Another reason to avoid Internet Explorer

The article should suggest to get a non-Windows computer

IE is a joke.

I would boot in SuSE linux more often, but it wont recognize my modem, maybe I should go out and buy a linux compatible one. IE is a virus waiting to happen (and windows for the most part)

FireFox is my browser of choice.

Any recommendations for a modem Reddy?

I agree Ab, nasty things... Although if the developers of those modems could be bothered they could write Linux drivers for them, even if the manner in which they work is a gross waste of processor cycles

I believe most external modems are hardware modems, don't think a COM port has enough bandwidth to communicate with a driver at the speeds required (although I might be talking rubbish ).

Most externals are indeed hardware modems. Beware some USB modems now are software controlled too. I haven't seen any software-dependent ones off a COM.

An external costs ~NZ$30-100 here. No idea what a reasonable analogous price is in US terms, perhaps ~US$10-50? I have no special recommendations for 56k... they all (apart from winmodems) do the same standard job.

Jeeves, it's not just about drivers for Linux and Windows. If it's only dependent on an open protocol (of sorts) rather than specialised builds for each kind of kernel and OS, that provides support for all kinds of platforms... BeOS, Solaris, Mac (?), old versions of Windows, everything.

Hmmm, think I understand what you're saying Abi, it's not just a matter of drivers you need the OS to support them as well? Conversation's getting a little low-level for my liking

linux + firefox = safe

computer + not turned on = safe

FireFox is good if you like looking at crappy webpages....most designers target for IE, and therefore many pages look bad in FireFox.

Do you use it regularly rtheodorow? I've been using Mozilla and Opera for 4 years and rarely find web pages that look "crappy" in my browser. Occasionally I'll find things that don't work properly. Overall I find the benefits outweigh the setbacks, by far!

I use IE, on XP, which makes me satan.

I have tried, oh so hard to like Firefox, but I don't. It's slower to load, doesn't have the same functionality, and I don't want all these extensions, I just want to go to web pages quickly. and maybe the extensions help a couple tasks go faster, but when not in use, they clutter the toolbar area.

Now, I know that IE has holes, but Firefox has had them (and yeah, they seemed to be patched a little quicker) and then there is this article:
http://blogs.msdn.com/ptorr/archive/2004/12/20/327511.aspx
by a Microsoft guy, his followup article goes further to the point.

Oh, and I have tried Redhat Linux, I liked it, it was good, but I spent too much time thinking about the OS, and not enough time doing what I wanted to be doing with the computer, that and it won't read the computer that it's on right now's soundcard.

P.S. - Get broadband, and a NIC.

I think the reason most people find that IE starts up faster than Firefox is because they fail to realise the a lot (if not all) of the plugins and whatnot needed for IE are loaded at startup and therefore need not be loaded again; Firefox loads all that it needs when the program starts up.

Well, thats not my fault is it?

Netscape had the same issue, and as a fix, had a little quicklaunch icon if I recall right. But, I don't want that running in the background, unless it's some sort of minor service.

Obviously IE can do that, since the components are loaded at Windows startup, and running in the background as you say. Firefox seems to take about 23mb of RAM on open and about 2 more per open window, which is less than IE, but when you have a gig of RAM, you don't really notice.

The only thing I am using Firefox for is web page development, to see if my code works on IE and on Firefox, so users of that browser will see my pages correctly.

Well, as explained in the article, with Firefox, you don't always know who you're sleeping with, and you're using dime store condoms, so who knows what could happen, your browser might get pregnant! (just kidding)

I use internet explorer, and I only had problems once or twice, and thats because I didn't read a dialog properly, not some conspiracy.

hey thats a good one! ..if you don't have problems with IE then you must keep up with your Windows Updates huh ..cause 7times out of 10 thats where the real problem with people who get bad stuff from Internet Explorer

Up until I had this machine, I was using an illegal copy of Win2k, and never got updates, because I thought they'd some how catch me... I know they can f*** up people's systems if they have cracked XP and get the Service Packs, so it's not too outlandish.

The only thing I think gives me the edge is Spybot Search and Destroy's hosts file, and has some other blocking, using a "resident"

I couldn't help but laugh as I read that article.

If it works for you, it works for you... Just remember, you aren't doing anyone a favour by supporting a poorly standards-compliant client.

Well, I'd like to see some more middle ground on the whole standards issue.

