IEBlog

I have doubts about whether IE has a bug that select object can not be covered with div object or other objects

Glad to hear that IE is not being ignored, but IE is still losing respect in general. I think you guys should release a "Version 7" to give the general public the impression that progress is being made and IE is not outdated. Several browsers have had more recent (and well publicized) releases since the last major IE release. I think the “new” IE is going to get lost in SP2, as far as perception goes. Release a version 7, for all your supported OSs, sometime after SP2 and rejuvenate the buzz…stop the attrition.

No.

If it's not good enough for you guys to slap with a RTM label, it's not good enough for me to download and run on my machine.

No offense. :)

It is nice to see this blog, Scott. Probably you'll be bombarded with such kind of messages but anyway: when do you think this one will be fixed - http://www.literatecode.com/get/crashie.html? It has been reported and registered a year ago and still do the same in SP2 RC2. Just curious.

Well said up there, that IE is losing respect in the real world.. the fact that people are taking Firefox seriously still urks me, but they have some valid points.. MUCH more configurability, tabbed browsing, etc..

And then I found MyIE2 (a wrapper for IE - http://www.myie2.com/) - which has tabbed browsing - which is key for these MSDN blogs for example - I have a "group" I open, that opens all the blogs I normally check - and opens them "tabbed" so I don't have a zillion windows open. I can work my way through that "group" all within one container - much more ideal than individual browsers (for most cases).

Point is, once I started looking around at browsers (I haven't done that since the Browser Wars) - the things that are making the difference are the fru-fru usability things.

And as a developer (for a long time and of all Microsoft languages) - let me say, that the heat you guys get for security flaws is bull. You guys are between a rock and a hard place. I work for a company where I write intranet apps and users are NEVER happy with the functionality. They want web apps that work like windows apps - and that's only possible with powerful scripting and objects (like activex and applets).. but at the same time, Internet developers say you shouldn't even ALLOW these things because they are too risky. You can't win.

Anyhow.. sucks to be you, but keep up the good work!! :-)

Solution to web apps that work like Windows Apps...

Use .net, build a WinForms click once application that does everything and automatically updates from the web.

All of the benefits of web central management and a real user interface instead of the crap that the web gives you.

The future is smart clients, not Web based craplets.

Solution to web apps that work like Windows Apps...

Use .net, build a WinForms click once application that does everything and automatically updates from the web.

All of the benefits of web central management and a real user interface instead of the crap that the web gives you.

The future is smart clients, not Web based craplets.

sorry for the double post... Firefox... gotta love it!

IE is a good idea but not the final ideal ,maybe smartclient is

"I realize that statement will cause some people to chuckle based on current press on security issues and perceived lack of innovation, but that is my job."

It's strange that someone's job in the IE team is to cause us to chuckle instead of innovating in web browsing, but looking at IE state of the art, I think I understand...

Scott, with all due respect when your browser properly supports web standards like firefox, etc then those of us who where long time fans of IE may return to using it.

I loved IE at V3.0. V4.0 was a poor user experience. I loved V5.0 again. V6.0 and since have been OK, but nothing special. I certainly don't love V6.0 - and I'm astonished that anyone loves V6.0 - the Courtney Love in a world of Kirsten Dunst's.

"If you want to try out the latest IE browser, I strongly encourage you to download and run the latest release candidate for XPSP2 Service Pack 2."
I strongly advise you to get over this boneheaded idiocy and release a new version of the browser that I can use in Win2K and 2K3.

Just because IE's (legitimately) a part of the OS does not justify this asinine approach to releasing updates.

As a web developer, I'm doing everything in my power to get people to switch away from Internet Explorer. This is because, when developing websites, I author to standards, it takes a few minutes to tweak things to get everything perfect in browsers like Firefox and Safari, and then ages to work around all of Internet Explorer's bugs and shortcomings. The time to implement a decent XHTML Strict + CSS 2 design would be shortened by at least a third if Internet Explorer wasn't so buggy. I have measured this personally across a number of projects.

If a new version of Internet Explorer was available that didn't screw up so damn much, not only would it make my life much easier, but I'd stop switching people away from it. The features of other browsers are just the "honey" that web developers use to get people to switchaway from IE. Right now, the only thing keeping many web developers from dropping Internet Explorer support completely is its market share. It's the new Netscape 4.

*Please* fix IE. Top of the list:

1. CSS 2 bugs ("peekaboo", "guillotine", "3px jog", etc).

2. CSS 2 tables.

3. CSS 2 generated content.

4. CSS 2 selectors.

5. PNG alpha channel.

CSS 2 is over six years old, and Microsoft have had employees in the CSS working group the whole time. PNG is almost eight years old and Microsoft promised PNG support for Internet Explorer 4.0. Given that Microsoft are the world's biggest software company, it looks very much like standards are deliberately being sabotaged. Is it any wonder web developers are starting to get royally pissed off with Microsoft?

Sorry but your browser is not standard compliant, I'm Web developer to and that's why I use (and I love) Firefox.

Edit : Another CSS 2 bug, "hover" is not supported by IE !

A good start would be setting up Bugzilla, to get tot know precisely what bugs are around.

Gotta say that after using and switching to FireFox, IE really looks like a dog in comparison. Loads about 4 times slower than FireFox and it's supposed to be part of the OS?! After using tabbed browsing I don't think I could ever go back. Speed of page loading is insane, makes IE look like it's running on a 386 or something. Plus, all this and then you have a huge amount of good, quality plugins and themes none of which seem to detriment the speed of the core browser like toolbars do to IE.

Aside from the user benefits I mentioned above the standards support is simply great, it allows the web to be made the way it should be. Why can't IE be made to support STANDARDS? They are there for a reason.

Kev

IE sux man.

It's not W3C compliant, it let pass too much pop-ups, too big security hole ... how can you say that honestly ?

Moreover, There is a lot of more efficient browsers ...

Oh yeah, forgot to mention I am running XPSP2 and the changes to IE are barely noticeable. Pop-up blocking thats no-where near as flexible as FireFox's just isn't going to cut it.

