Joe Bentley
Ding Dong! Merrily on High Definition TV
posted
Just downloaded the release of IE7.
It's okay. There's a significant upgrade in features from 6, but it still pales in comparison to Firefox.
Firefox is going to stay my primary browser for the forseeable future, but like many people I go to a few sites which just don't work well with anything other then IE, so any improvement in that lackluster program is welcomed.
-------------------- "Existence has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long." - Rorschach, The Watchmen Posts: 8929 | From: Norfolk, Virginia | Registered: Jun 2002
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posted
I personally prefer IE to Firefox, IE just seems a little cleaner to me (I have been using both since beta). I also like the fact that I can view thumbnails of all of my tabs on one page in IE.
-------------------- Where are we going, and why are we in this handbasket? Posts: 782 | From: Arlington, TX | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
Ugh... don't remind me. We're knee-deep in complete regression testing with all of our web products with IE 7.0. So far nothing major but I'm just waiting for the "no longer supported" shoe to drop and we have to fork another version of our software.
-------------------- "Tis too much proved that with devotion's visage and pious action we do sugar o'er the devil himself." - Hamlet Posts: 344 | From: Pittsburgh, PA | Registered: Jun 2006
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posted
I've been using IE 7 for the last couple of weeks now.
I like the tabs, but I'm not sure if I like how they've moved everything around. I'm so used to having the menu, then buttons, then address bar. You can get the menu back if you use preferences though.
-------------------- Tom, we're flying a giant robot into space! "Safe" isn't the first word that springs to mind! - Colleen, Last Hope, Vol.2 Posts: 2710 | From: Meet me in St. Louis | Registered: Mar 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Lonely Mountain: Ugh... don't remind me. We're knee-deep in complete regression testing with all of our web products with IE 7.0. So far nothing major but I'm just waiting for the "no longer supported" shoe to drop and we have to fork another version of our software.
You must *so* be looking forward to Windows Vista.
-------------------- IIRC, it wasn't the shoe bomber's loud prayers that sparked the takedown by the other passengers; it was that he was trying to light his shoe on fire. Very, very different. Canuckistan Posts: 3694 | From: Arizona | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
Be careful, guys. I had the beta version on my computer, and when you remove some things on the computer that may NEED to be removed (I don't remember what exactly was removed in mine), the uninstall file *poof* disappears.
In addition, some websites (CVS comes to mind) and some firewall programs (my school uses Cisco Clean Access Agent) do not like it. At all.
Until my computer (and my school's firewall) insists I use IE 7.0, I'm not touching it with a 10 foot pole.
-------------------- My mom, about my nervousness with Jeopardy!: "Don't worry about it. Just get drunk and you'll do fine." Blog Just call me Mickey 2 Posts: 3295 | From: Radford, VA/Herndon, VA/Orlando, FL | Registered: Jan 2006
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posted
I downloaded it for DW, and my first thougt was that IE was trying to play catch-up with Firefox, what with the tabbed browsing and extensions and all.
I still like FF better, but I think IE 7 is much better (looking) than IE 6.
-------------------- Heisenberg may have slept here.
I got an idea... an idea so smart my head would explode if I even began to know what I was talking about. Posts: 291 | From: Greenville, SC | Registered: Apr 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Wild.Otaku: I've been using IE 7 for the last couple of weeks now.
I like the tabs, but I'm not sure if I like how they've moved everything around. I'm so used to having the menu, then buttons, then address bar. You can get the menu back if you use preferences though.
You can also toggle the menu on or off by pressing the 'alt' key. But I've had it for a couple of months (since beta 2) and I don't miss the menu any more.
-------------------- "Ladies and gentlemen, this is what is commonly known as money. It comes in all sizes, colours, and denominations - like people." Posts: 997 | From: Maidstone, UK | Registered: Jun 2006
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posted
Another beta user here. I wasn't too keen on the beta, it seemeed to have a few bugs and the tabbed browsing kept crashing on my computer. I tried Firefox, and thought it was appalling. Now IE7's been released properly (and since a fresh format of my C: drive), everything in IE7 is working perfectly now. I like all its features and it runs well with all my other apps.
-------------------- "The fact that "uvula" and "vulva" look and sound similar was just a happy coincidence." - Lainie Posts: 548 | From: England | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:I tried Firefox, and thought it was appalling.
