Slowplay.com » Internet Explorer: Rock Solid?

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Maybe it’s your OS.

I use firefox and mozilla with linux
and I don’t have any of the problems you mentioned.

Comment by Eric — February 10, 2005 @ 9:07 pm
i think you are worrying about surface problems with the progressive rendering engine that actually makes Firefox faster than IE. if you would be patient i think that you could learn to wait the extra seconds it takes for the table formats of most pages to load fully. i have never looked back since i moved to Mozilla 1.7 before trying out Firefox 0.8 a few months ago. and nothing in the updates has let me down.

Comment by peter — February 10, 2005 @ 9:21 pm
i have firefox and the yahoo toolbar with no problems. adaware consistently finds me clean unlike ie.

Comment by tom — February 10, 2005 @ 9:24 pm
You don’t like firefox because you don’t like the way it renders links. Yet, you stick with IE even though page source only works 50% of the time, has many many bugs and annoying pop-up windows?

Comment by andrew — February 10, 2005 @ 9:32 pm
IE rock solid? I have a bridge that might interest you.

Comment by ludios — February 10, 2005 @ 9:33 pm
There is a extension for Firefox called “Google pagerank status”, it displays the PR of sites in firefox.

Add the extension “GooglePreview” also and look again.

:)

i havent touched IE for many many month, i cant remember when, since version 0.5 or 0.6.

Comment by Zaak — February 10, 2005 @ 9:41 pm
I use Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Netscape and Opera on a regular basis, on both PC & Macintosh to test my websites on.

Using all browsers regularily, Firefox seems to be the most stable, fastest and also nicest to use, bar a few features such as new windows open to the right and slightly below the current window (Safari has this worked out nicely). All in all, Firefox seems to use CSS stylesheets much better than IE, doesn’t cache images that would usually require a restart in IE and is much more straightforward to use the bookmarks etc.

Try Firefox.

Just for a day, but don’t let any old habits stop you from enjoying your internet experience, by shopping around for a better browser you will ensure that the best browsers will stay alive, not just the best marketed.

Nuff said!

Comment by Yari — February 10, 2005 @ 9:43 pm
Showing a graph which illustrates that IE is used by more uses than Firefox does not mean IE is the superior web browser, it just means that IE is what’s built in to windows at most users don’t realize that they have another option. I honestly laughed outloud when you wrote “I have Firefox, I’ve tried Firefox, but I don’t use Firefox. The main reason being it’s not Internet Explorer.” The fact that Firefox isn’t IE is probably one of the most common reason to use Firefox.

P.S. There are already virii out that specifically target Microsoft’s Anti-spyware utility. Use SpySweeper and/or Ad-aware, they’ll do a much better job than anything Microsoft releases.

Comment by Phooey — February 10, 2005 @ 9:57 pm
Obviously, you have not tried “tabbed” browsing in FF. If you had, you would be wanting to slap Bill Gates.

Comment by dg — February 10, 2005 @ 9:58 pm
I haven’t decide which one is better??? Please, any comment would help, and PLUS, explain the different between each of their own unique feature???

–THANK YOU—

Comment by Wil — February 10, 2005 @ 10:03 pm
dg: The tabbed browsing is excellent, I agree.

I’m not trying to bash Firefox, just saying it hasn’t been good enough yet to get me to change from IE. When you grow accustomed to things it’s hard to change, even to a superior product.

Comment by Eric Anderson — February 10, 2005 @ 10:12 pm
here are the Firefox features:

http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/central.html
https://addons.update.mozilla.org/extensions/

Comment by Zaak — February 10, 2005 @ 10:13 pm
I think you have a couple of problems first you’re resistant to change. I quote:

“The main reason being it’s not Internet Explorer. IE has grown on me and it will be hard to convert me over.”

Also you find it hard to adapt to changing circumstances. I quote:

“Every time I take a run with Firefox I’ll try to click a link, it moves because the content wasn’t quite finished loading, causing me to instantly copy the current URL into the clipboard, click the big red X, and then click the big cursive E.”

Someone might do that once, twice, three times or even ten but eventually people adapt to new software.

I don’t see a browser problem here I see a mental problem that is preventing you from experiencing the best on the web, firefox of course, and most likely the best in life. Go see a shrink.

