IE7 Rant

[Renegade]

Well, it looks like my venture back into IE and IE7 is about to end. I haven't had time to try out FF 2.0, and I'm not about to as 1.5 is working fine (i.e. I've heard of stability issue so let's wait & see...)

But for IE... I've just about had it. I'm getting really sick of it. It's not the memory hog that FF is, but it's just slow. New tabs take too long. The mouse gesture plug-in is incredibly awkward. I just don't have time for it anymore.

On top of that, I found an annoying CSS bug in the System.Windows.Forms.WebBrowser object that just really ticks me off (not sure if it's the IE team's fault or the .NET team's fault - and I don't care much - it's still a problem).  I spent an entire day trying to track it down. No luck. That wasn't an 8 hour work day - that was from the time I got up until now - late at night and into beer time.    These things should take 2 hours max. As it stands, this stupid bug will probably take me DAYS to work around. It should take me zero seconds. If I'm lucky, I might be able to have a crummy semi-work around to do the absolute minimum that I need by abandoning the object and going with some static junk that might take me 1~2 days. Not a happy camper here...

I'll give IE a bit longer, but not much. It's seriously wearing on my nerves now. 

I really hope that the IE team gets on top of it and seriously fixes IE. I don't give a about security in IE. IE security is never as bad as the media makes out, and even when it is bad only twits that surf garbage sites get hammered by that. I just want things to work smoothly. IE7 isn't doing that at the moment. If anyone from the IE team is reading - PLEASE SPEED IE UP! And fix the WebBrowser object too - or go and complain to the .NET team about it. (3dlight and darkshadow scrollbar items don't display in the WebBrowser object at all.)

So... How is everyone else finding IE7 so far? Better than me I hope. 

[Renegade]

Oh - another thing... Selections just completely suck if you resize the text. Beyond inaccurate, they're just silly. To reproduce it, press CTRL and scroll your mouse wheel then make a selection. It's just total non-sense.

[cranioscopical]

How is everyone else finding IE7 so far? Better than me I hope.

I don't have the programming skills to bump up against the kinds of issue that you define.
I was mildly amused/annoyed when, after downloading and installing final 7, the next appearance of automatic updates insisted that it wanted to install... final 7. (I know I could have forbidden that but didn't feel like sorting out whatever mess might have ensued.)
Off topic, but while I have your ear, I was using floating ruler yesterday. Thanks for that.

[mouser]

ive been growing more and more fond of FF (v1.5), but i have to say that starting it is sooo slow that i either have to keep it running at all times, or suffer each time i launch it.  IE does not suffer this issue.  Hopefully FF2 will improve this.

[app103]

Oh - another thing... Selections just completely suck if you resize the text. Beyond inaccurate, they're just silly. To reproduce it, press CTRL and scroll your mouse wheel then make a selection. It's just total non-sense.

I tried this with AOLex/IE 6. Didn't get to the part where you try to select text yet, when I noticed something weird:



Second image is one click of the scroll wheel smaller.

It is reproduceable...on your post...even in just plain IE 6. (I had to see if it was an AOLex issue) I have never noticed something like this happening before. 

[Renegade]

FF is really good with resizing text, and IE6 was good as well. IE7 though is just wacked. When you make a selection, it's doesn't select where the mouse cursor is. It's like it's half baked between the original size and the larger size. Not critical, but annoying.

Mouser, have you noticed how slow creating new tabs is in IE7? I've found that FF (1.5) is very fast there. Then again, it does soak up a lot of RAM.

Floating Ruler - I still need to do some work there - But I've got another thing to finish up then get on to a custom dictionary application. I'll post the floating ruler at Renegade Minds when I can get around to finishing up some of the other stuff for it. (I use it quite a bit with Visual Studio when doing interfaces.)

[f0dder]

I don't give a about security in IE. IE security is never as bad as the media makes out, and even when it is bad only twits that surf garbage sites get hammered by that.

It is bad. B-A-D, BAD. In a period some years ago where I didn't run any antivirus (because I don't surf garbage sites), I got infected. Probably through a banner ad, the best I can tell. Realized I was infected after I lost half of my JPEGs and a bunch of mp3 files...

