Why you should dump IE.

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by greencreeper

I tried Firefox because of all the fuss and I didn't rate it. Has potential though. I found that many sites didn't display properly and it generally made my system behave oddly. The Net is largely designed for IE - that's a huge legacy that Firefox has to address and currently it's ignoring it.

No, as Richard says the differences between IE and standards based browsers (such as Opera and Firebird) is something Microsoft should address, or possibly the designers who use IE only features. The problem with people designing for IE is simply that to view a site designed for IE, you need to use IE. In itself, this is sort of acceptable IF you want Microsoft to control what browser (and therefore what OS or Platform) you are using.

Increasingly, people are using the WWW on PDAs, phones or other devices that may use Symbian OS, Linux, Palm OS etc. By designing a site specifically for IE, the designers may be preventing those people from accessing their sites. If the designers stick the standards, then there will be no problem viewing sites on all devices. If IE were brought into line, it would not have problems either.

As to alternate browsers, yes, I do use IE mainly (our admin software at work requires it), but in my own time I tend to use Opera. I did use Firebird, but have found it renders things too slowly.

[Jon M]

Originally Posted by aliferste

Why is security third ?

A few reasons... as an I.T professional I'm usually aware of potential hazards and obviously steer clear of dodgy sites, I never install software that has questionable content (spyware/adware).. I don't pretend that I can deal with every eventuality.. I'm just compromising (debatable) a bit with security because the benifits outway the pitfalls in my opinion...
Yes, IE has problems.. but they're secondary to my enjoyment/ease-of-use.
No browser is flawless after all.

[greencreeper]

Originally Posted by scastle

No, as Richard says the differences between IE and standards based browsers (such as Opera and Firebird) is something Microsoft should address, or possibly the designers who use IE only features. The problem with people designing for IE is simply that to view a site designed for IE, you need to use IE. In itself, this is sort of acceptable IF you want Microsoft to control what browser (and therefore what OS or Platform) you are using.

I take your point but it makes no sense to me to design for minority browsers that hardly anyone uses and then "tweak" your site so it works in the popular browsers everyone uses. That said, web designers have always been a funny lot - more art than technological. Probably why I don't touch ?TML if I can help it - my artistic efforts have largely been pictures made from bits of wool and the odd clay thing resembling road kill. My sense of colour is shocking too.

I'm not worried about Microsoft - it's a patriarchal organisation and Gates can't last forever

Originally Posted by scastle

Increasingly, people are using the WWW on PDAs, phones or other devices that may use Symbian OS, Linux, Palm OS etc. By designing a site specifically for IE, the designers may be preventing those people from accessing their sites. If the designers stick the standards, then there will be no problem viewing sites on all devices. If IE were brought into line, it would not have problems either.

If a website is intended to be cross-platform you would create different sites for different platforms and use some intervening technology to identify and serve the correct site - I believe this is where XML, XLST and something like Xalan come in.

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by greencreeper

I take your point but it makes no sense to me to design for minority browsers that hardly anyone uses and then "tweak" your site so it works in the popular browsers everyone uses. That said, web designers have always been a funny lot - more art than technological. Probably why I don't touch ?TML if I can help it - my artistic efforts have largely been pictures made from bits of wool and the odd clay thing resembling road kill. My sense of colour is shocking too.

I'm not worried about Microsoft - it's a patriarchal organisation and Gates can't last forever




If a website is intended to be cross-platform you would create different sites for different platforms and use some intervening technology to identify and serve the correct site - I believe this is where XML, XLST and something like Xalan come in.

It is possible to do this (even using Javascript) as my own personal site did (I designed two sites: One for Web and one for Wap and the default page simply redirected the browser to the appropriate page).

If IE followed standards, then the only change ANY web designer would need to make for ANY platform would be for screen size, and possibly include suport for Screen readers for the blind. You wouldn't have to tweak the site to work in different browsers.

[Jerrek]

I see no reason to switch. IE provides everything I need. The only standard that I see is the IE standard. If it can't be displayed in IE, it isn't worth viewing or visiting. If a page doesn't display correctly in IE, I skip over it.

[Russ]

The day Firefox matches IE for speed is the day I'll swap. I tried the current version and it's about 4 or 5 seconds slower than IE.

[Richard M]

I would try Mozilla 1.7, it's still the fastest browser in the world (despite what Opera says ).

Originally Posted by Jerrek

I see no reason to switch. IE provides everything I need. The only standard that I see is the IE standard. If it can't be displayed in IE, it isn't worth viewing or visiting. If a page doesn't display correctly in IE, I skip over it.

Quit trolling.

[philip.j.fry]

Originally Posted by Jerrek

I see no reason to switch. IE provides everything I need. The only standard that I see is the IE standard.

