Safe Browser???

I typically use Mozilla, but when I click a link in game it opens in IE. Recently someone posted a link in a group I was in and I clicked it and ended up with Virtuomonde (sp?) and could not get rid of it. I ended up having to reformat. No more links from game

I am still very much opposed to Google's Chrome. May be fast, but transfers everything you do right back to the information collecting giant.

Microsoft released a patch to fix this today... you can go here to see what to do:

http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/111811

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The other reason I'm asking this now....is over the past couple days my brwoser has been freezing up.....locking up when I close it, so that I have to ctrl-alt-delete......this is new......I cleaned everything up and it seems to be ok now....but still.....it has me wondering if I should switch browsers. I'm on a Dell....WindowsXP..... no real problems with connectivity and speed and so on......but some solid wisdom here would be mucho appreciated.
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Same thing happened to me. I disabled all of the add-ons and that solved the problem. Go to Tools | Manage Add Ons | Enable or Disable Add Ons.
I disabled them all and IE worked great. You might decide to be more selective. (Anyhow you can re-enable anything you need.)

I recommend on Windows that you use Firefox. On Mac OS, Safari (but turn OFF "open safe files after downloading". Whatever browser you use, create a separate "Downloads" folder for it, rather than downloading files to the desktop.

Don't stuff the browser with extensions and toolbars. The only extension I use in Firefox is Flashblock.

I can't give you the rest of my suggestions because there's some kind of anti-spam filter in the forum that thinks something I wrote is spam sign.

You need to change the default browser to Mozilla or FIrefox. There should be an option in the browser itself to do that.

Firefox has more published flaws, but they publish EVERYTHING they change, in detail, because their development process is open. If Microsoft made their internal bug-tracking system available to the public I think we would see a different result.

There are deep and fundamental design flaws in IE, flaws not shared with any other browser, that are widely published and Microsoft has left unfixed for a decade.

Getting back to Yosef's comment: this does not make me feel happy about the number of flaws they've noticed internally that ever get fixed.

/me is always wary of these kinds of statements because some take it to mean that <favorite browser> protects them from doing foolish things. Very often, this is not the case.

Firefox is not my favorite browser. On OS X it's my third choice, after Camino and Safari. Unfortunately Windows does not have as many good browsers available, and the Windows port of Safari seems a bit naive in some of the ways it behaves... so I'd rather not recommend it yet.

MS does sell operating systems, which are loaded onto most computers. Many people who dont really know how to use them, dont take the steps to keep their machines clear, and clean them out. They think it's broken and go buy a new one. Not everyone is as enlightened as you are. In the last 8 years, I've saved many people that expense by cleaning the gunk out and showing them how to prevent it.

:0 jumps in, dunno if this is good but i'd consider paypal's recommendations to be, for lack of better for now, the 'gold/diamond standard'...

http://tinyurl.com/434h3x

Newsflash. One of the machines I fixed, the children in the family (both under 10), were getting "would you like to download and install (insert handy sounding but malicious program here)" type messages in their kid game sites and clicking YES. They were also getting stung using search engines for home work assignments. No one in the family knew how to properly maintain the machine.

Point here, it isn't only porn.

Had a blast removing around 970 instances, and then teaching the entire family how to take care of their machine.

Not at all, this latest security issue is related to people trying to access passwords for game sites apparently.

Which is a porn substitute for some people

Firefox, with "NoScript" installed is practically bulletproof, tho, it can be a little annoying at times having to enable scripts temporarily on some web sites. And, VERY occasionally, something won't work unless it's viewed with IE. But you can't find more security that's easier to install and maintain.

The scripting model in Firefox is not designed to be inherently unsafe the way it is in IE. I would not, professional paranoid security guy that I am, bother with that additional layer of protection.

You just now found out Vista sucks raw eggs? LOL

Nothing wrong with sucking raw eggs. Just ask any weasel.

I did that, I found that button on my 2nd day. And I have chosen Firefox multiple times, but everything from in game still opens in IE. So I just figured it was a typical non-working option lol

and I always run 'no script' in firefox

Look what it did for Rocky

I use firefox and youtube on vista with no problem. What isn't working?

The problem with that is that W3C doesn't create standards - they only create recommendations.

Another problem with it is that no browser is fully W3C compliant. They all pick and choose what to implement from the W3C recommendations, so creating a webpage for a browser that implements certain things doesn't mean that the page will display properly in another browser that chose not to implement certain things. The result is that we see pages and stylesheets that include all manner of workarounds so that they will display reasonably well in this browser, that browser and the other browser, and it's always been a right royal pain in the butt except for the period when Netscape was scrapped and IE was the only browser in sight (except maybe odd ones like Opera that had such tiny userships that they weren't worth bothering with).

The game should use whatever your default browser is. If you type start->run in Windows and enter a URL or click a URL in the chat window in SL you should get the same browser opening. If you don't, then there's something wrong with your Windows configuration... not SL, Windows.

Actually, there is a set of tests based on the W3C standards, called the ACID tests, now in their third iteration (ACID3). All the major browsers but IE have taken passing these tests as a major goal, and Microsoft at least recognizes it as a desirable one. So, no, they don't just "pick and choose".

And even if you just stick to IE, you STILL have to use a bunch of hacks in HTML and CSS to maintain compatibility across multiple versions of IE.

I haven't seen it mentioned here, but I've used Opera for a number of years. It's worked better than the others for me. Only site I've had trouble lately is Hotmail, and I have the same problem there with all browsers other than IE since their recent revamp of the site.