Why is Internet Explorer "a joke".

Aug 1, 2010
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It really is the apps. I've never had a problem with them slowing me down and I have at least 10 visible with 3 times that running background.

For me, and this is totally personal preference, it's also just the general look. Something about the IE gui just rubs me the wrong way.

As for Chrome... Weeeell, if I trusted Google with my deepest darkest secrets, I wouldn't have made my official Google Plus name Anonymous Burger, now would I.

This is why Firefox is the only real choice.

Also we have the best anime girls.

[img/]http://cache.desktopnexus.com/thumbnails/296661-bigthumbnail.jpg[/img]

Just sayan.
 

Thaluikhain

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Jan 16, 2010
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I like Firefox because of all the plug ins. Currently it seems to crash a bit less, I think, but that's likely to change.
 

Olas

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Dec 24, 2011
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amaranth_dru said:
OlasDAlmighty said:
**snippits**
Well to answer your question in simple terms to keep this post lite, security is weak, its a resource hog, its not as user-friendly or as fast (done tests to prove this) as Firefox or Chrome and the other side is people generally tend to dislike the fact that its proprietary and users are unable to completely remove it from the computer. So yeah, it generally is joked about because of how shit it is.
It really sounds like you just described Internet Explorer 8. We can argue about what constitutes user friendliness, but IE is almost certainly the most secure browser, perhaps a bit too secure as it tends to flash warnings over fairly minor actions. IE10 and 11 are also pretty light and fast, even relative to FF and Chrome. I've seen some tests that rank IE as faster then Chrome and some that rank it slower. Chrome is still probably the fastest browser overall, but the lead is definitely narrowing.

I will grant you that it's dumb the way you can't uninstall IE from Windows, that is bullshit and no program, good or bad should work like that. But at least you're not being forced to use it. You're still free to install the browser of your choice and set it as the default, so it seems like kinda a petty thing to get angry over.
 

Naeras

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Mar 1, 2011
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To add something that nobody has mentioned yet, and which probably only applies to me: IE cannot properly handle the scripts used when you do a BLAST-search for gene/protein sequences. I once lost two hours of work in a bioinformatics course because the stupid university PCs we had to use only had IE installed, and then the browser just popped.
 

Hebby

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Dec 8, 2013
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Basically how I view IE. Always behind in the greater scheme of things. Went from IE to Firefox
and never looked back.



Another amusing one for the road.
 

Esotera

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OlasDAlmighty said:
I've stuck my head into HTML before, and while there were discrepancies between how things were rendered in IE, there were also discrepancies between Firefox and Chrome as well. I don't know the details of why this happens, but as far as I can tell, if you want to make sure your page is compatible, you have to test it out on all the browsers anyway.
Testing is an essential part of the development process it's true, but IE generally requires browser-specific code a lot more often than Chrome or Firefox. Which basically means you have to duplicate code and make two separate applications, not particularly fun. I'm not a professional developer but the amount of times I heard "Oh that's just IE" from the developers at work far outweighed the couple of times a bug was unique to firefox/chrome.
 

DoPo

"You're not cleared for that."
Jan 30, 2012
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paulgruberman said:
From a web dev standpoint, needing to add extra code so the site works for IE (yes, even the latest version) is a constant, needless waste of time. Things look fine on the viewer's end because web devs are taking the hits for you.
This pretty much sums it up.

XMark said:
IE6 = Cancer upon the internet. A shambling corpse that barely even resembles a real web browser. Very nearly dead everywhere except China but still cannot be completely ignored.
IE7 = It's like IE6 with a few errors haphazardly fixed with duct tape, but still waaaaaay behind on web standards, and has its own weird set of deviations from the standard. Frustratingly only about half as dead as IE6.
IE8 = Marginally acceptable browser for most pre-HTML5/CSS3 purposes. However, its place as the most popular current browser is seriously holding back the evolution of the web, and IE8 is going to take freaking forever to die. In about two years, IE8 will be the sworn arch-enemy of web developers world-wide. We will be cursing its presence until the last XP computer crashes to its final bluescreen.
IE9 = Microsoft finally joining the HTML5 club, but with a really half-assed effort that was a year or two behind the other browsers. Lots of HTML5 and CSS3 features are missing. Most annoyingly the text field placeholder attribute.

IE10 and 11 are actually pretty decent though, they've almost caught up with the rest of 'em. Almost.
This expands well on the concept.

OlasDAlmighty said:
Dead Century said:
I just did a fresh install of Windows on my old netbook. Let me put it this way: It's the browser you use to download another browser, and then never touch again.
Ah yes, I was wondering how many posts it would take before this old joke popped up, turns out the answer was 3.