IE is a piece of shit in so many ways. But it's fast and lean, and not because "it's built into the OS" as those anti-whatever zealots claim. But security wise, it's about as a watertight as a sieve.

[Josh]

I will join in and say I've, since XP SP2, had no security related issues with IE. IE has not failed me. Before the ActiveX prompts, yes, I had gotten spyware, but not on any sites that werent "questionable". IE might have a lot of exploits found, but again, market share gets you the most attention from hackers and exploiters. Not one of these exploits, again since SP2, has affected me.

I agree with renegade that the media does make a bigger deal out of the exploits found on Windows and IE than need be. I would love to see an Apple exploit or a Linux exploit or heck, even a firefox/opera exploit, get as much press as a WinIE one does. The reason they dont, again, market share. No one cares about a product that is used by less than 10% of the market.

[f0dder]

Of course IE is attacked more than everything else, because of it's "marketshare" - that's a no-brainer. Heck, the other browsers might have just as critical flaws (though I somehow doubt it). Fact remains, though, that there are a lot of exploits for IE, and the are pretty damn nasty. Iirc, those ActiveX prompts could be bypassed when they were initially added - so much for security.

And there's a new exploit out too - http://it.slashdot.org/it/06/11/05/0147245.shtml . Yay.

It sucks that IE is so full of nasty bugs, since it's so much more lightweight than firefox...

[Renegade]

It sucks that IE is so full of nasty bugs, since it's so much more lightweight than firefox...

I'm not so sure that IE is lighter than FF. They differ. FF is a HUGE memory hog where IE is nice and light there. Very good memory management from the IE team and they did a good job there.

But when it comes to responsiveness, create a tab in IE then create a tab in FF. FF is faster. Of course it's chewing up a lot more memory, but it's still faster.

There are some really cool things in IE like the new preview tab that lets you look at all your tabs at once in a thumbnail view. Very very cool.

But the normal create tab thing and a couple other things in IE are SLOW. If the IE team can hammer out those issues, IE will truly rock hard again like it did against NN4.

I haven't looked into the security thing and whether or not the slowness of IE is partially due to memory spaces with new tabs, but then again... I don't care. I just want that speed.

I remember a while ago about some banner exploits going through. Some guys had exploited a graphics things (JPGs I think - might have been something else as the beer + memory thing may be slightly out of order ) and pushed out a ton of banners to get zombies. No matter what you do, the scum bags will always find a way... The new Vista security model will help though. Hopefully then we'll see more Mac and Linux exploits.

But I just want IE to be faster... (And for the things that are now broken to work.)

[f0dder]

Well, I'm not going to install IE7 so dunno about it's speed - but IE6 loads *MUCH* faster than firefox, both 1.5 and 2.0, also on second-time loads when files are cached. FF also seems to be a bit slower at rendering, but that's hard to measure on fast CPUs - disk loadtime is not, though

Tabbed IE "addons" like Avant and Maxthon aren't slow with tabs, btw.

[Josh]

Please note that maxthon and avant use their own tabbing engine.

[dk70]

The "banner" incident wouldnt be that on Myspace would it? Problem was not IE or XP but the fact that 1 million (I read 1 million infected!) did not upgrade to SP2 and so was asking for trouble. Headlines dont tell all story Many people who get infected cant be saved - and dont care either.

Ive forced myself to use IE7 last couple of days and certainly find Firefox is faster on the popular sites I travel. Could be due to pipelining, more caching and other tweaks. Difference not huge but noticeable on some sites, I feel the cache Also different way of using memory for sure. Differences, but not in a million years can they be deciding factor in chosing browser. Lightweight vs. hog dont make sense to me. Firefox will use availble and not used memory and ? Stability, speed, features/options is much more important, only Task Manager worries about memory. If slowdowns, crashes they are not releated to xxx amount of memory used but extension bugs, sometimes (but rarely with version 2) compatibility problems with X site, plugin bugs. There are no 1 monsterbug in Firefox making it use tons of memory for no reason at all, is what it is. Also no known monster memory leaks, may be 100s of minor bugs/leaks but that will always be the case. Firefox 3 pass Acid2 test since long, 2 do not and never will so ? Why should Firefox be identical in use and startup time to a whole different product I dont really know. If you only used programs with least memory, startup time - would you have the "best"? If that is theory uninstall as directed by Task Manager. Turn off java, javascript, flash and other buggy evils. Go minimal.

