Pro tip: dont insist, 99% of them will never change the browser, instead install Chrome Frame
You have to force chrome frame to be the default renderer as well, being chrome frame by default will only be used when a website requests it.
For Thanksgiving, give your parents a treat: upgrade their browser
91–100 of 109 posts
Re: For Thanksgiving, give your parents a treat: upgrade their browser
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
Similar situation here. My Dad uses his laptop for browsing and email, maybe to scan a document every few months. After getting fed up with all the calls about spyware and other generally weird issues I installed Ubuntu. Since then, I've had two support calls from him: 1) "Is it safe to enter my password when it's installing updates?" 2) "I'm at my friend's house... how do I add a new wireless network?"
Whilst it seems like a good idea to install Ubuntu on other peoples computers there are 4 things that would stop me from doing it. 1) Flash player, this crashes allot under Linux and seems to have some weird issues with sound where you will be listening to a video and all of a sudden the sound will start playing from the beginning of the video in addition to the current sound. 2) Wifi , this generally works, but Netw…
About 4:
For me, all the more reason to install Linux on as many machines of as many people as possible. Should the situation arrive where a piece of hardware doesn't work (which is rare, in my experience), I tell people to blame the hardware suppliers, and complain to them, and tell them to stop making shitty products that don't work. The more people do this, the more the hardware suppliers will be pressured into getting their shit together and properly support Linux and other free (as in Freedom) operating systems.
Re: For Thanksgiving, give your parents a treat: upgrade their browser
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whilst it seems like a good idea to install Ubuntu on other peoples computers there are 4 things that would stop me from doing it. 1) Flash player, this crashes allot under Linux and seems to have some weird issues with sound where you will be listening to a video and all of a sudden the sound will start playing from the beginning of the video in addition to the current sound. 2) Wifi , this generally works, but Netw…
About 4: For me, all the more reason to install Linux on as many machines of as many people as possible. Should the situation arrive where a piece of hardware doesn't work (which is rare, in my experience), I tell people to blame the hardware suppliers, and complain to them, and tell them to stop making shitty products that don't work. The more people do this, the more the hardware suppliers will be pressured into ge…
This is of course true, more Linux use would improve hardware support (of course would have the side effect of people writing more crapware for it too which is probably what you got them to switch over to avoid).
The problem is that your unlikely to get your aging relatives to lobby the hardware manufacturers and even if you do it doesn't really solve their immediate problem and they're probably going to ask you to re-install Windows.
The problem is that there are many relatively minor things that can be deal breakers for lots of people in terms of operating systems. For example if they use netflix or decide they want to run a particular game or bit of hobby software if that is not available for the OS then they will probably want to switch away even if it makes their overall experience across the board worse.
This is one of the reasons for continued survival of IE6 in corporates, even though it may have lots of things wrong with it there might be that 1 piece of enterprise software that won't work in anything else, that is basically required to do their jobs so they can't move away.
Re: For Thanksgiving, give your parents a treat: upgrade their browser
#94I hope nobody minds but I'd like to share what happened to me recently: My father called me a few months ago to ask if I could go on our bank's online banking site and tell him if I noticed anything unusual. At the time, HSBC's online banking had the following flow: Enter your user ID as the first step, enter your DOB as the second, and finally enter three specified digits from your 6-figure security PIN. It all seem…
Pherhaps there is a case for a minimal Linux (or even better OpenBSD) distro that contains only an up-to-date browser (automatically updated) with most plugins (flash,java etc) disabled. You could also set a firewall to block all but a whitelisted set of domains (to prevent CSRF etc). It could also be set to use a different DNS server to the main computer (or have DNS hardcoded into /etc/hosts).
This could then be run in a Virtual Machine transparently so that it appears to be just running as another application, could be called "Secure Browse" or something, that would be used specifically for things like banking websites etc. This wouldn't prevent things like keyloggers and some other attacks but would prevent allot of the more common stuff (malicious plugins, malicious proxies / software DNS redirecting etc).