I'd like to see IE properly support PNG alpha blending, and for the w3c to support some width characteristics in CSS, why can't you define a width to ? Why can't you change the scrollbar colours in Firefox? Why don't they support CSS Filters?

Thanks for the inline/block thing, I will give it a try, I have never seen it mentioned before. If the w3c is going to say it isn't valid, there should be some sort of mention as to why it isn't valid, or if it can be valid, when it is.

I would just like to see some middle ground, I don't think that IE is perfect, but neither is Firefox/Mozilla, and it bugs me how "fashionable" it is to use Firefox over IE, Microsoft bashing is sort of old hat these days. It's just a browser

Yeah, the spec and validator are not terribly user-friendly. Keep in mind their audience is techies, so you're expected to be able to learn to use it. It does improve, though. The recent upgrade of the validator is much better than the previous version. The spec is meant to be concise and precise so you can't expect the same from it. The trick to learning how to code properly is to read interpreted articles, such as those on alistapart.com.

Fyi, the notion of seeking truth only in the middle ground is a logical fallacy.

I personally assure you that using Firefox over IE is not merely a statement of fashion; there really is substance to it. At the same time, thanks to a concerted evangelism and marketing effort, the Firefox people have made it seem like a trendy thing. Don't be fooled.

It's a big deal for a lot of people in the industry. I'm somewhat surprised to see your comment in the midst of a webmaster's forum.

Quote: I use IE, on XP, which makes me satan.

I am of the mindset that new isn't always better, and all throughout the release of other browsers, Netscape, Opera, Mozilla, Firefox, I have tried them, and didn't like them.

I like IE because it works fine for me, it has a home, refresh, stop, back and forward button, it has an address bar, and it displays webpages as most people have designed them to be seen. I have all the other buttons turned off, and it's a single bar across the top, Firefox can't get that small, the smallest icons are bigger, and there is a grey bar that I can't seem to eliminate, I guess this is where extensions, or other buttons would go if I had them, but I don't.

I don't have toolbars, I HATE toolbars, and all the other browsers seemed to offer were outside additions which I was never going to use. Some claimed "faster browsing" but I never saw a speed change, except that it was slower to load, and usually slower between pages.

Yes, this is a webmaster forum, and I don't have the same system of beliefs in what is/isn't a good browser. Oh, and I know that IE can have problems, I did technical support for one of America's biggest cable ISPs, gotta love outsourcing, but all the problems I saw with IE were a result of other things that people had installed, and sometimes because they were super paranoid about things that were going to happen to their browsers.

I have a whole hate on for popup blockers. If you aren't visiting a ton of porn sites, the most popups you'll get is 2, a couple quick alt-tab, alt-F4, and it's all good, much better than carving an exclude list, the first thing I did when I got XP SP2 was disable the popup blocker. Also, as tech support, this was so much worse, because people wouldn't know they had them, and wondered why our email popup wasn't working, I'd have to spend 15 minutes going through their add/remove programs because it wasn't in their tray or IE toolbar.

The logical fallacy argument is interesting, but in this case, one side is saying 2+2=moose and the other 2+2=cow, and the middle ground is 4. The article is interesting, but I don't think that the 2 sides are arguing in the same way, the 2 sides are simply failing to "comply with the other's standards" it's the 2+2=moose guy, screaming at the cow guy about what he is doing wrong.

Again, this is a webmaster forum, I design websites, and I read articles on markup, and standards. IE still works better on Windows, plain and simple. I will eventually make the switch to Linux, but I need to try a few distros, and get it on a really good computer before I will be really happy with it.

P.S. I also use Outlook 2000 (anything newer is crap) feel free to tell me how insecure that is too.

CptAwesome wrote: I am of the mindset that new isn't always better

That's good. I don't think anyone's claiming Firefox is any good simply because it's new, for that would be a fallacy too.

CptAwesome wrote: I like IE because it works fine for me, it has a home, refresh, stop, back and forward button, it has an address bar, and it displays webpages as most people have designed them to be seen. I have all the other buttons turned off, and it's a single bar across the top, Firefox can't get that small, the smallest icons are bigger, and there is a grey bar that I can't seem to eliminate, I guess this is where extensions, or other buttons would go if I had them, but I don't.

It's either the bookmarks toolbar or the tab bar. You can turn off the bookmarks toolbar by right-clicking the grey space beside the menus and unticking the relevant option. If screen space is an issue, one would think the tab bar would be more useful to you; then again, if you don't like that, you can disable the tabbrowser extension.

