This was brought up at least twice now in the thread. Please read it before saying stupid things like that.
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Browser Wars, Part I (aka Browser Discussion)
- Thread starter Falthor
- Start date
It's not stupid at all, and you're deluding yourself if you think Firefox (or whatever) is best for everybody. All he wants is something to view web pages with, and IE, despite its flaws, does it well enough.
End-user convenience is more important than you seem to think.
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surskitty
「にがいのは いやだ」って…
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But when it's costing web developers much more time to cater to IE users....
Christ, what is up with the Firefox assumptions? Did I say anywhere that I wanted to him to start using Firefox?
Eevee
usually right
"Good enough" is the greatest enemy of software development.
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Then blame the IE devs, not the users.
On the development side of things, it is, yes. Not on the user side.
I could learn regexes to change some strings in a text file I have, or I could use Find & Replace. Assuming the replacements I'm wanting to make aren't that complex, I'd rather use the latter. Even though regular expressions (Firefox) can do things that Find & Replace (IE) can't do, for replacing simple strings (day-to-day web browsing) it's not a problem to use the inferior product rather than spend time learning a new technique.
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Eevee
usually right
False analogy.
1. IE and Firefox pull from external data sources, for which I am partially responsible. You can use whatever clunky tools you want for your own stuff, but I am sure as hell going to encourage people to upgrade when it has a significant impact on me personally. You're omitting the one little factor that makes this a notable concern for me at all.
2. The problem is not generally with people who are satisfied with Find & Replace; it is with people who want to do something too complex for Find & Replace so decide to do it manually instead because that's good enough. I recently saw a Wikipedia editor complain about spending 20 minutes deleting every few lines from some table markup; this could be done in a decent text editor in a fraction of that time. Good enough wastes unfathomable amounts of user time, too.
1. IE and Firefox pull from external data sources, for which I am partially responsible. You can use whatever clunky tools you want for your own stuff, but I am sure as hell going to encourage people to upgrade when it has a significant impact on me personally. You're omitting the one little factor that makes this a notable concern for me at all.
2. The problem is not generally with people who are satisfied with Find & Replace; it is with people who want to do something too complex for Find & Replace so decide to do it manually instead because that's good enough. I recently saw a Wikipedia editor complain about spending 20 minutes deleting every few lines from some table markup; this could be done in a decent text editor in a fraction of that time. Good enough wastes unfathomable amounts of user time, too.
Most computer users don't know how to install software. Most computer users also haven't heard of other web browsers.
By all means encourage people to upgrade, but don't spew vitriol when they value their own convenience better than yours.
And in that case a regex would be appropriate. Hence why I restricted the domain to changes that "aren't that complex."
Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending IE's backwardness. I love application/xhtml+xml. But there are times when I'm not on my own computer, and Internet Explorer is the only browser that's installed. (No, I don't have Firefox on a flash drive, and I would rather use any browser from IE to Lynx if it's already installed on the computer rather than fill it up with useless programs.) My dad still uses Netscape because that's what he's had since 1999. Some people think that little blue e is the Internet. Blaming people like this for using browsers that make you curse and swear as you fix CSS bugs is silly and won't get anyone anywhere.
Eevee
usually right
Hence why your analogy was bad.
You are sure making a large cognitive leap here. Yes, I am annoyed when people who understand the problem still adamantly refuse to even try out any browser besides IE just because they don't feel like it. I don't see how this implies that I am out to get your tech-unsavvy grandma and would beat her in the face given the chance.
Ah, but you forget something in your little Find and Replace rant:
I AM FINE WITH WHAT FIND AND REPLACE DOES
If, for some reason I need to do something that Find and Replace CAN'T do what I need it to do, then I will find a alliterative. If I don't NEED to do that, than why should I? I have what I need, it does what it needs to do, and I am familer with it's workings. Just because you seem to think everyone needs "Finding and Fixing words" or what-have-you, for the sheer reason as that it exist, and that you think "Finding and Fixing words' is better, get a reality check, okay?
