Why is Internet Explorer "a joke".

[Hagi]

Again, your starting point in this case is the standard you mentioned. Note the relevant bolded part of my post. If your starting point is IE and the demands of IE - regardless of external standards - then everything else becomes deviant. I would also appreciate a more civil tone from you - criticize my arguments, not me personally.

As a developer I must say that this isn't actually true. Which is pretty much the entire problem.

The only difference between starting with IE and making your code compatible for IE later on is when you write that extra code. If you start with IE you'll be doing extra work right at the start, if you add compatibility later on then you'll be doing extra work at that time.

It's not that IE needs 60 lines of code and other browsers need 60 lines of different code. It's that IE needs 90 lines of code, including the 60 lines that other browsers need to do exactly the same thing those 90 lines are doing in IE. The other browsers aren't deviant if you start in IE, they're more efficient.

IE doesn't have it's own standard, as an alternative to the W3C standard. It's just doing different things every single version.

You can see this very simply. Open up IE, you'll have options to go into different document modes for IE7, IE8, IE9 etc. There's even another option to go into different browser modes for IE7, IE8, IE9 etc.
Now open up Chrome/Firefox/Any other browser. There's no document modes, there's no compatibility modes. There's no browser modes. That's because these browsers have standards. They're not doing different seemingly random things in each version. They have a standard which they keep to.

 

[AT God]

I use IE on my laptop (which I'm using now) and Chrome on my desktop because in my experience, chrome seems to have more issues with reliability. I think IE isn't bad, it's just the slow, reliable, 'vanilla' browser. I never liked Firefox, I have no reason behind that but I did switch from IE to chrome a few years ago, except on this laptop. I like how Chrome is generally faster than IE but I think that Chrome has some hilariously ironic shortfalls. Mainly, I get lots of Youtube crashes on Chrome that I don't get on IE, which seems silly since Chrome and Youtube are linked. The one thing I like about Chrome is that it has an adblock that only affects youtube videos, I don't mind letting websites have banner ads and the ads before Escapist videos are fine because I don't usually watch a dozen videos back to back but on Youtube I often put my TV as a monitor and go to sleep listening to video playlists and having those stupid 2 minute ads that require me to get up and click skip pissed me off, so I run adblock on those videos.

Another way IE is better (at least over chrome) is for Flashplayer, although Firefox is supposedly the best choice. I hate how flash games that save data bury the saves in to some random folder with IE but chrome hides them in even worse places, so if I play a flash game and want to back up a save game, I always just run IE. And chrome has bigger framerate/sound sync with flash movies than IE does.

If IE were faster, had better customization options and youtube specific adblock that worked without affecting other sites I would probably go back but I like Chrome for my desktop computer at least.

 

[Comocat]

Here is a review of the different browsers. As best I can tell the difference is pretty negligible. I fail to see how IE6 is relevant to the conversation.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2365692,00.asp

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2413634,00.asp

 

[Gary Thompson]

The way I see it is, sure, the new IE doesn't suck as bad as it used too, but Chrome and Firefox are still better, faster and more reliable, even if it's less so now.

Why would I use IE when other browsers are still better?

 

[ForumSafari]

Mostly it's the fact that it's a web browser that isn't patched with any real frequency, that companies run old versions of, that is guaranteed to be on nearly every Microsoft machine and that handles a lot of script execution. It's basically a huge attack surface and isn't very well optimised, that coupled with outdated versions used in enterprise contribute towards its' reputation.

Incidentally does anyone still remember a time when Critical Miss was quite funny?

I fail to see how IE6 is relevant to the conversation.

To be fair anyone running anything like SAGE at work has to grapple with older versions due to short sighted devs. Our company still uses 8 and that's painful enough.

 

[thatonedude11]

For me, there is one redeeming feature of Metro which means I'm fine with it, and which has meant me feeling incredibly uncomfortable going back to 7, and that's the ridiculously good application search.

-> Tap windows key
-> Type 3-4 letters of the name of the program
-> 99.99% of the time, Windows will return you the right result at the top of the list
-> Press enter, program starts

That, for me, has had a miniature revolution in how I actually go about my OS. Yes, 7 had search-in-start functionality, but it's simply not as well done as this.

How exactly is it better than the search in windows 7? I'm genuinely curious, as I've been able to find just about anything I want with the search in Windows 7 with no problems.

