Yes, I know IE7 is a soft target, but today is the first day I've ever used it. (Relatedly, I'm hating HR software which only works in IE, but that's so hateful I'd need to book a day's holiday to rant about it all. And of course booking that day off would involve having to use ...).
On running it for the second time (because something crashed) the homepage with the heading 'Welcome Back', at this URL: http://runonce.msn.com/runonce3.aspx I think I may also have seen this the first time, but successfully ignored it. And also I, naïvely, presumed that the "runonce" in the URL meant I wouldn't see it again. But clearly it's spotted I've been neglecting it, and there's a subheading 'a) Required settings'. So let's see what's required, and maybe this will shut it up in future. My current search provider is 'Live Search'. I already experienced an unexpected Bing page appearing just the first run: when I mistyped a URL, to something that wasn't responding in port 80, it understandably timed out -- but instead of displaying an error message and leaving the URL intact for me to emend, IE7 decided I'd like to see a Bing search for typoed URL. I suspect that switching search providers won't really fix this, but I'd probably prefer Google anyway so let's give it a go. I click the 'Let me select from a list of other search providers' radio button. Strangely, and hatefully, this gives most of the page a dark blue background, similarly to if I'd dragged the mouse over it to select it. Some of the text turns white to be visible on the blue, but not all. OK, so where's this list of search providers? I can't see it anywhere. There's just a big button labelled 'Save your Settings', but I don't want to save them yet -- I haven't finished picking them. Oh. After I selected that radio button another line of text appeared below it: "Click 'Save your settings' below to see the list of search providers." Except I can barely read it, because it's hatefully in black on dark blue. But even more hatefully, why misleadingly label a button then dynamically add text telling you to click it anyway? Surely it'd've been less effort to put a relevant verb on the button itself?! I click the button. A new IE window apepars, with the promised list. I'd've preferred this in the existing window (in a new tab, if IE really doesn't want me to lose the original page; I believe IE now does tabs), but I can see a list item labelled 'Google', with their second-most-recent logo next to it. Maybe that logo was current when IE7 was released? Possibly, but this page is being served from www.microsoft.com, not hardcoded into the application, so MS presumably could've updated it to the current icon. I click 'Google'. A _third_ IE window appears. Possibly I shouldn't be surprised by now. This appears to have the same list as before. Odd. Maybe it's already added Google and is offering me the chance to add more. Hmmmm, I wonder where it's added it? The box to the right of the URL bar still says 'Live Search'. Maybe I mis-clicked. Let's try again. 'Google'. Same thing: I now have 4 windows, 3 of them apparently identical. Let's look at the text on that page --- oooh, there's a bold bit which says "Make this my default search provider", which sounds what I'm looking for. It continues: "check box in the Add Search Provider dialog box that appears when you click the link". Dialog box, what dialog box? Let's close window number 4, so I can see number 3 again. Ah, _there's_ the dialog box! As well as hatefully opening a pointless duplicate window, clicking the link also made a dialog box pop up in the original window -- completely obscured by the new window it's opened in front of it! It's hard to convey an appropriate level of hatefullness for doing this. Anyway, having finally found the option I'm about to click 'Add Provider' when I spot a caution along the bottom of the dialog box: "Search provider names can be misleading. Only add search providers from websites you trust." Yup, that makes sense. So let's check what I'm agreeing to here. The dialog box says: Name: "Google" From: www.microsoft.com Yer-what? You're asking me to accept a "Google" search that's from microsoft.com?! Well that vindicates the need for the caution! Microsoft apparently tricking people into signing up for a Google search, but they control it. Except, of course, it isn't. Microsoft is merely the site that's providing the link to Google. Which hatefully confuses users about who is actually providing what, inadvertently training them to accept things even if the name and "From" don't match. And thereby undoing all the good of displaying the "From" and having the caution. (It could've been that Microsoft had sneakily created a Google link which redirects through one of their servers -- so the user still gets a Google search, and sees Google URLs, but they get logs of what users are searching Google for, which is probably valuable data to their Bing developers. But they aren't. I checked. The "From: www.microsoft.com" link adds a direct search with Google.) I close the excess windows. My original window now says 'Settings saved successfully; you're good to go'. Which makes me think this really could've been done in all one window. Tentatively I quit IE and start it again. It loads my defined homepage! Success, at last. No more being bothered with IE's own pages getting in the way of loading webpages. But really, how on earth did Microsoft manage to make this so complicated? Isn't this stuff supposed to be friendly for non-geeks? Smylers