Now, I'm not saying Find and Replace is better than the other product, I'm just saying that I just use what I have if it's all I need for what it does.
Eevee
usually right
Swing and a miss.
You don't even know what alternatives do. You don't even know what alternatives are available, so when you do need something else, the first instinct most people have is to waste time doing it manually or do a half-assed job. Sometimes, alternatives can do things most non-super-nerds hadn't even heard of.
In Ubuntu out of the box, I can resize a window by holding Alt and dragging it anywhere in the window with the right mouse button. I don't have to find the edges or care where they are; I just hold a key and drag, and it resizes from the nearest corner. Did you know that was possible? Can you imagine how incredibly useful that is without having done it; how much nicer it is to have another source of time-suck and frustration merely vanish? Would you even imagine that's possible and look for a product that can do it?
Keyboard shortcuts are another grand example; even the most basic text-editing ones. I have over and over watched people press right-arrow multiple times instead of End, or press up a lot (or use a scrollbar) instead of Ctrl-Home, or click between tabs instead of Ctrl-Tab, etc. Loads of people don't seek them out because it doesn't occur to them, and even if it does, they don't learn them because what they have is good enough. Good enough makes people slow and clumsy and prevents them from finding better ways to do their work that could save them thousands of hours later.
People are incredibly unreceptive to new tools that could make things way easier for them with a minimal input of effort and it drives me bonkers. You're doing it right now; you're getting angry and snide because I'm merely taking the position that, hey, maybe there are better tools out there.
This has nothing to do with using some cool shiny toy because it exists. I am an OCD nerd. I do not recommend software or methodology lightly, and if I am wrong about an option then I am deeply interested to hear why. I've spent weeks looking for a music player app that did everything I wanted it to.
I brought up find and replace because powerful editors have regular expression support. The upshot of this is that you can say things like "remove all the spaces at the end of every line" or "find everything that looks like a phone number" in a matter of seconds. Did you know this was possible? Would you have thought to look for something better if you had to do one of these tasks? Would you even have known what to look for?
Those tasks are not impossible to do manually; they will just take you a while and be more prone to error. So why would you look for a better way to do something you can already do?
Evolutionary
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It's true some people think that Internet Explorer is the internet not just a browser out of many. I used to think that little 'e' symbol WAS the whole internet. Most schools seem to have it, or at least where I live. I'm not saying it isn't bad, I'm just pointing out lots of kids think IE is the internet and you can hardly blame people for using it if they've used it there whole life and have been taught where everything is when they're a little kid. I use Firefox so people wouldn't annoy me to death just to get it.
Doctor Jimmy
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Internet Explorer
1. Speed: Using this registry hack, IE becomes almost as fast as Firefox or Opera. In fact, some pages load faster.
2. Compatability: Most websites (OK, maybe not most...but some) are comatable withthe shitty IE standards.
3. Integration: IE uses native theming (aero in Vista, a solid, native color for the address and tab bar in XP) to integrate with the operating system. Whenever I upload a file to someplace (Tinypic, email attachments, etc), a native explorer window is used, complete with the favorties sidebar and the search box. Other browsers I've used, like Opera, don't have this feature.
4. RSS: IE has a really simple RSS page, that loads headers, content, and images. While Opera has this feature, the email-like layout of it is kind of not productive. Firefox only has headers, and while this is OK, I prefer seeing the content on the RSS page rather than loading the full page.
5. Security: Whenever I download something from the internets, there's a yellow bar at the top that warns me of a download. I have to approve the download first before doing it. Firefox doesn't have this feature, although it does ask you where to download to beforehand, which IE can also do.Nevermind the security, I just opened a virus from some hellhole on the interbutts. Its IE's fault too, probably ;_;
6. Interface: IE has two toolbars, compared to the four enabled by default on Firefox (menu, address, bookmarks, tab). There's also no menu bar needed for IE. This matches with other applications, like Office '07 and WMP. The interface is simple, and contains mostly icons with little text.