Comment by Wayne Reid — February 10, 2005 @ 10:24 pm
:-)

Help with switching from IE to FF:

http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/switch.html

Comment by Zaak — February 10, 2005 @ 10:28 pm
Eric,

“Mouse Gestures” are the boom :0) If you haven’t, give them a try.

dg

Comment by dg — February 10, 2005 @ 10:29 pm
Internet Explorer: Rock Solid? Solid Crap, Every single line of it. Just like every thing else Gates touches. Microsoft didn’t write the Anti-spyware program they just bought a company and then like everything else Microsoft does they threw it to their 30 million beta testers..Oops I mean customers. Why throw open the door to anyone that wants to take a look in your computer. That is internet explorer, one big gaping hole, looking for suckers to throw into the bottomless pit. nah only kidding I love Bill….. yeh right!!!

Comment by Sick of loser Bill and his trash. — February 10, 2005 @ 10:37 pm
I don’t know if the author will actually read this… but I think he is a bloody idiot. IE 6.0 is like a piece of swiss cheese! Full of holes. I’m wondering if your brain is composed of swiss.

Comment by Chad — February 10, 2005 @ 10:54 pm
If you can’t figure out how much better Firefox is than IE within 20 minutes - how did you ever make the leap from abacus to PC in the first place?

Comment by Mike N — February 10, 2005 @ 10:55 pm
Fire Fox and Thunder bird I found after using for nearly six months are the best alternate to IE.Avant browser in association with IE is a good change,try this.

Comment by Munnalal Baranga — February 10, 2005 @ 10:56 pm
Try K-Melon if you want speedy and safe. Anything but Internet Exploder!

I suppose you also use Outlook? You, sir, are just asking to be bit in the ass.

Comment by Matthew Carrick — February 10, 2005 @ 10:57 pm
Chad: I don’t think my brain is full of holes, but if it was I would be too stupid to know it, so that’s an impossible question to answer.

Mike N: It’s better in some ways, but not in every way. It’s different.

Matthew: Yep, Outlook.

Comment by Eric Anderson — February 10, 2005 @ 11:02 pm
You are an MS idiot and know nothing about development.

Comment by pat — February 10, 2005 @ 11:04 pm
Tabbed browsing - nuff said

Comment by Tabber — February 10, 2005 @ 11:08 pm
Your nutz, go fire fox, all the experts are so what about that small problem, your crazy do you know how much explorer acts like spyware? I could build a legal case against microsoft and the government and hit them with a major law suit and i’m not even a professional at computers!

Comment by Thundergod — February 10, 2005 @ 11:09 pm
All windows based systems from old bill there acts and behaves like spyware etc, it is wide open to the world let alone old billy boy! Oh and norton it seems they work for the governments too. I can go on and on but why bother, just try and enjoy and keep your self safe, the best thing and safest thing to do… unplug your system, now that is top security advice from old thundergod here!

Comment by Thundergod — February 10, 2005 @ 11:11 pm
You prefer IE because…um..um…

Hold on a sec, it’s coming. OH YAH. You like it because it’s been around, and has a known reputation…

Of being full of security holes, buggy, ill-working features, and my 10 year old could hack his way through it to your PC.

Yup. Glad to hear that some folks are all about the aesthetics of a millisecond-faster loading time.

Enjoy IE. You and it are a perfect match.

Comment by Reisu — February 10, 2005 @ 11:18 pm
Give Eric a break. Judging by his article list, it looks like his tech know-how takes a back seat to his expertise in foreign affairs.

Comment by a one time visitor — February 10, 2005 @ 11:20 pm
I’ve been using Firefox for a few days now, and I will NEVER go back to IE. I used IE forever and never liked it, finally there is something better. Mozilla FireFox and Thunderbird absolutely dominate IE and Outlook. Before downloading FF, I heard rumors of it being a RAM hog, but I did tests with it and IE open simultaneously, and in many instances IE used more RAM than did FF.

The nicest thing about FireFox is how customizable it is.

Extentions I currently have installed:
Bandwidth Tester
ForecastFox
Google Pagerank Status
Feedview
Auto Copy
Tabbrower Preferences
FireFTP

Comment by Aaron N — February 10, 2005 @ 11:28 pm
[…edited]

And honestly, is one incremental rendering “bug” (which isn’t really even a bug), that strikes maybe 1% of the time (0% of the time for me, but whatever), really worth switching back to a poorly written browser with security vulnerabilities up the yin-yang?

