IE7Pro Forum

The only big update that I usually wish for is the ability to block tables with the ad-blocker (this includes the ability to target the <tr> and <td> parts to the table as well).

People, please keep the conversation in english only so that everyone can understand what you suggested.

Part 1, about preferences dialog.

The more ie7pro goes forward in development, the longer the list on the left side will grow and we have already reached the point, where clarity got lost. To solve this problem, I suggest to arrange the sections in a hierarchical way (similar a folder tree in Windows explorer). E.g. the sections mouse gesture, super drag & drop and shortcut key could be grouped in a higher ranking group called "interface". Plugins and Scripts could be grouped similarly, also address bar and search, and so on. By doing so, the number of the top level sections would degree, making it easier to find, what the user actually needs. The Thunderbird settings dialog shows a way, how this can be done.

The first page in the dialog with the rather meaningless name "setting" (with the exception of the last section "About" that are all settings in all sections) got to overcrowded. I suggest to separate them in separate (sub-)sections. Also: The arrangement lost partly its logic: The option for enabling the ie6 search bar is definitely on the wrong place. It would be more logical, to make a own group (could be called GUI) for enabling the ie6 search bar, disabling the ie7 search bar and location of the ie7 menu bar, contingently also the ie7pro icon area (but more about that in a later part). Tab settings should also go into a own sub-section.

As already described here in post 24, lower part there is a change needed for the default answer for the shortcut key assignment in case of conflict.

Regarding the spell-checker: As known, there was a discussion about the usage of multiple language dictionaries. As I had said there, the simultaneously of more than 1 language at the same time will provide more trouble than advantages. (Everyone may charge him/herself: How often do you write in more than one language in the same post?) But a solution might be the following: Make a general option, where the user can set, if after every start of ie the last used dictionary shall be active (as it is now), or if one of the dictionaries shall get activated automatically (e. g. english, but let the user decide). In addition to that there could be the possibility, that the user can create a list of url, where the dictionary switching can be set individually; example:
url1:   switch to the following dictionary (User selectable)
This list could be filled by the user similar to the address bar option.
Another possibility for this additional option would be, that ie7pro itself remembers the last used dictionary on a given site. But such a automatism can be adverse, so in this case the should be a third option in the general options, if this url-automatism shall get activated (otherwise one of the above named options will work).

Part 2, about the look and feel.

This part will comprise out of two sub-parts.

The question gives me the opportunity to come back to a point, I already mentioned some time ago: Why are there 2 pro-icons at all? And why is the icon for the pro-menu placed at the wrong place?

The actually placed in the status-bar icon can do all, what is necessary for working with ie7pro: calling the menu and calling the settings window. But the great disadvantage of this status-bar icon is, that it is placed at the bottom, whereas all the other functions of ie are placed at the top of the program window. Some older guys might remember the old DOS-programs as Word for DOS or Multiplan, where the main menu was at the bottom (but even the really old Norton Commander for DOS had the menu at the top), but than this got changed. It is more than 15 years over, that functions of a Windows (and also DOS) program are at the top section; every user looks in a new program at this place to find out, what the program does. And 99% of all Windows programs with a standard GUI have the menu and icons there. It is a question of common kind of usage, and that means of ergonomics and usability. To bring it to the point: If ie7pro will compete with other addons and stand alone browsers, it is not enough, to provide useful functions, but also to provide them in a ergonomic and logical structure and design.

With ie7pro the situation is not only, that the pro menu is placed at the wrong end of the program window; the even worse situation is, that the user has to move the mouse at the top, to use the ie-standard-functions, and at the bottom, to use the pro-function. Every good design should avoid the need for such great distances and mouse-movements.

Footnote: The problem with ie7pro is even worse (by rating of usability and logic of usage): There are 2 icons, which look absolutely identical, but they do not the same and they react different. You can call the settings dialog with both of them, but with the upper icon you have to do a single left-click for that, with lower icon you have to do a double left-click or a single right-click (dependend from setting) to achieve the same. What is the logic of that? The lower icon can call the pro-menu, but you cannot do this with the upper icon at all. The (new) user has no hint at all, that 2 identical looking things are so different.