You Firefox people need to relax. As a web developer, I won't TOUCH anything that has Netscape-ish/anti-microsoft crap. Mainly because choosing a product because it's "good", is more important that choosing a product because it's "not the company's product"

I have ZERO issues with CSS compliance - and what do you mean "hover" isn't supported? Do you mean:

.MyLinks:Hover
{
color: red;
text-decoration: underline;
}

I use that every day, I don't get it? About the only thing I agree on is that Firefox and MyIE have better usuability. IE has become the plain-Jane of browsers but for W3C and CSS compliance and for things like activex support, I'll accept no substitute.

i love IE too because of the security aspect, coupled with outlook

drebin test that and you will see :

input:hover {
background-color: red;
}

IE doesn't work that well for me even though I should have used it to check for w3 compabilities. I remember i run ie in solaris once, but now I'm using other *nixes that is not supported... Don't think solaris is supported anymore either..

why make ie just for windows?

drebin:
as you can read it here http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/evaluation/features/default.mspx IE have :" Full CSS Level 1 Support"
What about CSS2 ?
Maybe it's time to implement some aspect of the CSS2 even if it's still a candidate recommendation ? What do you thing about that ?

"I have ZERO issues with CSS compliance - and what do you mean "hover" isn't supported? Do you mean:"

You may be kidding ! IE6 CSS support is pretty outdated and partial, now try this in IE, which is a basic and perfectly standard CSS declaration:

tr:hover {background-color:yellow}

<a href="http://getfirefox.com/" title="Get
Firefox - The Browser, Reloaded."><img src="http://www.mozilla.org/products
/firefox/buttons/header.png" width="305" height="150"
border="0" alt="Get Firefox"></a>

How much of the old NCSA Mosaic code is there in IE today? Will IE 7.0 be in managed code?

There is a huge community of Bloggers and Channel9’ers out there ready and willing to help create the Browser of our dreams.

Brant Gurganus : you are right.

Drebin, did you miss my list above? Internet Explorer doesn't support CSS tables, CSS 2 selectors, or generated content. Also, as others have noted, the :hover pseudo-class is only implemented for the a element type. Whole chunks of the CSS 2 specification, which Microsoft are partly responsible for, being completely unusable because Internet Explorer doesn't support them.

I like IE, I would like to see the security problems fixed and tabbed browsing.

About security, just see this recommendation of the US-CERT :
http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/713878

solutions:
_Disable Active scripting and ActiveX_ (sorry Dride but how can i use ActiveX with IE if there are security exploit ?!? )
[...]

_Use a different web browser_

I'm agree with Jim, IE must do a lot of improvements to be a true browser !

As others have already mentioned, the current problems with IE are countless. Here are some of them in a short list:

- IE is by far the slowest browser (compared to Firefox, Opera, et al.)
- it has many security problems that only the more computer-oriented people can protect themselves from
- it has also many other, not necessarily security-related bugs
- it is not standards compliant
- the patching of these problems is too slow (MS should have invested the 70 and then some billions to security-related development instead of lining the pockets of investors)

Why doesn't somebody just come out and admit that IE has deliberately been allowed to slip to relieve preassures and allegations of anti-trust and monolopoly against MS, and that IE isn't going to make any leap forwar again until its believed Mozilla has a significant enough foothold.

The freezing of IE can only be explained as a business decision.

For those who harp on and on waving a finger saying "IE is not standards compliant"... if the IE dev team had of carried on at the pace that took them to version 5.5 the same people would have been harping on about monopolistic practices.

Understand this truth.... there will be no significant advance of Internet Explorer until Mozilla (or alternative) is fealt to have a secure hold within the "marketplace", and ideally after various flavours of browser are more closely integrated into KDE and Gnome.... remember MS took a lot of heat over browser integration into the operating system, and over the death of Netscape.

I like to participate in arguments to either further validate my beliefs or to learn new things.

Today, I have learned new things. I can see the usefulness of the hover for a <tr> (and it never dawned on me that that should be possible) and after doing some research, there is a lot of cool stuff in CSS2 that I didn't even know about!!

I wonder what Microsoft's stance is on this - if there is a release that's planned to support CSS2?

Looking back, it's almost like in the old days, IE was ahead of it's time and supported CSS1, but things that looked good in IE looked bad in Netscape.. whereas now, it's the other way around and they feel behind the curve.

And to be honest, with this security issue - there already IS a solution, for Internet sites, the browser disallows things like activex.. and for Intranet - it allows more. Why is that not enough?

Hello Microsoft,

If you want the security problems fixed and tabbed browsing capability then turn to www.mozilla.org. Install Mozilla package or FireFox which is a very quick state-of-art standalone browser. It can tabbed browsing too.

And install Linux OS.
Microsoft Windows is far too expensive and overly vulnerable to viruses and attacks. Only OpenSource developers can make the software right !
Begin eg. with "Mandrake 10 Official". What a brilliant system it is. Isn't it ?

So I will never go back to Microsoft Windows or IE anymore. I can't afford to waste money or time with it.

Good bye.
// moma

About IE 6 having full CSS 1 support, that is not true, background-attachment:fixed; is not supported for all elements other than body.

Drebin,

> I like to participate in arguments to either further validate my beliefs or to learn new things.

That's an admirable attitude.

> after doing some research, there is a lot of cool stuff in CSS2 that I didn't even know about!!

Sadly, that's very commonplace. The thing is, no CSS tutorials will teach things like display: table as long as the most popular web browser doesn't support it. So people are unaware of these parts of CSS. And because they are unaware, they think Internet Explorer does everything just fine.

If people were more aware of the features of CSS that the other browsers support but Internet Explorer doesn't, I think you'd be hearing a lot more complaints about how Internet Explorer is holding things up for the web.

Hmm... Why can't people debate maturely? I just see immature kiddies here calling other people's software "shit" with no reason without telling the cons of the program they are "protecting". Don't argue.

Now I have to find the holes from your statements, cerbere. You seem to act by these lines laready said:

"Mainly because choosing a product because it's "good", is more important that choosing a product because it's "not the company's product"".

