Help me, I've fallen to Internet Explorer...

[Maiklas3000]

I've started using Internet Explorer 8 with my tablet, and I can't stop! Firefox is not as tablet-friendly.

Input panel: Firefox 3.6 sometimes offers the input panel, but Internet Explorer is a lot more reliable in this regard.

Accelerators: Firefox has a plugin called SearchMenu that tries to mimic IE accelerators, but IE's implementation is smoother. I use it with Google Translate: highlight a phrase and translate!

Fingerprints: Omnipass has trouble with Firefox and Protector Suite 2009 does not yet support Firefox 3.6.

InkSeine: Supports only IE.

Task bar previews: You can quickly browse thumbnails of the IE tabs in the taskbar. Firefox thumbnail shows only the current tab.

Basically, IE gives you more of a tablet experience. It has some hint of the elegance and fluidity of InkSeine.

You have to realize that I have avoided Internet Explorer from the start. Before Firefox, I used Netscape Navigator / Mozilla and even Lynx.

Any others turned to the dark side?

This message was (hand)written in IE8 under Windows 7.

[digitaldoctors]

I much prefer surfing the internet with a keyboard, mouse, and dual monitors. I almost always use FireFox.

On my Tablet, for very light surfing, ie use IE or FireFox. I would say IE is superior for Tablet PC web surfing.

I like having two browsers going, if one gets tired, I just fire up the other one. Firefox is such an easy download, I don't mind installing it. Plus I love Foxmarks and the Awesome Bar !

Firefox 3 Video Tour: The Awesome Awesome Bar


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvFlvho4CL8

[digitaldoctors]

Did you try FireFox with all the Tablet PC addons ?

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/fir...don_must_haves

[Maiklas3000]

My tablet PC is my dual monitor, my second monitor. (See Maxivista.) So, I get the best of both worlds: dual monitor with full-sized keyboard and mouse, but then I can grab the tablet and run.

Re: Firefox awesome bar... IE has its own "awesome bar":



This is a complicated image, because it's showing you both the Firefox awesome bar and IE's equivalent. What you're seeing here is IE (under Windows 7) showing the youtube video of Firefox's awesome bar. If you watch the video it will make more sense, but focus first on the youtube video window. There you see that typing "bl" in Firefox's address bar brings up Information Week blog and some other blogs as suggestions. Next, look above and right. In my Internet Explorer, you can see I've written "bl" in the yellow input panel, which is entering text into IE's address bar, and IE then provides suggestions. One suggestion is a google search I had done previously for the Information Week blog, and another suggestion is the Information Week blog page itself, marked as a favorite.

(Writing just "bl" is sort of a challenge on a Windows 7 tablet, as it tries to turn it into a word, like "be", but you can tap on the text and then enter each character individually. Or you can just write more text, like "blog".)

And the input panel is better integrated under IE. With IE, if you highlight text and then hit the input panel prompt, the text gets sucked into the input panel and you can edit it. If you try that under Firefox, first you'll get no input panel prompt, and then if you bring up the input panel manually, it will be empty. Also, the Firefox awesome bar offers no suggestions until you hit the submit button on the input panel, so it's really not awesome at all on a tablet. Only the IE version is awesome on a tablet.

Re: Firefox tablet PC add-ons... Yes, I had found that web page. My experience:

Grab and Drag - provides grab-n-drag scrolling, which is very nice with a pen. I suggest turning on the friction in options. However, I ultimately uninstalled it. The grabbing interferes with other pen actions, and if you do shift back and forth between Firefox and IE, you'll get confused by the lack of grabbing-n-dragging in IE.

FireGestures - gesture "hotkeys" - maybe there is some nice way to configure this for tablets, I dunno, I uninstalled.

All-In-One Gestures - another gesture "hotkeys" add-on, but not mentioned on that site. I still have it installed, but I don't use it much. For "back", you do right button (i.e., pen button) and a left motion. That's nice, but what's not nice is that you have to hold the pen button for 2 seconds until the cursor changes to blue (and the right click menu comes up or is about to come up) and THEN you motion left. That's more of an OS problem than a problem with the add-on, though. (Edit: Oh, I get it now. You have to press the pen button before you make contact with the screen to get right button without waiting.)