7. Alphabetized favorites: When organizing the links in the favorites folder in Windows by name, the favorites in IE7 are the same, and are in alphabetical order. I find this easier to find bookmarks with.
8. User account files: each browser uses a different kind of cookie managment system. For IE, the cookies are induvidual files stored in a folder somewhere in C:\Windows. Opera uses a single file with the cookies embedded inside. Firefox's cookies are stored in the user's folder (C:\users\<username>\AppData). I currently have Firefox and IE installed on my PC. That means I have two different sets of cookies stored on my machine, thus having twice the amount of cookies. If I have tracking cookies on my computer, like from casalemedia or Google, then that means I have twice the intrusive robot invaders scanning through my browsing history. The solution: only have one browser. In my eyes, Firefox and IE are equal in speed and in basic features, so why do I need both of them installed? I figure, if I use IE more than I use Firefox, then I'll probably uninstall Firefox and have IE as my main browser.
9. Old school:
Clicking the blue "e" has never been more fun. That yellow swoosh on the icon is just fantastic.Not.
tl;dr: I use IE7and break the internet while doing so
1. Speed: Using this registry hack, IE becomes almost as fast as Firefox or Opera. In fact, some pages load faster.
2. Compatability: Most websites (OK, maybe not most...but some) are comatable with
3. Integration: IE uses native theming (aero in Vista, a solid, native color for the address and tab bar in XP) to integrate with the operating system. Whenever I upload a file to someplace (Tinypic, email attachments, etc), a native explorer window is used, complete with the favorties sidebar and the search box. Other browsers I've used, like Opera, don't have this feature.
4. RSS: IE has a really simple RSS page, that loads headers, content, and images. While Opera has this feature, the email-like layout of it is kind of not productive. Firefox only has headers, and while this is OK, I prefer seeing the content on the RSS page rather than loading the full page.
5. Security: Whenever I download something from the internets, there's a yellow bar at the top that warns me of a download. I have to approve the download first before doing it. Firefox doesn't have this feature, although it does ask you where to download to beforehand, which IE can also do.
6. Interface: IE has two toolbars, compared to the four enabled by default on Firefox (menu, address, bookmarks, tab). There's also no menu bar needed for IE. This matches with other applications, like Office '07 and WMP. The interface is simple, and contains mostly icons with little text.
7. Alphabetized favorites: When organizing the links in the favorites folder in Windows by name, the favorites in IE7 are the same, and are in alphabetical order. I find this easier to find bookmarks with.
8. User account files: each browser uses a different kind of cookie managment system. For IE, the cookies are induvidual files stored in a folder somewhere in C:\Windows. Opera uses a single file with the cookies embedded inside. Firefox's cookies are stored in the user's folder (C:\users\<username>\AppData). I currently have Firefox and IE installed on my PC. That means I have two different sets of cookies stored on my machine, thus having twice the amount of cookies. If I have tracking cookies on my computer, like from casalemedia or Google, then that means I have twice the intrusive robot invaders scanning through my browsing history. The solution: only have one browser. In my eyes, Firefox and IE are equal in speed and in basic features, so why do I need both of them installed? I figure, if I use IE more than I use Firefox, then I'll probably uninstall Firefox and have IE as my main browser.
9. Old school:
EveeSkitty said:
Clicking the blue "e" has never been more fun. That yellow swoosh on the icon is just fantastic.
tl;dr: I use IE7
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Evolutionary
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Doctor Jimmy
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I like both IE and Firefox. However, IE has some features, explained above, that are hard to ignore. Which is why I use it more. It has some flaws as well, which is why I'm not so sure I want this as my main browser.
Eevee
usually right
"Almost" is an advantage?
Gecko browsers go to great pains to match native theming. Opera, Safari, and Chrome go to great pains to be assholes.
