I really, really, REALLY like my Google toolbar. Which is only available for IE. As are many plug-ins and extensions.
IE is better. IMHO.
rsa: I prefer the short text, but you’re right that it should be an option you can change (it probably is, but I don’t know where!). The back button thing is a known bug and it is annoying. Hopefully it’ll be fixed soon since it depends on the browser doing something extra (it only happens on certain pages: details at that link). Still, score one to IE for that one.
Fear Itself: I believe it was Google themselves who said they had no intention of making a Google toolbar for Mozilla or FB since it had all those features already 
If there are features that IE has that FB doesn’t, could you let me know what they are. As I said, I do have to use IE sometimes, and I’d like to know.
I never said FB was perfect, or that some people wouldn’t like it, but when you add up the positives and negatives on each, FB comes out ahead. And every magazine browser review I’ve seen agrees with me.
I am sitting looking at my Firefox right now. It has the practical equivalent of the Google toolbar right there. In fact, let’s go further, it has the equivalent of The Google toolbar for Alta Vista too. And Yahoo. And Whatis, and BBC News and Dictionary.com and AllTheWeb and Ananova and Sam Spade and Multimap and Encarta and How Stuff Works and The Straight Dope Archive. In fact I could have a couple of hundred others if I wanted to install them. All just like the Google toolbar. All free.
Firefox quite simply spanks IE’s behind and sends it home crying. And it’s still only a beta version!! But it is a matter of opinion I know and this thread has become IMHO material. I urge those who are facing the problem in the OP to follow my link in my above post for a solution. If they really must use IE. 
I’ll also chime in…
I think switching to Mozilla (or Firebird or Opera) is a valid solution to the OP’s problem. IE quite simply has some serious stability, security, and compatability issues. You may or may not be affected, depending on your usage, but the issues do exist. More importantly, Mozilla provides a very easy and reliable “solution” to the IE problem.
For an analogy, you may be having problems with your car’s dealer-supplied CD player. Maybe it skips too much, or overheats. You can either continue to get it repeatedly serviced by the dealer and live with the maintenance hassle, or get a better and reliable alternate brand of player.
I have always used IE, since the very early days of the Netscape wars, and sworn by it. I recently tried Mozilla for the heck of it, and was simply blown away by the increase in speed, stability, ease of use, and flexibility.
No doubt that it is, by anyone’s opinion, a superior product.
>> No doubt that it is, by anyone’s opinion, a superior product.
I guess I am not “anyone”. I am just an ignorant IE user and we don’t count because we have not found the truth yet. It has not been revealed to us. . . or worse, we refuse to accept Mozilla as our savior. We will burn in hell for this, together with Bill Gates. Oh well. . . I am still not converting to Mozilla or Linux or Mac or whatever. Internet Explorer works fine for me. Sorry.
Thank you all for your help, however, my problem has not been fixed. Getting a diffferent browser doesn’t seem to be the best thing to do for right now, and I want to keep IE because up until this problem, it has served me well.
I've downloaded patches 810847 and 813951, which combined, should have fixed my problem. It hasn't worked. Is there something I'm doing wrong? :confused:One thing you may not realise is it is not necessarily a problem of Mozilla/Firebird/Firefox but with IE, because IE handles the CSS box model badly.
StanDup,
Do you have the same problem with websites that require login (e.g. SDMB)?
From this page In Microsoft Internet Explorer, you may experience the following behaviors:
* When you click About Internet Explorer on the Help menu, the Cipher Strength value is 0-bit.
-and-
* You cannot connect to and view Web pages on secure Web sites.
CAUSE
This behavior can occur if the Schannel.dll, Rsabase.dll, or Rsaenh.dll files are missing, damaged, or of the incorrect version.
Also in the same page
- Click Internet Options on the Tools menu, and then click the Advanced tab.
- Under Security, click to select the Use SSL2.0 check box and the Use SSL3.0 check box (if they are not already selected).
- Click OK.
I am confused. The patch which is supposed to correct it is Q831167.exe (KB831167). Did you run it? It did not work for me but reinstalling IE6-SP1 did it. Read my post, #9 in this thread.
It seems the problem is with the new version of wininet.dll and it may be solved by reverting to the old file. Check date and file size.
I can sympathize with the OP. Disclaimer - I am a Mozilla believer. My wife is not, and it’s not worth the Marital Harmony Damage Points ™ to try to convert her.
She has been having problems with various (all?) secure sites. This is a known issue, as others have pointed out, and is likely caused by a bug in IE6 Service Pack 1, which I installed shortly before this issue reared its head. MS has, on their site, a patch for the patch (Linux zealots, just bite your tongues and play along, okay?). Search for kb831167. Which I just installed, but it didn’t solve the problem. There are two other articles referring to this, kb821814 and kb813444, but the latter seems to refer to XP exclusively, and wifey is on 98. The other says to contact MS directly, and charges “may or may not apply”.
This is all very annoying, as it means she can’t access any of her online banking services. If anyone gets anywhere with this, please LMK. (capnfutile at netscape.net)
Back to the Mozilla holy war, if you dig tabbed browsing, I encourage you to set it up as follows - tabs open behind current tab, and mousewheel-click opens link in new tab. This TOTALLY rocks for sites like Google News or SDMB, as you can just tap the mousewheel on things that interest you as you scroll down the list, and your slow-as dialup connection will open them in tabs in the background while you are reading something else. And built-in pop-up blocking? Yummy. But this doesn’t help the OP or my better half
capn “control-tab” futile