Jun 09
Let me moan a little about something that totally drives me up the freaking wall.
Sometime back in the early 50′s Firefox, Opera, Safari, and other quality browsers added the ability to do tabbed browsing. Jump to 2005 where Microsoft has FINALLY decided that tabbed browsing is a good idea after all. But is it part of a new browser build? NO! Its a freaking tool bar download thing!
So let me just ask the obligatory question: Why is ANYONE using IE anymore? Give me a reason and I promise to really think about it. Is there a good answer? Anyway, you can get the stupid thing here if you really want it.
as a program, ie totally sucks. i use maxthon, which is basically a shell for ie. the reason i use that instead of firefox, netscape, or opera is that in my opinion, the ie renderring engine runs much more smoothly and quickly than gecko, especially when having more than ten tabs open at a time or when viewing a site that’s heavy with flash. my dream would be for apple to one day port safari to windows and have it run on the ie engine, but that’s as likely as apple scrapping the iPod because they’re just sick of all that money. maxthon has every feature that firefox has and even does almost all of them better. even with skins though, it’s as ugly as sin which is why i’ve always loved safari. i’ve even gone so far as to ‘mod’ firefox to look like it, but i don’t think any browsing engine crunches the web better than ie. for now anyway.
I use IE. My dad takes care of the computer so I’m not aloud to download anything. I don’t know why he uses IE (he’s an electrical engineer, so comps are nothing new to him), he just doesn’t bother to change them, I guess.
deathmonkey – do you do any web development at all? IE is the bane of the web developer; non-compliant, partial implementations of web standards. I’ll also disagree with your point of view on rendering. The only pages I’ve seen IE render well are pages specifically built for it; if you have any kind of cross-browser compatibility requirement you are basically hosed – I’m a lead developer at a company designing J2EE web applications that must work across *at least* three browsers: Netscape Navigator, IE and Mozilla.
One of my “favorite” IE’isms is having to shim an empty iframe between a select control and any content that you want to overlap that select control. IE does not “crunch” the web – it grinds it up into mushy pulp and expects everyone else to follow along.
With regards to rendering speed, does 2-3 seconds either way make that much of a difference? I mean, really, that has almost as much to do with how the site was coded as it does with the underlying engine e.g. absolute height/width values associated with tables versus relative widths where the engine is constantly having to recalculate based on new values it finds as it parses the page.
Finally, should you really have to go looking for a “wrapper” around your browser in order to get the features that Firefox has when you could just get Firefox? I know, I know: you want the IE rendering engine. Still, if the “program … totally sucks” why would you want it at the core of your browser, for any reason.
That’s really all I’m going to say on the topic because, unfortunately, this can become as heated as vi vs. emacs, linux vs. windows, chocolate vs. peanut butter. YMMV. IANAL. etc. etc.
In short, I agree with Scott.
Scott, why would something that you don’t even use drive you up the wall? Why would you let something so insignifigant get to you like this? Just another reason to bash any and everything Microsoft does? You really are a tool.
And while we are on the subject of to little to late I just have three words….two button mouse.
Devon: I use it all the time, but feel free to make assumptions. I am a full time web scripter in the day and I test and work with EVERYTHING, including IE. You swing that ‘tool’ word around pretty liberally.
codemonkey (i refuse to type the zeros),
no, i don’t do any web developement, none at all. but neither does, i’m willing to bet, ninety-nine percent of internet users. i’m never going to ‘shim’ an empty iframe and i don’t really care to. i’m a hardware guy. you shouldn’t have to do math to browse the web, nor should you have to pull up gamespot and have your browser spaz out for twenty seconds while it renders the flash. nor should you have to be the lead developer at a company designing j2ee applications to have an opinion, one way or the other, as to why to still use ie.
no, you really shouldn’t have to get a ‘wrapper’ around your browser in order to get the features that firefox has or that ie should have. i, like many others who have far better programming talent than i, find some of the features in firefox somewhat lacking which is why it supports extensions. firefox is also a great platform for developing browser modifications. but that shouldn’t stop someone from designing a great product, even if the geek fad popularity of firefox far overshadows that program’s features. when i visit a page in maxthon or ie for that matter, the page seems to look like it’s supposed to. that’s the basis of my opinion; no degree necessary. i can run active x enabled plugins, it’s integrated into windows, i’m happy. and i might add that i’ve never gotten a virus, been a victim of identity theft, had malicious code executed, or contracted an std from ie as many reactionaries on the internet and in the news have loudly proclaimed.
i don’t disaggree with scott that ie as a program sucks. it does that so very well. i don’t use ie, i use a shell for ie so i guess i’ll have to hang up my ‘geek’ credentials and have a good cry. this really shouldn’t be such a heated topic. nor should linux Vs. windows, or mac Vs. windows for that matter. what’s to get upset over? that microsoft made a bad product? my life is changed forever. whatever will i do? (windows millenium edition)
i’ll tell you why i use IE….because i am lazy. i will be the first to tell you firefox and associated programs are better. but as i was recently on a university connection placed behind a proxy (don’t get caught downloading…it’s a horrible thing) i was really too lazy to meander my system around said proxy to get firefox to work, so the only other option was IE. best…runon sentence….ever……
ie sucks. WOO Firefox. My only reasoning for hating ie is that I hate microsoft. Big business blows donkies, and those donkies don’t want to be blown. You’re a dirty man Bill Gates.
In response to the ‘Why is ANYONE using IE anymore’ question, it’s still the only browser supported by windowsupdate. Good luck updating those security flaws with firefox
. And yes, i know many of those updates are for IE, but a handful are for other parts of the windows OS such as Windows Media Player or DirectX (unless you’re not lazy and download the offline installation 
)
I can’t use IE. I’ve tried to install Wine and get IE to work, but it’s just too much work. I suppose I could duel boot and have a Windows Partition just to run IE, but man, that’s a lot of work just for a browser.
Until IE is ported to Linux, I’ll just have to stick with Firefox, Opera, Konqueror, et al.
You don’t ever need to have IE in Linux…you have all you need and more.
Well the problem is no matter what I’ve tried, I can’t get those security updates applied to my computer. Even when I got IE working with Wine, (It wouldn’t display png images though), I still couldn’t get Windows Update to apply the security updates.
In other news, Opera won an award for best browser for the second year (third?) in a row. I love this browser. With the free key, (7.54-8beta)there’s no reason to say no to Opera. FireFox has some nice extensions, though.
The only reason ANYBODY should be using IE is for specific site compatibility. But that’s completely the fault of the webdev.
I normally use Opera but I keep IE around just in case.
‘Just in case’ is right now since half my computer is nonfunctional due to catastrophic HDD failure
I use it because it comes with windows and I have _many_ other more important things to do (like gaming… oh so many games out there) than to give a rat’s ass about browser features.
Summary: because I just don’t care.
Jaded, that’s not a good reason NOT to use another browser. In fact, a better browser can save you time for all those “important” things you have to do. Also, it can keep your computer cleaner to keep your performance good for games.
Listen to RT…he speaky der truthenhymen.
Yes Yes..
Er spricht die Wahrheit.
Ichen mine hymen?
IE is my backup browser – not because it’s any good, but because a) it’s not like I can get rid of it, and b) most people still use it, so many sites are horrible in other browsers. Firefox 99% of the time, though.
nein, es ist nicht schlshlemmischen kaputt …
” ….. Ichen mine hymen? …….”