Firefox doesn't only have headers. It just only shows the summary, like Safari.
I don't really understand why you would want to read a single RSS feed in the first place; presumably it's just a different view of a fully-fledged HTML page, right? Why not read that? And if you want to read several, use Google Reader or get a newsreader like Sage.
What's the difference? Asking what to do with a file sure sounds like confirmation. Off the top of my head, only Safari will cheerfully download files out of the box with no confirmation or any other indication that it's doing anything.
IE has two toolbars because it crams an unrelated mass of menus onto the tabbar, greatly reducing the tabbar's usable space. There are a multitude of ways of reclaiming the space taken by Firefox's menu bar if you really want to, and of course the bookmarks toolbar is unnecessary and easily removed. Opera starts with menu/address/tab, but again I've seen some impressive minimalization done -- far better than IE will allow you to do. Safari has the same set as Firefox, but of course the menu bar isn't part of the window on its native platform.
If you really want a minimal UI, you should either play with a more customizable browser or use Chrome, which has just a tabbar and address bar out of the box and no cruft on the tabbar.
This raises the question of why you are organizing links in the Windows Favorites folder in the first place.
Every major browser trivially allows you to sort bookmarks by name.
Doctor Jimmy
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Een though it might only be "almost" as fast, it certainly feels a lot faster than Firefox. In IE, whenever a page is done loading, the spinning cursor goes away and the page is done loading. Firefox can load the content quickly, but then it hangs for a while to load the rest (I'm using Adblock Plus BTW)
I have multiple RSS feeds. Firefox makes it easier to find induvidual articles, but IE has the content and images as well. Since IE doesn't have Adblock Plus (IE7Pro doesn't work as well), viewing a simpler page without ads is better.
I tried Chrome before several times. While it is a good browser, its not as stable as Firefox or IE. There isn't a bookmarks manager in the beta build (there is in the testing build), and the interface is too simple and has too little features.
I know Safari can do this...but Firefox? I'll have to check that out.
Like I said some posts ago, I use both Firefox and IE. I like all of the current browsers, including Opera and Chrome. But until most websites stop working in IE, or until I get tired of it, I'll use it. It works with everything, and while other browsers have some features that IE doesn't have, the main thing that I'm focused on is going to web sites and web applications using a modern browser. No, I'm not a stubborn asshole either, I've used plenty of browsers. IE, Firefox, Opera, Chrome, etc. all have CSS1-2, Javascript, and Ajax enabled, and most websites have those. So, unless if there's some feature or something I haven't heard about that will make me switch, I'll continue to use a web browser that has these features enabled. And for now, that is IE.
EDIT: I just tried out the testing builds of Firefox 3.1, and they're so much faster than IE. I might use this for now on...FF3.1 Beta 1 is slower than IE, however, and those are more stable than Minefield. So it depends on how reliable the testing builds are, and if they're worth it. Like I said, web pages work almost the same way in IE as they do in other browsers.
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Eevee
usually right
What do you mean by 'the rest'? Images?
Er, but Firefox DOES have adblock, so why do you need to view the feed..?
Whatever you use, seriously, try Google Reader.
Right-click anything in the bookmarks menu or manager: 'sort by name'.
That's just it. IE's CSS2 and Javascript support are abysmal (in ways that are often undocumented or worse) and cause endless headaches for developers. It's also made zero inroads into supporting much else, like SVG or MathML or aPNG or CSS3 or HTML5 or XHTML or any number of other cool tools everyone has to avoid using. It's even forcing a lot of apps that could be open and inspectable into being Flash apps, because IE itself is clueless. If it were a decent browser with a good track record of keeping up with Web trends, I wouldn't give half a crap what people use.
Other browsers have adblock, bookmark keywords, fully-featured feed readers, ctrl-tab previews, BitTorrent support, mouse gestures, session management, desktop shortcuts to chromeless Web apps, instant-search history...