The other day when I was setting up my new computer – so was using IE as it came pre-loaded with Windows 7 (I hadn’t installed Chrome yet – my preferred browser). I needed to re-install my security software -from eset. This software has a user id and password required – which was in my gmail account (as they e-mailed it to me). So I opened up a gmail tab and found the e-mail – so I could cut and paste the user and password. But an interesting thing happened – I couldn’t cut and paste.
I had the eset download site open in another tab and it prompted me for a user id and password in order to download the new version. From this screen I attempted to click back on my gmail tab – but it wouldn’t let me. The user id/password screen was occupying the browser’s complete attention.
I then downloaded chrome and tried it again – and guess what – it worked. So there is a real usability difference between IE and chrome – in that the tabs are very independent in chrome – vs. interdependent in IE. I had forgotten this difference – but it made things more difficult for me….
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