So:

" "make Internet Explorer the best way for browsing the web." ... how can you said that ?"

By just saying it. That's cheering up and a wish.

"I'm sorry to inform you that your browser is NOT standards compliant. So how can it be the best way for browsing the web ?"

Could you define us what does being not a standards compliant mean, please? I don' t know and I'd like to know.
It can be the best (in people's opinions only, naturally) by making it compliant with the standards, whatever that means. Or perhaps it doesn't even need that. Maybe popularity would be enough. Or stability or support by other products.

"I'm using Mozilla Firefox - you can download and try it at : http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/"

Thanks for the link.

"It's GPL guys, do you know what does it mean ?"

I don't. Teach me. In a non-fanatical way, thank you.

"Some features from this PERFECT browser (yes i said perfect, because you insinuate that IE is a good browser):"

Nothing is perfect. Thus Firefox isn't either. Simple. No need to use CAPITAL letters for that. You only make yourself sound silly. :-)

"_Popup Blocking_ : Mozilla Firefox : YES / your shit: NO"

Indeed, using underlines is a fine to get people focus on something. Though, used many times, make you sound silly again. Weeee! ^_^

And I see you begin very unfair here. You first time use the whole name, Mozilla Firefox... but then why do you call Microsoft Internet Wxplorer by the name "your shit"? It's not its name, you know that. No one learns from this, you just start arques and slow down world wide technological improvement. And everyone will blame you for that. That wouldn't be so fun, would it?

"_Space Installation require on Windows_ : mozilla Firefox: 4.7MB / your shit: it depend if you install security patch, do you know what I mean ?"

Not to mention your numerous grammar errors in your sentences (which clearly show you are taken over by your fanatical feelings), here's how you probably should've put your text:

- Fix the first sentence.
- Mozilla is a name, thus it needs to start with a capital letter.
- The file space needed is invalid wince you do not tell us the version number.
- Again the "your shit" problem. Learn to use correct product names.
- Oh, you are really going to make me trust with all those typographical mistakes. :-P
- Give us the options, thank you. What is the full download size if you download it, what is the less space needed and did you note that it is up to some point integrated with Windows, so you can't really say exactly how much you are installing and how much of the browser you have already...
- Security fixes? You'd rather have a completely new version of the browser up for download each time there is one? For example, many of those mass spreading of a virus events wouldn't have happened if people wouldl've used Windows Update.

"_New Theme : Mozilla Firefox : YES / your shit : maybe you will implement this functionnality.. one day.."

- I you meant the plural form...
- "Your shit" problem again...
- Are you that desperate to get custom themes to IE? Wow, nice to see you care about IE's development. :-) (I personally have never liked any custom themes in any programs, though.)

"Try to respect to the standards : Mozilla Firefox: YES / your shit : AH AH AH AH !"

Okay, now I'm certain that you are a grammar illiterate ignorant trouble maker.

"well i think it could be a good idea to take a look at http://update.mozilla.org/extensions/?application=firefox - you will find 114 extensions made by the GPL Community."

Hm... I didn't quite get it, what do you want to tell us by this statement?

"Conclusion : Use Firefox, it's so more simple."

I am using Firefox, but simplicity is just an opinion of a person. That's not general.

"hum .. did I precise that it's GPL, stupid?"

Yes, you did. In the beginning of your speech. Gee, I never knew you had that bad memory...

Oh, and calling someone stupid (not intelligent) without knowing that for a fact just makes you youself look stupid, sorry to say.

Indeed, you sound like an immature 12-year old. Learn how to debate. Otherwise, thanks for the laughs. :-)

Oh, silly me, forgot to comment myself. Hehe.

Well, guys, I hope IE's development would get some more resources. I do understand that all of you are focusing on Longhorn, maybe even on Windows eXPerienced Reloaded, but maybe you could compile somekind of an IE 6.5 in the SP2. I'd be glad to wait for XPSP2 for anther few weeks if you did that. I'm eagerly waiting for the revise in Longhorn. :-)

LEAULE !!
ahum sorry.

You're funny.

Left already? :-)

I don't believe you had enough time to read everything I wrote...

Anyway, let's get to Firefox's problems. I hope these will get fixed too:

- Some rare random crashing.
- Doesn't process Java Script correctly.
- Page formatting on various sites.
- Pop-up blocker a bit "too active".

I don't remember having any formatting problems with IE... Funny, isn't it?

Joonas,
first, sorry for all grammar mistakes, my english is not very good.

If you thing that i cant debate on IE, i'm sorry but what can i say when i read : "make Internet Explorer the best way for browsing the web". What can we say ?
ok IE is the best. where is the debate here ?
If you thing i'm sounding like a 12-year old, what can we say about this blog ? is this a commercial presentation or a real space to debate ?

The true thing is that i'm thinking like Guy Murphy. IE was let behind. the good question is why ? Microsoft people can maybe give us a clue.

Second, i'm sorry but for security reasons, using IE in commercial/professionnal environment is totally silly. Just see my link : even US-CERT disencourage using IE.

third, I'm using OpenSource all days. And i'm so happy with that. It's so easy to participate to the developpement of some stuff. Why not IE ? because it's close.
I'm not clausing to IE because of it's a Microsoft product, that's not the reason.
I'm refusing to use IE because there's a problem because IE is not improve like Guy said.
So how can we trust IE is a good product is nothing is done to improve it ??


" Left already? :-)"
Not yet :/

"I don't believe you had enough time to read everything I wrote..."
of course not many time, just in order to reply.

"Anyway, let's get to Firefox's problems. I hope these will get fixed too:"

"- Some rare random crashing."
on GNU/LINUX Debian -- www.debian.org -- never see that.

"- Doesn't process Java Script correctly."
can't said.

"- Page formatting on various sites."
can't said

"- Pop-up blocker a bit "too active"."
I's better than have no blocker with IE. And you can desactive, at any moment the blicker, just click the blue button at the left botton of firefox.

"I don't remember having any formatting problems with IE... Funny, isn't it?"
Does IE can format page with CSS 2 ?
well the answer has already be done: no.