Well, the whole problem could be solved very easily: Erase the (at now) top icon and place the (at now) status bar icon into the tool-bar, whereto it belongs. Maybe, that some people might say, that this would not make clear for the new user, how to access the pro-functions and settings. (I would not follow such argumentation.) But also this is really easy to solve: All the standard icons in the ie-toolbar have a down-arrow at the right side, indicating, that there is a menu below. So making this arrow beside the pro-icon would indicate the existing of a menu in exactly the same way, as every ie-user knows it already from the main-program.

And that brings us back to the main point: There is IMHO not the least need for 2 icons (except, that the developers want the eyes of the user to rest on pro-icons) and there is not the least logic, to bring the pro-menu at the status-bar, where (nearly) every Windows-app has it at the top. And I have never seen a Windows program (with standard GUI), that dispenses the menu at the different edges of the program window.

Another footnote: It is true, that part of my suggestion can be done already by the user at now: By customizing the ie-toolbar you can remove the superfluous pro-icon at the top. But at now there is no possibility to bring the (actually) status-bar icon to the top.

____________________________________________________________________

The question of the number and placement of the icons is only one point to improve. Indeed, there is another point, and taking the fantastic speed of the development of ie7pro into consideration, this point will get bigger in the future.

I speak about the point, that (nearly) all the functions, that ie7pro provides, are centralized in a single menu, that grows and grows and grows ....

Even now it is not really concise, to find the function, that the user is looking for at a given moment. And even quite obviously it is necessary to place / group some functions into sub-menu, which a disastrous from the point of accessibility. The pro-menu is not very far away from the amount of all the standard-menus of ie7 (except the favorite-menu of course). Can anybody imagine, that Microsoft would have made a single menu, placing all the functions in it, just divided by some dashes? I think it is time to think about, how this can be solved. I will show you 3 possible solutions, which might be combined. (Maybe there are other solutions, but those that follow are those, which come actually into my mind.)

Suggestion 1: (Probably not doable in ie7): Enhance the side-bar / explorer-bar. Especially some functions as the tab-restore-manager would work great there (as I think), the user would see the whole history at a glimpse and can click the entry he needs back. This solution would work even better, if something like a floating side-bar, as another member in the forum suggested just recently suggested, could be done (I don't know, if this is possible).

Suggestion 2: Enhance the standard ie-toolbar. This toolbar is customizable, so that there could be more additional icons instead of one, as it is now. By doing so, the different group of functions could be placed in different menus below those icons and so the needed clarity is there. Of course I know, that there will come (probably most of) the users and say, that they do not want to spend the needed space for additional icons, especially as the place for the tabs will get belittled. Yes, they are right, but this can be solved. (At first, for those, who really want to stay with the actual pro-menu, this could be an option; they do not need to customize the tool-bar with additional icons.) I don't know, if the following is possible (if not, there will follow Suggestion 3 further down), but as the developers where able to place the ie7-main-menu at the top I could imagine, that the same is doable with the ie7-toolbar. This would have 2 advantages: At first, there is enough room for a number of icons and at the same moment the rare space for the tabs (which gets quickly to small, if there are many tabs open) enlarges at the same moment.

Suggestion 3: (Should be doable with version 6 & 7 of ie AFAIK): Create one or more new toolbars, which can get placed above or below the tabs row. Again, with this solution you have enough room for all the icons needed, to split the functions of ie7pro in meaningful groups. Now integrate the ie7-standard-functions of the ie7-standard-toolbar into the new toolbar(s), and again there is a chance to enlarge the space for the tabs (nearly the whole width of the program window). If you devs are able to to hide the ie toolbar (just as you did with the ie7 search  bar), it would be ideal, otherwise there is still the possibility to remove the icons from the toolbar, so the toolbar gets as small as possible.

Another point into that is, that no one says, that a tool bar (icon bar) must contain of icons; you can place drop down-list (e.g. great for the values of auto-scrolling and auto-refreshing) and you can place simple text. So making a tool bar out of pure text-elements would provide a way, to make a very new menu, where the functions of ie7pro can get arranged neatly. Out of this idea I said "or more" toolbars in the paragraph above: A text-menu-toolbar and a toolbar with icons, listboxes (and probably more).