Minimize "trick" shows how Mozilla devs are thinking. No memory is released because of a little speed advantage. They have strange ideas, also wont include true RSS reader in browser - other pet ideas exists. Well, revert that to normal behavoir and where did problem go? Again shows "problem" is merely visual providing setup is healthy of course. Crash-happy, slow with more than X tabs, major problems at Gmail or other motorway and there shall be much activity at Bugzilla - rest is in general optimization/bugfixing department.

Renegade, MS devs said they used popular IE6 bug-collecting websites. Look them up, will probably have "upgraded" as well. May be fixes are avaliable, if nothing else confirmaton.

Btw, one of the reasons "Media" talks so much about IE problems is 1. There have been so many through the years and 2. Microsoft responses to problems have often been provacatively slow at best. Took a while to fix IE6... Dont forget same company introduced tabbed browsing with MSN toolbar! I dont think Mozilla will cheer about more exploits but when/if they come see what happens. You are assuming they are helpless because of increased market share and forget much of the reasoning for Firefox are IE security/problems. They either do swift cleanup, live up to promises and expectations! - or close shop. Why assume they act like MS? Would be suicidal. Opensource powers will show as best/fastest way of dealing with security problems or die out. Same goes for Opera in a way. Only Microsoft can give finger for years and get away with it. Mozilla cant - keep checking those Secunia reports. Anyway, most "issues" are based on if and if lab-conditions but make good headline or 2. How many times have you been able to make a direct line between documented exploit and real life usage? I mean outside experimental sites. Happens, but not often. Most is BS about all popular browsers after SP2 - coding makes it into popular channels with other agenda. I can think of worse user problems than a little browser, like doing simple OS upgrading (Myspace again). No reason to pad MS on back but at least follow best practices and install latest updates. Most problems will magically go away (included in best practices is foolproof test of all incomings) And do check OS/other software exploits on security sites before those of browsers - only top of iceberg. http://www.morgud.com/interests/security/dfk-threat-simulator-v2.asp I tried his old version, not doing it again. Kind of depressing unless you are living in a fort. Not even sure I should give link but shows how crap can survive and breed. Best practice should kick in, ignore link

f0dder, last chance of improving startup time could be an optimized Firefox. I use this one http://www1.plala.or.jp/tete009/en-US/software.html#FFINFO ; because it supports new spellchecker, others do not. Optimize to your cpu. Turn off antiphishing, session saving just to test. I really cant understand you consider startup time a major problem. I just restored my fat Firefox with 10 tabs, I would call it fast even! Solution is of course to minimize not close but you wont listen  FF does not in any way hog your fast computer while minimized - not unless there are other problem. You are deeply into land of personal preferences I think, some have same feelings towards new theme. Preferences is exactly what FF is good for but you cant really change much about startup speed. Adjust habits or suffer. FF quickly catches up once it gets going.

[mouser]

one of the things that INFURIATES me about microsoft is there flagrant ignoring of their gui standards..
i think the idea of user interface standardization is important, which is why i generally dislike skins.

it just boggles my mind though how often microsoft uses some weird user interface stuff that i hate.  the idea of removing the menu bar from internet explorer 7? HORRIBLE idea. wtf are these people smoking. ridiculous. it took me 15 minutes of hunting to figure out how to get it back and get to the options..

[rjbull]

The company I work for has issued an edict banning people from installing IE7, because it doesn't work with their Intranet, nor with the corporate centralised buying system.  So much for compatibility...

[f0dder]

The infection was a while ago, can't even remember if it was before or after SP2 was released - probably after, though. Wasn't on myspace - not sure where the bug crept in, but it was while a friend borrowed my computer. Hotmail checking, a couple of forums - nothing dirty or whatever.