IE is not so usefull as Firefox. And there's a lot of many others browser, that i'm missing.

The problems with IE are numerous, the main one is that MS made the decision to bundle it into the OS. Go back to college and ask your OS professor if the browser is really important to the OS.

Then even worse after you used IE to illegally destroy Netscape, it was abandoned.

Or at that is how it appears to most people who make money doing web development. I too used to be an IE user but since I have switched to Firefox I will not look back. And I usually try to convert any IE users that I can find.

I am glad though that it appears that MS has gotten it's head out of it's ass and is going to start working on IE again.

What is sad is that I have read that IE will never be stand-alone again. That means for me that I will in fact never run the damn thing.

Bundling a browser into an OS is just a bad idea. It shows that people who make decisions at MS do not understand what an OS really is... for that matter the connection between IIS and the OS is just about as bad.

It is almost like MS must have hired the dumbest developers that they could find. Which once again makes me sad. MS has got more money than God and yet has been unable to "on it's own" come up with a good secure product. It has only been in recent months that enough devestating bugs (ie press) have hit MS that there has been any attention paid to security at all.

And yes I know supposedly Gates started the whole security thing a while ago and we are just now seeing the fruits of this work.

We will see. Good luck to the IE team. Unbundle your product from the OS and get a clue.

Dear Joonas,

Sure, the Gecko engine (used in Mozilla browser, Firefox, etc.) is not perfect, but it is by far better than IE, and used as a reference when benchmarking web browsers...

I'm glad you're happy running IE. In fact, I still wonder why so many web designers/developers keep complaining about this brilliant piece of software...

Oh silly me, it may be because of the infamous lack of CSS2 support ? Not to mention some CSS1 bugs (such as fixed background, as mentioned earlier) : just have a look on alistapart.com and how many IE hacks are needed to have it working almost correctly. It's awful how developers have to trick the CSS engine with... comments !?

Or maybe it is just the repetitive security problems involving Microsoft's master piece ? Let's play a game, search "Internet Explorer" on Cert.org : that's about 1609 results to me. And compare this to "firefox" : that's about 1 result today. And this result involves a Microsoft Windows related problem.

I may be a little too confident, but my guess is that this will be quickly fixed. Love it if you want. After all, some people still use Netscape 4 too. :)

As a web develolper, I'd love to see an updated IE6 that better supports CSS2 (and 1, for that matter). Sadly, I doubt that will ever come to be. I only use IE to test compatibility for all the people un-educated enough to keep using it. I educate my clients, and they usually love Firefox.

Firefox is my browser of choice for development (you've got to try the developer tools plugin, it's fantastic: http://update.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?application=firefox&id=60&vid=63) and for surfing.

I hope that Microsoft and the IE team can hear past the immature noise here and gets the message that there's a huge demand for standards compliance above all other concerns.

Joonas:
"- Some rare random crashing."
I'll agree this needs to be worked on.

"- Doesn't process Java Script correctly."
Show me an example of how Firefox violates a JavaScript standard. (If it actually does, I'll gladly submit a bug)

"- Page formatting on various sites."
HA, no. View source, I guarantee the problem is in the web developer.

"- Pop-up blocker a bit "too active"."
Actually I have many more problems with Google Toolbar's excessive popup blocking than I have ever had with Firefox.

"I don't remember having any formatting problems with IE... Funny, isn't it?"
Well, you obviously haven't been viewing (or developing) standards compliant code. (You know, those W3C standards MS participated in?).

IE vs. Firefox:
http://www.csszengarden.com/?cssfile=/062/062.css

Check out the sub pages:
http://channel9.msdn.com/wiki/default.aspx/Channel9.InternetExplorerFeedback

"Could you define us what does being not a standards compliant mean, please? I don' t know and I'd like to know.
It can be the best (in people's opinions only, naturally) by making it compliant with the standards, whatever that means. Or perhaps it doesn't even need that. Maybe popularity would be enough. Or stability or support by other products. "

Not being standards compiant means that IE does not conform to the W3C standards for CSS (There are other standards too, but CSS is the most wanted and beneficial standard to start with).

CSS when properly used enables a website author to make sure that their website will display correctly on any platform that supports the internet standards - note platform here means anything from a smartphone through to PC's, not just operating systems. CSS enables true seperation of content and design thus providing much better accessibility options as well as dedicated designs for different devices that are all defined from a central document.

IE's lack of and buggy support for all of CSS1 and virtually non-existent support of CSS2 means that web developers have to continually downgrade their websites to work with and around IE. Apart from a few old versions of browsers that are still around pretty much any current browser not based on the IE engine supports and complies to the W3C standards so you can see why there is so much anger from web developers towards IE.

So to re-iterate a few of the points for CSS when used correctly:

- Better cross-platform support for devices including printers
- Specific designs for each device to take best advantage of available resources
- Better accessibility for disabled users
- Better content/style seperation which leads to better document indexing and automated analysis
- Website look-and-feel can be updated from one file

Again, they are just a few of the benefits to having websites comply to the standards. I say websites there as in the end it's truly up to the web developers to take advantage of CSS but developers aren't going to use these benefits if the dominant browser doesn't support the standards and makes it 10x harder if they do try to use them.

I could also go on about how IE is in the position it is due to being built as part of the OS but I think thats best left to a different discussion. My point is the sooner IE coforms the sooner everyone benefits.

Kev

travis:

I couldn't agree with you more, when developing pages you should be able to make total crossbrowser compatability by using standards, which the Gecko engine totally lives up to, whereas IE often freezez, and installs stuff behind my back... Browser - and web developing, has become a much easier task since I became a firefox user.

> - Some rare random crashing.

Possible, do you have any URLs where Mozilla or Mozilla Firefox crashes?

> - Doesn't process Java Script correctly.

Standard compliant Java Script ("ECMA Script") using the DOM or some proprietary JScript? URL?

> - Page formatting on various sites.

Are the HTML or XHTML valid? If not, then there is no "right" or "wron" page rendering. URL?

http://validator.w3.org/ ((X)HTML Validator)
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/ (CSS Validator)

> - Pop-up blocker a bit "too active".

