Is Internet Explorer Really All That Bad?

I get alot of people telling me that Internet Explorer is "absolutely awful" or that it is a "lame excuse for a web browser" but I'm not sure what to believe really, I have used IE in the past and though I can't say I'd use it as a primary browser I definitely wouldn't mind using it, if I were forced to use it I would probably be happy with what I could do to be honest, it comes pre-installed with Windows so it's not a hassle at all and there are many other positives to it as well. I am currently running Google Chrome but am actually considering IE as a full time browser... Call me crazy but I don't see too many downsides. We know it won't die because Microsoft will probably always be with us, and it is a fast browser from my experience, any input? I'm guessing it's bad rep comes from past experiences...

All the latest IE iterations have been good, stable & fast IMO (apart from it's fonts looking muddy on all my laptops, one reason for not using it much). Am on Firefox, fonts looks sharp and got some add-ons I don't want to be without, apart from that could use IE anytime.

As said before the latest IE (since IE 9 or 10) are much better than previous versions.

When talking about IE though you have to understand than in the past, it was the defacto dominant browser. But it was based on it being shipped with windows not on its qualities as a browser.
IE was also the worst at following W3C web standards and web sites usually had to hack their pages to render them properly in IE. Which in turn caused problems in browsers which themselves followed the standards more closely. This non-adherence to standards of old IE still haunts the modern versions, hence the Compatibility view found since IE 8 which tries to solve that.

Today IE is mostly on par with FF and Chrome, on features and adherence to W3C standards (see : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid3). FF is better on extensions but still relies on a single process (less secure: no sandboxing, less stable: crash in one tab crashes the whole browser), Chrome feels more polished overall for normal users but lacks customizability.

One thing that you might lack on IE is that you don't have as much control on options per-page or per-website. You can place websites in the old concept of IE security zones but it doesn't allow as much freedom as FF or Chrome. You can't for example disable activeX only for one site in your Trusted Zone, you'll have to disable it for the whole zone. This can be very annoying.

You missed my point Tookeri. I was choosing ActiveX as an example. What about Javascript ? Java applets ? Animated GIFs ? Iframes ? Access to the clipboard via script ? etc.. These can be configured with the Security Zones. You can't choose options for a very specific page that won't affect the zone it's in.

This kind of granularity of control over options on a per-site basis has been found in FF (sometimes via about:config but still accessible) Presto Opera (Site preferences) and even Chrome although to a lesser degree (via the exceptions system) for years.