Posted on 10/20/2010 8:28:50 AM PDT by ShadowAce
It’s common knowledge that almost every single geek hates Internet Explorer with a passion, but have you ever wondered why? Let’s take a fair look at the history and where it all began… for posterity, if nothing else.
Contrary to what you might think, this article is not meant to be a hate-fest on Internet Explorer—in fact, we’re pretty impressed with the hardware acceleration and new features in Internet Explorer 9—but keep reading for the whole story.
We’ve all been so used to thinking of Internet Explorer as that slow, buggy browser that is behind the times, but it wasn’t always that way—in fact, way back when, Internet Explorer pioneered many innovations that made the web what it is today.
Here’s a quick tour through the easily forgotten history of the infamous browser:
1996: Internet Explorer 3
This version of the browser, introduced in 1997, was the first browser to implement CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Yes, you’re reading that correctly—in fact, it introduced many new features like Java applets and sadly, ActiveX controls.
1997: Internet Explorer 4
IE4 introduced a blazing fast (at the time) rendering engine as an embeddable component that could be used in other applications—this was a lot more important than people realize. This version also introduced Dynamic HTML, which allows web pages to dynamically change the page using JavaScript, and added Active Desktop integration.
Even more weird? Seems like nobody remembers this anymore, but IE4 was actually cross-platform—you could install it on Mac OS, Solaris, and HP-UX—and by the time IE5 was released, IE4 had reached a 60% market share.
1999: Internet Explorer 5.x
Microsoft invented Ajax. Wait… what? That’s right, it was this version of IE that introduced the XMLHttpRequest feature in JavaScript, which forms the underlying technology behind every web application you’re using today—you know, like Gmail. Of course, the term “Ajax” wasn’t actually coined until years later by somebody other than Microsoft, but this release supported everything required to make it work.
So Yes, Microsoft Innovated
From IE3 until IE6, Microsoft used all their resources to simply out-innovate the competition, releasing new features and better browsers faster than Netscape. In fact, Netscape 3 Gold was a buggy piece of junk that crashed all the time, and Netscape 4 was extremely slow and could barely render tables—much less CSS, which would often cause the browser to crash.
To put it in context: web developers used to complain about Netscape the same way they complain about IE6 now.
The trouble all started when Microsoft integrated IE into Windows as a required component, and made it difficult to uninstall and use an alternate browser. Then there was the whole business with them exploiting their monopoly to try and push Netscape out of the market, and a lot of people started to view Microsoft as the evil empire.
Microsoft Stopped Trying
By the time Microsoft released Internet Explorer 6 in 2001, complete with lots of new features for web developers, since there was no competition and they had a 95% market share, Microsoft just stopped trying—seriously, they did nothing for 5 years even after Firefox was released and geeks started migrating left and right.
Microsoft-Specific Features
The whole problem with Microsoft’s innovation is that much of it was done in ways that didn’t follow the web standards—this wasn’t as big of a problem when Internet Explorer was the only game in town, but once Firefox and Webkit came around and started following the standards correctly, suddenly it became a huge problem for web developers.
Security Holes and Crashing
Since Microsoft decided they didn’t need to try anymore, and they didn’t keep up with the competition from Firefox and other browsers, bugs and security holes just cropped up left and right—really terrible ones, too. For instance, this code is all that is required to crash IE6:
<script>for(x in document.write){document.write(x);}</script>
In fact, the screenshot at the beginning of this section was a live example of testing out this particular bug.
IE7 and IE8 Were Too Little, Too Late
It took 5 years after IE6 for Microsoft to finally get around to releasing IE7, which added tabs and made the browser slightly more tolerable, but for web designers it was still a nightmare to deal with, and only complicated the issue since now you had to make pages render correctly in two lousy browsers instead of just one.
It took another 2.5 years for Microsoft to finally release Internet Explorer 8, which greatly improved CSS support for web developers, and added new features like Private browsing, tab isolation to prevent one bad page from taking down the whole browser, and phishing protection. By this point, most geeks had already moved on to Firefox, and then some of us to Google Chrome.
![image[21]](http://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/image2110.png "image[21]")
Just because we’re geeks doesn’t mean we hate everything that’s inferior and outdated—in fact, we often love retro computing—that’s why we love Atari, NES, Commodore 64, etc. We take pride in our geek knowledge. So why’s Internet Explorer a different story?
Here’s a couple of reasons that fueled our hatred of the buggy browser, and finally put us all over the edge:
Supporting IE is Like a Fork in the Eye for Web Devs
Here’s a sample of a day in the life of a web designer: You spend hours making sure that your page looks great, and you test it out in Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and even Opera. It looks great, awesome!
Now you open up IE and the page looks like somebody put it into a blender and hit the Whip button. Then you spend double the amount of time trying to fix it to look tolerable in IE6 and IE7, cursing loudly the entire time.
Geeks Forced to Use Internet Explorer
And here’s where we come to the real issue—the whole reason that geeks can’t stand Internet Explorer:
Geeks everywhere were forced to use Internet Explorer at work even when there are better browsers, forced to support it for corporate applications, forced to make sure web sites still work in IE, and we couldn’t convince everybody to switch to a better browser.
Geeks don’t hate something that’s inferior—but they do hate it when it’s forced on them.
Thankfully it seems like Microsoft has finally learned from their many, many mistakes in the browser world. They are below 50% in the market share wars, and they’ve finally learned to focus on using web standards.
Internet Explorer 9 is about to be released, it’s got a shiny new interface that looks a lot like Google Chrome, blazing fast hardware acceleration, and supports HTML5 surprisingly well—in fact, it’s so much better that 34% of our readers said they will switch to IE9.