Pipelining and caching are nice features in firefox (and shame on people running outdated webservers that break with pipelining!), it certainly does make the browsing experience better. It's not just caching that makes FF gobble up ram, though - it does seem like there's some pretty sloppy code in there.

Why should Firefox be identical in use and startup time to a whole different product I dont really know.

Because it's still "just a browser". Even a fresh install without extensions (ie, about as useful as vanilla IE) is still a good amount slower to start than IE. There isn't really any excuse for this - for FF2 they should've spent less time on stuff like forum speel hceking, and more on code cleanups.

I guess I should try out an optimized build sometime - but it "feels" a bit pointless, as I don't have problems with CPU usage, only the slow startup time. When there *is* high CPU usage, then it's because of java or flash, and you're not getting optimized builds of those

The "minimize instead of close" is symptomatic treatment instead of fixing the real problem - as a programmer, that's a pretty big insult.

[Josh]

The company I work for has issued an edict banning people from installing IE7, because it doesn't work with their Intranet, nor with the corporate centralised buying system.  So much for compatibility...

Microsoft released several beta's and indicated on said beta pages that compatbility needed to be checked. If the company was really wanting to deploy IE7, I am sure they would have tested for compatibility. People complained that Microsoft wasnt standards compliant, and now when they attempt to move closer to being such, they still get complaints because now things that once worked dont. Do people want standards compliance or do they want stuff to "just work"?

[dk70]

Same with Firefox and extensions. Even on Firefox forums you can find warnings against 2 because it "break" things. Earlier releases were no exceptions, just the nature of releasing something new. 

Canons prettty good printing tools for IE are history as well. There are probably other stories.

Minimizing Firefox instead of closing is imporant to mention since you experience long startup time, is difference 1 or 2 seconds?. You also care for memory usage so should enable that. Why let it sit on memory when not used? Might be good for slow connections/computers but I hardly notice restoring windows/tabs, an old workaround they still hang on to.

Try search Mozillazine for startup problems, high cpu usage at start or similar. Im not saying anything about IE weirdness as long as it can be fixed which occasionally is keyword for Firefox as well. Either you freak out after 1.xx second no matter what or there is a problem. If you find Firefox generally slower than IE7 there should be problem. Most can be fixed.

I still dont see how you can compare and expect same result. You can estimate or time Firefox 1 or 2 seconds slower - or "good amount" but would you not be surprised if they clocked the same? Gazillion of codelines initialized exactly same way? How likely is that? Do you think it would increase or decrease startup time for IE if it had same profile management as Firefox? Take a look at File Monitor during start and compare. Firefox will have more entries I bet, those 1-2 seconds are used So much easier to deal with these tiny problems when you feel you get more browsing power than with IE7 - or Opera for that matter. Not available elsewhere, well except other Mozilla products. Would you even be pleased if it was not "slow"? Face it, you dont like Firefox heh. Dump it. Whats wrong with Opera? - not just a browser?

[mouser]

i actually leave firefox minimized to tray when i want to use it, otherwise start time is more like 10 seconds (maybe ive got an evil extension causing that problem?).  ie based browsers start up nearly instantly.

[dk70]

You could try out Preloader https://sourceforge.net/projects/ffpreloader/ Works on 2 but seem to take out session restoring. Also I think you have to "reload" it for every change made to extensions etc. I only tried for few minutes. Dont see 10 seconds or close/start over and over so not really much benefit.

Some get high cpu usage because of mouse driver being stupid, autoscroll or whatever. Many bugs are possible. Ive also read halfdead LIVE bookmark feeds can increase startup time a lot. Could be hidden somewhere if bookmark file is huge. Clean profile should not have problems. They claim to have improved start a bit with version 2. 3 should be faster still because of new bookmarks/history format. Dont think there are any tricks to do execept perhaps preloader.

[app103]

Tabbed IE "addons" like Avant and Maxthon aren't slow with tabs, btw.

AOL Explorer is fast with the tabs too.

Do a search and read all the reviews and don't just bash it because it's AOL, it's actually a quite lovely browser.

I linked to the Softpedia page because there is quite a few comments there about it....and some that might explain why browsers like Firefox are slower to open.