Windows 8 does not get flack for being worse than 7, that's impossible, since it's better. It gets flack for being different, and therein lies the indictment on the state of the community accepting it and not necessarily Microsoft.

The thing is, I like the start menu. Why shouldn't I complain about Microsoft replacing it with an interface that is designed around touch devices, which I don't own and have no interest in owning? If you like it then that's all well and good, but don't pretend that the people who don't like it are just afraid of change.

 

[AdmiralMemo]

Let's put it in terms of money

Chrome, FireFox, Opera: $50
Current IE: $5
Older versions of IE: $1
IE6: Owes you $50

So, it's not "bad" and it's not nearly as bad as it used to be, but there are better alternatives. It may no longer be a cancer, but it's merely upgraded to placebo.

 

[Nomad]

Again THAT IS NOT HOW IT WORKS. I know you want to twist and turn so you don't sound as wrong, but you are wrong - accept it. You have no clue what you are talking about and yet you proceed to talk as if that shouldn't matter and you have some sort of point there.

Tell me - if you go to buy, say, a pint of beer, do you have your own measuring cup or do you go with the universally agreed volume for a pint? Because I'm pretty sure you aren't going to view all other pints as "deviant".The bolded part is irrelevant - Microsoft must follow the external standards, that's why we can even talk about HTML in the first place. Otherwise, we would have had HTML++ or something which is a proprietary Microsoft format. We aren't, therefore, it's W3C we must verify against. IE fails in that regard - it doesn't fail compared to other browsers, it fails against the universal measuring stick. So no - again I tell you - you don't have a coherent point there - you don't know what you're saying so I guess that's why you don't see how what you're saying makes no sense. Trust me - it doesn't.

But see, this is something that isn't specifically related to HTML itself, but rather an universal truth. If your starting point is X, and X is the standard you set for yourself, then everything that deviates from X is the alternative. X does not become an alternate starting point for you because Y is an external standard. If IE is your starting point, the entire rest of the world can support a competing starting point without your standard becoming deviant in relation to itself. Your beer-analogy supports this just fine - as you say, it is entirely possible to make your own measuring cups for volumes of liquid. Others may have trouble adjusting to your unit of measurement, but no more and no less than you would have trouble adjusting to theirs. It's a zero-sum exchange by nature.

I would appreciate you not spewing uneducated, unneeded, and wrong thoughts on a matter you admit cannot even discuss, and still claim to have be correct after all...just because ponies or something.

Apparently you feel very strongly about this. I'd still suggest calming down a bit, though. Caps lock does not get your point across better, and nor does tossing out derogatory evaluations of my contribution to the discussion. I would also like to note that I have not said I can't discuss the topic - I've said I can't make any judgement as to whether or not IE is a hassle to code for. And I haven't. I think the issue here is that I'm actually not discussing the topic you think I'm discussing, since you appear to be hung up on the technical aspect of the issue. I'm not commenting on the merits of IE in this case, I'm commenting on the discourse surrounding browser comparisons.

As a developer I must say that this isn't actually true. Which is pretty much the entire problem.

The only difference between starting with IE and making your code compatible for IE later on is when you write that extra code. If you start with IE you'll be doing extra work right at the start, if you add compatibility later on then you'll be doing extra work at that time.

It's not that IE needs 60 lines of code and other browsers need 60 lines of different code. It's that IE needs 90 lines of code, including the 60 lines that other browsers need to do exactly the same thing those 90 lines are doing in IE. The other browsers aren't deviant if you start in IE, they're more efficient.

IE doesn't have it's own standard, as an alternative to the W3C standard. It's just doing different things every single version.

You can see this very simply. Open up IE, you'll have options to go into different document modes for IE7, IE8, IE9 etc. There's even another option to go into different browser modes for IE7, IE8, IE9 etc.
Now open up Chrome/Firefox/Any other browser. There's no document modes, there's no compatibility modes. There's no browser modes. That's because these browsers have standards. They're not doing different seemingly random things in each version. They have a standard which they keep to.

This is relevant and informative, and potentially eliminates one of my issues with the discourse.
Is there actually no case where a line of code that works for IE will not work for Chrome? This seems strange to me, because at the municipal authority I mentioned earlier, we actually had to use IE for a select few services (namely the web interface for our printer services) - because they just wouldn't work for Chrome. If the 90 lines required for IE will work fine for Chrome (disregarding the additional 30?), then how can compatibility issues in this direction at all occur?

