IE8 to SharePoint-‘Are you sure you want to navigate away from this page?’

Building ‘easy’ and ‘complex’ user controls or field controls is one of those daily jobs that a SharePoint developer will do when building WCM websites.

Recently whenever I was navigating from the Edit Mode, whether it may be a postback or clicking on a link to a different page, IE8 prompts with this ‘wonderful’ yet ‘awesome’ message:

Here is my custom field control in edit mode

So, as you can see in the above screenshot, I have a repeater and then some command arguments – Remove and Sort – Whenever I tried to remove the item or sort, IE8 halts for at least a minute and then prompts me with that message. Clicking on OK does finish the job, but why this message?. This does not happen in IE6, IE7 and Firefox.

Luckily, one of the MSDN forums user Sergioko has found a workaround for this problem:

Hi people,
I have installed Intenet Explorer 8 and started experience a problem. When my publishing page is in Edit mode and I click any link to navigate out to a different page IE8 prints 'Saving Page Content...' in its status bar for about 20 seconds and then displays a message box 'The page took too long to save...'. There were no such error with either IE7 or FireFox. After playing with Javascript debugging, I found that SBN_CallBackHandler() client function of SaveBeforeNavigationControl is not called as it supposed to. It looks like the implementation of XMLHttpRequest object in IE8 is somehow different from the previous release. I'm not sure if it is a bug of IE8 or SharePoint javascript but the problem exists. Fortunatelly, IE8 allows you to turn off its advanced setting 'Enable native XMLHTTP support' (enabled by default) in menu Tools/Internet Options/Advanced. It solves the problem but I would like to have more correct solution :-)  Any ideas?

Yes! Go to Tool->Internet Options->Advanced and disable ‘Enable native XMLHTTP support’ and everything works fine!

I think the SharePoint Team should be made aware of this bug as this is indeed a show-stopper in regard to user experience in the Edit Mode (which is very common in WCM websites and upgrading to SP2 does not solve this issue)

Anyone from the SharePoint Team investigate this issue?

IE8 - Reopen Recently Closed Tabs

We usually work with multiple tabs opened in our browsers and when many such tabs are opened, there is a chance that we accidentally close some tabs and wonder where they are! :)

Well, IE8 might have a solution for you!

IE8 can remember your recently closed tabs (I guess, 10 tabs). You can also see the list of tabs and re-open them.

Lets do a small test - I am entering some text in pastebin

Suppose if I close this tab along with the typed information, will IE8 re-open it for me along with the text entered ? - YES!

IE8 can remember the information entered in certain form elements, exception being those which handle authentication (eg., login form) or any other secure information.

IE8 - Things to note in InPrivate mode

Recently I blogged about how to start IE8 in InPrivate mode by default

There are two ways to do it:

• Using command line
• Making the InPrivate page as your Home Page

Well, it turns out to be that setting the InPrivate page as your Home Page does not open IE8 in InPrivate mode. It just opens the page about:InPrivate

This is similar to the behavior of about:tabs and about:blank !

Remember, You are not browsing in InPrivate mode if you are opening about:InPrivate!

What do we look to confirm that we are indeed browsing in InPrivate mode?

• The [InPrivate] text in the title bar, and,
• The InPrivate icon (picture) before the address bar

How do we start IE8 always in InPrivate mode?

This is the only way (atm) which will start IE8 in InPrivate mode

iexplore.exe -private

This can be done by just typing the above command in Start Menu (in Vista)

Or, also by creating a short-cut

IE 8 - Loosely-Coupled Internet Explorer (LCIE)

I blogged about IE8, Tab Groups and Task Manager earlier and mentioned about many iexplore.exe processes in the Task Manager.

It turns out to be that there is nothing wrong with IE8. Its the new feature called Loosely-Coupled Internet Explorer (LCIE) which is introduced in IE8. From the IE8 web site:

Loosely-coupled Internet Explorer (LCIE) is an architectural effort to improve the browser by separating its components and loosening their interdependence: most notably, it is an attempt to isolate the Internet Explorer frame and its tabs into separate processes. In Internet Explorer 8, this isolation will bring about improved performance and scalability, as well as more potent methods to recover from problems like disk or system failure.

So with IE8, the UI Frame and the Tabs function as separate processes, and thus the more tabs you open, the more iexplore.exe processes you might see in the Task Manager. And, this number is controlled by power of your computer. The more power, the more tabs you open, the more iexplore.exe processes will be created. And also they perform tasks asynchronously.

