So somebody downloaded a file from CC and has a problem. Jane’s up to her ears in aardvarks on her book, and she asked me to handle it, which involves, in this case, getting the file which I don’t keep on my computer and sending it to the person who needs it. This should be simple.
2 1/2 hours later, I have finally uninstalled the Yahoo toolbar by totally blowing Firefox back to the basics, after reading through every help screen. Yahoo is now on my nuke-it-with-prejudice list, meaning the world will have to turn upside down before I use their search engine, and it was, until this morning, my go-to favorite search engine.
They not only installed the toolbar, they blitzed the normal remove-it functions and hid themselves so they didn’t appear on any menu, from Win 7’s ‘add-remove programs’ to Firefox’s ‘extensions’ manager. No, by this point, I had not only that beastly damn toolbar, I had a free games, a dolphin screensaver, and a free music downloader icon, and I was ready to kill. I’ve lost an entire morning’s work dealing with the fallout, I’m in a hellacious mood, and I STILL can’t get Filezilla to get into CC because it’s on Lynn’s password and I’m too steamed to even try to cope with the situation.
There’s got to be a hot spot in hell for programmers that do this sort of thing. And this was deliberate.
Kudos to Firefox for having a Reset Program: nice little thing: it copies your bookmarks, history, skins, etc, installs Firefox bare-nakedd and then reinstalls your data, then very politely uninstalls ITSELF. Which is the way programs ought to function, and a real reason I prefer Firefox to the endlessly updated IE-whatever. Firefox Mozilla, friends. And for mail, Thunderbird. Less buggy, more friendly, and free.
Gotcha!! I just loathe those programs. I disconnected Yahoo a couple of years back for just those reasons.
Any drive-by program that installs itself without authorization, no matter how well intentioned, gets ripped out on discovery. I choose which programs get to live on my computer, thankyewverymutch!
Bet Yeager’s language was employed this morning.
“This should be simple. 2 1/2 hours later,”
But computers are “labor saving devices”! It says so right here in the User’s Guide. 🙂 🙂 🙂
Yahoo got a scorching letter re the perpetrator site.
I’ve had good experiences with Google Chrome browser. And no issues with malware. Just sayin’. 🙂
I’m in this group too. DOS was fine, as I waited for a real OS. It did what you told it. W95 wasn’t too bad–until you let Office do a typical install, giving you Clippy, the Office Assistant! Custom installs after that. Then in 2004 I was prowling the bins at the Goodwill Outlet (“Goodwill store”: marginally usable junk. “Goodwill Outlet”: last stop before the landfill.) and found on the bottom a (unscratched!) CD lying of “Linux from Scratch, v4.1”. The learning curve was very steep, even if my career was in computing (built my own IMSAI computer [see “Wargames”] in 1976), but the only things running on my current Linux systems are what I built from scratch (excepting an old version of Flash binary and I’ll get rid of that when I can find a suitable replacement). It takes a lot to really push me to the edge, but some programs have come very close. Mostly I avoid everything I don’t know I really must have! 😉
But let me put in a small good word for programmers. It usually isn’t them responsible–it’s the marketing department!
Oh, but I LIKED Clippy! At least you could turn it on and off….
@KapnKirk: Chrome does not play all that well with Ancestry.com; Firefox works best for that site.
I’m sorry to hear that. Complain to their webmaster. 🙂
Seriously, I’ve also found that certain browsers work best for certain sites. FireFox works best for my bank, for example. At least I don’t find I have to use IE anymore. Airline websites were the worst until about five years ago, or so.
But as Chrome has gained market share, more and more sites are adjusting to it.
For a while, they didn’t play well with Firefox either – I was having to use IE to upload. Someone there finally figured out they’d be losing customers if they didn’t fix that malfeature.
Sites that have browser-specific features should label those features so the rest of us know what we can’t use.
Having more than one browser is not a problem for a computer. When I communicate with Dell and want to give them keyboard/monitor control, I need IE. For absolutely everything else, I use Firefox. Besides, it gives me nice Bleach skins. 😉
I use Word Perfect as my main wp program; I have Word for when I absolutely must.
I have Photoshop and Paintshop Pro, neither of which I can use well; my program was Microsoft Image Creator, but it died several generations ago.
Never have any problem with any of these except my occasional forays into Word leave me doubting the sanity of the creators. I envision some little old grandma doing little knitted roses…with doilys on every chair arm. WP is your neighborhood pub, just the basics.
But choice is useful.
I have *three* browsers at work. I need IE for some of the programs/sites I use there, Chrome for Google Maps (because we can’t update Flash or anything else), and Firefox for my own use.