 

[Hagi]

This is relevant and informative, and potentially eliminates one of my issues with the discourse.
Is there actually no case where a line of code that works for IE will not work for Chrome? This seems strange to me, because at the municipal authority I mentioned earlier, we actually had to use IE for a select few services (namely the web interface for our printer services) - because they just wouldn't work for Chrome. If the 90 lines required for IE will work fine for Chrome (disregarding the additional 30?), then how can compatibility issues in this direction at all occur?

There's a few cases, albeit they're rather rare nowadays since Microsoft has increasingly given up on doing it's own thing and instead is trying to catch up to the rest.

Older IE browsers did have lines of code that worked for them an only for them. Usually not very safe or efficient things, but certainly unique. Newer IE browsers have mostly dropped such things completely and instead are catching up, but not quite there yet, to the rest of the browsers.

If your municipal authority was using something like IE6 or IE7 then it's entirely possible it wouldn't work on Chrome (and quite likely not even on newer versions of IE since I believe their compatibility modes only go two versions back). If it required a newer version of IE then my guess would much more be on some sort of exclusivity deal. Not necessarily by Microsoft but somewhat more likely by the municipality authority itself, it's entirely possible to block things based on the browser asking for them and when you've got a barely trained IT staff unfamiliar with anything but IE and afraid of any change then these things happen. Even though allowing other browsers would break nothing it's still blocked, in my work I've encountered a few customers like this and it's always a challenge to convince them that Chrome's not a virus...

With IE nowadays the catching up situation has mostly lead to the situation I described if you're trying to do anything fancy. For simple things IE works mostly the same as the other browsers but for newer features, especially when it comes to animations, effects and that sort of thing you'll be needing everything you need on other browsers plus a bit more for IE.

 

[Olas]

I would turn the question around on you, actually, OP. Why do you think that Internet Explorer needs defending?

Because nearly everyone on the internets (including some people in this very thread) liken it to the retard child of browsers, the scum on the bottom of Chrome's shoe, the browser you use to download and install a "good" browser. I think that lambasting is unfair and unwarranted and comes mostly from ignorance of how it actually is.

"It's passable", "It's on par", and "It's not as bad anymore" are hardly ringing endorsements.

No, but those are the same endorsements I'd give to Chrome and FF, which are hardly perfect either and are barely any different today than they were back when they became popular. I'm "endorsing" IE in the sense that I think it's an adequate browser option, which is all the credit that it deserves, but way more credit than it gets.

The fact that it's taken so long to catch up is going to get residual hate from when it was still behind, and then there's the likelihood that they'll just fall behind again.

I don't care how bad something was or how bad it might be some day, we should be judging browsers on how they actually are. Otherwise we're basically telling Microsoft that they shouldn't bother trying to improve IE because we'll never go back to it no matter what, and that's not a healthy attitude.

1. Firefox is so easy to add add-ons to, as well as find add-ons that you want, it's not funny.

This is the one concession I gave the other browsers over IE. I don't know why Microsoft hasn't tried to tackle this. Perhaps because nobody would be willing to make apps for it. Or maybe because Windows8 already has an app store.
Either way, I still believe the apps Chrome and FF have are overrated. 99% of them are standalone programs that just run in a browser rather than the desktop, many of the ones I've seen were glorified website links. The ones that are legitimate enhancements to the browser are nice, but should probably just be built in features so that they can run more efficiently.

2. Chrome doesn't collect nearly as much bloat over use as IE, in fact I was sold on it with their initial promise that it's physically impossible to add toolbars onto it. Add the fact that Chrome can run almost any Android-based app (if I'm not mistaken) and Chrome has its extra functionality, too.

You can control exactly how much bloat you want any browser to collect in the settings, and I find it ironic that you're complaining about bloat when you just just praised FF for it's ability to install tons of apps. Apparently the ability to add things to a browser is only a positive when it's not in bar form.

3. Safari works really well for those with apple-heavy focus, such as iTunes and similar stuff, due to product integration features.

Kinda like how IE integrates with Windows 8, allowing you pin tabs to the start menu and do other neat things that you can't do in third party browsers.

