Archive for June, 2006

IE7 Beta 3 is here!  We’ve snuck in some goodies in the feed reading user experience based on your Beta 2 feedback (keep the comments coming!).  We are feature-complete for feed reading  in IE7, but we’re still looking for feedback to make tweaks and fixes for the final release.  If you run into issues with Beta 3, don’t hesitate in sending us your feedback.  Here are some of improvements since Beta 3.

 

Refresh All Feeds – Throughout the day, the download engine is refreshing your feeds.  However, when you’re ready to plow through all of your feeds, you probably want to make sure all of your feeds have the absolute latest info. This is feedback we’ve gotten from several beta users:

Airex: Nice Feature, but how can I, for example, refresh all subscriptions in OneClick?

TravisP: The feeds section definitely requires a sync or refresh function for the entire tree. I have over 50 feeds in my tree that requires each one to be right clicked on and refreshed.

Gert Van Waelvelde: I think a "check all feeds now" button would be very useful.  When I turn on my computer I like to get all the latest news and latest blog posts immediately, rather than having to wait until the feeds are synchronized automatically.  Also, when I'm about to turn my computer off, I like to know whether there are any new news items or blog posts that I should  read urgently.  A "check all feeds now" button would make this possible.

We’ve added a way for you to refresh all the feeds from the context menu from any feed or folder in the Feed List Pane.

 

Control Marking a Feed as Read – The feed reading model in IE is light-weight, and when you select a feed to read, the entire feed is automatically marked as read.  However, there’s a case where you open up a feed to read and realize that you don’t have time to finish reading all the unread items.  Wouldn’t it be nice to save the current feed reading state?

Roger Bonine: There doesn't seem to be any way to set read/unread info, either at the individual post level or the feed level. For instance, if I look at a feed and it only has two posts, I may scroll through the feed and read them both. Then I would mark the entire feed as read. Is this really not possible, or am I missing something?

Matt Ellis: I think the viewed model makes sense for the IE user - it's the least interaction, and it's the majority case that the user will want to mark all items as read when they view the page. The problem arises when I use the common feed from a more traditional aggregator where I have more fine grained control over my feed items. If I happen to browse to my feed in IE, IE will trounce over all my settings in my aggregator.

Now you can.  We’ve made 2 improvements to control how you mark a feed as read.  For feeds that have unread items, there’s a new control that appears “Mark feed as read.” 

If a feed has this control checked, when you navigate away from the feed (open a new link within the same tab, close the tab, etc.) the feed is marked as read.  To keep the current feed items in the unread state, just uncheck this control.

If you prefer to keep to manage when to mark a feed as read, you can change the default setting of this control through the Feed Settings dialog (Tools | Internet Options > Content > Feed Settings button) so that the “Mark feed as read” control is always unchecked.

 

Keyboard Shortcuts – In the past, we haven’t made it very easy to discover the keyboards shortcuts.  Aaron’s posted some useful keyboard shortcuts for IE7, and we’ve added them in the tooltip for the top-level buttons on the frame in Beta 3.  Here are the ones that we’ve added for Feed Reading:

• Alt + J for Feed Discovery Button – Opens the menu of the discovered feeds on a webpage
• Ctrl + J for Feed List Pane – Opens the Feed List Pane in the Favorites Center in a menu mode
• Ctrl + Shift + J for Feed List Pane – Opens the Feed List Pane in the Favorites Center in the docked mode
• Alt + S for Text Search – Puts the focus in the search box in the Feed Reading View
• Alt + I for All Items – Displays all of the feed items in the Feed Reading View
• Alt + M for Mark as Read – Toggles the Mark as Read control in the Feed Reading View

Here’s a pattern to go through all of your unread feeds:

1. Ctrl + J to open the Feed List Pane
2. Down arrow to find the next unread feed (a feed is bolded if there are unread items),  Right arrow to expand a folder, and Enter to select a feed to read
3. Space to scroll through the feed to the end.  By default, we filter the Feed Reading View to unread items unless it is a list feed.
4. Repeat steps 1 & 2 to get to the next unread feed

We hope you enjoy these improvements!   We look forward to hearing what you think.

- Jane

***Double News Flash: There is no "problem" with the badge on IE. Just make sure that when you try to use this badge on 360 as a blog entry, you select either the Vertical or Horizontal version and NOT the default Header version.  The default width of the Header badge is 620, which is longer than what 360 allows (540).  So if you want to use the Header version, you have to change the width from 620 to 540. ****

I’m happy to announce that we’ve made some tweaks to our flash badge to make it work on Myspace and Yahoo! 360.  As you can see above, the badge works great as a 360 blog and also works as part of your Myspace profile, the header on your Myspace blog, or in the blog itself. 

