Visual Basic Programmer

Speeding up your PC

Optimising Internet Explorer 9

IE9 is the latest and greatest version of Microsoft's browsers. For the first time, a Microsoft browser can handle (some of) the new features of HTML5 and CSS3.

But IE9 cannot be used with Windows XP – so it will take a long time before HTML programmers will be able to use the new features. Windows XP, with 50% of the market, will take years to diminish to a point where it can be ignored. They could of course use Firefox.

Temporary files

Cache is a local storage area in your browser in which previously viewed HTML pages and images are stored. If a previously viewed Web page is accessed again, the copy is loaded from the cache. With this technique, unnecessary Internet traffic is avoided.

These temporary files can grow very quickly as you browse the Internet.

To delete these files:

1. Start Internet Explorer
2. Right click the top toolbar, and make sure that "Menu Bar" is selected. You can unselect the Menu Bar later to increase the viewing area.
3. Click "Delete Browsing History ..."

You have the option of deleting Temporary Internet Files, Cookies and History files. These files should be deleted on a regular basis.

64 bit Internet Explorer 9

Are you experiencing problems with IE9? Is your computer has one of the new 64 bit CPUs? If so, then simply use the 32 bit version of IE9. Do a search for iexplore.exe. You should find two versions:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe
C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe

Select the x86 executable version, right click and Send it to the Desktop.