It is hard to block only the right pop-ups, but there are great improvements in work (you will see them in Firefox 1.0RC1)

> I don't remember having any formatting problems
> with IE... Funny, isn't it?

Thats because almost every webdesigner has to create websites, that are compatible with the market leader, but there are some sites, that use the full power of XHTML/CSS2 and IE will not be able to display them properly.
When I create a website, I normaly need about 40% of the time for creating the site in a absolutely standards compliant way that looks perfect in Mozilla (Firefox), Netscape 7.x, Opera, Safari, Konqueror and then I open the site in IE and a lot of things are broken and I need then 60% of the time to fix it for IE6.

--Thomas

How can you love MSIE when there is Mozilla Firefox for virtually every operating system? I have serious doubts that if windows development was shut down that people would volunteer their time to develop IE in the same way that is being done on Beos

I'm a FireFox hound and have encourage family and friends to switch from using IE. Everyone I've switched has enjoyed their FireFox experience despite not being "techies".

As a web developer, I want good browsers on the market and in the hands of consumers. IE was ahead of the curve but, as one poster put it, it's now the new Netscape 4. Newer browsers are faster, simpler and lack the security holes of IE. The standards support issue is also huge since a site's code can be so much cleaner and effecient when separating style from content. IE can do this to a certain point but then the hacks come in where CSS support differs from other browsers (CSS hack chart: http://centricle.com/ref/css/filters/).

I want IE to be a good browser so I can code pages that work across browsers and platforms without over coding or hacks. If , as some say, a browser is just a browser, then why not get over ourselves and let the user's experience online be consistent throughout?

I've tried to stay objective, but comparing my experiences with MSHTML and Gecko over the past 5 years or so, I just can't comprehend how anyone would prefer IE over Firefox.

Using nightly builds and following the development of Mozilla products has allowed me to witness the efforts the Mozilla Foundation has made and is still making to release the best browser, e-mail client, ... out there. I haven't seen any products that begin to really compete with them when it comes to standards, user-friendliness, convenience, or just general development, by which the rate at which new features are added and bugs are fixed - for which Bugzilla continues to prove to be the most effective way.

As a web developer, I need to be able to test things all the time. Reloading pages a dozen times and messing with (standards-compliant) code has clearly demonstrated to me that
1/ IE6, which is a release, isn't nearly as stable as the average Firefox nightly build I use, which is supposed to have bugs and is kind of allowed to crash
2/ to this day, it's still hard sometimes to predict whether that same version of IE will have problems interpreting the code that Firefox takes without any trouble.
Add to that the feature set of Firefox (and let's not get into third-party software for IE) and it makes you wonder how anyone could "love this browser" when there's clearly at least one far better product out there.

I'm sure many of you will argue that my code is to blame in at least some cases, but I can assure you that using Mozilla products has in fact made me very aware of standards and I do everything in my power to adhere to them - standards which are in fact partially defined by Microsoft.

Finally, I'd like to add that I started out as an IE3 user, then upgraded to 3.02, then IE4, IE5, IE5.5 (which, incidently, molested my system) and finally 6. I've been a web developer for quite a while and I have to admit that I rarely bothered to test with pre-Mozilla.org Netscape products, because I'm willing to acknowledge that those were junk. But so did Netscape itself, and they've been making huge improvements, as I've just been saying. So if anything, I hope IE will get at least the same improvements with (or, though unlikely, without) Firefox breathing down its neck, because it appears considerable competition is the only way to startle the browser business.

And to all of you who are just flaming or complaining here: try to be constructive. I hope I was.

come on, this blog is a rotten april fool. How can somebody seriously prefer IE for daily usage ? The only thing I like in IE is its fast Javascript + rendering engine ( not too hard, since it's not standard compliant and deeply rooted in the OS ).

Oh, and even in Javascript, there a little thing that do not work in IE. It's the access to a character of a string via the [] like described in the 3rd example for the String object in the references of JavaScript 1.3 ( http://devedge.netscape.com/library/manuals/2000/javascript/1.3/reference/string.html ), released in 1999.

Joonas Mäkinen:

In the two years since a major jump in the version number of IE the Mozilla program has come into existance and surpassed IE in many area, some of which include css support and security.

When IE 6.0 was released, mozilla.org didn't even exist. The last update, per the Microsoft web site, of IE was Sept. of 2002. Since then Mozilla has had 11 releases.

So I applaud Scott and the IE teams efforts, the have a Sisyphusian task ahead of them.

"I've tried to stay objective, but comparing my experiences with MSHTML and Gecko over the past 5 years or so, I just can't comprehend how anyone would prefer IE over Firefox. "

Will Tim, I can give you one. If Firefox provides detailed enough documentation telling me how to _use_ it programmatically, I'd love to switch. The source code is there, you may argue, but not everyone has the leisure to get lost in such a huge source "forest".

IE exposes COM interfaces for programming. Although complex and not-so-easy to use, it makes things possible. What I'd like to see in future IE is,

+ Neat, clean, managed interface. It's so painful to use COM Interop dealing with those ISomethingCrap ... Why can't I just use myBrowser.FileDownload += myDownloadHandler ??

+ Allow me to set the timeout of one instance, thanks. I know I can do it inside registry, but that's for all instances.

+ Make it in the namespace under something like Microsoft.InternetExplorer, not SHDocVw nor mshtml in global namespace

BTW, XP2 SP2 RC2 IE (wow, sounds like rap!) is quite impressive, nice job!

I think the most worrying aspect of the lack of IE development for years is big bad bill's atempt to stagnate browser development in general.

As somebody a lot wiser than me once said and i'll roughly quote here... "If the browser is allowed to develop into a mature platform for delivering applications then that reduces windows to nothing more than a slightly buggy set of device drivers"

The important part here is that if you dont continue to develop ( and i mean develop not fix, which is what you are doing now ) the browser, IE, unitl longhorn ( which is years off and for all practical terms that may as well be decades ) then your going to have an obsolete piece of software before too long...

Think about it...