The question I'm asking is why? is it important to get another browser and never touch IE again? You haven't proven or explained your point and it's statements like this that made me want to create this thread in the first place.
Look at that list just above. IE6-8 were just bad an IE9 was better (technically, IE 7 was better than IE 6...but using that would would imply it's actually an improvement when it wasn't). Now, IE10-11 are alright-ish, and let's for the sake of the argument, say they are equivalent to other browsers in terms of users. It took 10 years for this to happen. During the entire time, other browsers lead the way, IE didn't even follow for the most part. It's the way Microsoft does things - they don't want to be part of a group, so a lot of the times that hurts them and the users. Maybe they've changed their mind about IE - I don't know, but if past trend holds, then perhaps one day other browsers will make an advancement that won't catch up with IE for years. What would be the reason to risk that is the better question?

OlasDAlmighty said:
I've stuck my head into HTML before, and while there were discrepancies between how things were rendered in IE, there were also discrepancies between Firefox and Chrome as well. I don't know the details of why this happens, but as far as I can tell, if you want to make sure your page is compatible, you have to test it out on all the browsers anyway.
If you write valid HTML/CSS, chances are the differences between browsers would be either very small or none at all. I don't think I've seen that many discrepancies that would require fudging the code/stylesheet to equalize - there were just a handful of occurrences as far as I recall, and even then, probably half were born out of lightly invalid code.

Now, I'll be honest - I've not done web development for a while now, so I've had little experience with IE9 and none with 10 and 11. Still, I can give you a shining example of IE's advancement in action:
As I said, I've seen very little of IE9 - from what I saw it was actually standardized. Including the JavaScript. Also, it offered some nifty web developer options, like a built-in JS debugger. Anyway, I had a sum total of 15-20 minutes with it. And here's is the "best" thing I found out about it - it still managed to break code. This time because it was up to standards. I mean it - one JavaScript plugin broke, because it had a bunch of places in the code where it would do "if it's IE - here is the code, for all other browser - here is the actual code". And since it was supposed to work with older IE versions, the code was broken in the new one. Backwards compatibility - what's that?! It's also another example of how Microsoft operates - they just release stuff, everybody else is responsible for dealing with them. So again the question - why would you want that?

OlasDAlmighty said:
I will grant you that it's dumb the way you can't uninstall IE from Windows, that is bullshit and no program, good or bad should work like that.
You can uninstall it [http://www.wikihow.com/Uninstall-Internet-Explorer-Completely]. Erm, more or less - you can at least attempt it

Warnings

*You will only be able to get Internet Explorer back by reinstalling it from the Microsoft website now. Hence why you need to make sure you have another browser, if you don't and you uninstall Internet Explorer its going to be hard to recover.
*In some cases, your computer might just rollback to an older version. Sadly, some computers won't completely uninstall Internet Explorer, just dispose of your current version.
OlasDAlmighty said:
But at least you're not being forced to use it. You're still free to install the browser of your choice and set it as the default, so it seems like kinda a petty thing to get angry over.
Actually...no - sometimes you are forced to use it. Welcome to corporate environment. In fact, the reason IE6 was as widely used before wasn't because people just loved it so much - a lot of organisations had to use it. That's a big part of it's userbase - people who are forced to use it. So, no - you are also wrong on this account - sometimes you are forced to use IE.
 

VanQ

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Oct 23, 2009
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paulgruberman said:
From a web dev standpoint, needing to add extra code so the site works for IE (yes, even the latest version) is a constant, needless waste of time. Things look fine on the viewer's end because web devs are taking the hits for you.
Pretty much this. I spent some time doing web development and it more or less went like this.

-Design the site
-Build the site
-Test the site in every browser
-Figure out why the site isn't working in IE
-Add extra lines of code to fix the site in IE

It's just a pretty bulky, poorly designed browser.
 

DoPo

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Jan 30, 2012
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VanQ said:
It's just a pretty bulky, poorly designed browser.
Oh, it's designed pretty well. If you are Microsoft. It's those "internet standards" thing that just get in the way and the pesky people who claim you have to follow, instead of trying set them.
 

Hagi

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Apr 10, 2011
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Web developer here as well and currently dealing with the most hilarious IE11 bug ever, especially in combination with their new anime mascot.

I've got an element inheriting styles from a sibling element ( as opposed to the expected standard of inheriting from parent elements ).

