Okay, we're finally starting to tackle the process of upgrading to
MSIE 8 from MSIE 6, having been given the green light by all our
customer SCI portals.

  One challenge I face is the widow of the company's founder, who is a
nice old lady who unfortunately does not get computers *at all*.  I'm
trying to make MSIE 8 as much like the MSIE 6 she is used to, and as
simple as possible.  I've turned off most of the new toolbar icons and
menus and search box and other stuff, turned off tabbed browsing, and
turned the traditional menu bar back on.

  PROBLEM: I cannot find a way to remove the "Favorites" button, with
its gold star icon, and the giant toolbar strip which holds it.

  When clicked, this button folds out a panel on the left of the
window, listing favorites.  This is redundant to the "Favorites" menu,
and (more importantly) will just confuse her.

  The giant toolbar strip would otherwise have tabs and/or new menu
icons on it, except all that is disabled, so it's just a mostly-empty
gray block of nothing.  It eats up a ton of screen space, which is
important on the laptop she has.

  If I right-click the toolbar strip and choose "Customize", I have
the option to show the "Favorites" bar (formerly known as the "Links"
bar).  If I do that, a new toolbar strip appears, the "Favorites"
button moves there, and the first giant toolbar strip disappears.  But
I don't want to display the Favorites bar, either.

  The "Favorites" button does not appear in "Add or Remove Commands"
under "Customize".  It's simply not there.

  When tabbed browsing is enabled, the Favorites button will appear on
the tab bar, which at least keeps it from wasting space.  But like I
said, tabbed browsing is disabled (because otherwise this person will
continually lose her web pages and my phone will never stop ringing).

  I found some people suggesting I disable the "Command Bar" via Group
Policy.  I tried invoking that policy, which did cause the "Command
Bar" to become grayed out in the list of available toolbars, but it
didn't hide the Favorites button.

  I found a GP setting to disable the Favorites bar.  Invoking that,
"Favorites Bar" became grayed out in the toolbar list, but the button
and its toolbar is still there.  If I do that when "Favorites Bar" was
previously selected, upon GP application, the other bar comes back,
with the button.

  Is there a way to do this, or am I just doomed to more support
headaches because Microsoft decided you shouldn't be able to remove a
button?

-- Ben

~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~
~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/>  ~

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