I know that my ideas look like radical changes and I would like you to understand them as the basis of a discussion, not of a ready and perfect suggestion. I tried to handle not only the actual situation of ie7pro, but also the future, when there will be some more features in the addon with far more different scopes of functions.

Hi sangiano,

sangiano wrote:

... but from then on we are in complete disagreement.

No problem here. As I already wrote, my post was intended as a basis for discussion, and taking that:

sangiano wrote:

We must have different styles for using IE7

The more users you ask, the more different styles of usage you will find, that is quite normal. Nevertheless, (nearly) any software should follow some standards (there might be some exceptions - if there are good reasons), and I argued, that ie7pro should do this also.

Reading this:

sangiano wrote:

I rarely have to use the toolbar buttons and those I use most are on a mouse gesture. For me it is a short distance to the status bar and a long way to the toolbar.

there is nothing to say against that - for you and probably for some others. But you left out the fact, that there are still some important elements at the top, and they will - following my actual knowledge - always stay in ie6 & 7 at the top: The address bar, the icons for the favorite center and the tabs row (taking only those, that can not get disabled). (JFTR: I don't know, if there is any add-on, that can place those elements near the status bar; at least, I don't know any, and to be honest, even if it would exist, I would not be interested in, because I don't see any sense in breaking standards (without any good reason, as said).) For example, if you are in the favorite center and then you need the tab restore manager (and do not want to remove the hand from the mouse), you do have really the longest way, that is possible inside the ie-program window. (I know, that you will answer with mouse gesture in this case, more about that will follow in my part 3.)

Part 3, improvement of existing features.

I don't think, that it would be useful, to fill line after line with all the features, that could be improved. So I concentrate on those things, that disturb my usage daily or even more often, so that are the points, that really bother me very often:

1. Starting with the start, i.e session restore: Most important: the order of the tabs should get restored in the new session (as the original ie-feature does (but with some other annoyances).

2. Still session restore: Make the appearance of the dialog at the session start, if and which tabs shall get restored, an option. In 95+% of all cases I want all tabs get restored (otherwise I would have closed those tabs before quitting). For the crash recovery this dialog is really important, but here it is annoying.

3. Mouse gesture must be made more tolerant. Following my experience, I have to do a gesture in 50% twice, before it works. And as I am used with gestures in Maxthon since years and as I have made the identical gestures for identical functions in ie7pro, as I am used to them in Maxthon (and there I did never experience this problem) it is definitely not a question of my hand or my mouse hardware or driver.

4. Mouse gestures are needed especially for:
- Auto scroll
- Auto refresh
because both functions are (placed in sub-menus of the pro-menu) far to complicated to reach. I made the experience, that I rarely use the Auto-scroll feature in ie (in difference to Maxthon), because scrolling by hand is far easier to do; and so this feature is in the list, but not really by the hand.

5. Improvement for auto-scroll (taking an idea from Maxthon): In Maxthon you can (as an option) set, that the auto-scroll shall only work, until the mouse is hovering the scroll bar, and by placing the mouse more up or down the scrolling speed differs. This is really useful, because you can stop the auto-scroll quickly (for what reason ever) by moving the mouse a few pixels to the left and re enable it by moving the mouse back to the right. Also, you can change the scrolling speed very quickly; it is really useful, because the user might want to scroll a page, that is written in his own language, quicker than a page in a foreign language. Furthermore, there are pages with big letters and images (so only few text on a given room), and there are pages with small letters and without images (so far more to read on the same place). The user can with this additional feature change the scrolling speed without the need, to change the setting.

6. Inline search needs some more improvements. At now inline search does not remember the status of "hghlight all" between ie-sessions. The next point is, that the information about the number of found matches disappears at the moment, you click on "find next / previous". (That makes it necessary, to click twice on "highlight all" to bring this info back.) The biggest problem is, that after having done a search you cannot scroll the page with the mouse wheel, until the page has got the focus again. (If you place the focus back to the search bar the ability to scroll stays active.) That leads to the result, that you might have jumped to a matching string somewhere on the page by using "find next" several times, than set the focus on the page for scrolling (because the active match is in the last shown line and you want to see the rest of the text for reading the context), and if you want to go ahead with the next matching string you will find, that inline search (after this switching of the focus) starts at the first result again - very annoying, if the search string appears several ten or perhaps more than hundred times on the page. And at least: If the next / previous match is let's say less than 5 rows apart from the top or bottom of the actually visible part of the page, the page should get auto-scrolled, so that the found match is somewhere in the middle of the window.

