Running aol 9.1 and if I type something in the top search bar I get something like this: Typed BBC Space force and the following appears in the search bar on the page that comes up BBC%20Space%20force. The listthat appears under this has lots of entries that look like this:
If I type BBC Space force in the search bar at the top of the welcome page it all works normally so what is going on? Only just started doing this. Any AOL experts out there?..................................................................JR
Know nothing about AOL, save that I wouldn't let it within 100km of any machine of mine, so can't say what's going on but you may have deduced that %20 is web speak for a space between words.
Counting down to retirement update: I bright light now beckons
Yes and thank you for the reply but whilst I accept some do not like AOL, as is demonstrated every time I ask a question about it, most never say why they feel so strongly about it. What is it that is wrong with it? Specific statements would be much appreciated so that one could assess and compare from one's own experience. ...............................................................JR
PS Would still like to hear from someone who could shed more light on the effect that I have described.
Joined on 23/08/2004
Southern Morbihan (56)
Posts 1,974
Re: AOL search doing weird things!
JohnRoss wrote:
Yes and thank you for the reply but whilst I accept some do not like AOL,
IMHO AOL is as invasive of your computer as Norton AV. A long, long time ago in the UK, in the days of dial-up, I used a superb, and cheap, ISP called 'redhot-ant' but, unfortunately, it eventually experienced problems and gave us notice it was going to have to close. To give me time to find a new ISP I inserted the AOL disc, delivered free through our letterbox, which gave me up to a month of free internet access. The first thing I did was to make sure that as soon as AOL was up and running I opened up internet access through IE; thereby avoiding the worst of the AOL nannylike compulsion to monitor and restrict every move made. As soon as possible I ditched it, as even after a couple of weeks of dodgy receipt and sending of emails I had had enough. AOL = AO hell in my view.
Sue
Edit: having read through the articles mentioned in A N Other's link I just had to laugh; how true the comments seem to me. I was fortunate in that, in my early days of having/using a computer and learning to access the internet - at the mind boggling speed of 28 kbps (is that right, I have forgotten?) - I had geeky neighbour who came and uninstalled AOL for me - and what a b****r it proved to uninstall, but he succeeded - thankfully.
A lot of us 'old hands' have had sanity challenging experiences with AOL and although I'll admit to not having experienced the current version neither have I seen or heard any evidence that it's got any better, on the contrary, only reports of the same old problems. Customer retention is probably driven more through inertia than anything else and rather than write my own missive I'll let THIS site articulate my feelings.
But, if it works for you.........................
Oh, sorry, it isn't is it
Counting down to retirement update: I bright light now beckons
Thanks Sue. When you say "The first thing I did was to make sure that as soon as AOL was up and running I opened up internet access through IE;" I assume that you must have either had some bad experience of AOL before or have been alerted by someone else to potential problems. When you say " thereby avoiding the worst of the AOL nannylike compulsion to monitor and restrict every move made." What do you mean by this as such a description is alien to me and it would be useful to have examples so that I can check to see if I am a victim of such things in some way as yet undetected by me. My emails seem to be received and sent without problem and have always done so as far as I am aware. However interesting as others views of AOL are I would really like to address the problem I reported in my original post.....................JR
Unfortunately JR I rather doubt that you'll get much in the way of solutions to your problem here as I can't imagine that anything but a minuscule number are using AOL hence the vast majority will have have no experience of it.
There's another reason too but stating it will get me into big trouble so I'll stay stum
Counting down to retirement update: I bright light now beckons
Feel free to pm me....... I am now of the opinion that the effect is something to do with Internet Explorer as if I close AOL and open I.E. and type stuff in the search bar I get the same symptoms. I don't know how the AOL software interacts with I.E. but it clearly does as the history of I.E. shows the sites looked at through the AOL search facility. I am not a software man, as you may gather, only hardware and out off date at that! Z80s and 6502s were more my experience and not this modern stuff!...........................JR