Firefox doesn't have special empty toolbars reserved for extensions. But if you install extensions which use a toolbar, sure, they'll take up space. That's a matter of utility.

The argument against IE is manifold. User experience is one (debatable) part of it, yes. Standards compliance and unpatched security holes (like the one MS plain denies, ya know?) are others. The latter two are of greater concern to developers, which is what I originally referred to.

So you disabled the pop up blocker because it blocked trusted pop ups? SP2 doesn't have a whitelist? I don't see where the difficulty is in setting up a whitelist once, particularly if these pop up frequencies are as low as you propose -- surely only one or two out of the, uh, one or two pop ups per session can be trusted?

Many people find pop ups annoying, and indeed face a lot more than one or two per session, porn or not. The blocking feature is available for them and optional for everyone. The process you suggest is comparatively more cumbersome, as it is necessarily frequent, unlike the low maintenace needed to keep a whitelist. But hey, that's user experience, and to each his own. You can disable pop up blocking in Firefox. (General opinion from my perspective is that Firefox's extensions help with this personalisation, btw.)

Now I don't see how you can justify that one side is yelling moose while the other is shouting cow -- humourous as the image is. I can't figure out if your analogy is in relation to W3C standards/MS standards, or Firefox/IE. You may have a point if you're talking about the browsers in a user experience context. Otherwise, I fail to see how you came to cows and moose.

I would try to tell you how insecure Outlook is, but I've honestly never used 2000. And it's been years since I touched Express. I forget how bad it is.

Ah, it was the navigation toolbar, even though I had moved everything out of the navigation toolbar. On my settings my browser is a very dark grey, and though the words are white, the checkmarks are black, and with my low vision, I couldn't see that it was checked, though I assumed it needed to be able to navigate....

Moving on, the 2 sides are not really in disagreement, they aren't 2 arguements, it's not the horse vs the train, they both have a lot of good concepts, and ideas, and they need to merge those, without sacrificing much on either side.

I guess the biggest problem with any browser, or website, is the person using it. Guns don't kill people, people kill people. Someone who knows what a whitelist is, and is concerned with popups, then yeah, Firefox is great, I am not concerned with popups though. My parents installed SP2 because the radio told them to, and they were confounded for days because of the popup blocker, I know the info bar is RIGHT THERE, but the same thing would have happened in Firefox, it's been awhile since I installed it, but I think that the popup blocker is on by default, as with tab browsing, which is cumbersome to someone who uses alt-tab as much as I do, because then I have to remember to switch to ctrl-tab when in Firefox, and etc.

If the browser/gun is in my hand, I am shooting with IE, because I've done it for years, and I am a perfect shot, Firefox isn't going to make my browsing any better, unless it learns to read my thoughts, and dynamically fix my spelling before Google does, only when I want it corrected, based on my mood, like I said, not going to happen.

At no point did I say you should stop using Firefox, because the more people who use it, the better it will get, and maybe someday I will make the switch, but it's not a bad thing to hear why people don't use it. I like IE, I like how it renders pages, I don't like how the w3c put restrictions on the width CSS, and like was said before, if you can make it work, then it shouldn't be invalid, it should be blah blah blah.

It's 6:30am here, and I need sleep, but I think I am done with this discourse, since I have learned a couple things, and thats why I joined the forum in the first place

Whe I read this tomorrow, I am probably going to be confused by my sentences, so, it's not your fault if you are too

Don't think I'll get involved in the overall argument here. Both time and the fact almost everything has been said restrict me there!

It would just be good to point out that the W3C do not restrict width in CSS - unless you know something I don't, if you do could you qualify the argument?

This is a good discussion, and many interesting points have been raised. In particular CptAwesome I like the fact that you don't use Firefox but do bother test designs with it, much the same way people that have switched from IE must do the same. Also, if you like IE stick with it, moving will only mean you have to learn a new application. Those who moved away bothered to do so because they dislike IE so much that they deemed it worth the time expenditure to move.

Ah, but surely you had to be dis-satisfied with IE in order to be even looking for an alternative?