> [Tonetheman] The problems with IE are numerous, the main one is that MS made the decision to bundle it into the OS. Go back to college and ask your OS professor if the browser is really important to the OS.

No, IE is NOT NECESSARY part of Windows. For some special uses Microsoft offer completly uninstalling browser from the system. It's not offer for BU, but for manufacturers of fridges and so on (it's for example normal Windows XP system, only without IE; the explorer become to be win95 like).

> [Tonetheman] Bundling a browser into an OS is just a bad idea. It shows that people who make decisions at MS do not understand what an OS really is... for that matter the connection between IIS and the OS is just about as bad.

There is another "good feautere" for the developer. You have no legal possibility to run more then one version of IE together. It's very useful for developers... How can I test pages for enough of IE-bug-patches on IE (for example) 5.5 and 6.0 on single machine?

Enjoy:
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.msdn.com%2Fie

> [Thomas] When I create a website, I normaly need about 40% of the time for creating the site in a absolutely standards compliant way that looks perfect in Mozilla (Firefox), Netscape 7.x, Opera, Safari, Konqueror and then I open the site in IE and a lot of things are broken and I need then 60% of the time to fix it for IE6

Yes, IE RISES the prize of web developing. Why? The developer (which has abilities to be signed as a developer, not ignorant with WYSIWYG editor) writes the sources cerresponding to the structure and design of page. He/she starts testing in browsers. He/she sees there is no problem (or only few cosmetic) in the most browsers (Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, ...) except IE. Knows, the IE is major browser, he/she starts generating patches to make it viewable in IE in a seansible way. As a result, he make the sources messy and not very readible due to loads of unlogical (enforced by IE) parts.

> [Kevin Freitas] The standards support issue is also huge since a site's code can be so much cleaner and effecient when separating style [CSS] from content.

That's my words...

> [P01] How can somebody seriously prefer IE for daily usage?

Because they do not know anyone else, or the are paied to saying this.

"I may be a little too confident, but my guess is that this will be quickly fixed. Love it if you want. After all, some people still use Netscape 4 too. :)"

I can't say I love any browser... and I use Firefox, as I already said. I just don't like offensive arguments.

Oh yeah, Netscape Navigator... that still exists? :-P

---

I'm not so familiar with CSS problems to give out my opinions on those. Though, I learned a new thing that needs fixing. Thanks, Kevin.

What I found out about formatting problems with Firefox was at 3D Realms Forums (www.3drealms.com/forums.html) when quoting other users' posts gave some glitches. The browser also mysteriously crashed there two times and once on some other site I don't rmember. I couldn't find a reason for that. :-\ Then, I couldn't write news posts using Mambo open source, the buttons in the editor just don't show up in Firefox so I have to use IE. (I also use IE to access Windows Update.)

What I also found out (not a big thing, though, a bit annoying) was that in UBB forums clicking a button to place an emoticon causes the emoticon to be placed on the bottom and not where the cursor is.

In other words, not much. :-)

(This blog doesn't like my last name. :-P)

Okay, it seems that the 3D Realms Forums get a "This page is not Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional!" warning also...

I'm actually a big fan of ie.... but ie for Mac. Or as least I was a fan of ie while it was still being developed.

Explorer 5 for the mac was arguably the first real web standards compliant browser.

Other than it's speed Explorer for windows has always been a bastard child.

I now use Safari mainly and Firefox when I'm my PC.

I hope to see the new ie make big leaps forward in standards compliance, security, and HI/UI... I'd like to come back to the fold.

> [Scott] The last update, per the Microsoft web site, of IE was Sept. of 2002.

...and I think it was only because of "adding Windows 2003 support"...

Scott,

I'm glad you are open to feedback. For the sake of all of us developers, please make your product fully CSS compliant.

Thanks.

With Firefox 0.9:

I click the happy little orange and blue icon. Within five seconds, Firefox is up and running, even on my five-year-old computer. I go to Bookmarks -> Bookmarks Toolbar Folder -> Open in Tabs. All of my daily websites are open, just like that. On a cable connection, it takes roughly thirty seconds for all twenty of them to load simultaneously. I scan the page open on the first tab, press CTRL+W to close it. One down, on to the next one. Read it. CTRL+W. And so on. I'm finished reading everything in about two minutes.

One of the pages I check daily is CSS Zen Garden, mentioned in the comments above. I look at one of the newest designs. It's beautiful, almost brings a tear to my eye, with transparent menus and clever graphic design.

With IE 6 (WinXP SP2 RC2):

Internet Explorer has been "removed" from my computer, so I hit Windows Key + R to open the Run dialog. I type "iexplore" and hit Enter. Ten seconds passes, the browser is open. The interface is stylish and fits will with the Windows XP theme, but nothing compared to Firefox's changable XUL theming support (I use Smoke <http://www.mozthemes.tk>). I go to Favorites and open the first one on the list. I read the page, center click a link. Nothing happens. Oh yeah, no tabs here. I want to come back to this page, so I leave it open and open the next bookmark in a new window. Five seconds later, it has rendered. Badly. This is CSS Zen Garden. Perfectly standards-compliant designs that don't work in IE. I skip this, plan to check it out in Firefox later. I finish the bookmarks, opening each in a new window. To close them, I have to contort my hand crazily in order to press CTRL+F4. Who came up with that combination? Finally, I am back to the page I started reading earlier. I start reading. Uh-oh, a pop-up. Close it. Another one. Close it. CTRL+W, CTRL+W. Wait, that doesn't work. CTRL+F4. Ouch, it burneth.

And one more thing:

I develop websites for a living too. Mozilla Firefox's Web Developer Toolbar extension rocks. Where can I find this for IE? Wait, IE doesn't support extensions, but it has *ActiveX*. Great, one more thing to turn off, along with the browser itself.

I'd be quite interested to see a Microsoft IE person sort of "set the record" on this..

-What are the plans for usability things like "tabbed browsing"
-What are the plans for CSS1 and CSS2 complete compliance?

It's as simple as that. There is no WAY Firefox is going to take over the 97% market share that IE has - so unless things are still going the same with with IE a year from now, I'm not going anywhere near Firefox (for regular use or testing).