Doesn't happen in Chrome. Doesn't happen in Firefox. Doesn't even happen in IE9. But with their new anime mascot it seems they're incorporating anime tropes into their browser in new and unexpected ways?
 

Eggsnham

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Apr 29, 2009
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It's getting better, but it's still kinda... not-good.

Lemme put it this way; it's the dollar store water pistol in the neighborhood water war. It may get the job done sometimes, but it's not consistent and certainly won't win any awards.
 

Mersadeon

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Jun 8, 2010
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Don't get me wrong, it's not the horrible testicle-cancer it used to be, but it still isn't up to snuff. Security wise, especially. I only use it when Firefox is spazzing out with long youtube videos. Internet Explorer is still unsafe, at times incredibly inconvenient with its interface design and slower than others.
 

Imperioratorex Caprae

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May 15, 2010
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OlasDAlmighty said:
amaranth_dru said:
OlasDAlmighty said:
**snippits**
Well to answer your question in simple terms to keep this post lite, security is weak, its a resource hog, its not as user-friendly or as fast (done tests to prove this) as Firefox or Chrome and the other side is people generally tend to dislike the fact that its proprietary and users are unable to completely remove it from the computer. So yeah, it generally is joked about because of how shit it is.
It really sounds like you just described Internet Explorer 8. We can argue about what constitutes user friendliness, but IE is almost certainly the most secure browser, perhaps a bit too secure as it tends to flash warnings over fairly minor actions. IE10 and 11 are also pretty light and fast, even relative to FF and Chrome. I've seen some tests that rank IE as faster then Chrome and some that rank it slower. Chrome is still probably the fastest browser overall, but the lead is definitely narrowing.

I will grant you that it's dumb the way you can't uninstall IE from Windows, that is bullshit and no program, good or bad should work like that. But at least you're not being forced to use it. You're still free to install the browser of your choice and set it as the default, so it seems like kinda a petty thing to get angry over.
I'll admit I haven't used the more recent iterations of IE because of the track record of bloat and glaring security flaws. So its hard to trust that it is any better than what I've come to like about Chrome. Granted everyone can change, and i'm not really angry over the lack of ability to remove (at least easily removable) just seems odd. The biggest joke I know of IE is that its the browser people use once to download Firefox or Chrome on a new PC. :) Thanks for the info though, appreciated much.
 

Subscriptism

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May 5, 2012
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In my opinion it's slow and it's interface is fucking painful compared to either chrome or firefox.
 

Griffolion

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Aug 18, 2009
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OlasDAlmighty said:
IE being a joke is a relic of the old time of when it was actually a joke of a browser. Now, it's very competent, you wouldn't have a bad time with it at all.

That said, I prefer Chrome, just preference.

Microsoft just gets a good deal of bandwagon hate, that's it really. I tend not to jump on the bandwagon, as I generally hold two very unpopular opinions:

1: Windows 8 (and subsequently 8.1) is the best operating system Microsoft have ever done, both from a technical and HCI standpoint.
2: IE isn't a crap browser and deserves at least a fair consideration.

Crap, where did I put my flamesuit?
 

CorvusFerreum

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Jun 13, 2011
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Naeras said:
To add something that nobody has mentioned yet, and which probably only applies to me: IE cannot properly handle the scripts used when you do a BLAST-search for gene/protein sequences. I once lost two hours of work in a bioinformatics course because the stupid university PCs we had to use only had IE installed, and then the browser just popped.
So much this. I remember some of our older university computers only having ie installed as well, making even something simple like a quick BLAST search a real fucking hassle. Navigating through any of the NCBI-Databases was a nighmare in general since the browser kept chocking and chrashing.

I haven't used it in a long time and even then I only used older versions of it, so I can't speak for the newer IE stuff. But the older ones were simply worse than the alternatives in all aspects. I see no reason to switch back to it.
 

wickedmonkey

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Nov 11, 2009
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Chrome user here, got turned off IE "back in the day" when it was terrible and jumped ship to Opera and then to Chrome. I couldn't go back to IE now - gesture controls have spoiled me, the UI is still horrible compared to Chrome and it just feels slower and 'clunkier' than Chrome.
Also as far as I'm aware (I could be wrong) IE is still one of the more unsecure, vulnerable browsers out there.
 

Tigurus

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Apr 14, 2009
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I don't mind using IE10/11. I got it on my notebook and it works just fine. I honestly had more trouble with Firefox than with IE. I also tried Chrome, Safari and Opera.
And I must say that Opera is just the one. Or at least was the one till Opera jumped ship to the Chrome-based engine/thingy.