One of my least favourite Internet Explorer features has to be the fact that it opens a dinky little window when you use the very handy CTRL+L shortcut to type in a URL in the address bar. All other browsers puts focus on the address field and selects the whole existing URL so you can type away. IE gives you a little 250 pixel wide text input. I’m trying to think of situations where this could be how I want it to behave, but no, can’t come up with anything. Not only does it make editing long pasted URLs hard, it stops you from CTRL+L’ing and then pressing tab to get to the search field like most other browsers lets you do. This behaviour is continued in IE 8 beta even with what they’ve done to improve the address bar.

On a related note, I tried to think of a favourite feature to balance this post out but I honestly can’t think of anything. There’s really nothing at all I consider a favourite feature of IE, something IE has that I like and that other browsers don’t have. That is, when you think about it, pretty astounding from a company like Microsoft who has made a lot of great software through the years, Office, Visual Studio – even Windows has redeeming features!

Ps. I thought of a quote from the Mort Walker comic Beetle Bailey. The camp chaplain proclaims that the sargeant surely has ‘redeeming features’, but when asked what that means has to admit that “It’s an expression I use when I can’t think of any redeeming features”. Least favourite Internet Explorer feature