What are those colors on IE tabs?

I thought this was one of the best features in Internet Explorer 8, but not everyone gets the meaning of the colors on the tabs. The colors represent that the tabs are related, meaning that you followed a link from one page, IE opened another tab and assigned the same color as the previous tab, so that way the tabs that are derived from other tabs are now all grouped and it’s very easy to see this, very useful when you have multiple tabs open for different purposes. I just had to blog this because someone actually asked me what those colors were for, so I figured there’s more people who may have the same question.

Do you want to view only the webpage content that was delivered securely? The simple guide

The post about the new dialog for secure/unsecure items in IE8 has had quite a few visits, so I thought I would make it much easier on the visitors to get to what they specifically need, I am guessing they are arriving here mainly to find out:

1 - What the heck does it mean.
2 - What they should do to see the full page.
3 - How can they get rid of the stupid message.

1 - What the heck does it mean?
They inverted the question from the previous dialog:

"This page contains both secure and nonsecure items.
Do you want to display the nonsecure items?"

So that more people will just click the default, and by doing so IE will not display the unsecure items on the page.

2 - I just want to see the entire page, what should I do?
Click NO

3 - How can I get rid of the stupid dialog once and for all?.
The short answer would be: Tools>internet options>security>custom level>display mixed content: Enable.
The long answer is on this other post: How to: Prevent the security dialog about unsecure items in IE

hope this helps! If I didn't answer what you were looking for, please let me know in the comments.

Do you want to view only the webpage content that was delivered securely?

keywords: IE8, usability, warning, error, dialog

Update: If you just care about making the dialog disappear go straight to comments or this post for more details, if you want the simple answers check the "simple guide". This post was originally intended for developers but it seems a lot of people are looking for an answer to this puzzle.

IE8 has been released and it's got a few really cool features as well as some really good protection mechanisms, all in all, a fairly good release.

But then I found this while navigating a secure page (Gmail)


Say what???

In what felt like I passed out I had to re-read the full dialog, then took me about 5 seconds to get what the dialog was telling me and about 10 to understand what would happen if I clicked NO.

I'm copying the contents of dialog text here just for SEO

This webpage contains content that will not be delivered using a secure HTTPS connection, which could compromise the security of the entire webpage.

Why did they change the previous dialog?:

This page contains both secure and nonsecure items.
Do you want to display the nonsecure items?

The new dialog seems very confusing to me, the extra text after the question just makes it even more confusing and for as long as I can remember we've had the same old dialog, which seemed fine.

Notice that even the answer is the opposite for the new dialog, maybe this is the reason it feels like asking a negative question.

I think the intent is for users to click the default yes, since 99.99% users don't really read any dialogs, and that will cause IE to not display the unsecure items on the page.

Pure Mac intuitiveness: The keyboard

The newer Mac keyboards have 2 delete keys, but that's not the WTF (or maybe it is, but whatever).
I have some files on my desktop (is that what is called in Macland?) that I want to delete, so I select the files and hit the first delete key... nothing, the second delete key, nothing... WTF!!

After trying Ctrl, Option, Command, Shift and their combinations with the delete keys, finally found one that worked, I already forgot which one though.

How is that intuitive?

Welcome to the family

I have joined the club, went to the store and bought the iMac 24" 3.06 GHz =o), the screen is awesome, makes my "old" 21" monitor look tiny

So far I have been quite a bit disappointed by the "usability" of the Mac, I guess I had really hight expectations for it, just the fact that the first application you have up there is the "finder", tells me something is not quite there, my biggest problems so far:

- short cut keys are different
- you install some application, then is just gone, you have to find it using the finder
- right click, where the #$%&** is my right click!!! - got it, you have to "ctrl+click"
- mouse buttons (or lack of)
- window resizing, why can I only resize from the bottom right corner??
- lack of "window restore", after maximizing the window

Right now I'm downloading Vista to install it on Fusion, we'll see how everything goes after I get familiar with it

the "welcome to the family" is what they told us at the store when we bought it, will keep you updated about my rants experiences