Secure IE improves the Internet experience with faster and more secure connections. It also offers a host of features, such as sticky notes and browser tabs; it zaps viruses and pop-ups; and it tunes your browser to your connection type

There's no denying that the Internet has changed the way we live our lives. We work, shop, and communicate online on a daily basis. However, as helpful as the Internet is, it has its share of problems. Viruses and information theft are troubling, and constant ad pop-ups are annoying. Browsing the Web can be time-consuming as well. Sure, broadband connections greatly improve upon the dial-up experience, but even broadband can be painfully slow at times.

A product from Winferno Software called Secure IE claims to change all that. Let's take a closer look at Secure IE and its features so that you can see whether the product is a good fit for high-security workstations and/or standard end-user desktops.

Secure IE features
A key security feature of Secure IE is the ability to use security zones to block things such as Java, ActiveX, cookies, and file downloads on all but the most trusted sites. The product blocks Flash animations and pop-ups, so you don't have to sit through any more pop-up commercials with loud music and blinding animations. It also works with your existing antivirus software to intercept and scan any downloaded files for viruses.

The software claims that it accelerates Web browsing by tuning your browser for dial-up or broadband usage, and that it can speed up your Web experience by up to 500 percent by using 10 simultaneous sockets instead of the standard two. The software can also preserve bandwidth since it blocks pop-ups and Flash animations.

Some of Secure IE's best capabilities are its bonus features, although their importance is downplayed in comparison to the speed and security benefits. For example, you can use sticky notes and highlighters to mark up a Web page and then save that page as a document, even if the page was secure. You can also create workspaces that allow you to open and browse dozens of Web pages simultaneously with a single command.

Installation
Secure IE requires Internet Explorer 6, which you can acquire from Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web site. Download the Secure IE installer program from the company's Web site. This 3.78-MB download requires you to purchase a license for $29.95 (site licenses are also available). If you want to evaluate the product before coughing up the cash, you can download a 15-day free trial version from the free trial section of the Web site.

Launch the Installation Wizard by double-clicking the executable file you downloaded. Click Next to advance past the Welcome screen, and you'll see the software's End-User License Agreement. Click Yes to accept the license agreement, and the installer will prompt you for the program's installation path.

After choosing an installation path, you need to select the Start menu program group that you want Secure IE included in. At this point, the installation program will prompt you about the types of icons and file associations to use. I recommend accepting the defaults. When you finish, click Next.

The wizard will display a summary of the installation options you've chosen. Click the Install button to accept these options and begin the file-copy process. When the installer finishes copying the necessary files, click Finish to complete the process.

The initial setup
After the installation completes, select the Secure IE command from the Start menu. You'll see a dialog box that asks for some basic information, such as your name, e-mail address, company name, and license number. All of this information must be entered precisely or your registration will be rejected. Once you've entered the necessary information, a rather annoying pop-up appears asking how you heard about Secure IE. The pop-up also contains a check box you must uncheck to avoid being sent e-mails with special offers and product announcements from the company.

Once you've jumped through these hoops, Secure IE will load. You're finally ready to start using it.

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Using Secure IE
After I installed Secure IE, I opened Internet Explorer and didn't notice anything different. Once I did a little poking around, I figured out that Secure IE installs itself as a separate browser. Although Internet Explorer is still the default browser, you can make Secure IE the default if you so desire.

Much of what's shown in the figure should look familiar because it comes directly from Internet Explorer. The main differences are a few extra icons and the Secure IE Tools menu. You might also notice that the Web browser is now tabbed so that you can switch between multiple Web pages without having to load multiple browser instances.

Security
As the name implies, security is Secure IE's biggest selling point. What I like about the security features is they are really easy to tailor to your needs. Simply choose the Options command from the Secure IE Tools menu to open the Secure IE Options dialog box. The left side of the dialog box is divided into categories. As you click on each category, the right side of the dialog box displays the corresponding options.

If you select the Browser General category, you'll find options to enable or disable multimedia content and pop-up windows or options to display a message every time Secure IE blocks those features.