Update:  Unfortunately,  the badge is only supported as part of a 360 blog post.  A more permanent option for placing the badge is forthcoming.  Thanks!

To post to Yahoo! 360:

1. Go to the Badge Page in your profile.
2. Select either the Horizontal or Vertical version of the badge
3. Copy the code by selecting the code and selecting Copy from the Edit menu on your browser
4. Go to 360 and click “Compose Blog Entry”
5. Enter some text here describing your badge.
6. Select “View HTML Source”
7. Paste in the badge code after your text
8. Click “Post This Entry” and you’re done!

To add to your Myspace profile:

1. From your Myspace page, click “Edit Profile”
2. Cut and paste the code from the badge page (pick any size you want) into any of the profile fields.
3. Save and you’re done.

To add to your Myspace blog:

1. You can cut and paste the code and post it as a blog, or you can customize your blog to have the Answers badge as a header, by clicking “Customize Blog” and pasting the badge into the “Your Own Header HTML” field.

If you want to edit the badge code to have a custom height and width, you can edit the height and width fields in the code to anything you want.  FYI: the max width on 360 badges is 540 pixels.

As I said in my previous post, the badge is an awesome way to promote your questions and answers.  Since it’s always showing your latest stuff, visitors to your blogs can see what you’re most curious or knowledgeable about.  Have fun, and definitely let us know how you’re using the badge.

Nick Nguyen
Product Manager, Yahoo! Answers

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We've added the option to assign channels to your referral units. Now, when you're generating the code for any referral unit, you can specify a channel to track the performance of that specific referral unit.

You can use the more detailed channel reporting to track anything from whether text or button referral formats perform better, to whether Firefox referrals are more successful on your product pages or your news pages. Channels will help you experiment to find out what's most effective in referring users from your site.

With the addition of channels for the referrals feature, now might be a good time to brush up on your channel expertise by reviewing our channel guide.



Posted by Julie Beckmann - AdSense Publisher Support

We just heard from the Ozzie developers at bluepulse that they've whipped up a Blogger widget for their mobile phone platform; here are a few details from their post about it: Supports HTML, so you can link to a site, another post, or another blog from your postSupports multiple Blogger blogs. Create a new post, or edit an existing post from the widget and republish itSave a post as a draft and

Hi everybody, Max here. I posted before about "A New Look for IE” back when we released the beta 2 preview, and with the launch of beta 3, I wanted to take a moment to tell you about some of the new functionality we have added and changes we have made specifically related to your feedback.

First and foremost, let me thank everybody who has put the time and effort towards giving us feedback, whether it’s through our connect site, participating in our monthly online chats, talking with us at the conferences we attend, or even just commenting here on our blog; this helps us make the product better for you. Since beta 2, we’ve fixed many issues, and we continue to drive to releasing a more secure, reliable, easy to use browser with IE7.

New Icons

In response to feedback especially here on the blog and on Channel 9, we want to show you some new icons for beta 3.

We’ve lightened up the stop, refresh, and search icons, and we’ve changed the icons for the favourites center and add to favourites to give you back the good old favourites star.

Tab Reordering

The next big change we have made, which I’m super excited about as this was one of the more highly voted for issues on the connect site, is that in beta 3 you’re now able to reorder tabs via dragging!

Just drag the tab where you want it to go. This is a super convenient way to keep your tabs organized within your window.

Authenticated FTP

We also heard lots of feedback about FTP not working in IE7. In beta 2, anonymous FTP sites worked, however if the site required authentication, then one needed to either use windows explorer to get the familiar folder view of the FTP site, or use the somewhat arcane ftp://username:password@ftp.site/ URL format in order to make it work in IE7. In beta 3, IE7 now prompts for credentials and gives an html view of the FTP site. If you’re interested in the folder view for the FTP site, simply choose the “Open FTP Site in Windows Explorer” menu entry from the Page menu.

Easy Access to Email

Earlier in the IE7 development cycle, we decided to remove the command bar icon that provided access directly to one’s email. Through our Customer Support Services division, we learned that the lack of this icon was in fact one of the top call generators for IE7 beta 2, and hence we’ve added this icon back. It’s now available to be put into your command bar through the customization menu. Right click on the command bar and select Customize Command Bar -> Add or Remove Commands.

A smaller change

There’s one more change I want to tell you about, first because I think it’s a great example of a small detail that makes a big difference in how much people enjoy using the browser, and secondly because it was expertly done by one of our new summer interns, Michael Ritche.

