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Is it finally time to abandon IE?

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nontroppo:
Is it finally time to abandon IE?

It was finally time to abandon IE numerous years ago. We each have our issues, and IE is mine. I do think IE has been far more a victim of significant attacks over the years (and that is not only because it is used more). MS have spent large resources trying to patch it up and IE7 is much better than the shambles of earlier releases. There are reports and statistics that we can discuss back and forth, I've been there before and don't have the energy to redebate the evidence for IEs worse record, but I think a strong case can be made for it[1].

But when a product with such a poor track record also got no significant engineering spent on its core duty (rendering and presenting HTML) since IE4, and so fully destroyed successful employment of open standards that would have accelerated and facilitated the internet to grow, then that product gets my contempt. IEs half-assed rendering, its failure to follow even proper core underlying protocols like HTTP/1.1, the horrendous mishmash of proprietary and non-proprietary ECMAScript, forcing sites to poor unsemantic markup obfuscating content sharing, the weak user facing user interface, slow performance, and so on gets it in a unique position as the only piece of software I could say I passionately dislike. It has caused legions of web devs endless wasted hours of hacking and their contempt was on full show when MS opened up IE7 and now IE8 to more public scrutiny. IE is still like a sloth smoking opium on supporting technology that would benefit us all as end users. This can only be interpreted as MS using IE as the way to impede effective competition.

I see nothing that is redeeming for it; it is "good enough" only if you ignore the damage it has done and will do to the web we all cherish and depend on so much.

Phew, thats better  :P
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[1] And smart users can always ensure their protection, knowing the workarounds still doesn't negate the flaws being there in the first place.

Darwin:
Go on, nontroppo, tell us what you really think. Don't mince your words and beat around the bush - give it to us straight up, we can take it!

Shades:
My nLite'd XP installation (meaning: IE and OE were removed, next to some services I deemed unnecessary) has a lot of problems with the scanning software from HP. I get continuously errors ( at a rate of 3 per second) because this software requires IE to build its interface.  :down:

Luckily I was "born again" when I laid my hands for the first time on a piece of software called Phoenix 0.5. That was the name of Firefox before Mozilla was forced to change names (for the uninitiated). After that encounter I was already more than happy to drop IE completely.

Ah, those were happy times on the net with Win2000Pro (SP2), security through obscurity and a piece of software called: zolt (a service that removed the writing ability of the File System, not even the administrator was able to write a single bit!) without being hindered by NAT, firewall or anti-virus on a 5mbit always-on connection :)

Too bad the interface from zolt is not nice to work with. Because of the increase of (legitimate) disc activity with XP, the flaws in the interface of zolt became too annoying (even for me), else I still would be using it today.

Ah well, it's all a distant memory now...just where IE belongs as well.

cmpm:
I have found, as you all have I'm sure. That sometimes a link will execute IE without warning. Legit links that trigger IE for some reason and will not use Firefox.

I suppose that is the sites build or preferences or something. I don't know much about it. But it would be nice to have some warning. We all know windows update or Microsoft update will use IE when initiated manually.

There should be something to warn of a browser initiating, with a chance to stop it. Especially when there is a major security issue with it. Some sort of notice to click to proceed or halt operations when it's a browser other then what you have designated as the default.

There probably is in some of these security programs or -maybe- windows itself. Can it be blocked by a firewall and alternately let it run or not?

I haven't used IE since my last manual update, and the last time it kicked in for some site that I don't remember. Maybe I'll start a list of what sites initiate IE while clicking links in FF. It don't happen much, but I get an occasional surprise. I'm a pretty safe web surfer in general. Links to links and more links are not as safe though.

f0dder:
I've never seen a website launch IE when I'm browsing around in firefox... it does happen with poorly coded applications, though.

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