Microsoft help…helped! Quickly. Efficiently. Freely. Whoopiee!
First things first: We’ve had a rash of people downloading epub file and unzipping them, asking where the epub file was.
Well, gosh, says I, those files aren’t zipped. They’re designed to make downloading directly to a device possible. OTOH, an epub file is a zipped file. Maybe they don’t have “show extensions” enabled or a designated ebook reader on their computer and it’s showing up as a little zippered icon. And if you right click on an epub file, you can unzip it to its component parts, which can be really confusing.
So..I added a little note to the generated email not to unzip epub or mobi files…and I continued to get queries from people who were unzipping the epubs and unable to read their books.
Well…one intrepid reader (love you guys!) figured out that IE is the culprit. The built-in downloader for IE8/9 was changing the .epub file extension to .zip! No wonder people were having problems.
Simple answer? Click “save as” all files, and manually change the file extension to .epub. I can do that. But that’s not cool for the less computer savvy and we want to make the book-buying from CC as painless as possible. So…I braved the lion in its lair.
I tried Microsoft help.
OMG. The forums are a nightmare to navigate, and that really didn’t get me in contact with the programmers to get the problem looked into. I knew lots of people were having the same problem so it wasn’t something goofy in my pristine (because I never use it) version of IE, but something goofy in the program itself. So…I tried Live Chat, certain they were going to charge me an arm and a leg just for saying “Hi.”
Actually…it wasn’t like that at all. I tried customer service first. They heard the problem and gave me a link to another chat that ended up being for Office, (probably because ebooks were involved) and he quickly sent me over to the Windows chat where I got to choose among several charming faces who to chat with. I got David and once I managed to clearly define the problem (You’ve got to admit, it’s weird. A downloader that arbitrarily changes a file extension? Who ever heard of such a thing?) he immediately realized it belonged with the programmers, contacted his superior and gave the problem its little ticket.
It was fast, it was polite, and whether or not it gets fixed, at least I tried!
So…it’s very possible you can blame your next IE update on me! 
No, I won’t blame you. If MS would give better support and better documentation to their software, it might be easier for users to navigate.
I did find that older programs that relied on a “Help” file from Microsoft didn’t work unless I downloaded a patch from MS, and of course, the first 5 or 6 times I tried to download it, the program wouldn’t download at all, so I couldn’t get it to load, couldn’t call up the Help file to figure out what I’d done wrong (nothing!), but finally got it to work……..Maybe there should be a special level of hell for MS programmers….
Didn’t Shepherd Book already allude to that one?
Ugh, MSIE, ugh. I hope they’ll actually fix it, and soon.
But readers would be better off with Firefox or Safari, IMHO.
Don’t mind me, I’m trying to figure out what’s changed with the Mac since I last used one regularly.
However, good news, it appears I now have a working setup for audio recording. A few adjustments along the way, but hey, it works!
People using IE are tempting fate by even opening it, let alone browse. Come on in, every malware ever made!
Firefox or Chrome are much safer. I haven’t used Safari yet. It took me a while to get used to Chrome – I fought using it for a long time. But some of my FB games don’t crash if I use Chrome.
Onna-san, can I contact you offsite? I have some questions about BJD, and don’t want to waste CC’s bandwidth and posting space with personal stuff. You can e-mail me at colemanpurple (at) hotmail.com Thanks!
Gasp! What if it’s something I want to know but didn’t know I wanted to know?
Seriously, if anyone ever wants to contact another member here and would rather not put their email online, just let me know and I’ll happily act as a private mediator of emails.
But you have to let us know if you get one!
Sure, chondrite! Look for an email from b_onna so you know it’s me.
And something for Jane to know: a package from OR is on its way, and it’s not for Mr. W. The name on the package will be the clue.
Reply sent, chondrite! Enjoy!
In theory, I agree with everything everyone is saying, but the fact is a lot of people use and love it, so when there’s a problem with it, I really need to investigate it. I mean, if we want to talk about unwieldy 800 pound gorillas I wish we could force to play nicely with others, there’s a site beginning with an A that would be at the head of the list.
However, the point of the post was what good online help I got from Microsoft. Gotta give ‘em points for that!
I be a Firefoxer and swear by it. I love their NewsFox feed reader. I only use IE when forced to — rarely I run across something that welded to IE and won’t work with anything else. I suppose I should succumb to Chrome when GOogle stops supporting iGoogle (boo! hiss!). I have so many handy apps on my iGoogle homepage that I use so much, like F to C temperature converter, a weather radar app for my region, $ to £ converter, US to metric converter, etc. Stuff I use alla time.
Credit where credit is due, that you got good support from Microsoft. Good help from anybody these days is worth a post.
Also, I can think of two sites, 800 lb. gorillas beginning with A.
The reality is, a *lot* of people use IE for one reason or another, so people have to support it along with the other major browsers.
Good going, Jane.
I have found that on certain websites, Firefox doesn’t put the text in the right spots, with relation to the pictures. Sometimes, the pages don’t completely load, even though I have the latest, greatest updates to
Firefox, and I’ve verified that the plug-ins and the add-ons are up to date, too. Case in point, it doesn’t always let me use my match.com page, so I end up having to go to IE. Same with Yahoo, if I’m looking at the news, it doesn’t always completely load the pages. My FB page just seems to work better and seems to be aligned better with IE.
Consider Chrome, Joe.
Part of Firefox’s issues with loading may have to do with any ad block or other plug-in you may have added. I know I am unable to look at some bjd websites on Firefox on the office machine due to all the protection the school initiate to stop malware and such.
If you use IE, I hope you have something like Malwarebytes installed to help keep the buggers away.
Thanks, Onna-san. I had Malwarebytes installed, but it was only the trial version and I didn’t take up the upgrade offer. I’ve got so much stuff wandering on this computer, I wonder if it’s better to just slick the hard drive, reinstall Winders, and start over. Or, just buy a new hard drive, make that my primary, install Winders on it, and nothing else, and hope that it works better than now. I’ll give Chrome a try, I’ve been ignoring their offers to install because I’m not familiar with the app, just like other people have tried Safari, I’m not familiar with it, either.
Just found out that the Firefox plugin ‘Ghostery’ does not play well with ancestry.com/dna
FYI
The tech came in this morning and told us to temporarily disable all Java plug-ins in all browsers we use. There’s a nasty virus hitting people with Java enabled.
Yipes! Thanks for the warning!
oh noes, a Java epidemic? And I didn’t get my Java vaccine…..I’m screwed!
Onna-san, I downloaded Chrome, now I’m trying to figure out how to get the various passwords I have on Lastpass over from Firefox to Chrome. It should be interesting…..
maybe next time, I’ll save my nickels and dimes and buy a Mac……
Oh, say it isn’t so, Joe! Not a Mac! LOL!
Ah, I got it figured out. Still, the PC has major problems, I think due to a lightning strike near the house a couple of years ago. EMP is not nice to delicate electronics, and none of my equipment is “hardened”, and my rooms aren’t shielded. The USB 2.0 bus has died, the internal network card died, I’ve lost a couple of other things, and I believe the video card is also dying. Sigh..well, it IS 4 years old, and unlike wine, women, and kittehs, it doesn’t get better with age.