IE6 featured auto scaling of large images to fit the browser window, and it had this weird button that would show up over the top of the image after some indeterminate amount of time. It felt a little odd to use, and was somewhat unpredictable. In IE7, thanks to Michael, we’ve replaced this with a simple magnification cursor. Now, you can click to zoom the image to full size, and the image will be centered on where you clicked.

This was a great first change by Michael, and we’re sure there will be many more.

Jane has posted details of some UX improvements in the RSS experience on the RSS team blog. Check them out.

As we look towards finishing IE7 and starting in our next release, please keep the feedback coming! With your help we’ll continue to improve Internet Explorer.

Thanks,
Max Stevens
Lead Program Manager

We’ve noticed questions/comments/confusion about uninstalling IE7 so I wanted to highlight one of our FAQs and add a little more detail.

Uninstalling IE7 will leave you with a fully-functional IE6 and allow you to install the latest release, IE7 Beta 3, which we recommend for all IE7 beta users so they benefit from the latest bug fixes and security updates.

To uninstall Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2, Beta 2 Preview, or Beta 1:

• Click "Start", and then click "Control Panel"
• Click "Add or Remove Programs"
• Scroll down to "Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2" or "Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview", select it, and then click "Change/Remove".
• If not found, check "Show Updates" at the top of the dialog box, scroll down the list to "Windows XP - Software Updates", select "Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview" or "Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1" and then click "Change/Remove".

To uninstall Internet Explorer 7 Beta 3:

• Click “Start,” and then click “Control Panel.”
• Click “Add or Remove Programs.”
• Scroll down to "Windows Internet Explorer 7 Beta 3", select it, and then click "Change/Remove".

If you still can’t uninstall, read on…

Note: %windir% is your Windows directory and usually located at C:\Windows

• “I can’t find any IE7 entry in Add/Remove Programs. What should I do?”
  • You can run the uninstaller directly using the commands below.  Each is for a different beta release so only one will work. Note that to see these folders, you need ‘view hidden folders’ enabled.

IE 7 Release	Uninstall Command
Beta 3	%windir%\ie7beta3\spuninst\spuninst.exe
Beta 2	%windir%\$NtUninstallie7beta2$\spuninst\spuninst.exe
Beta 2 Preview from March	%windir%\$NtUninstallie7b2pmx$\spuninst\spuninst.exe
Beta 2 Preview from January	%windir%\$NtUninstallie7bet2p$\spuninst\spuninst.exe
Beta 1	%windir%\$NtUninstallie7beta1$\spuninst\spuninst.exe

• “I don’t have those folders (%windir%\$NtUninstallie7-----$ or %windir%\ie7beta3).  What now?”

• Open %windir%\ie7*.log (not ie7*_main.log) and look for a line something like this:
              time_stamp: CreateUninstall = 1,Directory = C:\WINDOWS\$NtUninstallie7-----$

• If found, the uninstall folder was created but later deleted.
  • Please tell us what happened. Did you delete it to free disk space? Do you run a tool that might delete it? Something else? We know there are some cleaner tools that remove the uninstall directory. We’re working with the vendors to have their tools updated and we changed our directory name in Beta 3 to prevent this problem in the future.
  • Call product support (1-866-876-4926)

• If you have a line like this:
              time_stamp: CreateUninstall = 0…
  
  
  • Please tell us right away. Did you reinstall Beta 3 or is this in a Beta 2 log?
  • Call product support (1-866-876-4926)

• "I'm told I need to be the same user to uninstall but I am the same user."
  • Add this key to the registry:
    

    Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
    
    [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer]
    @=""
    "InstalledByUser"=dword:00000000

    Alternatively, you can take the indented section above, paste it into a text file, and save it as a .reg file. Run the .reg file and then try uninstalling.

• “I get a warning about other programs that may not work after removing IE7. What’s the warning all about?”
  • The dialog contains a list of programs that may not work after uninstalling IE7.  The purpose is to prevent out-of-order uninstall of related programs. If a dependent program is left on the system without its prerequisite, it may stop functioning, require reinstallation, or even cause your system to stop working properly if it is an OS component. The details of this are described in KB 823836.
    
    While this warning is important, especially if for some reason you’re uninstalling security updates or hotfixes, I want to clarify that the programs listed are everything you've installed since installing IE7.  The uninstaller doesn't have a way to detect what updates are actually related so it lists everything.  That's why an unrelated application like Windows Live Messenger may appear in the list depending on the installation order.

Thanks for trying IE7 and please continue to report your problems and file bugs by following these instructions

John Hrvatin
Program Manager