• All-in-one, easy-to-use experience: AOL 9.5 puts everything users want at their fingertips – a Web browser, mail, messaging and content.
• New tabbed browsing: Users can easily open and manage multiple windows. Tabs let you keep several sites all open at once without cluttering your screen, and there's no need to use a separate search engine because AOL Search, enhanced by Google™, is always on the top of your screen.
• Integrated AIM: AIM® is built-in -- so you can see which of your buddies are online and instantly chat, share pictures and more.

• Windows Vista or Windows XP
  
• Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher
  
• 166 MHz Pentium-class processor or higher
  
• 128MB RAM, 460MB free disk space
  
• 28.8 Kbps or faster modem, or other Internet connection

You know when you use something over and over, and sometimes you forget how useful it is because it's just part of your daily routine? For me, over the last month or so, I've been using a little icon in middle of the Desktop Toolbar. It was titled "Elections 08" and it took me directly to election news coverage. I used it all the time.

Keywords. Ahhh, I love Keywords. Since I'm lazy, it should come as no surprise that I love the one-click ease of Keywords. Keywords were actually a big reason why I was a reluctant adopter when it came to using AOL Desktop. I had heard they were no longer available.

I understand that Desktop (AOL v. 10.1) takes some getting used to. For example, I still can't get used to the missing "Write" button in the upper left corner. I can also get how people might want to easily go back to 9.1 if Desktop isn't the right experience for them (for example, some recent comments on my last blog).

We miss you Laura! Meanwhile, thanks for the comment regarding Favorites. The running-out-of-room on the carousel was an issue I had with 9.1 – I don't have it with Desktop because of the "More" option, so that's nice.

My newest Desktop discovery is the Mail Search feature. When first searching for a term in my Mail I didn't get very many results, which I knew was wrong. Then I realized that next to each of my mail folders was a number. Turns out this is the number of search results within that folder. Wow! This is much different than 9.1, where all the relevant emails that use the search term got consolidated into one big, long list.

So, for example, let's say I sent a mail to all my friends with the subject line "picnic" and they all wrote back. If I wanted to find the email I sent, I would do search for "picnic" and I would not only get the email I sent, but all the response emails with a subject line "re: picnic." With 10.1, I can search only in the "Sent" folder for "picnic" emails to find the one I need. It's a lot more efficient.

I also sent my first email with a MapQuest map right in it. I mentioned earlier that if I needed to give directions in 9.1, I would only provide an address and make the recipient do the work because I'm lazy (yes, simply opening a new window to access MapQuest WAS too much work!). But the ability to add maps into email using Desktop is so easy that I may be converted into providing maps to my recipients on a regular basis, even if I don't actually have a place to send them. You hit the attach button, type in your location and presto! Your map is in the email. It only looks like I care enough about my recipient to do a lot of extra work for them – in reality, I do almost nothing. Nice.

More fun finds next week!

Here are a few of my favorite things... Toolbar Favorites. I'm not going to lie. I am a total nerd about Favorites, especially adding Favorite shortcuts to the carousel on the Toolbar. Deciding which URLs are worthy of one of the few highly coveted spots on the Toolbar Carousel as well as which icon goes with what shortcut is something that I spend way too long on (like making a WeeMee ... I can kill an entire afternoon perfecting a WeeMee). So Toolbar Favorites was one of the first features I checked out two weeks ago when I downloaded Desktop 10.1.

There are parts of the new Toolbar Favorites functionality that I really like and some that I wish were better. I love the "More" option. It used to be a huge dilemma for me when I realized I had a new site that I needed to regularly check but my carousel was full and I had to delegate one of my beloved existing Toolbar Favorite shortcuts down to the lame Favorite Places folder (where there was no icon, it took an extra click to retrieve, there was no ability to sort ...). I also like that all the AOL channels were represented upon initial download. In 9.1, the selection of default AOL shortcuts seemed random.

But I've worked here almost ten years and I know how to get around AOL pretty well so I wanted to move the AOL channels out of the visible Toolbar Carousel (which is why the "More" feature is so fabulous – I don't have to delete them altogether). Changing out the Toolbar Favorites was a piece of cake – I love drag and drop functionality. I had hopes maybe there would be some new icons from the library added for the shortcuts, but there was nothing new. However, what is new is that now, when you add a Toolbar Favorite, the shortcut icon is often picked up from the page. For example, I regularly read a friend's blog that uses Vox. When I added the URL to my Toolbar Favorites, the default icon showed up as the Vox logo. That was pretty neat.

Sadly, because the new Toolbar is a lot narrower, the icons are very small once they are implemented. If it hasn't already been made clear that I really enjoy using Toolbar Favorites, let me reiterate the point by saying I rely on them constantly. I am used to being able to glance across the Toolbar and seeing a clear "!" and knowing that's the shortcut for my Poll Tool or knowing the cartoon penguin will take me to my family's Web site. They are not as recognizable anymore. However, when you mouse over them, you now get a full description, whereas before there was a strict character limit (my Poll Tool used be identified as "Plltl").

