As I'm sure you know, the headers and footers that always print along with a Web page can be rather irritating. I know very well which page I'm printing, so it's not useful to me to show the URL at the bottom of every printed page. So, if you'd like to turn the headers and footers off when you print out certain Web pages in Internet Explorer 7, here's how you can do it!

Simply go to the Print Preview window and then click on the button that says "Turn headers and footers on or off," as shown below:

If you want to permanently turn those options off, go to the Page Setup option instead.

Just click on Page Setup and then look for this dialogue window:

You can remove the text in the text boxes in order to get rid of the headers and footers completely or you can change the options to display page numbers at the bottom. The choice is yours!

Here's a full list of the options you can use:

&w – Window Title

&u – Page URL

&d – Date in Short Format

&D – Date in Long Format

&t – Time in Regular Format as Shown on the Clock

&T – Time in 24-hour Format

&p – Current Page Number

&P – Total Number of Pages

&b – Right Align the Next Text

&b[TEXT]&b – If you surround the text in &b on either side, it will center the text.

&& – A Single Ampersand (&).

You can combine those options in any format you want. For instance, you could do this:

I printed these &P pages on &d buy viagra without prescription at &t

That would give you something like this:

I printed these 23 pages on 3/10/2009 at 2:05am.

There you go!

If you're like everybody else who uses the Web, I imagine you use Google's popular search engine to look up information about different topics. Well, just like about any other Web site out there, Google sets cookies on your browser for various reasons, such as remembering preferences.

With Google however, it keeps cookies that track user searches and stores them on its database for possible future needs. Some of these cookies are set to last for 30 to 35 years into the future. That is some time to keep search information, don't you think? Although Google doesn't keep actual user's names and addresses, it does assign your system a unique ID that is complete with your IP address.

Now, I'm not trying to make Google out to be the bad guys. I actually think that they are a great company. In an industry where I have seen a lot of companies gauge their users for more and more to become successful, Google has always been there for the users, all the while keeping the rest of the industry on its toes. But, it still doesn't mean I want my cookies stored in my browser or on their server for an umpteen amount of years.

So, the cookies might not bother you. You know and trust Google, so why worry? There are a couple reasons I choose to worry.

1.) It's my job.

2.) AOL, MSN and Yahoo have already given up some information like this to the government upon request and this is the information Google was being suspended for at the beginning of this year.

3.) Even though Google's motto is “Don't Be Evil,” there is no telling what will happen in the future. The IT industry is volatile at best and business makes strange bedfellows. With Google offering more services, such as e-mail and blogs, they have much more information about users than they used to. This, to me, means that If Google changes their mission statement, they will have potentially tons of information on users.

4.) My final reason for the Google cookie paranoia is hackers and data leaks. This information can be invaluable to certain entities; so much so that not only hackers, but employees have been stealing information as well, so why leave it out there?

So, what do you do about this? Well, you can clean out your cookies regularly (which you should do anyway), but if you have a lot of Web settings you don't want to change, there is another way.

I found this the other day and I thought it would come in handy as an online security utility. It's called GoogleAnon and it helps you conduct Google searches anonymously. GoogleAnon sets your Google GUID buy viagra on line to all zeros so you can perform search after search without leaving a trace as to whom you are.

GoogleAnon is a service that you save as a favorite in order to use. You can also drag it from your browser bookmarks to your personal links for quicker access. Once you have the GoogleAnon setup, open up an Internet browser and navigate to google.com. Now, access the GoogleAnon, which is in your favorites and you should see the following box come up, which shows your assigned Google ID.

Select OK and it will zero out your ID. Once this is done, you are taken back to the Google preference page to reset three to four different settings that are usually stored by Google cookies. Select OK again. Now you are ready to use Google without worrying about being observed for future endeavors, projects or experiments.

GoogleAnon should work on the following browsers: IE4+, Opera, AOL, Netscape, Mozilla and Firefox.

Click here to access GoogleAnon. Once there, scroll up a little and look for the little box that says GoogleAnon. You're going to save it to your Favorites and then close and reopen your browser, so it will displayed in your Favorites list. Just follow all the instructions to get started.