Pherhaps this is unnecessary as many bank sites now require physical authentication via handheld keygens.
I do remember a UK banking site (that shall remain nameless) used to have online banking that didn't work unless you were running an IE with pretty much every plugin under the sun (activex included) installed.
Re: For Thanksgiving, give your parents a treat: upgrade their browser
#95I upgraded my parents browser but only after I upgraded them to Windows 7. Bye bye XP and all of your issues you have given us over the years.
Re: For Thanksgiving, give your parents a treat: upgrade their browser
#96My parents are running Linux now, but when they were on Windows, I just changed the Firefox shortcut's icon to be the IE icon. I didn't change anything else (not even the text below the icon from "Mozilla Firefox" to "Internet Explorer"), but my parents of course didn't notice.
Very clever. When I first started using Linux, I always wondered why in the world anyone would use the "Redmond" skin for the desktop. Of course, it's for subterfuge. :)
perhaps somebody should release a modern browser that is visually identical to IE6.
Re: For Thanksgiving, give your parents a treat: upgrade their browser
#97Also, delete all those toolbars.
This is the quickest way to determine someones level of tech savvyness, it is inversely relational to the number of toolbars they have installed in their browser (developer toolbars excluded of course).
It seems now that almost every piece of Windows software I install wants to install some sort of browser toolbar unless you opt out.
Pherhaps this is one of the reasons Macs are simpler and quicker , there is just less of a culture of bundling crap with every piece of software.
Re: For Thanksgiving, give your parents a treat: upgrade their browser
#98This should be a non-issue but on Windows XP [1] silent application upgrades often fail because they require admin privileges. [1] Win XP still has a third of the OS market share http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_system...
Also, IE9 doesn't run on XP and no version of IE for XP supports SNI [1], which is reason enough to switch it to other browser. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Name_Indication
I think this can also be an issue with firefox, or at least it used to be.
Re: For Thanksgiving, give your parents a treat: upgrade their browser
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
yeah, precisely newer IEs are ok. Chrome is ok. Firefox is ok. Opera is ok. this is an issue that most have solved very long ago, and the rest? well they don't read hacker news or ars anyway.
newer IEs are ok Not on XP, they're not.
Well get them a copy of Windows 7 for thanksgiving then you cheapskate :)
Re: For Thanksgiving, give your parents a treat: upgrade their browser
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
About 4: For me, all the more reason to install Linux on as many machines of as many people as possible. Should the situation arrive where a piece of hardware doesn't work (which is rare, in my experience), I tell people to blame the hardware suppliers, and complain to them, and tell them to stop making shitty products that don't work. The more people do this, the more the hardware suppliers will be pressured into ge…
This is of course true, more Linux use would improve hardware support (of course would have the side effect of people writing more crapware for it too which is probably what you got them to switch over to avoid). The problem is that your unlikely to get your aging relatives to lobby the hardware manufacturers and even if you do it doesn't really solve their immediate problem and they're probably going to ask you to r…
>The problem is that there are many relatively minor things that can be deal breakers for lots of people in terms of operating systems.
True, but that exactly is one of the greatest sources of hypocrisy in these discussions. Windows has lots (and in my opinion, more) "relatively minor things" which can be deal breakers - except that those are ignored or simply waved aside as "that cannot be helped" (when more often than not it could).
It's incredibly annoying because this bias is completely ridiculous and in many cases makes rational arguments almost impossible.
>This is one of the reasons for continued survival of IE6 in corporates
And this is also the reason why we should refuse to support this prehistoric excuse for a browser and force these enterprises to rewrite or upgrade their software, or face being cut off from the internet. I frankly do not care if some idiotic corporation had the fabulous foresight to base their entire internal infrastructure on a piece of software written as an extension to an application that can be expected to be outdated in a few years (wow, what a sentence). Every person with half a brain should realize that this is a tremendously retarded idea, and everyone who doesn't should be fired and replaced. Including managers.