Lastly, and this is what I am really excited about, it is easy to (FINALLY) prioritize the Favorites, both on the Toolbar Carousel and in the Favorite Places folder – again, a simple drag and drop. In 9.1, that was one of my biggest frustrations. If I wanted to change the order on the Toolbar Carousel (like group all the similar ones together), I had to delete the Toolbar Favorite and re-add it to the new location. If I wanted to organize my Favorite Places folder (like alphabetize them), well, I couldn't. I also thought it was interesting that all of my Favorite places from AOL 9.1 came over as did my Internet Explorer Favorites. It was great to have them all in the same place and conveniently accessible down the left-side of the Web panel.

Let me conclude by acknowledging I have a seriously unhealthy obsession with Toolbar Favorites. It's bad enough I probably spent a full hour playing with, organizing, prioritizing and assigning icons to my Toolbar Favorites list. Now I've also spent an entire blog just talking about them. More (on a new topic, I promise) next week!

Workaround #1

1) Manually Locate the folder:

C:\Program Files\AIM6\services\imApp\ver6_5_#_#\content\im

Note that ver6_5_#_# represents your version number of AIM. It will change each time you upgrade AIM. You must manually type in your version number or navigate to that directory.

2) Right Click Template.html (icon should be a page with an e)
3) Click Properties
3) Click Change
4) Select Notepad
5) Click OK Twice


Workaround #2

1) Start Internet Explorer
if it's IE7, hit the ALT key
2) Click on Tools
3) Click on Internet Options
4) Click on the Advanced Tab
5) Click on the Reset button
If you're running an older version then IE7, maybe click on Restore Defaults button.

Thanks,

Laura

___

Laura Peterson

Product Lead, AOL Desktop

Thanks again for the new comments. I'm checking into some of them and will get back to you with what I find. In the meantime, I have now been using Desktop for a full week. Here are some things I like and some things I am having trouble adjusting to.

I'm finally getting used to closing the tab instead of the full window. However, one thing I keep forgetting is that the upper left corner is no longer "Write Mail." I keep expecting to see a blank email form every time I click it and instead I just get my inbox. Even after a week, I'm still doing it. (I'm a slow learner.)

Click the "Favorites" link in the browser menu to expand the folders (as you can see in the screenshot below). You can also add, import, or manage favorites from this menu via the links at the top.



Favorites Menu view:

• Quickly expand folders and their contents
• Link to "Import Favorites"
• "Suitcase and heart" menu contains your AOL Favorite Places from a prior version of AOL

• Click the "heart" to open it.
• Sidepanel view also lets you view, edit, remove and add favorites.
• Double click folders to expand them.
• Click and hold to drag favorites or folders into other folders or to change the order
• "Suitcase and heart" folder at the top contains your AOL Favorites Places from an older version of AOL

How do I add links to Favorites, the Toolbar, or send in an IM or Email?

The heart menu from 9.1 is still around -- it's now the "add" button in the browser to the left of the URL field. Click this menu and choose one of the choices in the dropdown. Here's a screenshot:



In my next blog article, I'll take you through the steps to carry Favorite Places over from older versions of AOL as well as troubleshooting issues for anyone who has more questions.

Cheers,

Laura

I've gotten a lot of comments from folks warning me about what they like/don't like on Desktop. Thanks so much! I'll certainly be on the lookout for these things and let you know if I can find some way around the ones you don't like.

Meanwhile, today I downloaded Desktop 10.1. As it downloaded, I got a little tutorial about all the new features. This is a nice touch – entertaining and informative.

Some of the features I noted from my tutorial:

1) Browse without signing on. Not sure what that means, but I am sure I will figure out when I get downloaded.

2) Tabs for browser, email and IM windows. My husband uses Firefox so I've seen this before. It's neat, but it takes some getting used to. I tend to automatically close the X in the upper right corner, thus shutting down ALL windows.

3) Send and receive email from multiple accounts. Ohhhh, that's kind of cool.

4) Easily add maps and directions to emails and IM's. I wonder if they could make it even easier than just adding a link. Personally, I prefer to just send an address and make someone else do the work. I'm inconsiderate that way.

Even though I read the intro, when Desktop opened, I thought it had automatically signed me in because I was looking at a slicker version of the Welcome experience I was used to receiving after I signed in. But then I had to sign on once I tried to get my email. Ah-ha, this is "Browse without signing on." Makes sense. I like the new way you sign in.

A poll was recently done that showed 55% of AOL users check email first. I am one of them. So, a couple notes about my first mail experience. I like the reading pane (a preview to an email before you open it) because I find it to be a timesaver. One thing I don't like is that the default layout of your mail inbox gives you a less-complete view of the subject line than before. Easily fixed by enlarging the mail inbox, but I do wish it was automatically expanded.

Something else I really appreciated is that when I minimized 10.1, I saw my old AOL 9.1 icon sitting next to the new one. Just out of curiosity, I clicked and there was my old AOL just as I left it. This was definitely different -– in my previous experiences, if you upgraded to a new version of AOL, it replaced the old one completely.

My next step was adding my Gmail account. When I went to access it, the inbox claimed I had 430 emails but it only showed me the first 100 or so, with the most recent from Oct. 2007. I tried moving those 100 to my saved folder, and then tried deleting them, but it claimed I had zero emails, which wasn't right either. I couldn't access anything recent. So I removed the Gmail account and will play around with it over the next week. More on what I figure out, plus my thoughts on adding favorites to the toolbar, next week.