7. The handling of Auto-scroll and Auto-refresh should be identical. It is not really logical, that for auto-scroll there is a deactivate-function in the sub-menu and for auto-refresh you must select the active setting (check marked) again, to deselect it. The check marks in both sub-menus look identical and it takes quite a number of unsuccessful attempts to find out, why it does not behave, as you want it to do.

Here are some suggestions (not quite as organized or lengthy as Cosmo's) :

1. In the right click context menu there is already "Don't Filter This Site".  It would also be useful to have "View Filter Info..." or just the whole "Ad Blocker Advanced tree. I actually use "View Filter Info..." much more often.

2. Although I don't use it much, it might be better to have the "Save Current Tab as Image To" in the right click context menu. For people who do use this often, it would be a big time saver.

3. Some access to the privacy features needs to be through the menu rather than Preferences for those that want to use the function occasionally rather than every time.

4. For Clear Typed Address it would be better if you could choose which items to clear.  I really liked this feature when I used Avant Browser. Of course, getting it to work in Vista with Protected Mode On would be nice as well.

5. In Preferences, the only function of the Online Services item is to choose whether to synchronize automatically or not.  You could get rid of this section completely by making it a tick item within Online Services section of the Menu.

6. I agree with Cosmo it time for the Preferences Section to be overhauled and streamlined.  This is not intended as a criticism merely a recognition that the feature list of IE7Pro has grown so quickly that the original format no longer works as effectively.

Last edited by sangiano (08-09-2007 16:07:54)

My little suggestions

1) Improve Session & Crash restore adding the supporto for multiple ie instances;
At this time, if you have more than one stand-alone windows of IE7 open at the same time, and one of them goes in crash or is closed by you, you don't see the restore popup when you open ie7 again.
It seems that ie7pro is not able to detect the closing or the crashing of an ie7 window if there are others still open (I guess because it finds iexplore.exe process still in memory).

2) Add an option to get rid of "Click to activate and use this control" message with flash objects, we discussed about that here http://forum.ie7pro.com/viewtopic.php?id=467

3) Add a download statusbar like the one "Support Guy" discussed here http://forum.ie7pro.com/viewtopic.php?id=144 and here http://forum.ie7pro.com/viewtopic.php?id=942

4) Add a Session Manager to be able to save different sessions under different names and open them later easly, something llike the "Session Manager" Firefox Add-on (http://sessionmanager.mozdev.org/)
Something similar is available with a plugin by Fremy but due to plugin language limitations (for example the missing "on_browser_close" event) he cannot add all the feature users asks for
You can find more info here http://forum.ie7pro.com/viewtopic.php?id=1578

Last edited by provolino (12-09-2007 01:12:54)

Other two little suggestions:

1) Please make plugins uninstallable like scripts
2) Please add a button in the "Other" section to manually check if new version of IE7Pro is available (now there are no way to check for new version if you disables auto check feature)

I'd like to see the status bar icon change based on whether or not filters were active for the site you are on.  Along with that, when you go to the menu option to enable/disable the filtering, it would be nice to see a check mark if filtering is enabled, or no check mark if it isn't.

alsiladka wrote:

Although i would not reveal much right now, we have our plans chalked out for IE7Pro 1.2 already
To make that build a success, we shall require suggestions and ideas from you people , Our users.

Please drop in here with all your ideas and suggestion and feedback to -

* Improve and Enhance all the Existing Features

Give us users a way to remove the Favorites Center star(s) -- I'm just about ready to revert back to IE6 because I don't like them clogging up my screen real estate.  Have spent the last hour finding a way to hack them the heck off my IE7 screen, but to no avail.  And from the Google results I've found, it seems most people who have an opinion on these stars (I'm talking end users, not tech experts) are with me.

Sure would be nice if I could point ie7pro to the directory of my choice for finding the conf.ini right now 2 computers share 3 monitors and using software, running all from same keyboard and mouse but I have to copy and paste aliases from the address feature or just create them manually. If I could point to conf.ini on one computer on my network I'd be able to share aliases across all.