Make Internet Explorer usable with a few add-ons
by Mats Hellman on 13.Feb, 2009 under Windows
Even if I am, and have been for many years now, a Firefox user I do occasionally look back and feel I want to use Internet Explorer again. The simple reason for this is the small amount of resources this browser uses. I know it’s evil, unsecure, doesn’t follow the standards, is preloaded and always runs in the background and that is the reason why it seems fast. And since IE 7 we even have tabs.
Search provider
First of all I always change the search provider. IE has a search field since IE 7 so I use it. Just click the arrow in the search field and select Find more providers. Choose one you want to use, for me and so many others it’s Google. This was one of the reasons I made the switch from IE to Firefox in the beginning.
StumbleUpon
This is my favorite waste of time, I stumble. I admit, I could not live without stumble anymore. I don’t even know how I got by before I found this application. I’ve found so many sites via stumble I can’t even begin to count them. Some are work related and some are more personal. But it has probably saved me hundreds of hours searching time, because I bookmarked something I later needed at work. And it is available for Internet Explorer.
IE Pro
Last but definitely not least is the IEPro add on. This one makes so many other add ons useless. You get inline search, advertisement blocker, download manager, spell checker and so much more.
With these few enhancements you can use Internet Explorer and it will be almost as good as Firefox. It might not be as secure. But many companies do not push out Firefox or even have a policy on this forbidding the use of Firefox. If you can get your administrators to push out IEPro you will feel more at home in IE.
That’s all folks
I could start looking for a way to make this list long, like all those 50 Best plugins for Firefox, but I won’t. I refuse to make a post just to get a lot of content, and to be honest I wouldn’t want 50 plugins on anything anyway. If it can’t do it whit less something is wrong. The few changes I mention above make IE usable, and that’s all I need. I’ll still switch to FF when I miss it.