As a side note, how can any sane person say that IE6 + WinXP SP2 RC2 which weigh around 310 Mb has a real bad support of the web standards and many severe security holes.

FireFox and Opera takes respectively 14 and 7 Mb, have much more features and a solid support of the web standards.

That's not serious.

I fully agree that Firefox and Mozilla are miles ahead of IE in every possible aspect, but let's keep things accurate:

1. Ctrl+W does close IE windows
2. Ctrl+F4 doesn't (perhaps you meant Alt+F4?)

Prog.

I am sorry that there have been so many rude comments. I respect that some people prefer IE and especially the decision to create a blog open to feedback.

That said, I am a Mozilla Firefox user as well, for reasons you have probably heard a thousand times over.

It seems like things like pop-up blocking, tabbed browsing, and UI changes should be easy to implement; MyIE2, Avant Browser, and others have done so using the IE engine.

But the most important point is that Internet Explorer's CSS and other standards support has been very frustrating to me as a web developer. Floats and positioning seldom work correctly, and while it has been mentioned already, there are a host of CSS2 rules that other browsers implement that IE doesn't. Many of these are extremely useful.

PNG support is especially frustrating because I know that IE is actually capable of rendering them, but it requires propriety tags and attributes (http://webfx.eae.net/dhtml/pngbehavior/pngbehavior.html). While there may be technical reasons why IE doesn't just do this automatically, they aren't widely known. So it appears that Microsoft is just spiting the standard.

Please support standards.

Don't let anti-MS folk put you off Firefox. It isn't "good because it's not MS" - it's honestly a better browser. If Microsoft made Firefox, I'd still gladly use it.

I also agree entirely with Jim (http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2004/07/21/190747.aspx#190979).

It's a shame that MyIE2 et al. exist - they allow people to have Firefox-like UI while still using IE-style rendering. This reduces the Firefox's "pull" for end-users, who don't know or care that IE screws up page display.

Can you not use IE/Mac's rendering engine for Windows? Or just admit failure, quit, and use Gecko or KHTML? Please? You'd redeem yourself by it... a little.

I'd just like to add a couple of things to what I said previously.

It's really frustrating when Microsoft add in a feature that they know is annoying, and only offer non-standard ways of switching it off. For instance, the proprietary autocomplete attribute. It would be dead simple to have implemented it as a meta element, but instead Microsoft have given web developers the ultimatum of annoying behaviour or invalid code.

It's easy to ignore "acceptable" errors like this, you say? It isn't when you are set up to get notified via email every time one of your pages is invalid. It isn't when you have so many "acceptable" errors in your pages that you miss the one really important error hidden amongst them.

Especially annoying is the fact that you've implemented some workarounds as using meta http-equiv elements (which were intended to be read by web servers and emitted as proper HTTP headers), but you don't pay attention to the actual HTTP headers themselves when transmitted properly!

A lot of people don't like "doctype switching", and somebody suggested using a meta element to determine which rendering mode to use. No doubt you think that this will be too prone to regressions and incompatibilities with existing documents. So have an "X-Internet-Explorer-Standards: true" HTTP header that can also be put in a meta element. That way, I can update a single configuration file, and invoke the standards mode across all our servers at once, for all our documents. It's also standards-compliant, implementable by people who don't have any control over their server, and will not affect any existing documents, so it's perfectly backwards-compatible.

One last thing: let's try and keep it civil, guys. Nobody wants to read a bunch of posts all saying how great Firefox is and how shit Internet Explorer is. We all know that already, so let's try to be constructive in our comments instead of just cheerleading or flaming. That helps nobody.

The immaturity level of this discussion is astonishing. Both the Mozilla side and IE side are doing themselves no favors with all this hyperbole and unwarranted flamage. How are the developers supposed to improve IE with this kind of feedback?

My only wish is that the IE developers look long and hard about supporting W3C specs to the letter. I think the determining factor will be whether IE marketshare drops significantly over the next couple years. If it doesn't, then Microsoft will likely make a power play on the web using XAML and a bunch of proprietary technology to push the technological envelope. But if people start coding advanced sites that don't work in IE, then Microsoft may have to go the mile to support those standards.

So, to the IE developers, PLEASE do the right thing and get standards support up to speed in addition to your proprietary extensions. I know it doesn't make business sense, but for the good of humanity we need standards we can use. Microsoft is beholden to it's cash cows Windows and Office, but as Microsoft internally reworks an outdated old OS over and over, the amount of waste is incredible. Think what could happen if Microsoft bent its resources towards developing the next level of innovation on top of Linux. The low-level plumbing and fundamental security issues would basically take care of themselves, and Microsoft could develop truly mind-blowing applications. Instead we see a protectionist policy that relies on all innovation to come from Microsoft, even though it comes at the expense of interoperability.

IE developers! Please please please do the ethical thing and implement CSS2, 3, and XHTML correctly so we can develop sites that work across platforms. The world will thank you!

One other comment about the Firefox propaganda.. is disk space REALLY an issue anymore.. I mean, at ALL? Is it even on the charts? With 160GB hard drives that are $139 (http://www.staples.com/Catalog/Browse/Sku.asp?PageType=1&Sku=504516) - is the difference of even a gigabyte even relevent?

I mean, your 310mb vs 14mb - that's the difference of 0.193% and 0.009% of the hard drive.

If you've going to defend something - you need something stronger than disk space.

The small size means you can carry Firefox around on a USB stick.

There are a lot of people out and about who have to still get their internet via dialup. Many of my students do.

Downloading 310 mb via dialup is not fun.

There's 3 problem with the size of IE6+WinXP SP2 RC2.

1. it takes ages to download
2. it doesn't fix the security holes found in june.
3. why the hell do we need to put 260Mb on top of many more security patches to "patch" a soft that should work and be secure in the first place ?

"security issues and perceived lack of innovation"

Don't bullshit us, we're not idiots. "perceived" lack of innovation? It's a blatant, outright dead product! It hasn't had any rendering updates since 2000!

