Two Windows Questions

Factual Questions
1

  1. I have been following the advice someone gave a few days ago for getting around the slowness of the message boards: right-click on a topic, select Open in New Window, and do this for a number of topics, so they can all be loading while you are reading the first one. In general, this seems to work pretty well, but it always seems to end up with one or two windows which never get anything in them. When I try to close these windows, or minimize them, nothing happens. When I go to task manager, it says that one of the windows (usually only one, even if there are two or three that I can’t get to do anything) is not reponding. If I then tell it to end that task, it ends all the Internet Explorer windows that I have open. (This is IE 5.0 on NT 4.0.) Has anybody else run into this kind of problem, or have any idea what might be causing it?

  2. After I do the above, I then need to re-open all of the IE windows that I had open. This causes them to be placed at the end of the taskbar. I like to have my tasks in a certain order on the taskbar. Is there any way to re-order the items on the taskbar?

2

I can’t say much about question #1. The SDMB server us often slow to respond and leaves blank windows.

Regarding the 2nd question though, Windows has no built-in capacity to do this but there is a program called TaskBarOrganizer available at http://www.zdnet.com/downloads/stories/info/0,,77624,.html that lets you re-arrange the taskbar.

3

Sorry, the URL in my last post didn’t get posted correctly. It should include everything up through the “.html”. To use it correctly, use the mouse to select the whole string, right-click and select Copy. Then move to the Location field, right-click and Paste, then press Enter.

4

Yes, I have the same problem. Windows is very stupid as to how it arranges its processes, and IE and Netscape don’t help things with the way they are programmed. It happens all the time to me, on 3 different ISPs, many different computers. AFAIK, there is no fix other than running OS/2 or Unix, where multiple instances of IE and/or Netscape would actually be different processes in their own separate memory space, not different…threads? Is that the correct word? I’m sure someone will correct me if I am wrong.

5

I always open threads in new windows and keep the main page of threads open and active while the new windows spawn. I’ve noticed that after somewhere between 12 and 16 windows, I start to get “Netscape is running out of memory, try closing a few windows” error messages. I just click “OK” and read the threads. The 2 or 3 that didnt’ load will nevertheless have the URL in the location field, so I copy, do a Command-L, paste, and get those pages to reload once the others that I’ve read have been closed. No problem.

6

Then don’t use IE or Netscape. The Opera browser (http://www.opera.com) is especially well-suited for the SDMB.

Multiple browser windows are kept in the main Opera window, with a task-bar like row at the top, so that you can quickly select any of the browser windows you want. Windows that have loaded but haven’t been viewed yet show up on this bar with blue text.

You can ctrl-shift-click a link to open it in a new window in the background, so you don’t ever quit looking at the current page. This feature alone is worth getting Opera for.

You can navigate quickly with keyboard keys. For example, Z is equivalent to the “Back” button, and A is “Forward.” The 1 and 2 keys cycle between the open windows. Features like this go on and on.

7

I used to have problem 1. It hasn’t happened since I added another 128M memory though. No idea if there is a causal relationship, but memory is cheap, and it has helped in other areas.

8

IE will run as a different process if you launch the browser separately from the icon. If you use “Open in new window” or File|New|Window, then it’s just another window off the original process.

There used to be an option under Advanced for “Browse in new process”, but I can’t find it anymore.

As far as organizing the tasks, they are listed in the order they are launched, and aside from using a 3rd party utility, there is no way to re-order them.

9

Sometimes you just have to wait for the windows to get their information. Patience is the key. The browser might not do anything at all because its waiting for information to come in. Try being a little more patient.