Any particular reason why?
-------------------- All along the untrodden paths of the future, I can see the footprints of an unseen hand. Posts: 6912 | From: Flanders | Registered: Jan 2004
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posted
That's the first time I've ever heard Firefox called "appalling". I too would be interested in hearing why.
-------------------- Come on, come on - spin a little tighter Come on, come on - and the world's a little brighter Posts: 5595 | From: Columbus, OH : The Soccer Capital of America | Registered: Sep 2002
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posted
Every thing I wanted to use it for was inferior to Internet Explorer. In particular, several sites I visited (can't remember them all, sorry) displayed very oddly. I think one in particular was deviantart; my girlfriend uses it and complained that it didn't display well. The occasional obscure site I can handle, but there were some pretty mainstream/popular sites that didn't display properly. The tabbed browsing was ok, but then IE7 has that too. Also, one really annoying thing was that pages would display either really big or really small. Like, I'd go to eBay and the text would be really small. So I'd use Ctrl+Mouse Wheel to make the text bigger. Then when I'd go to Yahoo, the text would be huge and I'd have to readjust the size again. Off to snopes, and the size was wrong again. Finally, I had a lot of trouble uninstalling it. I never did fully get it off my system (I'd find the icons lurking around here and there).
Sorry, 'appalling' may have been too strong a word, but for everything I used it for, it was never better than IE; maybe 'disappointed' would have been better. Perhaps you can educate me: just why is it considered (by many) to be superior?
-------------------- "The fact that "uvula" and "vulva" look and sound similar was just a happy coincidence." - Lainie Posts: 548 | From: England | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
I dislike firefox too. Having heard it recommended here so many times I tried to like it, and persevered with it for a while, but at the end of the day I just don't like it and much prefer IE.
I think appauling is probably too strong of a word, but I have a strong preference for IE.
I don't like the tabbed browsing - that's what the taskbar is for!! I've got IE7 installed, but I have gone back to just opening stuff in a new window rather than in the tabs.
Scout.
-------------------- "Abandon shop. This is not a daffodil, repeat, this is not a daffodil!" Posts: 661 | From: UK | Registered: Jan 2003
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posted
Out of curiosity, what is the difference between clicking or ctrl+tabbing between tabs and clicking or alt+tabbing between windows? I don't see a difference, which is why I never get those who are oppossed to tabbed browsing. Whatever floats your boat, just chock it up to me not getting it.
And on a sidenote, I had lots of problems with Firefox, so I switched to Mozilla, and it worked wonders. If anyone still wants to switch from IE but didn't find Firefox appealing, Mozilla was always less buggy for me.
posted
I also dislike Firefox. I think I managed about half an hour with it before giving up - I just didn't get on with it at all.
-------------------- Silence should never under any circumstances be construed as agreement. A lot of the time, it's simply a reflection that someone just said something so stupid that no response could possibly do it justice. - Ramblin' Dave Posts: 8528 | From: Nottingham, England | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
I suppose to an end user the "whys" don't matter, but I think it should be made clear that the reason some sites don't display properly outside of IE is that they have been designed to work specifically with IE, as opposed to being designed to work with web standards. In other words, the sites are poorly designed and/or broken - the problem isn't the browser.
Certainly in the end it is a matter of preference. As slow, bloated and insecure as IE is I can't even begin to imagine using it voluntarily, but to each their own. Mostly though, I found the use of the word "appalling" to be, well, appalling.
-------------------- Come on, come on - spin a little tighter Come on, come on - and the world's a little brighter Posts: 5595 | From: Columbus, OH : The Soccer Capital of America | Registered: Sep 2002
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posted
I installed IE7 at work yesterday, mostly because I wanted tabs and mouse gestures, and while it's nice that it's trying to become a firefox clone it still feel bloated. It feels like it's trying to do, all by itself, more than I want it to do. Maybe it's just my dislike of IE in general, though, who knows.
I was quite annoyed that it had to verify I had a genuine installation of windows installed before it would let me install it.
posted
I tried Opera half a decade ago, left IE and never looked back. Opera is the only browser I use today, except for occasionally running MS update, which for some reason will only work with IE.