As a web app developer, I lose measurable hours and money to this browser. It's going to take a lot more than smiling words to win back any respect from me, and no doubt the overwhelming majority of other web developers.

IE is not 310 megabytes big.

Hear, hear, Matt.

I don't think I stressed this point enough when I posted it before. I actually went through a period of implementing designs as if Internet Explorer didn't exist, purposefuly using useful CSS that I knew Internet Explorer didn't support, and then going back and altering them to work with Internet Explorer. I didn't go out of my way to trip it up, just use what I would normally if I wasn't aware of Internet Explorer's deficiencies.

It was informative to see how much time I am wasting on Internet Explorer. Take multiple column layouts. Instead of:

* Floats,
* Clears,
* Dummy wrapper div elements with padding instead of margins to avoid box model problems,
* Explicit heights, hidden from other browsers, to avoid making text jump about during :hover events,
* Spurious position: relatives to avoid disappearing text,
* God knows how many other hacks,

I just used display: table-cell. It worked in all major browsers except for Internet Explorer.

I'd urge any web developer who doesn't think Internet Explorer's CSS shortcomings are a big deal to actually do what I did and measure the time you are wasting on this browser. Measure the money it is costing your company.

I also agree with Matt's other point. Please don't be so condescending as to try and write off the negative opinions of Internet Explorer as a mere "percieved" lack of innovation. I can't think of a single innovative feature Internet Explorer has had first, except possibly "channels" in Internet Explorer 4, which were a precursor to RSS. I'm open to correction, of course.

Joonas: It is if you apply the WinXP SP2 RC2 to "patch" the latest severe security holes. And 310 Mb is a low estimation which do not take into account the previous security patches spread here and there in the various folders of Windows.

But, indeed if you never apply a security patch, IE is "only" ~50 Mb big.

SCOTT STEARNS, THE TEST MANAGER FOR INTERNET EXPLORER AT MICROSOFT, jumps into the blogspher with a big 'KICK ME' sign on his rump with the post I Love This Browser! I hopefully got your attention with the title ofmy first post. And it is definitely true for me, as I have loved browsing the web since I started way back in the mid 90s, and I really love browsing with IE. Yet, you may ask who I am or who we are that will be posting on this blog. I am Scott Stearns, the test manager for the Microsoft Internet Explorer team (as Dean says we will be pulling together full bios of people later). The IE team as we usually say. Some of us have our individual blogs today, but we also wanted to have one that was focused on what we do every day at work -- make Internet Explorer the best way for browsing the web. Strange he should say that when his real achievement has been to make the worst browser on the web the top browser. Yes, by dint of his unremitting tream management, attention to design-flaw detail, and star class software rewriting team, Internet...

Just to comment on someone's mention of IE having ~97% market share: that's not a particularly accurate figure. From a few high traffic sites I either administer or have access to the statistics of, it's looking *much* worse than that for IE, presently. The recent scares have sent large numbers over to alternatives.

From one site that gets the majority of its traffic from mentions in newspapers and radio, and has a non technical but US focused audience:

IE: 68.5%
Mozilla: 18.8%
Safari: 5.8%
Netscape: 2.2%
Opera: 2%

The lack of substantial updates and innumerous bugs and standards deficencies makes me hate it. I'm stuck developing on it at work, and end up cursing at it nearly every day. :~(

Ok, let's not pussy foot around. If you've got a blog, you've got to be able to say something about what's actually going to happen.

Scott, Dean? The big question:

Is IE going to get rendering engine updates, and are those updates going to cover the W3C standards? CSS2? 3? W3C DOM? Anything else?

That is the time, money, and business critical question for me, and I'm guessing many other web developers.

Say something about what's going to happen, and what's happening, or this blog will serve little purpose other than PR fuzz.

Sorry to come across so harsh, but you can't sit on a product for four years without updates (other than maintenance patches) in a software development area as dynamic as the web and not expect to take heat for it.

I believe it is apparent from the above posts that IE now losing share to other (said alternate) browsers particularly Firefox.

What you seem to have missed the point is that you are tying the browser updates with the Windows system, especially the XP. I give you the fact that you are trying to make the IE standards compliant and providing this updated (however more focused on the security issues primarily) version in the XP SP2. But what I have heard about the XP SP2 till now I am SERIOUSLY considering NOT TO apply SP2.

What happens in this situation ? What about the users who are using Windows 98/Me/2000/20003 ?
WILL WE NEVER GET A STANDARD COMLAINT BROWSER FROM MICROSOFT ?

I hope Mr Stearns can hear the web developers complaints about IE. You might think IE is a super browser but believe me Firefox, Opera and Safari teams have worked hard when IE's development almost stopped years ago, and now they are eons ahead of IE at least from compliance with standards and innovative features (bettr control, pop-up blocking, tab browsing etc) perspectives.

I feel that IE has been only in "mintenance mode" for years, maybe this is because of Microsoft's dream of "windows is the client for internet" and "we believe in Harddrives and fat clients" "trhin clients are evil" strategy, or some kind of "we have %90 of web, everybody using IE with its faults, so who gives a damn" carelessness.

I hope you can at least care a little and fix some of the most serious problems mentioned above.

You love IE???, i love Osama!!!

Seriously, if you prefer IE above normal browsers like Firefox, Mozilla and Opera, you should try Mosaic. Or Lynx (does that have a win32 port?)

Your product makes my working life a lot harder.

Follow Standards!

Get proper Alpha Support for PNGs.

Do padding like *all* the other browsers.

"...and I really love browsing with IE."

Look, that kind of transparent nonsense won't fly. Obviously you will have used many other browsers such as Firefox that have improved on the basic browsing experience. One cannot "love browsing" with a browser that doesn't block popups unless one doesn't mind popups.

Frankly, the experience of "browsing with IE" is at best mundane, like browsing your files with Windows Explorer, and it's the baseline tool at best. SInce IE is really only defined by its deficiencies these days, which of its failings is it that makes you love it, exactly?

bredend: Lynx for Win32 is available at http://www.fdisk.com/doslynx/lynxport.htm