Except that MS are members of the W3C and supposedly should have a good idea of what the standard is.

If it can't be displayed in IE, it isn't worth viewing or visiting. If a page doesn't display correctly in IE, I skip over it.

I do the same, but the other way around

Originally Posted by Russ D

The day Firefox matches IE for speed is the day I'll swap. I tried the current version and it's about 4 or 5 seconds slower than IE.

One day I'm going to have to sit down and compile firefox with performance metrics enabled and compare the two, but from what I've seen on my newly compiled 0.9 it's at least as fast as I remember IE being (especially IE on XP).

[Richard M]

Originally Posted by philip.j.fry

I do the same, but the other way around

You're not the only one.

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by Jerrek

I see no reason to switch. IE provides everything I need. The only standard that I see is the IE standard. If it can't be displayed in IE, it isn't worth viewing or visiting. If a page doesn't display correctly in IE, I skip over it.

Fine if you are not planning to use the Internet on any device apart from a PC, Mac, Pocket Windows PDA or MS Smartphone.

It could leave you a bit stuffed if you do though.

Originally Posted by greencreeper

I'm not worried about Microsoft - it's a patriarchal organisation and Gates can't last forever

So why support a standard that may have a limited future? Development of IE as a standalone product has already stopped (they stopped development on the Mac and wil only distribute future versions of IE in Windows Service Packs).

If IE were bought into line with the W3C standards, then it would not be a problem if development on it ceased as the sites would still be accessable from other browsers.

[Bifta]

The number of people using anything other than IE is so minutely small that Microsoft don't need to conform to anything, like a lot of other people, if a page doesn't render correctly in IE, I'm not going to install another browser just to get round it.

Here's an indication from one of my busier site's showing how many people use a browser other than IE, less than .84%

Top 15 of 1035 Total User Agents

# Hits User Agent

1 238858 20.66% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)
2 157182 13.59% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1
3 105478 9.12% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)
4 48786 4.22% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98)
5 43825 3.79% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98; Win 9x 4.90)
6 27099 2.34% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; .NET CLR 1
7 26142 2.26% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; FunWebProd
8 24963 2.16% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; Windows NT 5.0)
9 15599 1.35% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.0)
10 14076 1.22% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows 98; DigExt)
11 12805 1.11% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; CDSource=v
12 11227 0.97% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; AOL 9.0; Windows NT 5.1)
13 10563 0.91% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; BT Openwor
14 9904 0.86% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 4.0)
15 9672 0.84% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows 98; Win 9x 4.90)

I don't know if Webalizer picks up proper mozilla browsers so here's some other stats:

#: #reqs: #pages: browser
--: -------: ------: -------
1: 1552822: 71395: MSIE
: 1332391: 60777: MSIE/6
: 217190: 10600: MSIE/5
: 3241: 18: MSIE/4
2: 16496: 732: Mozilla
: 15217: 647: Mozilla/1
3: 1707: 210: Opera
: 1707: 210: Opera/7
4: 612: 111: Konqueror
: 612: 111: Konqueror/3
5: 8941: 66: Netscape (compatible)
6: 24: 24: ia_archiver
7: 426: 9: Galeon
: 426: 9: Galeon/1
8: 4: 3: HenryTheMiragoRobot (http:
: 4: 3: HenryTheMiragoRobot (http://www
: 3657: 0: [not listed: 9 browsers]

[philip.j.fry]

Originally Posted by Bifta

/snip

Interesting...that is, it's interesting that the User Agent string for IE reads as Mozilla compatible.

[Bifta]

Originally Posted by philip.j.fry

Interesting...that is, it's interesting that the User Agent string for IE reads as Mozilla compatible.

Probably has something to do with webalizer running on *nix and IE not being a browser available for it.

[Richard M]

Stats from CF, which is probably a pretty good indication of the net in general:

	MSIE		1678404	88.1 %
	Mozilla		110348	5.7 % *
	Unknown	?	51417	2.7 %
	Opera		25230	1.3 %
	Netscape	19540	1 %
	Safari		14839	0.7 %
	Firebird	2337	0.1 % *
	Konqueror	677	0 %
	MultiZilla	522	0 % *
	Links		131	0 %
 	Others		424	0 %

* Indicates Mozilla based browser

BTW - IE has always had that Mozilla string because they wanted to show it was compatible with early Netscape browsers (<4) when Netscape was the dominant app.

[greencreeper]

So if the majority use IE, then what are we arguing about?? You can't ignore the post popular browser when developing, and like I said, it seems daft to design for browsers that hardly anyone uses. The market dominance of a company sets the standards, regardless of any standards body.