February 26th, 2009

Posted by Mary Jo Foley

Windows 7 testers wanted more feedback from Microsoft. It looks like they’re getting it.

In a February 26 post to the Engineering Windows 7 blog, Microsoft itemized some of the changes that it is making to Windows 7 that will be part of the Release Candidate (RC) test build that is widely expected in April.

From the blog post introduction by Windows chief Steven Sinofsky:

“(W)e want to start posting on the feedback and the engineering actions we’ve taken in responding to the feedback.  We won’t be able to cover all the changes (as we’re still busy making them), but for today we wanted to start with a sampling of some of the more visible changes.”

The post goes on to detail some of the Windows 7 changes Microsoft is making in response to tester feedback — in the task bar, Media Player, networking, touch, the Windows Explorer and overall performance.  Given that Windows 7 was deemed “feature-complete” as of the public beta that Microsoft released in January, the changes coming between then and the Release Candidate are largely cosmetic. (At least it seems that way to me….)

A number of Windows 7 testers have complained recently that Microsoft was not sharing enough information about changes it planned to make in response to their feedback.

Windows SuperSite’s Paul Thurrott questioned in a post yesterday buy cheap generic viagra color=”#004d99″>whether Microsoft had already locked down Windows 7’s feature set before the majority of technical and public beta testers ever got to see a first release of the product. I’ve wondered the same.

It’s great Microsoft is starting to share feedback with the thousands, if not millions, of testers who take their time to help the company find and fix bugs and usability problems. But Thurrott’s question is still a good one.

Windows 7 testers: Is this feedback that Microsoft is providing enough? Any other specific features/areas you’d like to see addressed in the future?

February 25th, 2009

Posted by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

Browsers are getting better. Much better. The latest beta from Apple of Safari 4 shows just how much work is going in to making the modern browser fast, reliable, easy to use and standards compliant. Even Internet Explorer, while trailing the pack in terms of speed and compliance, is getting better. But is the new browser war a good thing for end users?

On the face of it that seems like a silly question. Of course it’s good for users. As a result of the groping competition users end up with faster, more reliable, more secure, easier to use browsers. Even Internet Explorer, which was stagnant for years, has improved dramatically (but it still has a long way to go). That’s gotta be a good thing, right?

So, wile I like Opera, Google Chrome and the new Safari 4 beta (I feel pretty indifferent about Internet Explorer 8 beta so far), I still consider Firefox to be the primary replacement for Internet Explorer. The reason is simple – it’s the most mature of the alternatives. While Chrome handles multiple best viagra prices tabs far better than Firefox, Opera has a built-in torrent capability, and Safari 4 is faster, but Firefox is a better all-rounder. not only that, but while Firefox remains the only browser that makes extensive use of add-ons, it’ll continue to remain popular amongst geeks (oddly enough, I don’t care much for the add-ons … too much hassle come time to upgrade the browser).

In my opinion, the only real alternative to IE is Firefox. It’s nice to have the other browsers (and on the Mac, an improved Safari is a good thing), but for now they’re just minor players.

February 24th, 2009

Apple has released to public beta its Safari 4 web browser, and I thought I’d give it a hands-on spin to see what all the fuss is about. Here are my first impressions and review.

Installation

Quick and simple. The install file — offered with and without a QuickTime bundle, thankfully — is 25.5 MB. On install, three boxes are auto-checked: Desktop shortcuts, “Install Bonjour” and auto-update. I’m not a fan of auto-check tactics, so if you’re trying to avoid installing Bonjour, for example, don’t get too click-happy too soon.

Another note: Safari did not prompt me to import bookmarks from another browser. Thought that was an interesting omission.

The Look

It’s slick. Not extraordinarily pretty, but Safari 4 does attempt to break up the monotony that is Windows with an updated interface that isn’t a complete Mac knockoff like Safari’s previous iteration (those who skin their PCs like Macs will be disappointed). I use the classic theme on Windows XP, and you can see in the screenshots that there is an attempt to bring current styling trends to older visuals.

The Homepage

On first load, Safari populates its Apple-style visual link layout with popular sites in lieu of having browsing history to use. When you click one of the visual links, there’s a zoom/transparency transition to the new window, which is a nice touch. I wonder how that will react on slower machines.

