Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

Following links from the ever helpful Lifehacker, I came across Siteadvisor.

Currently in beta, it's a tool that informs you whether the link you've followed (or even are about to click on) points to a site that delivers malware, or spams you when you give it a registration email.

It's not too obtrusive - though it does add a rating icon to links on Google. You can use a JavaScript-driven pop-up to drill down to find out what was seen as to give a site a bad rating, whether it's sending spam or downloads with embedded spyware.

Rather useful - and available for both IE and Firefox.

Put this one on your parents' PC!

You'll be pleased to know that this blog gets a clean bill of health!

The Internet Explorer 7 web site throws up JavaScript syntax errors when viewed in IE7 Beta 2.

I think that has to count as a big oops, even if the beta browser seems quite a bit more stable than the previous release...

Here's a nifty Firefox extension that runs Internet Explorer inside a Firefox tab.

So now you can use Windows Update and the like without leaving your day-to-day browser. It's still under development, and somewhat buggy, but it's promising and useful.

Windows only

If you've got access to a MSDN subscription, then you may want to try out the Windows XP version of Internet Explorer 7 beta 1. Unfortunately the standard install will replace your existing copy of Internet Explorer - and, to be honest, the IE 7 beta isn't the most stable browser around.

Now, you could dual boot Windows Vista, but the Vista IE 7 isn't the same as the Windows XP version, and setting up a whole Virtual PC or VMware image just to try out a browser can seem a bit like overkill...

However there is a simple hack that will make IE 7 work as a standalone browser. Just follow these simple instructions (based on the instructions for older versions of IE):

• Download the IE7 Beta 1 Install from MSDN
• Open the install file with WinRAR (yep, it's an EXE, but it's a self extracting EXE) and extract them to a folder. Alternatively, you can just run the EXE, make a copy of the files which are extracted in the first step, and cancel the install. I was too chicken to do this on my work computer.
• Look in the folder you extracted to for the file SHLWAPI.DLL. Delete this file.
• Create a new text file in the folder, then rename it to IEXPLORE.exe.local.

Then just click on iexplore.exe and the browser will launch and run...

One thing to note - you won't have access to your bookmarks, and trying to open the favourites menu will cause a non-fatal error. Still, you're not going to be using IE 7 for anything other than test purposes...

If you need standalone versions of older browsers (not just IE) you can find them at browsers.evolt.org. How about a nostalgic spin round the interweb in Oracle's Powerbrowser? Or Netscape Navigator 1.1?