-------------------- /Troberg Posts: 4360 | From: Borlänge, Sweden | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Originally posted by chillas to the bone: As slow, bloated and insecure as IE is I can't even begin to imagine using it voluntarily, but to each their own.
Ok, slow and insecure I can understand, but what do you mean by 'bloated'?
quote: Mostly though, I found the use of the word "appalling" to be, well, appalling.
Apologies for the exaggeration.
-------------------- "The fact that "uvula" and "vulva" look and sound similar was just a happy coincidence." - Lainie Posts: 548 | From: England | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
It's a resource hog - too much storage, too much memory to run (which is, in turn, a major part of what makes it so slow).
-------------------- Come on, come on - spin a little tighter Come on, come on - and the world's a little brighter Posts: 5595 | From: Columbus, OH : The Soccer Capital of America | Registered: Sep 2002
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posted
I downloaded IE 7 a few days ago and feel it's as good or better than Firefox. Ofcourse, I'm a "lazy" user, meaning I don't want to mess with plug-ins and whatnot. Therefore I'm enjoying it quite a bit. I've also not witnessed any drop in performance of the browser or my computer. I dare say it runs just as fast, and loads just as fast as Firefox.
Personal preference and all that.
-------------------- It can't rain all the time. Posts: 1102 | From: Iowa | Registered: Oct 2004
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posted
My boyfriend uses Firefox mainly because he can enlarge website text in order to read it. (He has very poor eyesight.) I've tried Firefox and I'm just not a fan for some reason. I don't think it's better or worse than IE; I just prefer IE. Perhaps it's because that's what I'm used to.
-------------------- "There is no constitutional right to sleep with endangered reptiles." -- Carl Hiaasen Won't somebody please think of the adults! Posts: 8254 | From: Florida | Registered: Oct 2002
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quote:Originally posted by chillas to the bone: It's a resource hog - too much storage, too much memory to run (which is, in turn, a major part of what makes it so slow).
Err...if you think IE is a resource hog, try checking out your Firefox memory leaks. Firefox devours memory, an issue that seems yet to have been addressed.
All things considered, I like the Firefox interface and I use it as my primary browser. However, the little cult of Firefox that has grown around it, dare I say it, appalls me. It's just a browser, not your firstborn.
-------------------- "One original thought is worth a thousand mindless quotings." -- Diogenes
"Vote Republican! We won't burn you at the stake for your religious beliefs or slaughter your family and steal your land." -- Ramblin' Dave Posts: 3555 | From: Florida | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
I'm using it, too. Main problem so far: If I click on "file" and "open" and type in a url, everything freezes and I have to ctrl-alt-del to cancel out of the program.
-------------------- "No hard feelin's and HOPpy New Year!"--Walt Kelly Hear what you're missing: ARTC podcasts! http://artcpodcast.org/ Posts: 7581 | From: Gainesville, Georgia | Registered: Jun 2000
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quote:My boyfriend uses Firefox mainly because he can enlarge website text in order to read it.
You can do that with IE (and most other browsers) as well.
- snopes
If the text is sized in pixels using CSS, then IE (at least up to V6; I don't know about V7 yet) won't resize it, at least not easily (you can, of course, set IE to ignore all styling suggestions, but it won't resize px-sixed text using the view menu or the mouse wheel). Firefox and Opera will happily let you resize text no matter how it's styled.
The other nice thing about FF is that it will let you set a minimum text size, which I do—no website will display text smaller than 12px for me no matter how the designer set it up.
Nick
-------------------- Don't forget to register for the New ULMB.
posted
I don't like Firefox either, as a rule. Having weighed all the options between them, considering them on their merits, I've come to the reasoned decision that I like the name 'Internet Explorer' better, which is just about enough to tip the scales. I like to feel like I'm on a grand adventure when I'm browsing. 'Safari' would be good too, but, wrong OS.
I've been using IE7 since the Beta and have come to like tabs, which I originally thought were pretty gimmicky. Those and mouse gestures, same deal. On the whole, I like it, but I liked IE6 too, in the sense that, as Rebochan puts it, the browser cult that sprang up around Firefox is not only odd, but really absurdly silly, enough that for me (at the time) I made a conscious choice to stick with the browser I had. For a time it was like using an alternative browser was not only hip but actively rebellious.
