I’ve read the warning, may I see the MENU please …

 

WARNING:

 

 Many Web Concordance problems have been traced to Browser Helper Objects (BHOs).

If you experience difficulty with the Web Concordances, check out this page.

 

I’ve read the warning, may I see the MENU please …

 


 

Do you know where your BHOs are?

 

Keep tabs on your BHOs with BHODemon

 

DOWNLOAD BHODemon from PC WORLD (and read review and ads)

 

Depending on what BHOs you have installed, the Concordance may or may not work with your browser.

 

We’ve had two major technical problems, one with Internet Explorer 7, and one with BHOs. 

 The Concordance software was developed over the past three years (2003-2007) using Internet Explorer 6, and was modified to function acceptably well with Firefox.  In our tests with Opera, we’re not aware of any serious problems with that browser.  Opera  has a lovely feature the others don’t, it will read out loud to you with a pretty decent synthesized voice!

 

Microsoft recently introduced its new Internet Explorer 7 browser, which did not work AT ALL with frames as we’ve evolved them over the years with the other browsers. We have built a modified version with a work-around for the IE7 frame handling bug … in the next menu select the option appropriate to your browser.  There are now two versions of the Concordances, one for IE 7 and one for all other browsers. The work-around is far from ideal and if you have no browser other than IE 7, you will want to try out Firefox or Opera.

 

Windows Vista comes with IE 7, and XP users with “update” set to automatic found their familiar and reliable IE 6 was replaced with the buggy IE 7, and there was nothing they could do to get it back without a partial re-install of the OS.  The reason we designed for IE 6 was that “everybody has it.”  We can’t design for IE 7 until its severe frame handling bug is fixed, we can only strongly recommend you download the free Firefox or Opera browsers, either or both of which will happily reside on your computer alongside IE 7 or even IE 6, and neither of which have any known issues with Concordance.  And if you download them you will want to be careful about BHOs.

 

While Concordance works adeqautely now with IE 7, the addition of certain plug-ins or BHOs (Browser Helper Objects) to any browser can stop it from working due to the fact that some Concordance pages contain more words than typical web pages.  Skype’s BHO designed to find phone numbers is a classic example of this problem.  In some of our web pages there are thousands of numerical values which Skype BHO tries to interpret as phone numbers.  It was designed to handle a few, not thousands, and it stalls out totally, appearing to make the computer “hang.”

 

BHO Demon software recommended by PC World and by us shows you all BHOs present and allows you to toggle them on and off, so they are there where and when you want them, but not there when they might cause problems.  It has the fringe benefit of revealing adware or spyware BHOs you may not even know you have, and allowing you to switch them off.

 

Browsers often work faster with the BHOs disabled, depending on their nature, number, and the speed of your computer.

 

Many problems reported with Web Concordances have been traced to BHOs ….

 

The following Web Concordance pages may not work well if certain Browser Helper Objects  (BHOs) are active.  Many BHOs install themselves without asking,  may be planted by viruses or spyware as well as legitimate software such as Skype or Google, and can generally slow down your surfing without your being aware of their operation.  Some can be quite useful, and others are decidedly not.

 

Even useful ones which sort numbers, words, or letters can cause difficulty with this Concordance because some pages involve more than a megabyte of words and numbers, which is more than some BHOs were designed to handle.  This includes, but is not limited to the Skype Browser Helper Object designed to let you “call with a click” any phone number in any web page.  While that is useful on some websites, when it encounters many thousands of what it takes to be phone numbers, as it does with the Web Concordance, it can stop your computer dead for some minutes.  It must be switched off to use this Concordance effectively on the computers we’ve tested.

 

PC World recommends the free BHODemon software and so do we.  BHODemon allows you to toggle any Browser Helper Object (BHO) on or off with a click while browsing.  That way you have the BHOs you want where you want, and when you want but can also switch them off where they are not actually “helpful”.  Many people are quite astonished at how many BHOs are on their system without their knowledge and how much faster their browser is after disabling those they don’t want.  Of course this will also enable you to get rid of BHOs you don’t want!

 

There is no feasible way for us to test all BHOs out there, but if you notice any particular ones which DO or DON’T cause problems when not disabled, please let us know!  FEEDBACK

 

DOWNLOAD BHODemon from PC WORLD (and read review and ads)

INSTALL BHODemon from here (1.9MB)

 

Ok, I’ve read the warning, and I promise to install BHODemon and switch off any troublesome BHO’s before complaining that your Concordance doesn’t work.  May I see the MENU please …