IE


Just my two cents on the frenzy blogs I read about Internet Explorer and his future.
I read that people start to think about using other browsers.

I think some people have a short memory.
Do you remember all the hard time to have a simple web page working for a lot of users just two years ago ?

The time where you have to deal with different browsers, Javascript or some obscure bugs in Netscape or IE 4.

I am personally happy with IE 6. It can be improve, but it does exactly what they say on the tin and it seem to be use by the whole Internet community.

I am not ready to come back again to the time where you have to test every single HTML code to be compliant with Netscape 3 or IE3.
I like having .Net doing the browser test for me, and maybe it's not perfect, but it works even on a Macintosh !

And for those who talk about Mozilla, how many versions should be there before having no more crash on my PC?

8 Comments

  • I think you're a little behind the times on the whole "pages not working" thing. IE6 is extremely outdated now, I think you'll find if you tried to use the latest technologies in IE6 it fails on an awful lot of things.





    Mozilla supports all the latest standards aswell as IE's good old "quirks" mode (that being IE5, the browser that didnt work very well at all) and enhances the browsing experience tenfold imo.





    As for stability, IE6 crashes plenty on my machine where as the latest mozilla has never crashed. I'm sure you can find someone who has the exact opposite though, isn't that always the way :-)

  • Dan, you say IE5 was the browser that didn't work very well at all. Um, no. Back when MSIE5 was released, what were the alternatives? NS4? Now there's a browser that works damn well comparative to MSIE5. Mozilla? Yeah right. I sure enjoyed those version 0.8 days. Opera? Exactly what did they offer at the time that was any better than MSIE?





    You also say MSIE6 is extremely outdated. You speak the truth there. We're close to 2 years now since any kind of upgrade. But personally speaking, I still prefer MSIE6 to Mozilla. Until Mozilla reaches that critical 30% market threshold I _have_ to make my #1 target MSIE6. I have no choice. Oh, and I never had MSIE6 crash in 2 years of using it.


  • Dan I agree with Dave. IE 6 and Mozilla 0.8, the version number speak the truth my friend ;-)





    I think for me the worst everdone of IE is the 5.5, and surely the version 4 for Mac.





    But Netscape 4 gave me so many nightmares, but I was quite happy to bury him as a bad memory of the past.





  • Paschal, it's mozilla 1.3 (1.4 if you count the beta) and its had a billion more incarnations than IE6, just because the version number is smaller doesnt mean its a worse browser. Microsoft are well known for making big version number jumps, it makes people think its something far better if the numbers bigger. How about you try it before knocking it, you obviously havent for a long while if you think the versions at 0.8.





    Dave, sure we have to dev for MSIE6, else we'd be cutting out 90% of the browser market. It doesn't make it a good browser though and it doesn't mean as a user you should ignore other more capable browsers. From a development perspective yes, you need to limit yourself, but as an end user, why should you?





    As for my comment on IE5, well uhm, yes it was a bad browser. But so was NS4 and so was opera before version 7. Yes, IE lead the field for a long time regarding support for things but its behind the pack now, even Opera manages to work better than IE these days.

  • As a sidenote, I've used IE as my browser of choice for years, its only in the last few months where I've become frustrated with it that I decided to swap. It would be interesting to see your standpoint on the topic if you tried mozilla for a few weeks as your main browser.

  • Dan, don't take me wrong, MSIE6 _is_ outdated, and MSIE5 _does not_ work very well. IMHO you are quite right about Mozilla now leading the pack. But that is only in terms of W3C standards compliance. And only as of the last... 8 months?





    I was speaking about two things that are very tough to ignore as a .NET developer (or any type of web developer for that matter).... MSIE5 in a historical perspective and MSIE6 for market share.





    The bulk of my browser development today dictates that I stick to MSIE5+ for everything. This has to remain the case - even for my extranets - until Mozilla craks that 30% saturation.





    Let me say one more thing in another comment....

  • If you look at what MS has done with ALL of their product releases following Win2K you see a very clear pattern. Nearly complete rewrites from the core code on up.... VS.NET, Win2003, Office 2003, Yukon shortly and eventually Longhorn. This is nearly everything they do.





    Now look at non-profit things you've seen.... ISO compliance, XML, large amounts of .NET source code releases and this almost religious conversion to blogging.





    In each of these things I've mentioned here they actually "lead the field" in ways no other software producer does. Show me the combination of talent, MONEY [emphasis intended] and vision from any other corner. Mozilla? Hell, they took at least 3 more years than anyone wanted and came up with a product that LEADS in only one thing: standards compliance. It certainly does not lead the way in breaking new ground when compared with this reinvention MS has undergone IMHO.





    One last comment to come....

  • Sorry for this lengthy comment, but I feel very strongly and didn't want my thoughts split up.





    Consider all the recent 'talent' hirings MS has done. Consider the extensive recoding of their flagship products. Finally, consider how they actually do lead in one thing: prevention from internal stagnation/hubris.





    Can one really believe they are simply ignoring MSIE? Or is it that they are reinventing it? More than one can make a case that Mozilla will eventually trump MSIE in the browser market, one can argue that something very unbrowser-like will trump ALL browsers. And who today is best postioned for this? MS.

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