IE6 may be tolerable after all

I was crushed to find that IE6 didn’t work with Microsoft’s IE Web Accessories for IE5, which I used constantly. I used the “open frame in new window” so often that I had forgotten that it wasn’t a normal part of the browser, until the first time someone asked for help in Blogger Discuss and gave a url that turned out to be a frameset framing another frameset on another server, so that I had to view-source, copy the url for the main frame, paste it into IE6, view-source, copy the url for the main frame in that frameset, paste it into IE6, until I could finally view-source on the blog itself. (Sounds farfetched, but you would be amazed at how many people give out a url that’s a frameset on a free “redirect” site (that pretends a frameset is a redirect), and then use another frameset on their actual host. Thanks to IE Booster, a set of free context menu extensions for IE6, not only do I have my “open frame in new window” back, I have a whole lot more.

A sampling:

  • Show source which includes the referring page, last mod date, any cookies, and the full set of http headers
  • Show partial source, for a highlighted selection (another Web Accessories favorite)
  • Resize window, with choices from 1600×1280 down to 640×480 (how did we do anything in those tiny windows?)
  • Show all forms and applets, which gives you the chance to see all hidden values, and edit anything about the form you choose before submitting it (a web developer’s dream and also a web developer’s nightmare, depending on who’s editing whose forms)
  • “Steal this link” (which they call “copy link target as <a href=url>caption</a>”), which lets you copy a link lock, stock, and barrel
  • Open selected text as url in a new window, for those incredibly lame newspaper sites that print urls as text rather than links

and several more features that I either haven’t used yet or don’t see a use for. The only two problems I’ve seen so far are a bit of a lag in displaying the context menu (now that it has close to 30 items), and a few times where things got confused while I was applying one menu item to the results of another, and ended up needing to hit Back a time or two to get things working. I’ll take far more trouble than that, just to have my “open frame in new window” back at last!

3 Comments

Comment by Ed #
2003-02-13 00:10:22

Thanks for the tip!!! GGGGRRRRRREEEAAATLLLYYY Apreciated

 
Comment by Kîñg #
2003-10-09 15:31:32

If you do NOT want the endless list of features that you don’t use in your context menu, but DO want to open every frame in a new window, have a look at:
http://biphome.spray.se/hans_tegnerud/proj-ie6ext.html

Just click on the feature you would like to add to IE6! :D

 
Comment by Sandesh Deshmukh #
2005-08-22 21:00:34

Your XML Feed Button is not clickable in IE7 beta 1, i thought it was just an image, but it works fine in firefox, so its ie7 who has been messing up! take care!

 
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