(personally I use Opera and Firefox - and by no means like the way IE ruins my beautifuly standards-compliant code )

lol, the more you learn the css, the more you'll learn how bad IE' support of it is! Actually the biggest annoyance is not being able to set height % properly, that is one thing that css lacks - although I believe it will be implemented in css3

Hm, what width restrictions are you referring to? This is an odd complaint... nothing has a width restriction that it shouldn't. If you use display:block and width in CSS, you can assign dimensions to anything. And yes, it will validate.
Edit: missed your post.

CptAwesome wrote: I guess the biggest problem with any browser, or website, is the person using it. Guns don't kill people, people kill people.

Hm OK, thinking in gun terms, here's what I see:

- Even if guns don't kill people and people kill people, it is no excuse for making a faulty gun.

- If you make a .22 calibre semi-auto pistol, you can't claim it's a .50 calibre auto machine gun appropriate for industrial grade usage, just because you use a different classification system within your company.

- When users in the 18th century became used to loading matchlocks, it didn't stunt innovation in firearms development, such as the flintlock. This facet of the analogy is appropriate because a large number of people swear by tabbed browsing, pop up blocking and extensions as significant improvements. This also applies to standardised XHTML and cross-compatibility. (Admittedly, the flintlock took time to be adopted since its inception -- but in internet time, the W3C and its recommended specs have been around for long enough.)

I could go on in this line but I won't. The gun analogy only works as far as user experience and the effect of MS on innovation goes. Security doesn't fit. The W3C standards and Firefox issues also involve free and open usage/development of software for users, and free and open usage/development of specs for developers.

You might think I'm being harsh here, but I'd like to know some of these "good concepts" MS/IE has. Their only advantage I can think is in being tied to the Windows desktop so tightly and thus having a large user base. (I, more than you, would like to see this concept of a larger user base transferred to other better browsers. )

I'm sure we all have anecdotes re family members switching browsers... I swapped IE for Firefox on the family computer and no one had an issue with it. My parents don't use tabbed browsing but they are grateful for pop up and ad blocking. Otherwise, as far as they're concerned, it's all the same.

Exactly Abishek - most users don't know the differences and don't care, as long as they can surf the Internet. Which links nicely with your point about IE being integrated with Windows, most users don't even realise they have a choice and when they find this out they really don't care, because IE does the job they need it to.

Well, to explore the gun analogy a little further, tabbed browser, popup blocking, etc, those are bells and whistles in my view, containing it within one window isn't that big a deal, IE to a certain perspective is tab browsing, because it's all on the Start bar, since it's part of windows.

Intergrating a popup blocker into the browser itself, again isn't that much of an innovation, since popup blockers for IE existed, they just hadn't be made part of the browser itself, all Firefox did was merge that concept with the release of their browser.

As for extensions, toolbars, and active-X have been around for how many IE versions? People have just learned how to exploit them, and honestly, there is no way to be 100% sure that nothing bad, in terms of extensions can be made for Firefox, the makers will just have to be a little trickier.

I unfortunatly have not used Firefox long enough to know what it can't do in all regards, I seem to recall some issues with different media formats, but I might be thinking back to a previous Mozilla client. One thing I saw that was odd was cookie handling. I don't know if it's a good or a bad thing that IE does this, but if you make a cookie for domain.com, on mozilla/firefox (last time I checked) it won't work on domain.com and vice versa. I thought that was an interesting difference.

Something else which Microsoft depricated (as of 6.0), I think for security reasons, was the http://user:password@www.domain.com authentication scheme, it still works for FTP though.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/ MSDN is quite extensive, so it's not open, it's fairly complete from my memory of it.

IE's lack of cross-platformedness is going to be its undoing. The Mac IE (the couple times I used it) seemed to be a half assed attempt at making a decent browser, and I am sure the Mac community is pleased as punch about Safari, is Firefox available for Mac? I don't keep up on my Apple stuff. I think there is about a .01% chance that you'll see IE on Linux, and an even smaller one that Microsoft had anything to do with it.

Like I said, someday, I will be on Linux, and I will be using Firefox, but that day is not today.

If I had to compare the IE on Windows to the IE on the Mac, I would say that the one on Mac isn't "half-assed." It is a lot more standards compliant than that of the Windows counter part.
From my experience with Safari, I found that it wasn't as good (as IE) and prefered IE (on Mac).
And yes, Firefox is availiable on Mac.

Having used all the major browsers out there, I still prefer Firefox over them all. Simply because it is availiable across all major OS platforms out there and because it is/has everything that I ever need in a browser.