-
Help me know how long the page took to load
When IE finishes loading a page, the status bar simply displays a
'Done'. What is should display is 'Done. Load Time xx
seconds'. This will help both the developer and the typical user to
detect performance issues. This is a standard in Rules to Better Windows Forms.
Help me restore the last closed window
Quite often I accidentally close an IE window by mistake. It would be very handy to be able to reopen the
last closed window using an File-Re-open Last Window option. Not sure if this can happen, but when I
accidentally close an IE window by mistake, I would like to be able to do a Control+Z to undo it and have the window open again.
I would like to reboot my PC and all my IE windows come back. Note: Firefox allows you reopen your tabs.

- Figure: I want IE to have this "Recently Closed Tabs" feature
-
Help me undo a hotel broadband inflicted Redirect
I am travelling in (say) NZ and accessing the Net through the Hotel's broadband access system.
If I have to reboot I save all my current open tabs when I close down Internet Explorer.
After I reboot and reopen IE every page is redirected to the hotel broadband login homepage. Aaaaaaaaaahhhh...
Not happy. I won't be able to remember and I am not going through all my history for the last week.
-

-
Figure: All pages have been redirect to hotel page.
-
Help me manage External Tools easily
Crazy Browser and Firefox supports a custom list of external tools. Currently IE allows very limited support for this eg. addition to the basic list of programs for email, news, and editing. Currently, to edit the list of external tools you often need to use a registry hack. IE should allow you to set custom executables as
external tools in the Internet Options dialog. This would let me use lots of automated tools that are command-line driven.

- Figure: Crazy Browser's list of external tools
And please make it consistent with Visual Studio.NET Tools External Tools

- Figure: Visual Studio has an external tools option

- Figure: IE needs the same "Tools | Add-ons" ability as Firefox
Help me decide if I need the add-ons functionality by giving me a URL and a description
We suggest that there are a description and URL for each one to get more info about each one (to help the user decide if they need the add-ons functionality)

- Figure: Manage Add-ons Dialog in IE
-
Help me take advantage of great IE developments in Windows, not just IE
The main purpose of Internet Explorer should be to render web pages. There is no point having a massive UI shell
it should be kept to a minimum, just like it is now. If individuals need more they can download an
add-on.
This gives consumers more choices and is the way to go. I could add on the Google Toolbar or the Altavista Toolbar
depending on my needs.
Gestures are a very handy feature in some other browsers, such as
Opera and Firefox, where specific mouse movements can be associated
with actions. For example, holding down the button and moving the
mouse to the right navigates forward in your browser history.
It is clear to see the great ideas in Firefox, wouldn't it be even better
if we could all use these innovations in our own Windows applications. Build
them into Windows not into IE. Seeing these changes in the next service pack
for windows would be great.
-
Help me have fewer IE windows through tabbed browsing - * Fixed by Microsoft in IE7 *
It is quite obvious that tabs, such as those used in Mozilla
Firefox and Visual Studio .NET are here to stay. In today's world where people have more and more applications open,
tabs help to reduce clutter in the taskbar.
-
Help me see the full URL of a locally saved web pages
When you save a document from IE using the browser's 'Save As...' feature, when you look
at the HTML, you will see a comment showing the URL address it was when you saved it. This
way you can always know where that particular document came from without having to keep
the URLs somewhere else or manually editing the document. I want it to go a step further by adding an info bar.
Eg. When you open up a page from "C:\dataAdam\Test.htm", then there should be an info bar like this that says "This is a Saved Copy of the web page
www.ssw.com.au... Click here to load the page".

- Figure: An info bar indicating the live source would be good
-
Windows Update on the Tools menu is inconsistent with other Microsoft products
The menu location of "Window Update" on IE is inconsistent with other Microsoft products. On IE it is located on the Tools menu (Tools | Windows Update), but on other Microsoft products (including Visual Studio and Office XP) it is located on the Help menu (Help | Check for Updates). Please refer to our SSW Ruels to Better Windows Forms Applications
-
Help me manage RSS feeds in IE like it's done in Firefox
There is no need for a full RSS reader in IE. However the Live
Bookmarks feature in Mozilla Firefox is simple and effective. It
creates a special folder in your bookmarks list and adds a separate
link inside that folder for each post in the RSS feed.
If there is an .rss file then this icon shows the .rss reference is pulled from the META tag
eg. <link id="RSSLink" title="RSS" type="application/rss+xml" rel="alternate"
href="http://blogs.ssw.com.au/andrewweaver/rss.aspx"></link>

- Figure: Live Bookmarks in Firefox
-
Improved Download Management
It would be good if there were better download features similar to those found in other programs (eg. Firefox, Getright Lite etc).
Getright Lite allows the user to have more options of views to see a transfer queue, download later, throttle the download.
I should not need 3rd party software to be able to resume a download! The download manager in IE should be
able to handle the situations like connection drop.

