LoneTear Helper

Try this little utility for some added functionality for your Internet Explorer, but be aware of some language issues that crop up.

LoneTear Helper adds minor functionality to your IE, but with so many blockers and protections built in or already available in upgrades, many of this utility's features are a bit redundant. Launching it loaded an icon in our system tray, from which we could open a tabbed but slightly confusing configuration dialog box.

Although the publisher says LoneTear works under Vista, we couldn't make it happen. We therefore tested it under XP. We liked that LoneTear added some mouse-gesture commands for page navigation, and blacklisting a page was simply a matter of clicking once. The latter feature might be easy to use accidentally, thus blacklisting a page you may actually consider a favorite.

Although English is one of the program's five available languages, some buttons displayed gibberish during installation. That may intimidate novice and experienced users alike. While no language problems cropped up after launch, the possibility stayed in the back of our minds during testing, especially when we contemplated the utility's name.

LoneTear, like the publisher says, is a lightweight utility. This add-on is easy enough to use, but you can find all these functionalities in other, more robust add-ons that may not have the same language concerns.