The File Downloads category offers an option to automatically scan downloaded files for viruses. The catch to using this feature is that you must configure antivirus support at the command line. Of course, the command differs depending on what antivirus software you're using.

There's an understated feature in the File Downloads category that I really like -- a check box that allows you to automatically roll back interrupted downloads. This is a great feature because if a download fails, you can resume the download at the point where the failure occurred rather than starting completely from scratch. This feature would have been great to have when I recently downloaded Windows XP Service Pack 1, which was more than 100 MB. The download failed at 80 MB, and I had to start over.

Speed tests
Secure IE claims to be able to boost your Internet speed by blocking pop-ups and Flash animations, by using five times the normal number of sockets, and by optimizing your Web browser to take advantage of your true connection speed. Like any good product reviewer, I decided to put these claims to the test. I selected the Secure IE Options command from the Secure IE Tools menu. I then selected the Internet Options (Advanced) category on the resulting dialog box and tuned Secure IE to use the maximum number of HTTP connections per server. I also told Secure IE that I wanted to optimize my browser to take advantage of my broadband connection. An example of these settings appears in Figure A.

Figure A

You can use Secure IE to boost your browser speed.

After making the speed-related adjustments, I saw an improvement in the speed at which various Web pages loaded. I decided to do some checking to see how fast my connection was actually performing. To do so, I visited Broadband Reports Web site and performed a DSL speed test.

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I live in a rural area of South Carolina where the fastest broadband service available is a mere 384 Kbps. In the past when I've run the DSL speed test, I've been able to get close to that benchmark value, but I've never actually attained an upload or a download speed of greater than about 360 Kbps. I had hoped that installing Secure IE might yield faster transfer speeds. But after running the test, I measured an upload speed of 175 Kbps and a download speed of about 285 Kbps. You can see the full test results in Figure B. Although I ran the tests at 10 A.M. on a Sunday, there's still a chance the disappointing results were skewed by Internet traffic or a busy server.

Figure B

Secure IE seemed to perform well, but a DSL speed test was disappointing.

Bonus features
As I mentioned earlier, some of my favorite Secure IE features are really downplayed in favor of the product's security and speed features. For example, the Web page shown in Figure A is an excerpt from my revised Web site. Suppose for a moment that I wanted to show someone the new site but couldn't send them to it because it wasn't up yet. Even if the site were up, it's often difficult for someone to look at a Web page and see exactly what you want them to see. In such cases, you could use the highlighter and the sticky-note features to mark up the Web page.

Once you've marked up the document, you can use the Save Document As command on the File menu to save the document. The default file format is ZHTM. (ZHTML is a zipped HTML file.) Unlike normal ZIP files, ZHTML files don't require manual decompressing. All you have to do is open a ZHTML file in Secure IE, and the page will be displayed just the way you left it. Zipping the Web page allows items that appear on it, such as graphics, to be saved along with the document. The downside of saving documents in ZHTML format is that only other Secure IE users can open them. If you need to send a Web page to someone who isn't using Secure IE, you can save the page in HTML, URL, or plain text formats. In case you're wondering, the URL format simply saves a link to the page.

Tab feature completes the picture
One other useful task you can perform with Secure IE is creating workgroups consisting of multiple Web sites. Notice the tabs just above the address bar. If you right-click an empty spot on the gray space, you'll see a shortcut menu appear. When you select the Browser option from this menu, a new tab will be added to the workspace. Each of these tabs represents a separate Web session. At first, this may not seem much different from the way Internet Explorer allows you to open multiple browser windows, but there's a big advantage: Secure IE actually allows you to save the groupings. Simply use the Save Workspace As command on the File menu to save the current tab configuration, including the Web site loaded within each tab. The next time you want to work with those specific Web sites, you can use the Open Workspace command rather than manually navigating to all those Web sites.

Secure IE's easy-to-use security and speed features are its main selling point, but its bonus features, such as the ability to mark up and save Web pages, are also of interest. If you'd like to eliminate annoying pop-ups or take more control of your browsing, Secure IE could be for you.

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