Why I think IE9 sucks

beecher said:

1) OS compadibility
Most people still use windows XP, did they release a xp version of the browser? No! Guess why they made it 7 only? Because they want people to buy windows 7 even though most people will have to replace thier old computers because the requirments are too high for XP users to upgrade or cause 7 doesn't run some apps they use a lot! Why not at least release a version of windows 7 desighed for older PC's so people will buy your da** windows 7?!?

Microsoft is a for-profit company - they do not support products ad infinium, and Windows XP entered the "extended support phase" in 2009. This means no new design changes, and no new products will be specifically written to run on this platform. Microsoft does this because it costs money to develop for a product that is more like NT4 than it is Windows 7 or Vista, and they are in the business to make money. It's not done specifically to screw you or the people still running XP, they do it because it fiscally does not make sense. Also, as to marketshare, Windows XP is in steady decline (more than 10% global share lost since March 2010, and down to approximately 54%), whereas Windows 7 is up almost 15% to 24% total in that same time frame (add the other mainstream supported OS, Vista in, and they're up to almost 35% global share, trending to taking over XP by the end of 2012). To make that even more interesting, here's a little remedial math - simply remove one country, China, from those numbers and the global share of internet usage accounted for by XP (and IE6) drops a bit over 20% (yes, over 20%). There are approximately 384 million Windows XP users in China, and more than 90% at year's end were still using XP and IE6. This ends up totalling about 22% of the world's internet users, so if we remove these numbers (which I think is now widely believed to constitute mostly pirated installs of XP anyway), it would drastically change the numbers for the rest of the world. Imagine taking the current share of 54% of XP users with the whole world totalled, and then drop 22% of the world's internet population from that number, of which only a few thousand are using something other than XP (that includes non-Windows OSes). Windows 7 and Vista usage drops essentially nothing, but XP usage loses basically all 22% from it's global marketshare number - making the global internet-accessing XP base about 32-33% (and shrinking by about a 10% average each year), with Windows 7 at 23% (and growing at a clip of just under 14-15% a year) and Vista at 11% (and shrinking at about 4% a year). Given those numbers without the gigantic China installed base of XP+IE6, you're left seeing Windows 7 outside of China surpass XP in marketshare by the first quarter of 2011, at the latest, and potentially sooner. I know it's theoretical to remove China, but given the vast piracy (and absolutely massive installed base of XP+IE6) in that country, those numbers added to the figures really can't be counted with a straight face when talking about XP's dominance.

beecher said:

2) Page compadibility
Most pages in internet explorer 9 don't even render correctly and you have to set it to compadibility mode! WTF Microsoft!!! Imagine everytime you go to a webpage and you have to go into compadibility mode! This was a problem interduced in IE7 and it's still not fixed!

As previously mentioned, this is almost always a site design problem by the web developer, and not generally an IE problem. Lots of sites used compatibility mode for pages when IE7 was released because they did not want to or for some reason could not design the page to use more modern standards (even then) in IE7. IE8 made this "worse" by being very good standards-compatibility-wise, and IE9 is basically completely compliant with all static HTML4 and HTML5 specifications, as well as most of those that are in recommendation phase, as well as following the same design tenets for DOM2 and CSS3. It's not perfect, but it does completely comply with stable standards, even new ones. At this point, if a site cannot conform and render properly to these very well-defined (and even newer!) standards which have been around, for the most part, for a few years now, then the problem is not really the browser, but the designer catering to other browsers or sabotaging the rendering in IE (either deliberately or through ignorance or sloth). I feel your pain, but point some of that anger towards the same web dev community that lambasted Microsoft for not being standards compliant in the past - it turns out that the problem isn't entirely IE's fault .

beecher said:

3) New user inferance
I think that the new user inference in IE9 isn't as good as in Firefox 4 and they could have defently made the toolbars smaller by reducing the size of the back and next button

This one is definitely to each his or her own - I personally prefer a minimalist UI, more like Google Chrome, so I welcome the new IE9 look. Again, that is personal preference, so if you like the FF4 look you might consider petitioning Microsoft to make changes in IE vNext.

beecher said:

4) Requires reboot after install
Seriosly microsoft! Why the hell do you need to make us reboot are computer after we installed IE9 this really irretates me because my computer used to be slow when starting up before I installed Solutu and used it to fix the boot time

