While helping a good friend of mine work up a new theme for her WordPress powered site, she began to complain that since she switched themes her site wasn’t loading correctly. Since I have my own back end account for her site I’ve been working side by side with her on her theme and checking the results in another tab and I hadn’t seen any loading problem at all.
But I was using the latest Firefox…
…in Linux Mint…
Okay, no problem. I figured I could just boot up into Windows XP and check her site via Firefox 3.6.8, Firefox 4.0 beta 3, Google Chrome and (shudder) Internet Explorer 8. All went well, her site loading without a problem, until I got to (shudder) Internet Explorer. Then suddenly it was all stop.
I had forgotten what it was like to use Windows.
First surprise I encountered was not being able to use the Desktop as soon as it appeared. It was a bit of a shock to be truthful about it as I was used to booting into my Linux based OS and being able to start working as soon as the desktop appeared and I was a bit taken aback when I booted into Windows after a rather long absence.
For one thing the boot time was soooo slooow as compared to Linux Mint which, from the boot-up to logging in takes less than 30 seconds if I don’t fat-finger my password.
The second thing was that I had to wait…and wait….and wait…before I could actually use the damn OS in the first place and I run a very clean Windows installation. First Windows had to finish loading everything that is…well…Windows. Then the Firewall software had to argue with the Anti-virus software as to which one was going to finish what first. Once they settled their differences, I then had to wait for the anti-virus program to update itself with all the latest signatures and tell me that it was finally safe to actually use the OS catching some awful electronic malady.
I made a cup of tea while I was waiting so it wasn’t a total loss.
I now was able to check my friend’s site in various editions of Firefox, Google Chrome and such but when it came to (shudder) Internet Explorer it was suddenly, All Stop!
It wasn’t that her site wasn’t loading properly in IE, it was the fact that I had completely forgotten that I had never imported my Firefox bookmarks into IE at all. I have been so used to just typing the first few letters of a website into the Firefox location field and having it immediately providing a list of bookmarked websites for me to choose from that I found myself completely stumped when I realized I had to actually type out the full address of her site into the Microsoft’s browser. Well, no problem then. I decided to just take a few minutes and import my Firefox Bookmarks into IE’s Favorites and off we go.
At least I thought so at the time.
I ended up finding myself completely bollixed at the process. I exported my Bookmarks from Firefox without a problem of course but when I came to importing them into IE I found myself staring at the damn browser in utter confusion.
I had forgotten how to import my bookmarks into IE’s favorites.
To make a long, frustrating experience short, I finally “remembered” (read: I looked it up on Google) that I had to go under “File/Import Export” in IE in order to import my bookmarks.
‘Ah’, says I. ‘No sweat now.’
Except that while importing my bookmarks, IE promptly informed me that some of my bookmarks could not be imported which turned out to be a lot of them.
What? Didn’t IE like some of my bookmarked websites or what? It was obvious that this lousy browser didn’t like my friend’s site one bit since my friend’s was one the of those that went missing. So I finally buckled down and wracked my brain for the entire address of her site and pounded into IE’s address bar like I should have done in the first place.
The site loaded fine just as I expected.
So what did I learn from all this? I’m not quite sure yet as I have to keep Windows around for as long as I wish to help others with their WordPress powered sites. If not for that though, I certainly learned that evicting Windows off my hard drive once and for all would be one of the first things I’d do and without a single regret.
(sigh)
In the meantime I’ve resolved myself to using only Windows for an entire week since I obviously need a refresher course. But I’m not starting until after this coming weekend.
After all, one must always allow some time to prepare oneself for a painful experience.
Kirk, I definitely feel your pain. I’m using Windows 7 and am not really sure why there are so many folks in the commercials prepared to admit it was their idea….. I wish I could have bought a Mac this time round, but I need Windows for real estate related programs that only run on Windows.
I use Firefox the majority of the time, but am forced to use IE to get into the Iowa City MLS. Plus I have to check periodically to see that my WordPress website is running okay there. (Which it isn’t BTW, I don’t have a header graphic on IE, because the guy who helps me wasn’t able to figure that out).
Quite clearly you have a superior solution in Linux mint. Don’t ask me why 80% of the people on the Web use Windows and IE. Beats me. Of course some of them are probably like me. Forced into using something simply because software developers decided Windows is the operating system of choice.
As you can tell, this is a subject that winds me up big time too!
Denise – To be truthful about it, Windows 7 is probably Microsoft’s best OS to date. Compared to past MS offerings it’s lean, fast and can run on older single core systems that have at least 1GB of memory. The problem with still having to check a website with IE is that “way back when” (middle 90′s or so) IE became the standard for writing websites after MS knocked the Netscape browser off the map. Unfortunately, in these days of strict W3C standards, we’re still suffering from companies who still code their websites for that infamous IE6 which only adhered to ancient MS web standards (MSHTML).
But I have to agree, for most folks, Linux Mint (along with a couple other “all bells and whistles” included Linux based OSs) would be a much more viable, affordable (free as in free beer) and (currently) safer OS to use.
Kvetch, kvetch, kvetch!!! Welcome to the real world.
Wow, I had not seen your actual site in ages. I like the header font. This is what all blogs should look like. Clean, white space, large text. Nice! When are you changing it?
Sixty – Heh, considering that the theme I’m using (2010 Weaver) includes about 9 different “child” themes based on the new WordPress “Default” theme (Twenty Ten) that I can customize with a whole slew of theme options, You never know what it might look like. Of course, I’m a lazy bum with absolutely no sense of taste when it comes to customizing my own site so I’ll probably just leave it as is.
Or maybe not…
And this friend appreciates all your help, it has truly been frustrating! I swear this is my last PC….mac next one around. Hmm looking at your sidebar I see your archive is different than mine. I like this one better. still so much to learn with the new theme.
Meh! Since starting to use Windows 7, I have only run IE once, and that was because I accidentally clicked the wrong icon.
You may be pleased to hear that I am, for the moment using Linux Mint, as recommended?
Grandad – “I have only run IE once, and that was because I accidentally clicked the wrong icon.”
I hope the experience wasn’t too painful for you.
And you decided to live dangerously and installed Linux Mint? I applaud you, sir. Give it plenty of time though as you need to be able to screw your head around to a new and mostly better way of doing things although it’s probably not as difficult as switching from Windows to a Mac. In fact, I can pretty much guarantee it isn’t.