Microsoft Keeps Beating a Dead Browser

Zidane24 · 09 Jul 2009

Night Hawk said:

IE 7 was where the tabbed browsing element was first seen along with the long awaited improvements overall for security. With Vista's original delays there was no newer version of IE from 6.0 allowing all forms of hacking and trojans to slip past the few updates provided. IE 7 however had to address the vulnerabilities.

Here I never preferred but excepted tabs on FF and Opera as part of those browsers when trying them out and first was a little disappointed with the beta release of both IE 7 and IE 8 especially with the new layout seen for that. Both betas resulted in crashes when first used on XP.

IE 8 is one I would advise for novice users due to the iimproved filters and overall safer browsing as MS has built up quite a data base on malignant sites which you are now steered away from with the filters as well as the suggested sites option.

Some time last while someone was still running IE 6 I had to go in on the XP machine there since the owner neglected to watch out for various things(porn ads, malwares) and clean up a real mess!

The link for one site was still found in the browsing history! The owner had actually allowed an 8yr. old to play the Windows games and that's who also found the link! I was fuming and tore through all the offline content!

along with upgrading to IE 7 at the time.

The only problem seen at some times of day or night with IE is when having multiple windows open and needing one more where you can't even reach the home page usually when the traffic is the heaviest. That's when another browser like Opera comes in handy.

hm...I thought that firefox originally came up with the tabbed browser thing...

fseal · 09 Jul 2009

Zidane2424 said:

hm...I thought that firefox originally came up with the tabbed browser thing...

Actually firefox and opera both stole it from other people.

Asa Dotzler - Firefox and more: tabbed browsing history

That summary misses a third party IE wrapper that added tabs to IE long LONG before MS got around to it, would have been about the time FF and Opera added tabbed browsing. I forget the name though. Was some time ago.

Night Hawk · 09 Jul 2009

That blog brings in Netscape as the first seeing tabbed browsing with IE 6 seeing an addon introduced by MS while still in the stages for Vista and IE 7 back in 2005. At that time I still had an XP/98 dual boot surprizingly with the last board that saw any 98 drivers.

I never tried Netscape however since that was generally out of the picture by that time. The latest 8.0 for that is found at Netscape.ca with the system requirements going upto XP.

In fact you can still find Netscape addons for FireFox at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3471

Legacy Code · 09 Jul 2009

Firefox was an annoying browser you got with another application lol same a google .... they have both done VERY well from it tho

petrossa · 10 Jul 2009

fseal said:

Actually firefox and opera both stole it from other people.

Asa Dotzler - Firefox and more: tabbed browsing history

That summary misses a third party IE wrapper that added tabs to IE long LONG before MS got around to it, would have been about the time FF and Opera added tabbed browsing. I forget the name though. Was some time ago.

it's still around. IEpro or something. Used it with 6 but when opera came it was more accomplished then ie with the wrapper

arkhi · 26 Feb 2010

I believe that a majority of IE haters where former users of IE6. IE6 was hell clunky, admittedly, even for me, an IE user. It took me a while to switch back to IE, as I have found FF to be better at that made.. I made sure enough improvements where done and that was around the middle part of the life span of IE7. Took me a couple of tries for me to like how IE had become.

I suspect that those bitter memories of IE6 clouded the judgement of people to simply hate it forever, scaring nmany users not to ever trust it. Okay, Not forever maybe, but close to Blizzard Entertainment's "soon".

gladson1976 · 26 Feb 2010

arkhi said:

I believe that a majority of IE haters where former users of IE6. IE6 was hell clunky, admittedly, even for me, an IE user. It took me a while to switch back to IE, as I have found FF to be better at that made.. I made sure enough improvements where done and that was around the middle part of the life span of IE7. Took me a couple of tries for me to like how IE had become.

I suspect that those bitter memories of IE6 clouded the judgement of people to simply hate it forever, scaring nmany users not to ever trust it. Okay, Not forever maybe, but close to Blizzard Entertainment's "soon".

The majority of IE haters are still hating it from v6.
looking at the browser comparison chart just makes me laugh.

Web Standards - As a developer for more than 10 years, I don't think so. IE has made a mess of standards by putting in its own standards. (I'm really sick of writing two versions of code, one for IE and one for others)
Developer Tools - FireBug just happens to be the best tool (of course its an addon [which also means its developed separately and much more better updated]) and it came eons before Developer Tools plugin for IE7
Customizability -

Compatibility - refer Web Standards

I could go on, ....

Anyway, IE is good. But saying that it beats the sh*t out of FireFox and Chrome

EvilOzzmess · 26 Feb 2010

IE sucks, plain and simple. But I am bias, as I never liked IE even in the mid 90's when that was basically all there was to contend with. Too plain, too impersonal and the layout could kill you with boredom or confusion as you sat there trying to learn all of the "hidden" features and "pages" and whatnot, and it was impossibly slow to boot - still is, too!

Needless to say, I haven't used IE since 2005, a couple months after we bought our fist home PC and when I finally discovered FireFox. The ONLY time I have ever, or will ever use IE since then is when Windows DEMANDS that it be used for certain applications or functions of updates or other Microsoft-related crap. But that's it, never for anything else.

Even though Firefox 3.5 is slightly slower and has more crashes than other browsers, and is arguably more intensive on system resources, I still choose to use it over IE because at the end of the day, it is still one of the most user-friendly browsers out there in terms of layout, functionality, personality and customizations. And that is something that Microsoft just can't grasp or contend with, because IE8 sucks even worse than the old mid 90's versions, in my opinion! They have managed to make it even more complex and difficult to work with and I just cannot stand the impersonal feel to it.

Microsoft really needs to either completely overhaul IE, or step aside to arguably more competent competitors. Really, I think it is absolutely deplorable that they make their OS versions tied into IE rather than allow for the user's choice of browser to handle certain functions - to allow other browsers to be completely 100% default in other words (which today is impossible because they embed IE so deeply into their OS versions).

My $0.02

Night Hawk · 26 Feb 2010

Chrome is a half baked browser Google introduced for whatever reason there looking like only the shell of something unfinished. FireFox is increasingly seeing malwares since it became a popular browser.

The best alternative to IE so far has turned out to be Opera seeing far, far less bugs of any types and offers more preference settings over FF. You are not stuffed witrh tabbed browsing for one since you can set the preferences to open new pages in windows instead.

JonM33 · 27 Feb 2010

This is why I don't read stupid magazines like PC World, PCMag and Maximum PC. Nobody buys those magazines and they are half filled with ads. The rest is opinionated garbage like the article here.