Loosing the Address Bar
Microsoft Windows has had the "address bar" for a long time. Although not used by many adding it to your taskbar for some has provided an amazing way of quickly getting to files, folders and web addresses.
I have used it for a while and have it in the bottom row of my task bar, I have this setup at home on my machine, work and until recently Hayleys Laptop.
SP3 came out recently and I immediately updated Hayleys laptop to it, all seemed fine, however today I logged into as me, and noticed the address bar had "vanished". First of all I thought I has just knocked it off but no it had physically disapeared from the toolbar list.
A quick Google later left me speachless....
"After installing Windows XP Service Pack 3, the Address Bar feature will be removed from the Taskbar. The Address Bar feature will not be present in Windows XP Service Pack 3. This change is in response to a regulatory request and is present beginning with Windows XP Service Pack 3 Beta."
It has been removed! The reason behind this is that the Addres Bar is actually part of IE, and Microsoft are trying to make IE less dominant within Windows due to antitrust. I personally think this is a joke, if the address bar opens links up in your preffered browser, in my case Firefox, does it matter that it's an IE component that fires up FireFox??
After further browsing I have found an Addon some one has wrote MuvEnum Address Bar to help with the issue but as of yet I havn't tried it due to now wanting to put something else on Hayleys Laptop.
To remove such an established feature is a real low blow, and I'm sure there must be a better solution, even if it involved more work.... So I was left without my address bar on Hayleys Laptop and hoping that work doesn't upgrade to SP3 anytime soon. Interestingly SP1 Vista still has the address bar so I wonder if SP2 will remove it.
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3 comments:
That does seem really stupid since it opens addresses in your default browser, the only IE integration is that it shows the browser history when you type urls. I did look into making one that would use firefoxs history, but quickly got bored.
I've stopped using it in vista now, start search does the job.
Like you I am very very cross having just updated to SP3, as a " Silver Surfer" it was so helpful to be able to type in web addresses from the taskbar,no warning as per normal, I will be lost without it,so will my wife who has very limited experince but could use the address bar quite easily as it sat on the desktop bar .
My work machine auto updated to SP3, and I was sulking about it for quite a while, before I hit google!
And I notice that I wasn't the only one using the address bar ON The task bar after all :)
I don't understand what is the legal implications! But I found this, that works!
found out you can add the address bar using the following steps:
1. Left click and drag "My Computer" from the Start menu to the top of the screen or desktop.
2. Right click on the new My Computer toolbar and select Toolbar/Address
3. Left click on the new "Address" bar and drag to the botton start bar.
The new address bar shows up just like before. It does dissappear after you reboot.
Source: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/itproxpsp/thread/6748d140-cde9-4705-9612-7013a6bcd910/
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