Whatever. I've been using Internet Explorer since back when Navigator was still a valid alternative, ten years ago or so, and in my personal opinion is that competing browsers are nice, in the sense that they spur development, but the fanaticism is... really bizarre--both in the "Firefoxliness is next to godliness" sense and the apparently-serious (it reaches heights that make it hard to tell) loathing of Internet Explorer that proliferates in the geek community, to a degree that I generally save for other things, such as for instance Pol Pot.
I will say, though, that for the computer I use out in public, Firefox does give the option to not let webpages choose their own colours. This makes, for instance, browsing the SLC significantly less eye-scarring. Both browsers let me turn off images, which is also nice, but I don't think I can get rid of page colours with IE. Until I can, the laptop keeps Firefox around. The logo's kinda cute, anyway.
-Bai"kinda like a lynx, or something"kal
-------------------- I'm just a typical American boy from a typical American town. Posts: 1463 | From: CU, Boulder Campus | Registered: Feb 2001
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posted
Hm.. I may be biased, but here are my thoughts.
Firefox is ok. I hate the downloading interface and the way plug ins are installed. It is also, unlike some of you here think, very insecure, particularly with spyware. Since installing it and using it I have gotten more spyware on my system than I ever had before.
Netscape is the true bloatware. And now that AOL owns it, I cringe at the thought of some of its new features that will appear.
Opera rocked since day one, although they have some strange bugs that pop up occasionally. Word of mouth has died down with them though and I am not sure why. They were the Firefox of the previous tech era.
IE definitely has its issues as well. I didn't like tabbed browsing at first (I, like someone else here, preferred using the taskbar because then I could minimize windows, resize to view them all, etc) but I have since gotten a bit more used to it. I also hate its handling of downloading files.
But while folks say IE is less secure because it already has been attacked, the thing you have to remember is it is a HUGE TARGET for these people. If some of these other browsers were as popular or as hated as MS seems to be (particularly on the internet) then they would be targeted more. Most browsers have similar security problems. Heck, without them we wouldn't have antivirus and firewall software companies...
Oh and the thing about the websites being at fault as opposed to the browser, that is true. And it goes the other way as well, although it depends on the browsers popularity and the site. For those that want to get the most bang for the buck, they tend to design to IE because, quite frankly, everyone running windows has it. And some websites may respond differently with IE7 than IE6. Nature of the extra level between IE and the actual page display. (Same holds true for applications that 'preview in a browser window')
Posts: 69 | From: Renton, WA | Registered: Oct 2006
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posted
... Renton, eh? My folks used to live there; I have no illusions about what lies just up the Interstate. Do you think you're fooling us with your anti-Firefox agitprop nonsense? Well you're not.
Seriously, though, yeah, what the hell? My laptop periodically goes on spyware binges. Given that the only real difference between the two of them is IE on the Number Beast (my desktop) versus Firefox on the laptop, I'm hard pressed to think of the latter as an objectively more secure choice. But, I mean, the logo's cute and it lets me strip colours.
I design minimalist websites and I try to make sure they work equally well in both--if nothing else, Firefox is (or was) much less tolerant of HTML faults, so it made me check those more carefully. But when you're talking about something with an eighty-five, ninety-percent market share, yeah, people design for it. Next news flash: southpaws don't get no respect, ergonomics-wise.
-Bai"get lefthanded"kal
-------------------- I'm just a typical American boy from a typical American town. Posts: 1463 | From: CU, Boulder Campus | Registered: Feb 2001
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quote:Firefox is ok. I hate the downloading interface and the way plug ins are installed. It is also, unlike some of you here think, very insecure, particularly with spyware. Since installing it and using it I have gotten more spyware on my system than I ever had before.
Cite? Your experience may or may not be related to Firefox, but I've gotten far less spyware from using Mozilla than I ever did using IE. If it is so insecure, can you offer proof that it is, at least, more insecure than IE? Even if it has it's vulerabilities (and I am far from a Firefox zealot), it is, IMO, far more secure than IE, or at least on par with IE, now that IE is playing the browser catchup game with it's recent updates.
quote:Err...if you think IE is a resource hog, try checking out your Firefox memory leaks. Firefox devours memory, an issue that seems yet to have been addressed.
quote:"To improve performance when navigating (studies show that 39% of all page navigations are renavigations to pages visited less than 10 pages ago, usually using the back button), Firefox 1.5 implements a Back-Forward cache that retains the rendered document for the last five session history entries for each tab. This is a lot of data. If you have a lot of tabs, Firefox's memory usage can climb dramatically. It's a trade-off. What you get out of it is faster performance as you navigate the web."
