I don’t know the jargon for the feature I am trying to disable, so bear with me. In Internet Explorer 8 certain words in articles are treated as a hyperlink which causes a pop-up window to display if you move the cursor over them. The pop-up offers to search for the hyperlinked word using Bing.
By the gods this is annoying. Can it be killed? Maimed? Exorcised?
-rainy
If that fails, try this instead.
I think that these things rainy is talking about are a function of the web page. For instance the first link in Duckster’s first link get me a page that has underlined words that bring up little info links. This happens in both IE and firefox.
Sorry, but I don’t see that, in either Firefox or IE. I see links created by the web page creator, but no additional pseudo links created by the browser.
Not to be an a-hole, but for serious, if you don’t specifically need IE8 for some very specific reason, use Firefox. If for no other reason than because if you do have a problem with it, people will know how to fix it.
And Chrome. I see the same thing.
Sounds like the website(s) OP is visiting employ contextual advertising
ETA: Specifically, in-text advertising
That is my point exactly. The infowords things are done by the web page creator.
So… the only way to be rid of that is to turn on javascript? Could be why Duckster is not seeing it.
OT: I actually typed (and deleted) *the *before your username, Duckster. 
I ran a test with Firefox and IE8. Now that I know what to look for, IE8 shows the contextual advertising, but Firefox does not. Why, you ask? Because Firefox has AdBlocker Plus installed.
So my original post was accurate. Use Firefox with Adblocker Plus installed.
I have Chrome but I don’t use it. Google is the new evil Microsoft. I don’t like it that Chrome phones home whether I like it or not.
(aside) Whistle “Dixie”?
Give Sinatra the best role?
That last part seems a little weird. Google Update still “phones home” with Chrome installed, even if you don’t use it. If you are talking about the part where it sends anonymous usage statistics for the team so they can “improve” it, the software at least says you can disable it. In fact, since it’s asked in the installer, I never even enabled it in the first place. But, even if I did, there’s no reason I have to even let it through the Windows default Firewall (I’ve got a hardware one, too.)
The only reason I stopped using Chrome is that they don’t have Live Bookmarks (or any of the promised extensions [other than a neat adblocking software that tricks the site into thinking you already saw the ad, thus still generating them revenue.]) I still don’t get why no one else wants to implement those.
Use his middle name, “Muriel.”
Tell him how much you enjoyed his dad’s Vegas show.
Come to think of it, Janice’s voice alone oughta do the trick.
Remind him what a horrible father he was.
They’re called Vibrant Text links or some such nonsense and they are annoying. Click the magnifying glass at the end of one of them and go to the Vibrant Link home page. There is an option to disable them. After disabling clear your browser cache and that should be the last you see of them.
IE8 has a new feature called “Accelerators”. This sounds like what you’re running afoul of.
Microsoft page here describes how to manage them: