I have a hotmail account which I only use for MSN Messenger but from time to time I do check Hotmail because some of my MSN contacts send emails to my Hotmail account.
For instance, I received an invitation today to contribute to a blog and it was sent to my Hotmail account. MSN Messenger notified me of the new mail and I clicked on the clicked on the notification which launched Internet Explorer, despite the fact that my default browser is Flock.
Internet Explorer 7 is reasonable stable, it has tabbed browsing but it’s not a patch on Firefox or other Mozilla-based browsers such as the aforementioned Flock. The latest browsers using the Mozilla engine have excellent support for CSS2 and half-decent support for CSS3 (even though it’s not a ratified standard yet). Internet Explorer is a nightmare for anyone who does any web design with its terrible support for CSS and its dodgy implementation of some of the most basic CSS. That and the extra functionality is why I use Flock instead of Internet Explorer. Making MSN Messenger launch web pages in Internet Explorer instead of the default browser is unnecessary and arrogant.
Technorati Tags: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Mozilla, Flock, Browsers, Microsoft
Do you know you can sign up to MSN with any email address. So you can give up hotmail completely if you wanted to.
I know but I’ve had that MSN account for too many years to change it. Even if I used another account it would still launch Internet Exploder though.
Didn’t realise you were the arty type Mitch.
Doesn’t launch IE here. Perhaps you need to have a look at your computer’s default browser settings.
Default browser is Flock. It’s when it pops up to tell you that you’ve got a new email and you click on the notification that comes up from the system tray. Clicking on a link in a conversation launches in the default browser.
Ah, I’ve just been playing around with my computer’s settings. It’s opening in my browser, and not IE – but my browser is powered by IE. It must be calling the IE engine dll rather than the browser itself. Hmmm. Interesting.
I’m having a lot of trouble with Firefox. In periods of heavy traffic, e.g. late evening, it just stalls. Safari doesn’t do this.
I’ve found Flock 2 to be very stable, even with all the features.
I dont think it is arrogance, i think it is sloppy coding, on microsofts account, in theory, the command will be someting like “BrowserLaunch-‘MSN’-‘account’
But i think a lot of MS products just use “IELaunch-‘MSN’-‘account’
I’ve just changed to Firefox, there is something wrong with my IE and it was easier to install Firefox than fix it, it looks and handles fine, no more traumatic than upgrading Windaes
Do you think this is another part of my metamorphosis into a communist? I really hope i dont have to start smoking a pipe 🙁
Don’t know about the specific MSN-related problem, but I have to admit to being a bit of a browser geek myself, and my vote by a long stretch goes to Opera: got all the features, good security, robust, faster than Firefox and looks great. If you were desperate, you could also try Maxthon (uses both the Trident (IE) and Gecko (Mozilla) rendering engine), which is the fastest of the lot, and Orca (uses the Firefox 3.0 engine but with the same features as the Avant browser): fast and has brilliant features – especially like the ‘search in this site’ feature. Orca is at the beta stage: beta 1 is better than beta 2 on my machine.