And as a web person, have you ever used the really really powerful extensions available (for free!) for Firefox? LiveHTTPHeaders and the Web Developer Toolbar are INCREDIBLY useful and powerful! You cannot fathom what you’re missing.

Get a clue.

Comment by Anonymous — February 10, 2005 @ 11:36 pm
When I seen this on Google news home page my first thought was Opera had gone over to the dark side and sold out to Billy… IE rock solid? When did it freeze over? Someone has already mention tab browsing which is build into FF. FF also allows one to personalize their own browser to their own needs with the use of extensions. MS will never allow the users of IE that kind of power.
I started using FF back when .9 was released and I haven’t used IE since, well other then windows update (has everyone downloaded the most recent IE patch update?) and few other sites I have to use for work and these pages insist on using active X. which there is a extension for FF I haven’t bothered though, with all the grief active X has caused. BTW there’s an ext for FF that will launch IE for such pages…FF has some great stuff in the hopper, MS with IE is still patching hole after hole. No browser is perfect and IE has perfected that part of being rock solid.

Comment by Anonymous — February 10, 2005 @ 11:47 pm
my friend works at microsoft, he recently got in trouble at work for having firefox as his default browser. microsoft is ibm 1978. they suck.

Comment by Anonymous — February 10, 2005 @ 11:50 pm
Mr. Anderson,
For what it’s worth, since I have cable modem internet, I am interested in a more secure setup than Microsoft can provide. I have been able to accomplish this by:
replacing Outlook with Thunderbird
replacing MS Office with Sun Staroffice
using Firefox instead of IE
using free antivirus by Grisoft
using Spybot-search and destroy
replacing WinXp firewall with Hardware firewall

Been doin it for a year now, with no problems. If security is an issue, then you must look at the whole package. Unfortunately, I have to stick with win OS for now.

Comment by Uriah Heep — February 11, 2005 @ 12:10 am
I agree with the author. I’ve tried FF but it’s not easy to trust another browser now. It’s … different. IE does the job and I’m used to it. About security, my IE is set to highest security all the time (except when absolutely necessary). Yes I miss some activex content but better safe than sorry (I wish the annoying activex warning box could be disabled though…)

Comment by NicePerson — February 11, 2005 @ 12:27 am
“According to our logs here is the current breakdown of our visitors for this month”
Eric, I wouldn’t trust your logs. Many apps out there that spoof the user agent. Firefox has an extension that does exactly that. User agent switcher. Even works on https pages. Check your logs I was annom a couple of post above. Should see in your logs Privoxy/3.0 (Anonymous). Now using Firefox ext. IESUCKS,Linux 2.6.22.1,RULES
Come on Eric, join the dark side. Dumb IE and MS and consider a different OS as well. oh, like say, SUSE.

Comment by Mark — February 11, 2005 @ 12:30 am
IE is suffering from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) and Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE). The worst thing M$ ever did was integrate the POS (Piece of Sh_t) browser known as IE into Windows. Windows would be a halfway decent product if it wasn’t for IE. It just goes to show what a lack of decent desktop OS competition allows. Slop.

Comment by Lotus Eaters — February 11, 2005 @ 12:44 am
Wow, I wonder how the people commenting here feel about their religion of choice.
Calling someone clueless for their browser choice simply points out your own lack of clue. Bashing a product because you don’t like the manufacturer is just pathetic, maybe someday you’ll have the opportunity to make serious decisions in the real world. I would love to see anyone justify deploying 45,000 Linux or Apple workstations at the bank I work for (if you succeed, you can take first six months of support calls).
And finally, all you clueless people using that slow Firefox browser? Get a clue, lynx is by far the fastest, most secure browser available.

Comment by Jim — February 11, 2005 @ 12:56 am
Mark from comment 34. If you’re going to be an annoying and arrogant advocate, at least take the time to learn about kernels versions. There is no 2.6.22.1 kernel. uname -r first next time.
Oh, and AIX 5L 5.2 rules.

Comment by Jim — February 11, 2005 @ 1:02 am
In reply to #36

Randomness in reply to your comments follows.

I think Firefox is a decent product, but I prefer the full Mozilla suite myself.