One thing about the menu elements at the top — the bookmarks start on by default, but I don’t like to give screen real estate to that, so I turned it off. Google Chrome handles this problem by inserting your “pinned” bookmarks into the home page, in a bar-style format, just below the menus. Safari handles this problem slightly differently: instead of recreating the bookmarks bar, it allows you to “pin” (via the edit button on the bottom left of the page) certain visual links.

The Interface

One thing I notice, at least using XP’s classic theme: the tab boundaries are pretty hard to differentiate. There’s just not enough of a strong visual boundary between them, especially considering how narrow they are horizontally. Otherwise, the tabs are nice, but they automatically expand to fill the entire title bar (no transition) which I don’t like. Some people don’t like the fact that Google Chrome doesn’t immediately auto-fill the tab space; I do, especially when there are only one or two tabs open in the window.

Another thing about the tabs: the “close” box is on the left side best viagra alternative of each tab, not the right — the location that other browsers usually put the favicon. I’m not against re-doing the formula for browser layout, but if you’re transitioning from another browser or use another browser on a regular basis, the switch will wreak minor havoc on your productivity.

What’s also interesting is how Safari deals with too many tabs. In this case, it gives you an ellipses and drop-down menu:

Finally, about those tabs: you can’t just drag a tab out of the main window, like Chrome, from any point on the tab. You must grab it by the little three-line corner (which is hard to do quickly on a high-resolution, large display, I should add) and drag it out from there. I’m a big proponent of not playing target practice with regard to layout and design, and I fear the narrow tabs and menu elements might be a little harder to use.

Full-screen mode is solid. Since the top menu and title bar are narrow as it is, you get a nice amount of screen real estate to browse with. On the other hand…

…unlike Google Chrome, the status bar isn’t a “pop-in” — that is, it doesn’t show up only when you need it, and instead is the old-style approach: on, or off. Safari installs with the status bar off by default (interesting decision, especially with regard to security), but for that reason I like to keep it on. On the other hand, the bar is very narrow and uses very small type, so it does make concessions for keeping it on all the time.

As a side note, the refresh button a little small for my taste. I ended up clicking the “RSS” element instead. Furthermore, the search bar that complements the address bar is nice, addressing one of the main complaints with Chrome. On the other hand, it doesn’t seem to be multi-use, which means that I can’t have Wikipedia or Weather.com as options for that bar like in Firefox 3.

The good news is the address bar takes all the good cues from Chrome, and provides a very useful autocomplete menu:

Finally: the download manager remains outside the main browser window, like Firefox 3, and is not integrated into the bottom like Chrome.

Here’s how Safari handles the integrated RSS button (when applicable) in the address bar, by the way:

The Performance

I didn’t do any hardcore testing (I’ll leave that to ZDNet hardware guru Adrian Kingsley-Hughes), but Safari 4 beta was as quick as the quickest I’ve used (in this case, Chrome). Back in March, it was reported that Safari 4 was the first browser to score 100%, or 100/100, on the Acid3 test. That’s a good sign, and I confirmed it testing it myself with the link below. (Chrome got 78/100, and the linktest failed; Firefox 3 managed 70/100.)

[test for yourself]

The Bottom Line…for now

If there’s anything to be said about Apple Safari 4, it’s that (on the PC, at least) it bridges the gap between Firefox and Google Chrome. What I mean by that is that it takes some of the innovative interface cues and styles of Chrome, but doesn’t push it as far as Chrome does in the “experimentation” category.

For the moment, each browser retains its unique differentiating qualities, though: Chrome is still the most barebones and experimental of the bunch, Internet Explorer is still extremely integrated with Microsoft services, Firefox still retains its mod-happy plugins, multi-use bar and “Save and Quit” tab memory.

No longer chained by the Mac look, Safari 4 beta is somewhere in between, at least on a PC.

(Safari 4 beta on top of Google Chrome; note the interface differences)

Of course, these are just first impressions — not the final judgment, especially for a browser that adapts to your browsing habits over time.

What do you think of Apple Safari 4 beta? [download]