[f0dder]

10seconds for starting FF sounds like a long time - probably related to dynamic bookmarks or whatever. It's not that bad for me, on a second-time launch of FF it takes around 2½ seconds before the main GUI pops up. With IE6, it's around 0.7 seconds (and pretty much the same level of instantness with other IE-based browsers).

It might be nitpickery to bitch against so short amounts of time, but it annoys me. There are some classes of applications that I don't mind take a bit of time to start, for example photoshop or vs.net. Or, well, the slow startup time still does annoy me, but it seems more justifiable there than with something as - relatively - simple as a browser.

Would you even be pleased if it was not "slow"? Face it, you dont like Firefox heh. Dump it.

I actually do like firefox, it's starting slowness just annoys me. And the symptomatic treatment is what really annoys me - hacks like preloading and minimize-instead-of-close, and then spending development time on stuff like form spell checker. Oh well.

Whats wrong with Opera? - not just a browser?

It has a few minor quirks... it's page caching is overly agressive, which is nice for speed - but means that there's often sites where I have to press Ctrl+R to get the page refreshed. Probably a problem with the site and not Opera, but the end result is the same - an annoyed end-user.

I've also had java-related crashed in Opera, and only Opera. Seemed to be a "first use of java after a computer reboot" kinda thing. Nothing major, but still annoying. And only happens with Opera.

Small rendering quirks here or there. Yes, probably with sites designed for IE. Less problems with FF though.

Built-in mail annoys me a bit, but it's not that bad. Built-in torrent support is awful and intrusive, though - took me too long figuring out how to turn it off.

It's a nice and fast browser though - around 1sec startup time on 2nd-time launches here. A bit slower than IE, but better than FF. The reason I use FF and not Opera is that there's a few more of those minor quirks in Opera than in FF, and because there isn't an extension system for Opera.

[Renegade]

it just boggles my mind though how often microsoft uses some weird user interface stuff that i hate.  the idea of removing the menu bar from internet explorer 7? HORRIBLE idea. wtf are these people smoking. ridiculous. it took me 15 minutes of hunting to figure out how to get it back and get to the options..

Hahaha~! 

Yep.

What ticks me there is that the toolbar is gone. None. Like you said, "WTF?" I want my damn STOP button back.

But the new Quick Tabs thing is uber-cool. (The far left tab - check it out.)

Right now there are a lot of very cool things in both browsers, and a mix of the two would be perfect. IE load up speed. FF tab switching speed, etc. etc.

I saw a new "mouse gestures" at work today. (I've tried another one and it really sucks in IE.) But the one at work WORKED! It was fast and smooth. I've GOT to get that into some of the new releases coming out soon. (ALTools will have some new stuff coming out, and there's some very cool stuff that you're going to HAVE to check out.) We're planning some toolbar stuff and it's really going to kick if what I've seen so far is any indication of what it will be.

[app103]

The reason why IE opens so fast is because explorer.exe is always running in the background. It's also the reason why all IE based browsers open fast.

If opera or firefox were always running in the background in a similar manner, they could be just as fast at opening.

Now if you want to see really fast, that would be my dIE browser...lacks just about every feature a browser should have...minimalism to the max...lol (but it was a lot faster than using IE on my 233mhz machine)



Thrown together out of necessity & frustration...with a sense of humor. I consider it a total piece of trash. I would have tossed it and its source in the recycle bin and never even have put it on my site, except there are actually people that love it to pieces and would be upset if I didn't make it available. Go figure. 

[f0dder]

The reason why IE opens so fast is because explorer.exe is always running in the background. It's also the reason why all IE based browsers open fast.

If opera or firefox were always running in the background in a similar manner, they could be just as fast at opening.

Wrong - I use blackbox as a shell instead of explorer.exe, and xPlorer^2 as file manager. Besides, IE is "iexplore.exe" and not "explorer.exe", and it's just a shimmy for a bunch of DLLs anyway.

Also, Opera does obviously not use IE rendering components, but still starts up nearly as fast. Good code.

Oh yes, notice that I'm timing "second-time launches" of the browsers (otherwise FF isn't just a tad slower, but absolutely horrible) - where the necessary executables and DLLs will be in the filesystem cache...