A new version of IE? Why bother?

I was reading this article on News.com about the updates to Internet Explorer included with SP2. One “freelance Web developer” is quoted as saying, “Internet Explorer hasn't been updated in three years, whereas every other browser has been updated in the last six months... A company like Microsoft shouldn't have the least-capable browser.”

Call me crazy, but now that it has the pop-blocker, what exactly is it that IE doesn't do? I've used Firefox on and off, but honestly, it makes no difference. Browsers don't really need any features other than the row of buttons, bookmark management and compliance to standards.

Does anyone remember around 2000? Designing was a constant pain in the ass because you had to make sure your sites worked in a half-dozen browser versions and hope that people upgraded. We've had relative stability now for years, and everyone has CSS browsers. Stuff just plain works these days. There are quirks here and there, but few show-stoppers.

When Longhorn and the new IE does come around, I can only hope that it's a beautiful, standards-compliant, managed code, elegant browser, written from scratch. I think Longhorn deserves that.

12 Comments

  • What about tabbed browsing. Your comment is like saying Word 6 was the pinnacle of word processing so lets not update it any more.

  • Shhhh. You'll encourage the crazies to come here and say that Word 6 was the pinnacle of word processing.

  • And (more on topic) IE should add tabs. Perhaps as an optional download?

    Don't point me to Maxthon. Tried it and don't like it. Add tabs along the lines of firefox but without the bloat of Maxthon (have you looked at Maxthon's interface. The menus, dialogs and toolbars are crammed with rubbish. IE could and should provide tabbed browsing with a nice, clean interface)

  • Spoken like someone who has always been able to force the user to only use IE as their web browser or as someone who is only developing WinForms applications. ;)

  • Nonsense... everything I've built in the last few years has worked in every browser. They work fine.

  • I must be one of the few insane people that doesn't like the idea of tabbed browsing. I surf in the form of threads and use my back button to navigate forward and backward, alt-tab to get between my threads of thought, and shift click to fork off on a new thought. I also don't like XP grouping my programs on the taskbar as it helps to give me a chronological order to the things I am doing.

  • "Browsers don't really need any features other than the row of buttons, bookmark management and compliance to standards."



    Well, that last part indicates why you need a new version of IE!



    Sorry, but its true.

  • If you think IE6 is 100% standards compliant, think again. For example it has numerours bugs in CSS rendering.

  • Yes, please fix the CSS support!

  • Did I just write non-tableless design. Just shoot me now.





  • Maxthon (MYIE2) is bloated? With this very blog page alone, loaded up in both browsers there is little or no different in memory utilization.



    MyIE2/Maxthon is where its at. Tabbed browsing, a whole list of plugins, popup blockers, automatic searching and highlighting, undo, skins, the list goes on.



    Anyone who is satisfied with the current version of IE and is still using it is crazy. Upgrade to Maxthon!

  • "written from scratch" MS is too far deep into the current bloated codebase for a re-write. I doubt this will ever happen.

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