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Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2022 December 18

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December 18

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Microsoft tortures me with Internet Explorer.

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I need to open a website. It is the "Physical Review Letters." Every time I try to open it I get a page saying that the future of Internet Explorer is with Microsoft Edge. There is a list of what to do to replace IE with ME, fine. Yesterday I went this road 3 times. Every time MS throws me back like nothing happened. Fortunately Wikipedia website is immune, At least I may complain here. All other websites are closed tp me. Why don't they simple replace one browser with another? If it is inevitable as they say, then DO IT. I am outraged. Today I cannot work because of their stupidity. AboutFace 22 (talk) 17:21, 18 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Consider installing another browser like Firefox, Opera or Chromium. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 18:20, 18 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
So you are still using Internet Explorer and you are complaining that Microsoft has not foisted Edge upon you but is allowing you to continue to use IE, with warnings, for the sake of compatibility? I am not sure I see the problem here. What version of Windows are you running? Is Edge already installed on your system alongside IE? Is it possible for you to test the site in Edge as well? Elizium23 (talk) 19:18, 18 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
What OS are you using? Here are the instructions to change your browser to Edge on Windows 10 and 11. CodeTalker (talk) 20:59, 18 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Are you sure this message is produced by Microsoft, and not by the Physical Review Letters website, whose maintainers may be tired of having to ensure their HTML code accommodates the quirks of obsolete browsers?  --Lambiam 23:09, 18 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

A discovery. I have MS Office with 8 components, the The Word and 7 others. I need only the Word and I've never used others. Now MS wants me subscribe on an annual basis for the same Word for $99. The website behaves like I do not have the old Word at all. I've been very happy with it. It looks I cannot switch from IE to the Edge without giving them $99 for a subscription I don't need. What's going on? AboutFace 22 (talk) 23:49, 18 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

You haven't revealed the version of your Office or Windows systems. I'm also not sure how Word and your website are related. Office and Edge are certainly not. If your OS qualifies to support Edge, then you should be able to start Edge—if your OS is sufficiently modern then it should have already been delivered via updates. No Office license and no fees are necessary to install and run Edge.
Have you searched your Start Menu for Edge yet? Have you looked at Microsoft's Edge download site? Elizium23 (talk) 12:32, 19 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If the website in question is https://journals.aps.org/, then they appear to publish in PDF and HTML. Reading PDFs is generally done through Adobe Acrobat, so that'd be your go-to software. Most websites are not going to distribute anything via DOCX, the Microsoft Word format. Unless you participate by submitting papers as well, in which case you would use your Word application.
Word and Office come in two flavors now, "365" is the cloud-based subscription, and there are offline apps you can license and install as well. Depending on how old your offline apps are, you should be able to stretch that license for a long time even after updates cease. Elizium23 (talk) 12:35, 19 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Download Facebook video to my desktop

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I want to download a Facebook video to my desktop. I went through the steps at https://www.tomsguide.com/how-to/how-to-download-videos-from-facebook Everything went OK until the last step (#7). When I clicked on the "Save video as", it only gave me the option of saving a .htm file, which isn't the video. I'm using Firefox but I also have Chrome and Edge.

How can I download the facebook video to my desktop? Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 20:43, 18 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Since Facebook does not expose an interface for doing this, it is safe to assume that they do not foresee downloading as a standard option and the creators of that content are depending on this being the case. As the guide itself says, there may be copyright or licensing issues that would preclude you from legally downloading it. I am not a lawyer, but I would say that anyone attempting to circumvent Facebook's standard controls should be looking through their Terms of Service, as well as any available licensing terms published by the creators and the posters, in order to determine if this is even a legally-permitted thing.
That being said, if there is a free license such as Creative Commons or Public Domain, I would not be surprised at all if exactly the same content was hosted somewhere else that actually made it easy for you to download it. It's worth checking on that before doing weird things to circumvent Facebook's UI. Elizium23 (talk) 20:47, 18 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't find it on Wikimedia Commons. This is for my own use. It appears that the last time the Facebook page was updated was 10+ years ago. If I can't download from Facebook, is there some Windows software which would allow me to capture it (sound and video) as I play it back? Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 21:24, 18 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Why don't you take out your smartphone or tablet, start the camera app, and make a video recording of your computer's screen? Elizium23 (talk) 21:38, 18 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not very good at using a smartphone or tablet, and I also want to retain as much quality as possible. Right now I'm looking into OBS Studio to capture the screen. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 21:44, 18 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Try using yt-dlp. Note if the video is private, you'll need to establish a login session on the client either by providing a username and password or by providing cookies exported from a browser already logged in, the latter is less likely to have problems if done properly. You can maybe try youtube-dl but I recommend yt-dlp as a drop in better replacement for youtube-dl in pretty much all circumstances with streamlink for live content. Note that if this is a public video by some content maker especially a company or large ensemble, a lot of those are available on other platforms particularly YouTube albeit possibly formatted for different screen size, although this is likely better if you aren't watching it on a phone anyway. Nil Einne (talk) 00:07, 19 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, I'll look at that. I just need a simple video capture. OBS Studio does a lot more than I need. This is from a small group on their facebook page. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 00:42, 19 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I downloaded the EXE and put in a folder with the same name, but when I executed it, it gave about 3 lines in a text window and then the window closed. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 00:51, 19 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I tried youtube-dl. It opened a text window for a few seconds but then closed. How do you use these things? Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 00:57, 19 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That sounds like what happens when you double-click a program that's supposed to be run from the Windows command line instead. How? Well ... to start with, find the "run" dialog (for instance press alt-r to summon it) and type cmd, and press enter. Then you'll need ... to navigate to where youtube-dl is, or have it in a location that's on your PATH. Then you'd type youtube-dl URL (replacing URL with the actual URL of the video), and hit enter to execute it, and perhaps you'll need to know the option parameters for youtube-dl, which you can put before URL if you need any of them. But maybe this was a rhetorical question?  Card Zero  (talk) 10:00, 19 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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