[cacinok]

I've started using Internet Explorer 8 with my tablet, and I can't stop! Firefox is not as tablet-friendly.

Input panel: Firefox 3.6 sometimes offers the input panel, but Internet Explorer is a lot more reliable in this regard.

Accelerators: Firefox has a plugin called SearchMenu that tries to mimic IE accelerators, but IE's implementation is smoother. I use it with Google Translate: highlight a phrase and translate!

Fingerprints: Omnipass has trouble with Firefox and Protector Suite 2009 does not yet support Firefox 3.6.

InkSeine: Supports only IE.

Task bar previews: You can quickly browse thumbnails of the IE tabs in the taskbar. Firefox thumbnail shows only the current tab.

Basically, IE gives you more of a tablet experience. It has some hint of the elegance and fluidity of InkSeine.

You have to realize that I have avoided Internet Explorer from the start. Before Firefox, I used Netscape Navigator / Mozilla and even Lynx.

Any others turned to the dark side?

This message was (hand)written in IE8 under Windows 7.

i haven't had the problem you are w/ the input panel.

i'm not sure i totally understand your "accelerators", but i haven't felt, anecdotally, anyway that firefox was any slower.

inkseine only being supporting IE is a non-issue as one, i don't use inkseine much and two inkseine is no longer being supported/developed.

ff has an add-on so you can see either a thumbnail preview of individual tabs or thumbnails of all the tabs on the tab bar at once.

i play w/ different browsers all of the time, but haven't found one that does all the FF does as intuitively. currently i have the newest versions of chrome, ie, ff and opera. my only real complaint w/ ff is that if you open and close a lot of tabs, it does not release memory. i really like opera, but it takes a lot more know how to get add-ons working in it.

[digitaldoctors]

My tablet PC is my dual monitor, my second monitor. (See Maxivista.) So, I get the best of both worlds: dual monitor with full-sized keyboard and mouse, but then I can grab the tablet and run.

I use UltraMon. I forget why I picked it over Ultramon.
I used Synergy2 to use my Tablet as a third monitor in many different rooms !

See here - (link coming)

IE has its own "awesome bar":

Good idea to copy this M$ !

And the input panel is better integrated under IE. With IE, if you highlight text and then hit the input panel prompt, the text gets sucked into the input panel and you can edit it.

Great feature.

[brightico]

Try ietab for firefox

[jhoff80]

Honestly, I've been using Chrome lately myself. In the dev channel versions, it mostly supports the TIP in the address bar (unfortunately not within search fields within the page, but I have a TIP icon in my taskbar anyway). It also now has a grab and drag extension called ChromeTouch. And while the Adblock extension isn't as nice as Firefox's (mainly because it just prevents ads from displaying, not from downloading), it's still pretty decent.

Firefox has been just way too slow and bloated for me lately. After a while of leaving it open, it frequently leaks memory on me, I've seen it use over a GB of my RAM.

Chrome, while not quite as powerful, is much faster.

Though, one thing you might want to try if you love Firefox. I believe starting in 3.6 (I've used regular Firefox, and the nightly alpha builds, so I'm not 100% certain that it's in that version or not, but I think it is.):

Go to about:config, and add the boolean entry intl.enable.tsf.support and set that to true. That should help with it's TIP support even without using any addons like Gesso or GeckoTIP.

[Maiklas3000]

i'm not sure i totally understand your "accelerators", but i haven't felt, anecdotally, anyway that firefox was any slower.

This shows an accelerator for translation:
* * *



* * *
Explanation: Highlight some text, a blue arrow appears, click on the arrow, a menu appears, hover over "translate" and the text is translated to English.

There is a plugin for Firefox called SearchMenu that tries to copy this feature, but it's not as slickly implemented.

[PaulB]

Using Firefox 3.6. I like Firefox's Adblock Plus. The TIP is a bit erratic showing up in the Google search field but a quick tap outside and then inside the field usually shows the TIP.