Sometime we’re going to get Win8 and Office 2010. Maybe next winter, they say.
I’ve discovered the hard way that you have to be vewy, vewy qwiet. . .er . . careful when installing programs, as a “standard install” usually involves installing somebody’s toolbar somewhere besides the perpetually sunless someplace I’d prefer to have it permanently installed. I always choose the “custom install” option. It’s the only way around the “stealth install” of unwanted gadgets. Oh, the sneaky, underhanded tactics that are employed to get you to install the [expletives and pejoratives deleted] Bing toolbar and the hassles I’ve had uninstalling that misbegotten pestiferous excrescence (to put it politely and with a minimum of blue air) — !!!!!. I use iGoogle homepage as my homepage, Google as my search engine and thereon I have my Google conversion gadgets (temp- F/C, currency -$/£, distance -miles/km) and Doppler radar gadget. Firefox is my browser of choice. I love their NewsFox feed reader — it’s what I use to keep track of the blogs, comics and webcomics I follow. I use Word because I have had to have it for my work, so I’ve got it and I’m familiar with it. I use word’s “autocorrect” feature for creating “shortcuts” that let me type a few characters and have them “autocorrected” to the complete word (like “apxly” autocorrects to “approximately,”)or character name or place name (great way to keep your spelling of names consistent). I’ve also got a bunch of editing macros set up that capitalize or LC the first letter of any word (ALT+W), separate a sentence into two sentences (put in punctuation, and capitalize the appropriate word) in several types of situations, and vice versa, with and without “and” removal . . .I have manuscript templates set up. . . .
Program of a different kind: a simulation of travel in the Roman Empire
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/341753/title/Interactive_map_like_GPS_for_Roman_Empire
neat!
@P J Evans: My daughter’s job requires working with new operating systems so she gets early versions of operating systems. Please urge your network and systems administrators to WAIT before installing WIN8. I’ve been using WIN7 and Office 2010 for 19 months with absolutely no problems, but the learning curve for the Office “ribbon” was steep. I’m happy that I can still use most of the keyboard shortcuts rather than having to search through ribbon menus. WIN8 will incorporate the ribbon paradigm into the OS. For people who are not interested in upgrading their computers to meet operating system bloat, the overhead in WIN8 won’t break the bank (at least the evaluation copy she has) but WIN8 is optimized for tablets, not regular computing (optimized for no keyboard). I predict that office/work tasks will take about 30% more than for an OS without and many of the more complex database and mathematics/statistics software will have difficulties.
I used to miss those little “gotchas” when I’d get updates, etc. Now, I look for them. Do you want to make “Ask” your default search engine and add the “Ask” toolbar? No…..I have enough toolbars and I’m going to be getting rid of several of them.
CJ, I went searching for Firefox’s reset, and couldn’t locate it within the tools provided. Do I have to go to Mozilla and get that program?
CJ,
I went searching for Firefox’s reset that you mentioned, but couldn’t locate it in the menu bar, even under Tools, etc.. Do I have to download it from Mozilla?
I guess I should have asked the question first, instead of making the comment. That way, it would have been obvious that a question was present.
Well, Joe, let me see if I can find it.
Here you go.
http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/reset-firefox-easily-fix-most-problems?s=firefox+reset&r=1&e=un&as=s
I went to “Help,” then asked ‘reset Firefox’ should you lose track of it again. It will save ALL settings but it will lose all toolbars.
Unfortunately it will also include LastPass in that—as a toolbar. If you are using LastPass [a software that fills the blanks for all your passwords and forms and credit cards] it will not remove LastPass data, but it will have to be rewakened: just click on its icon and get it reinstated in your Firefox.
Thank you! I did try a reset Firefox and as you said, it took away the toolbars. Small loss for some of them, now, as I largely ignore most of the stuff on the toolbars nowadays.
Joe, I’m sure if you miss one, you have only to visit the parent site—or just call up the program from your hard drive, if it is like LastPass.
Internet Explorer 9…….the best way to download Mozilla Firefox.
SteveB’s comment about IE9 reminded me of the following link:
http://www.lolroflmao.com/2011/08/19/internet-explorer-10-which-browser-do-you-want-to-download/
I’ve been using Firefox since it was Netscape, except when forced to use IE by some sites (Dell as CJ mentioned, and my high school class website, of all things, since the links won’t work there in Firefox).
In Firefox you can always uncheck a toolbar so you don’t have to look at it, but I’d prefer not to install the thing to begin with. I think these add-on installs are getting worse; I don’t remember having to be so careful to avoid extra programs I didn’t want in the past.