Besides, FF2.0's memory usage is down considerably.
quote:the browser cult that sprang up around Firefox is not only odd, but really absurdly silly
The cult of IE is perhaps even sillier. You won't use another browser because people like it? Do you know how silly that sounds? I can understand that you prefer another browser, or are used to one and don't feel like switching, but this just reeks of elitism ("I'm non-conformist! Watch me not follow the trend!")
quote: It is also, unlike some of you here think, very insecure, particularly with spyware. Since installing it and using it I have gotten more spyware on my system than I ever had before.
That is complete bollocks. Sorry, there's no other way to say it. Any increase in spyware is solely the fault of your browsing habits.
-------------------- All along the untrodden paths of the future, I can see the footprints of an unseen hand. Posts: 6912 | From: Flanders | Registered: Jan 2004
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posted
There's not a "cult of IE"; there's Baikal--there's a difference between the two. And I said "at the time", because I later made a good-faith effort to switch, as evidenced by it's continued use on my second computer. I'm not perfect, and I'm willing to admit it's silly--I was in high school at the time. I was a silly man in high school, perhaps more than I am today, and I believe it probably irked me. You have no idea how arrogant people who think their software carries some kind of ideological weight can be--I still have a friend whose every conversation begins with interminable ramblings about open-source software whose regularity would put my old Catholic priest to shame.
Likewise I can't really be too bemused by the people who seem to genuinely despise a piece of software, because certain particularly atrocious ones--Open Office and the client control software I used when I worked in debt management come to mind--can force me towards apoplexy when I have to use them. Perhaps, actually, it's just that software brings out the most juvenile in people--any written statement that replaces an 's' with a dollar sign comes to mind.
Anymore I've come to view software sectarianism with a fairly jaundiced eye. I use what I like, which for fifteen years has been pretty much exclusively Microsoft products. It can make one cranky--I consort with a lot of geeks, and in the post-Firefox age, I think I'm beginning to realise how all the Mac users I ragged on in high school felt. I don't intend to search for figures, all I know is that for fifteen years I've used a computer regularly, with a MS OS, a MS office suite, an MS browser (since I got online in the mid-90s), and an MS flight simulator. I've never had any complaints that I can remember now.
But I do think there is a difference. The disclaimer about personal experience having been said--and I won't point fingers, because you wouldn't know most of them--the self-righteousness, the belief that anyone is participating in something larger than a mere software selection, that they are combatting some vague, Galactic Empire-esque evil, or that their preference is somehow objectively better is not, of the two camps, the perspective you hear from the Redmondrians. So no, I really can't equate the two in silliness. I can equate me in silliness, but that's hardly meaningful.
-Baikal
-------------------- I'm just a typical American boy from a typical American town. Posts: 1463 | From: CU, Boulder Campus | Registered: Feb 2001
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posted
Well unfortunately, I only have the proof of me and the people around me. Coworkers and friends. Most are tech savvy.
What I have found, and they agree, is that with Firefox installed, you get ample spyware installed. I had 27 findings with spybot alone, and you know as well as I do that no program finds them all.
Perhaps it is because I know IE better, and I can set security as such to prevent these things from happening. In both IE6 and now IE7, which handles much of that for you.
The truth is, both have similar problems. But Firefox zealots talk about how perfect their browser is. I was simply stating that is has major problems in this area too.
Of course, not many people care. Thus, the lack of constant barrage of news stories, unlike IE. By the way, the same is true with Linux. People talk about Linux being the most secure, but, surprise, it has vulnerabilities as well. Again, not enough people to care to make it newsworthy.
And before you linux zealots attack me with how superior you are, it is the nature of software. To make things easier for the user, certain things are done to the system. They may be different for different systems, but that doesn't mean they don't exist at all.
Posts: 69 | From: Renton, WA | Registered: Oct 2006
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I've also not witnessed any drop in performance of the browser or my computer. I dare say it runs just as fast, and loads just as fast as Firefox.![[Wink]](wink.gif)
