Why does IE get so much dislike?

IE extensions and add-ons are just a bunch of junkmail

wish I could like it - but it always strikes a nerve aesthetically

FF is groovin' along fine for me - funny how IE9 fans hate FF and vice versa

at least they all connect us, so they're doing 1 thing right

I went through all the 31 threads albeit quickly and there were just 3 references to Opera. Opera is an excellent Browser but there are very few takers for it.

As for IE 3 through 9, my aversion to it is due to its GUI. Earlier Netscape had a far better GUI and I preferred it over IE 3 to 5. Now all the competitors of IE 6 to 9 have better GUIs. Many Net users are casual surfers and don't grow much with experience. One such friend of mine asked me the other day to get his AVG Internet Security registered on line because he and his techie were unable to do it. The only Browser on his laptop was IE8 because he knew of none other. And due to dozens of toolbars that had got installed on it by various programs, the space left for the open web-page at the bottom was about 5 centimetres.

Many programs during installation append a toolbar to IE if one is not careful and hardly ever to the other Browsers, least of all to Opera. Left to myself I shall keep away from IE and WMP for ever if Microsoft doesn't do something about IE's GUI and third party Toolbars and more codecs to WMP.

Personally, I found Google Chrome is faster then IE 9 with a better GUI for the user, however, I wouldn't judge IE 9 as being a bad browser, my step brother still tends to use IE 9 more often than Google Chrome.

Honestly? It is the layout. While IE now has many of the features I like from FireFox (tabs, bookmarks bar), it still is not the same and is very limited in what can and cannot be changed with it. And what I mean by the layout is all of the controls are all over the place... and there is a tiny little address bar. I don't like that. And I especially hate that little "click" it does when you do ANYTHING with it (that may or may not have changed, I wouldn't know. I don't touch it anymore unless I'm forced too). It is also, IMHO, far slower to load pages than the others.

I don't even mind anymore that FireFox and Chrome both are excessive memory eaters and crash out when flash is excessively used (YouTube, games etc). I'd rather TaskMan the processes out and keep using them than to deal with the mess that IE still is and I dare say will always be.

On the other hand, if the IE team would get a clue and change some things around, become more add-on friendly, allow easy modding (like on FireFox, About:Config easy as cake to alter to make things faster or whatever else you want to do) and get some decent skins (like say, a good black theme that's easier on the eyes)... then perhaps I'll trade in my FireFox and Chrome for it again. But for now? No freaking way!