Here is how it looks like:

And thus when we open IE8, we get two process running, one for the UI Frame and another for the tab

This is indeed a good feature and also separating processes might also help a lot in the event of any failure

More information on LCIE here

IE8, Tab Grouping and Task Manager

IE8 beta 2 has been a great release so far from our Redmond friends. We should not forget that its still Beta and we will have issues with it.

I was playing around with IE8 Tab Grouping and also looking into Task Manager on how IE8 was performing.

Tab Grouping is a cool feature which gives a color for similar tabs opened from same web site. For example, you may be reading an article from a web site and suddenly you see something interesting, and click that link to open in a new tab. IE8 groups those two tabs and treats them to be different web page links from the same web site and thus gives a color to it so that we can easily identify where the tabs came from.

Most interesting is even the Quick Tabs will show that color :)

(click to enlarge)

Suddenly I thought why not open Task Manager and see what's going on

I was surprised to see that there are 10 instances of iexplore.exe running and also to see it marked as a 32 bit application even though I have installed the 64bit version in my 64bit Vista Ultimate!

Update: As Nathan Mercer has pointed out in the comments, IE8 defaults to 32bit version, though 64bit executable is available via Start Menu

I also found that I had opened 10 Tab Groups opened (based on the color) which directly relates to 10 instances running in Task Manager!

What is happening here!

Update: Its a new feature called LCIE and you can read about it here

Let us do some test:

1) I opened IE8 and fired up the Task Manager

You can see that shows 2 instances running!

2) Let us open 3 tabs now

We now have 4 instances running!

3) Lets close two tabs in the previous screen-shot

I still have 4 instances running!

I really do not know what is happening here, but each instance does use memory!

What with IE7?

(Click to enlarge)

I have opened 4 tabs and yet I get only one instance running (This IE7 is a 32 bit version though)

Any suggestions or comments are welcome

IE 8 - Always start InPrivate browsing mode

There was a discussion in IE 8 beta Newsgroups at Connect regarding always starting IE8 in InPrivate browsing mode :)

Here is how you do it. There are two ways to do it:

Internet Explorer Shortcut

Create a IE8 shortcut as shown in the screen-shot below

The argument -private will always open IE8 in InPrivate browsing mode :)

Make InPrivate your Home Page

This is the easier way. Open IE8 and choose InPrivate Browsing from the Safety menu

Now, make it your Home Page

From now on, whenever you open IE8, it will be in InPrivate Browsing mode. The InPrivate box near the address bar wont be there, but the browser will tell you that its in InPrivate Browsing mode as shown below:

(I think that is a bug!)

UPDATE: It seems that setting it as Home Page and opening it later does not open IE8 in InPrivate mode. Read more here

New and Fresh - Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2

Microsoft today finally released IE beta 2 :) and the release is loaded with cool new features!

Well, by this time you might have found so many blogs speaking about all the new features available. I am not going to go through them now, but I am going to talk about the features that made me feel good about IE 8 ;)

Find on Page

This is the great addition to IE! I think this should have been the most requested feature and finally we have it today! :)

Improved Search Bar

We already have the ability to change the search provider in IE 7, but in IE 8 Beta 2, it even got better in selecting the search provider :)

Isn't that cool? You can now select the search provider immediately after you type!

Visual Search

If you have used Safari browser, you should be aware of the plug-in Inquisitor - IE 8 too has something similar now :)

Smart Address Bar

Firefox's  latest release had it and so do IE 8!

(Click to enlarge)

IE 8 takes a step further - You can delete those entries if you don't like them!

Compatibility Icon

This is quite handy! An icon to switch between Compatibility modes

Suggested Sites

You might one day visit some web site and would like to know whether there are any other web site of same kind. IE 8 has a solution for you - It can suggest similar web sites of the kind you are looking for - It just needs some time to learn though ;)

This needs rigorous testing to see whether IE 8 suggests proper web sites or not.

InPrivate Browsing

This is quite handy feature for those who want to....... - Visit here to know more about this cool feature :)

Microsoft has also updated IE 8 web site with Accelerators, Web Slices, Plug-ins and Extensions

I think IE 8 is getting geared up for a wonderful release!

Firefox, I introduce you - the New & Fresh IE 8 Beta 2!