- Figure: Bad Example - IE's download window is too simply, there is no way to resume an interrupted download session
We have also tested this on Vista/IE7+, however it's kind of sad, there is no improvement. Also, when I disconnect the Internet connection, the download window is just
staying there, no indication of the status at all.

- Figure: Bad Example - Vista/IE7's download window is simply hanging there when the connection drops

- Figure: Good Example - GetRight can help you to resume download and manage your sessions

- Figure: Good Example - FireFox has a download manager that allows you to restart an interrupted download session
Note: Better download managers than the one that comes built into IE7
-
Help me manage website passwords
It would be nice if there was a safe password storage facility (like Password Minder) / Auto Form Filler found in MSN Desktop.
I want to be able to view all the passwords I have stored for different sites, and be able to delete them.
-
Help me update IE without updating Windows - * Fixed by Microsoft in IE7 *
Why havent Microsoft released IE 7? Because it is part of the OS. The only way they can do it
would be via new versions of Windows or Service Packs. I dont agree with that. I think it should
be separated from the OS for 2 reasons:
- We need updates at least once a year
- There could be a great reduction in security issues by separating this further from the OS and stopping buffer overruns.
Firefox has 0 Critical Security Alerts since it came out mostly because it runs on the XUL framework with abstracts
from the OS.
Firefox http://secunia.com/product/4227/

Figure: Firefox errors

- Figure: Firefox 3.x errors
http://secunia.com/product/11/*NOT GOOD*

Figure: IE errors

- Figure: IE7 errors
-
Help me select multiple pieces of text
Internet Explorer should have the ability to let us select multiple pieces of text.
Sometimes we would like to select multiple pieces of text (usually links) and paste into a document.

- Figure: We can select multiple pieces of text in Microsoft Word.
-
Help me see I set a proxy server and forgot about it
When you get this

- Figure: IE - Cannot find server.
Sometimes it is purely because you added a proxy and you forgot.
This info should show on the "Cannot find server" page with a button to open the "Local Area Network (LAN) Settings" dialog.

- Figure: LAN Settings - Proxy server is used.
-
Help me print the computer name when printing webpages
We should have a '&c' to show the computer name.

- Figure: IE's page setup
Read the same request for Microsoft Word on our Microsoft Office Suggestions.
-
Help me see the file size of a page including and excluding images
The Page Properties in Internet Explorer is useful to view file size information of a web page. The file size displayed on this window however can confuse a user as it is unclear whether this figure includes images attached to that page.
I would also like to see the file size displayed on this window including images attached to that page.

- Figure: Add a new property called Size including Images" under "Size"
-
Help me work out if the option is enabled or disabled easily
The disable ones are counter-intuitive. "Ticking" something normally means turning something on, not turning something off.

- Figure: Internet Explorer 7 Options window
Help me spell check
IE should be able to do spell checking like how Firefox does.

- Figure: spell checking in Firefox
help me run IE6 and IE7 side by side on the same PC - * Update: Nothing changed in IE7 unfortunately *
Why does the IE team not design you to run IE6 and IE7 side by side on the same PC?
Seems a strange thing to not keep on shipping...
Help me save my option on the download file dialog
Does the below dialog annoy everyone?

- Figure: Want to show a image but popup a download dialog
Add check box: [x] Always do this action in future
-
Help me easily search by URL History
How did I miss this, 2 words and I have found the URL?
What a quick way to find a URL.

- Figure: IE need a better address bar like this.
-
Help me 'Delete All' temporary files for a specific domain
I would like another option "Delete all for current domain (microsoftsharepoint.com)".
I don't want to "Delete All".
-

- Figure: Only "Delete All" option is available
-
Help me reopen a previous browsing sessions
Say you have 3 IE sessions and each one has 3 tabs. If I'm forced to shut down my machine, how do I reopen all those browser sessions?
IE needs to extend the current
"Reopen Last Browsing Session" feature
to
"Reopen Previous Browsing Sessions" and include a sub-menu with a number of previous sessions. I would say 10 prior sessions would be a nice number.
Note: The 3rd Party Addin for IE8 called IEPRO does not have this feature either.
-

- Figure: I want to open more than the last browsing session
-

- Figure: This is the same feature as above but is lost when you install the Google toolbar
Firefox does this well, IE does not.
-

- Figure: It is easy to open a recently closed tab in Firefox. Not in IE
Tip: Did you know it's actually possible in IE?
Answer: Use the shortcut Ctrl+Shift+T, but it's not in the menus. IE users are not mind readers.
Add the same menu item "Open last closed browser tab", please.
Tip: How to remember this shortcut?
Answer: It is the equivalent of Ctrl+T, which inserts a tab.
To do the reverse, add "Shift" and it does the reverse