4. You CANNOT beat Opera in terms of speed. Period. It was designed as a light-weight browser from the get-go and is simply great for those with low-power systems.

I agree, you'll notice I gave a shoutout to Opera in my OP for being an underused browser. People are so fast to leap to Chrome that they don't even bother looking at what other browsers exist.

 

[DoPo]

I would appreciate you not spewing uneducated, unneeded, and wrong thoughts on a matter you admit cannot even discuss, and still claim to have be correct after all...just because ponies or something.

Apparently you feel very strongly about this. I'd still suggest calming down a bit, though. Caps lock does not get your point across better, and nor does tossing out derogatory evaluations of my contribution to the discussion.[/quote]

Why? Your contribution can be summed up as "But if we do the thing we cannot do I am correct - therefore - others are not correct." And you can't seem to see the flaw in this logic - you cannot do it, period.

I would also like to note that I have not said I can't discuss the topic

You said you had no clue about web programming - thing confirmed by the rest of what you said. Why just in the paragraph above you still cannot grasp that you cannot have a browser as a starting point. Do you also go around to the police and say "You know, officer - I know I drove on the left lane, but if we assume that's the basis of how we should drive, it's everybody else in the country who is wrong, not me"? Because this is as what you sound like.

Would you explain to me - what is the difficulty in understanding that you don't code for a browser but for a standard?

I think the issue here is that I'm actually not discussing the topic you think I'm discussing, since you appear to be hung up on the technical aspect of the issue.

So, you know, when you talked about writing code for IE, you meant it as the non-technical term...which doesn't exist. Gotcha - you really don't know what you're saying. And here is the issue we have - I am going off what you said where as you think you've said something different. And your words either don't make sense in real speak or mean something you didn't want to. So there you go - as I said, you don't seem qualified to discuss it.

 

[Product Placement]

I don't really understand why it gets constantly ridiculed.

Like you yourself and others are pointing out, the reason why people like to poke fun at it is because of legacy issues. IE6, was without doubt the worst browser of its time. It was a terribly thing that web developers will dream nightmare off, for years to come. Websites dedicated to a funeral for this horrible browser version have always been popular among web developers (one of which can be found here [http://www.ie6death.com/]).

Once browsers release a bad version, it can take a long time for the denizens of the internet to forgive it. Firefox had a period where version 3.X became a memory sponge, that my teacher is still giving it a flack for, despite that we're currently running version 26. Hell, I'm still finding people with Firefox 3.5 installed, because they haven't touched the browser since and refuse to give it another try.

 

[Griffolion]

How exactly is it better than the search in windows 7? I'm genuinely curious, as I've been able to find just about anything I want with the search in Windows 7 with no problems.

It's a personal preference thing, I found it clicked with me better. Just the way the transitions happen, the spacing of the results, etc. It just felt a lot better to me than 7. Like I said, it's a personal thing.

The thing is, I like the start menu. Why shouldn't I complain about Microsoft replacing it with an interface that is designed around touch devices, which I don't own and have no interest in owning? If you like it then that's all well and good, but don't pretend that the people who don't like it are just afraid of change.

I wasn't pretending that all the people who don't like it are afraid of change, that's a little disingenuous to say. However, I've witnessed a significant amount of people who haven't actually used 8, and are either jumping on the bandwagon, or just saying "nope" because of screenshots (IE, I've actually asked them if they've used it, and they responded "no"). Go to any forum thread topic during the Win 8 RC days and before. Look at many articles around that time. If you don't like 8 for the lack of a start menu, then fine (I'm going to assume you've used 8 fairly extensively in order to draw such a conclusion).

That said, and like I said previously, they have actually put a number of desktop usability features within Metro, they just need to strike the balance better.

 

[Olas]

You can see this very simply. Open up IE, you'll have options to go into different document modes for IE7, IE8, IE9 etc. There's even another option to go into different browser modes for IE7, IE8, IE9 etc.
Now open up Chrome/Firefox/Any other browser. There's no document modes, there's no compatibility modes. There's no browser modes. That's because these browsers have standards. They're not doing different seemingly random things in each version. They have a standard which they keep to.

What's even more frustrating with IE is that their browser compatibility modes aren't exactly correct versions of earlier IE engines; what you see rendered in IE8-compat mode is not necessarily what you'd see running actual IE8. So if you try to use those modes to test compatibility of your code, you can be in for some headaches.