Why are My Cookies Being Deleted in IE8?

Ever since I upgraded from IE7 to IE8 (first to the beta, then to the released version), I’ve seen that my cookies seem to disappear from time to time.  This is evidenced by the fact that I need to log in again to such innocuous sites as my.yahoo.com.  I’ve finally figured out that this seems to be happening every time I reboot my machine (or it decides to crash upon waking up from hibernation – this happens all the time.  ARGH.)  Sometimes it takes a while to see patterns in these things.  Or I just ignore it until it bugs me enough to do something about it.

In searching for a solution, I’ve seen that a lot of folks are having problems with IE8 and CCleaner with respect to cookies, but I’m not running CCleaner.  Some other posts led me to look at the Delete Browsing History screen below.  You can get to this either from Tools / Internet Options / Browsing History / Delete or from Safety / Delete Browsing History…

As I understand it, having Preserve Favorites website data checked means that content belonging to sites in your Favorites will preserve their cookies and temporary Internet files.  But I rarely use Favorites (sort of a perverse laziness).  Now I really like cookies.  I don’t really worry too much about my privacy at this level and I don’t *want* to have to retype my usernames and set other settings all the time.

Unfortunately this screen is an *active* delete of browsing history, so I don’t think that changing anything will have an effect.  I’m not the only one complaining about this out on the ‘Net, so hopefully there’s a solution out there somewhere.  Let me know if you find it!

I’ve posted this question to the MSDN Internet Explorer Web Development Forum but so far, no responses.

Discovering Internet Explorer 8 Developer Tools

As I mentioned in my last post, Fun With My Blog Stats, the #1 post in my blog stats over the last three months has been IE8 and the Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar.   If you’ve recently upgraded to IE8 and are wondering where the Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar (IEDT) has run off to, it has been replaced by the Developer Tools in IE8.

The IE team had developed the IEDT because of the sheer volume of requests for something which would mirror some of the toolbar capabilities in other browsers such as FireFox.  With IE8, the capabilities are baked right in and there’s no need for a separate add-on.  The definitive article over at MSDN which explains the new Developer Tools in IE8 is entitled Discovering Internet Explorer Developer Tools.

Below, at a high level, are some of the great features available to you with a click of F12, lifted from the TOC of the above article.  Even if you are a long-time user of the IEDT like I am, you ought to read through the article because there are some fantastic new features, and others work even better than in the classic IEDT.  If you’re a Web developer, you owe it to yourself to upgrade to IE8, if only for these great tools.

Every installation of Internet Explorer 8 comes with the Developer Tools. This tool enables Web site developers to quickly debug Microsoft JScript, investigate a behavior specific to Internet Explorer, or iterate rapidly to prototype a new design or try solutions to a problem on-the-fly. This article introduces you to key features of the Developer Tools.

• Introduction
• Getting Started
• Debugging HTML and CSS
  • Inspecting HTML Elements
  • Inspecting CSS Properties
  • Editing Sources On-The-Fly
  • Saving Changes
• Debugging JScript
  • Starting and Stopping the Debugger
  • Controlling Execution
  • Inspecting Variables
  • Inspecting Call Stack
  • Using the Debugger Console
• Profiling JScript Performances
  • Starting and Stopping Profiler
  • Viewing Data
  • Profiling Multiple Sessions and Exporting Data
• Searching for Content
• Viewing Sources
• Outlining Elements on Screen
• Working with Images
• Controlling Cache and Cookies
• Using Power Tools
• Validating Your Sources
• Testing in Different Browser and Document Modes
  • Testing Browser Modes
  • Testing Document Modes
• Using Keyboard Shortcuts
• Referencing Interface Commands
• Related Topics

IE8 Released to the World

Perhaps the news is a bit stale, but IE8 was released yesterday to the world. You can download it from the Internet Explorer site.  It’s so new that the title of the page is still ‘Internet Explorer 7: Home Page’!

I’ve posted a few things that I like about IE8; click on the IE8 tag to see them.

Why Won’t SharePoint Designer Recognize IE8? Firefox!

I loaded IE8 about a month ago and since then I’ve been getting the error below after I check in a page.  First, the usual message that the page needs to be approved:

If I choose ‘Yes’, I get the error: “A World Wide Web browser, such as Windows Internet Explorer, is required to use this feature.”, as below:

I did some surfing, and I’m not the only one seeing this behavior.  Others are seeing it in other instances that actually prevent them from accomplishing the task at hand.  My guess is that it is a bug, since IE8 is still in Beta.  The workaround is simple in this case: Just keep a browser window open to Galleries/Master pages and page layouts/My Submissions view in the Site Settings (http://[servername]/_catalogs/masterpage/Forms/my-sub.aspx).  This is the page that SharePoint Designer sends you to, which is convenient, but hardly a show-stopper if you can’t get there automagically.

UPDATE 2009-04-10: Well, IE8 is fully released now, and I’m still seeing this issue.  I still haven’t solved it with all my poking around and I’m still just working around it.  Anyone out there found a solution?

UPDATE 2009-04-19: Found the answer in a discussion that covered this message from a different angle.  The problem had nothing to do with SharePoint Designer or IE8, per se.  I had Firefox installed on my machine so that I could test how pages look in it, and somehow it was registered as the default program for something that SharePoint Designer must not have liked.  By uninstalling Firefox, the problem went away.  When I reinstalled Firefox (I still wanted it), I simply unchecked the option for Firefox to be the default browser, and all was good.  Simple solution to an annoying problem!  Sorry to cast aspersions on IE8, as it didn’t really have much, if anything, to do with it.

IE8: Built in Script Debugger!!!!!

I think the title says it all.  If you’re using script in your pages, you should get IE8.  QED

IE8 and the Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar

When I read today in an email from Microsoft that IE8 was at RC1 status, I thought I’d give it another try.  (I’d downloaded an early beta and it got in the way of me getting things done.)  Once I’d installed IE8, rebooted, and launched it, much to my chagrin I was informed that the Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar was incompatible with IE8.  This wasn’t going to do at all.  I use the IEDT constantly to check my CSS, pick apart the DOM, grab color codes, etc.  I can’t work without it!  Was I doomed to use IE7 forever?

A few deeps breaths and a little searching and I landed right back on the IEDT download page, which told me this:

The Developer Toolbar is not compatible with Internet Explorer 8.  Please use the developer tools included with Internet Explorer 8.  Press F12 or click the ‘Developer Tools’ entry in the Tools menu to begin using the tool.  Click here for more information on IE8 Developer Tools.

Well this was a horse of a different color!  Now the IEDT capabilities are baked right into IE.  From the looks of it, there’s more capability as well. My old favorites are still there (Select Element by Click, Show Color Picker, Outline Table Cells, etc.) and there’s some more as well.  One obvious improvement is the the left window now can show the HTML, CSS, and Script separately, nicely colored for easy deciphering.  There’s also something called the Profiler which lets you capture what’s going on with scripts running so that you can optimize things.

I’ll post more once I’ve used the new Developer Tools a while, but it’s worth a look.  Oh, and I’m guessing that IE8 may have some other new capabilities, too.