IE (all versions since IE4 on Win9x) have added binaries to the system to provide a consistent development and UI for web components, which the OS and a lot of Microsoft and 3rd party software utilize. Since these components are in use in most programs that run on Windows nowadays, installation of new versions of these files will require a reboot for the install to finish successfully. It may not be to your liking, but that's how things work currently in Windows - if a file is in use (and as I said, the IE binaries are *always* in use by *something* due to their ubiquity and usefulness as Win32 libraries for developers), the system must replace it. Since these are system-level files, that requires a reboot.

beecher said:

5) Defualt search engine and web page
The internet broswser could load a little faster if they used google as the defualt home page and they should use google as the defualt search engine and plus google is way more popular then Bing

Microsoft brands their products, as has been mentioned, with their own sites and search engines. Firefox uses Chrome (for monetary reasons), and Chrome uses Google sites (for the same obvious reasons as Microsoft uses Bing and MSN). These are easy to change, so this is a nitpick at best.

beecher said:

6) Defualt config could have been improved
First off they should set the defualt home page to a lighter web page and second off they should enable search suggestions by defualt

Another issue you should bring up for IE vNext - if you provide directed feedback, change is at least possible. If you simply cry out on the internet, change is far less likely to a corporate product from Microsoft, including Internet Explorer. If it is an issue, you should direct that feedback to Microsoft.

beecher said:

7) Uses properity plugins
Really microsoft? Why can't you just use non-activeX plugins and when you install a browser plugin why can't it just work with all other internet browsers

So does every browser. Yes, it requires development experience to write an IE plugin, but they're infinitely more powerful due to the same complexity. It's a tradeoff Microsoft made many years ago, and it has served them well - do not expect them to change something that works well for them and for IE developers the world over.

beecher said:

8) Make it easier to import from other browsers
I don't get it? Why do you make it so hard to figure out how to import data from other internet browsers? They should just put in the file menu a import/export button

Again, as previously mentioned, this can be done from the file menu.

beecher said:

9) Don't require admin previliges for addons
Why the heck can't you just make the addons able to install on just one account because firefox and google chrome managed to do this, why can't you microsoft?

Because placing files in the \Windows or \Program Files directories, or into the HKLM registry locations, *should* require admin privileges. Similar to my reply to #7, complexity requires more security. IE requires you to be an admin to install software, just as Windows does. IE add-ons can be packaged and signed as MSI packages and use the native installation engine, and the OS provides a service (AxIS) to install signed and administrator-approved add-ons by non-admin users as well. These seem a good set of compromises.

beecher said:

10) Hard-to-program addons
Why doesn't anyone write any addons to block stuff in different websites? Because microsoft doesn't allow javascript language to be used when programming addons and you need to learn the hard C++ to program addons for IE9!

Yes, IE add-ons are not simple HTML and javascript, mostly because IE's add-on model was built decaes ago, but also because an IE add-on can have access to all kinds of parts of the system that simple HTML or javascript would not be capable of handling. Again, functionality brings complexity, which makes things somewhat harder for the non-developers amongst us. However, a good add-on can do tremendous things in the browser, so again, it's a good trade-off.

I understand your frustration, ultimately, but like most users who complain about IE they fall in the same categories and are the same basic complaints. These complaints generally come from a lack of understanding of how, *and why*, IE works (and doesn't work) the way it does. The rest is usually Microsoft hate or misguided placement of blame for a problem, like most rendering issues or slow performance after install, etc. These are just my .02¢ in response to yours - both of us are free to proffer them. I wish you luck in troubleshooting your issues, however I may differ in my opinions from yours.

People don't seem to understand that the argument about XP is pointless. It will not be supported anymore....end of story.
If everyone expects MS, or anyone for that matter to cater to an old OS just because a lot of people have it still, then we'd still be stuck on Win98.

Compatibility.......haven't had any problems so far.

UI.....plain and simple. Although it's not my first browser choice, it's still a big improvement over previous versions.

Requires reboot....as previously said, it's integrated into Windows for it to work, nothing new.

Default search......seriously? I don't know why MS Bing wouldn't be MS's first choice to put as default. And popular doesn't always mean better. You can set the homepage to whatever you want. I don't get this argument.

Open IE click tools. Go down list to Compatability View settings and click.

New window as below check all three boxes at bottom. Click Close.
This will give you comp view on all pages automatically.

Mike

No big deal that you can't use IE9 on Win XP when you have Opera Chrome & Firefox available.

Although I'm an Opera kind of guy I'm actually quite happy with IE9, just moved the tabs below the explorer bar and i like it :)