Microsoft is billing Internet Explorer 9 as the browser that’s going to change the world, and they aren’t wrong—they just aren’t mentioning that they were the only ones holding the web back with their anemic browsers. And now that mess is finally over.
This is a hoot, thanks!
I’d only add that many of us were FORCED to use IE and only IE by corporate “preventers of information technology” who had bought into the Microsoft mythology hook line and sinker, and were more than anxious to express our defiance in whatever ways we could, including running other browsers at home, and I daresay, even installing them on our work computers - what audacity!
IE7 had the same problems Office 2007 and Windows Vista has,
They took a simple and easy to use interface and moved/hid everything leaving you to spend hours trying to hunt down simple functions that were easily found in previous versions.
The Flashblock add-on makes Firefox worth using over everything else. Sure, I have to click one extra time to get a Youtube video to start, but it also keeps the 95% of Flash that is utter crap from ever running.
I’ve totally forgot about NoScript.
Hopefully it will do the trick.
Indeed we do.
Apostle Claver tells the world how the real party of racism is the Democrats
Check the newer versions and then open the task manager and whoa!!
FireFox with the NoScript plugin is the way to go. It keeps you from experiencing the internet version of “grab your ankles, hold my beer, and watch this.”
Isn’t Firefox a new version of Netscrape?
Plus....the Extensionssss....Nothing like them in I.E.
I always say nothing makes the current version of IE look good quite like the next 2 versions. Every version of IE has been a pain, ugly, slow, piggish, tons of annoying “security” features that mostly stop you from browsing but never seem to slow down the malware. And MS has maintained the remarkable streak of always making the next version worse in every category. So the IE6 you fought hard to avoid when it came out becomes the IE6 you’re desperately protecting from automatic updates now that 8 is out. And in a few years you’ll be guarding against the evils of 10.
I started out with Netscape [dial up days]. It was ok, until around version 4.7. Then it became a nightmare and crashed on many websites.
IE4 and 5 were just getting started.
About the time I found FR, I also found a web browser [Fastbrowser Pro] that was IE6 based and had tabs. I still use it for FR, because it has some add-on features that later IE versions do not support.
I also found Firefox and stated using it around version 0.7. It was okay and the extensions/add-ons were nice, but it sucked up memory.
I tried IE7 and immediately deleted it, because it lacked many features. I also tried Google Chrome and deleted it for the same reason.
I am still on XP sp2. I still use Fastbrowser Pro for FR and Firefox 3.6.3. Some versions/upgrades of Firefox have been monsters, destroying profiles and files. When I use Fastbrowser Pro to look at Youtube videos, Youtube gives me a warning that the browser is out of date — but the videos still load, so I keep using Fastbrowser Pro.
I tried a later version of Chrome. It was faster than Firefox, but doesn’t have comparable extensions/add-ons that Firefox has.
One program that I use has already warned me not to use it with IE9, as IE9 will corrupt its files.
==
I keep thinking about a new computer with Win7, but so far, for home use, I haven’t been able to justify the cost vs home use.
They took a simple and easy to use interface and moved/hid everything leaving you to spend hours trying to hunt down simple functions that were easily found in previous versions.
It wasn't so bad with IE7, or with Vista, but Office 2007 is absolutely horrible. Even my shortcut keys don't work the same any more ( e.g. [alt][E}{C] for 'copy'). The still work (sometimes) in IE8, but not in Office. What were they thinking when they changed the interface? All it did was create a situation where anybody that had been using Office for the last 2 decades required training, either through a classroom or 'trial-and-error'. And, training costs companies money.
Had I known, back in 2007 when I got Office 2007, that it was going to be different, I'd have gotten 2003 instead.
Cause it sucks? Because in an attempt to stave off monopoly accusations, MicroShaft knitted it so closely into Windows that it probably has the access to do more damage than a third party browser? Cause it's sort of the AOL of browsers?
I tried going back to IE, because I am running a 64 bit OS, and thought I’d like a complete 64 bit brower.
Yuck.
Ditto to a number of the points people raised. Iam going to raise one more small but important (for me point).
I go to NUMEROUS websites that have usernames and passwords. Sometimes I have to guess at one or the other (was the user name an e-mail address or not? Did I have to capitalize the password?)
Anyway, when I make my best guess, Firefox submits the entry, while asking if I want it to remember. If it loads properly, I say YES. IE will not submit the entry UNTIL I tell it if I want it to remember. If I say YES and I’m wrong, I have to go through it again, with IE auto-entering the wrong info. I hate that.
Opera, busy or not works very well.
By the way, I can see November from my house.
On Nov 2, Pelosi’s house will be foreclosed on by we the people.
caddis the elder
I’ve never used IE as my regular browser. I went from Mosaic straight to Netscape Navigator.
Jesus! How many add-ons do you have? Ever think about turning some of them off? I use NoScript, AdBlockPlus, and Ghostery, and I’m running around 80 Mb (80,000 Kb). I agree that a browser should be agile, but lightweight has gone the way of the dodo!
With newer machines coming in with more than 4 GB RAM and hard drives reaching 3 TB, sure we want fast, but memory and hard disk footprints don’t much matter anymore.
Lets you toggle colors (I HATE sites with dark backgrounds and grey text!), images, Flash, and Java off and on with a check box for each, right up top in the menu bar for instant access.
I am so used to browsing sites like FR in "plain text only" mode that when I login from an IE-using computer I sometimes don't recognize where I am....
Well I only have 5, most are for stopping stuff from loading like FlashBlock and Ad Blocker.
I do have a habit of never closing the program down completely, so it just keeps using more resources until it is crawling.
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