1. I’m one of those poor bastards who works in the Security department of a Fortune 50, and have to deal with annoying script kiddies, and users who refuse to follow the policies we’ve laid out, and have seen first hand how insecure IE is. With Mozilla, I can disable Java and Javascript, and then I have a browser that is amazingly secure. I can only recall a half dozen exploits for Mozilla/Firefox over the last 4 years that haven’t involved Java or Javascript in some way. By disabling them, you have a faster browser that is also about as close to Rock Solid as you can get.

2. I wholeheartedly agree about bashing another product because it’s MS. They CAN make a good product, but AFAICT, they just don’t take the time to properly vette the code, as it is cheaper not to.

3. As for pushing out Linux to an enterprise, as you mention, it’s not exactly an easy task. We have a few thousand linux boxes, but almost all of them are thin clients, which connect back to a Citrix farm. Maintaining and supporting a large linux rollout is unfortunately more difficult than witn Windows, because of the large base of Windows management tools.

4. The UAF (User Acceptance Factor) is another key part of the lack of linux adoption. In large companies (100k+ employees) most of the computing base is persons used to Windows, Outlook, Word, Excel and Powerpoint. They know what button to click to open a new email, and how to create a slide show, but nothing beyond that. They have to call the hell desk every other week to have their password reset because they’ve forgotten it, and the one they had written down under the keyboard didn’t work. Or they managed to remove a toolbar from Word, and can’t figure out how to re-add it. When they can barely operate what they have, it’s not cost effective to spend the millions of dollars required to re-train them to learn a whole new set of Linux apps.

5. Finally, business apps. Again, in a large enterprise, many of the tools that are used for conducting business, such as financials, shipping/receiving tools, inventory management, customer databases, etc. are all done in house. Except for the occasional mainframe app, they are all Windows apps, and the in house developers know how to use VC++ to write a Windows app. Large companies don’t want to spend the money on high-end programmers, they’d rather hire two lesser programmers who can theoretically do twice as much as that one. Having to hire programmers to port the critical apps to linux just isn’t going to happen. When the potential for failure is huge, and downtime means a serious loss of revenue, any CIO worthy of the name will stick with the already developed apps that work.

Mike

Comment by Mike — February 11, 2005 @ 1:41 am
lmao, in that second comment, I meant to say I disagree with bashing MS just because they are MS, but it didn’t quite come out that way.

Comment by Mike — February 11, 2005 @ 1:43 am
you poor person. writing about technology with words like its too hard to change. whatta sap.

Comment by zmanzero — February 11, 2005 @ 4:46 am
The gradual page rendering complaint you had about Mozilla Firefox is completely user-definable in the Opera web browser.

http://www.opera.com/

Opera has more features than all other web browsers by an enormous margin. The feature that you’re looking for is:

Preferences > Windows > Advanced > Loading

You get the choice of having it redraw “instantly” (in realtime), redrawing “once every N seconds” (for example set it to 5 seconds and you will have no troubles clicking links as they appear) or setting it to “when loaded” (so it will redraw it only one time, at the end).

Comment by Raven Morris — February 26, 2005 @ 2:56 pm
Firefox seems good, but I can’t use it because of the toolbars. Google toolbar is essential to me and I refuse to use anything without it.

The other big annoyance with Firefox for me is that you can’t move the file menu, so you have to have the file/buttons/address bar right at the top (where it obviously doesn’t below) and the links bar down the bottom. This is stupid. Who uses the links bar more often than the buttons and address bar? Links should be at the top and I will not touch Firefox until this issue is resolved.

Comment by John — February 26, 2005 @ 3:01 pm
To commenter #42:

The Opera web browser allows complete placement control of all functions. Put the menu wherever you want, put the toolbars, URL bar, individual buttons, etc. anywhere.

Right-click a toolbar > Customize

Then just drag them to wherever you want and use the pop-up window for advanced options.

Comment by Raven Morris — February 26, 2005 @ 3:29 pm
I just like to have all my toolbars together on one row (file menu, buttons, address bar & google bar), apart from the links bar which doesn’t belong on the same row and deserves its own row, but putting the links below all the other controls just seems crazy and totally counter-intuitive. Sadly, this is what Firefox expects you to do, and it’s really sad for me because things like this annoy me and mean I can’t use Firefox, despite it being brilliant!

Comment by John — February 28, 2005 @ 4:30 pm
I shouldn’t even bother, but can you spell ‘ignorant loser’?

Comment by Joe — May 22, 2006 @ 5:56 am

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Internet Explorer: Rock Solid?

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