Hey, I decided to talk about something a bit random today! Internet Explorer. It's still considered a horribly crappy browser by many and it's an object of many jokes. There's a good reason for that though. IE's history is really terrible. After wiping out Netscape (which by the way cost Microsoft a really nasty lawsuit afterwards), they've become pretty much the only browser in use. Not sure how many people exactly used it but if I'm not mistaken it was over 90% of internet users. It was pretty much THE browser for some time with very few alternatives - and those weren't very well known. So what happened after IE gained monopoly? THEY GOT LAZY. Everything from that point was just one big stagnation. The browser could go years without an update. Competition started waking up because something needed to be done. IE was slow, faulty and it was a nightmare for website developers, because it didn't want to comply with all W3C standards. I am not surprised during that period people eventually started moving over to the alternatives and really enjoying them. Because other browsers have quickly become much better and IE was a joke. Yup, considering all that, it's not strange people hate IE and consider it rubbish.
But how many of you actually noticed Microsoft has been finally working on it extensively lately? The improvements are really vast, they added lots of stuff that people were missing so much, they improved stability greatly and made it comply completely with the standards. They added their own ideas as well and in general... I have to say the latest versions of that browser are actually... decent... yes, I'm serious. Comparable to other available browsers. Have you checked any comparison reviews in technology magazines? I actually have. Current IE is no longer a broken piece of crap that you can only make fun of.
Having said all that... I still prefer Firefox, it's a personal choice for several reasons and no other browser allows me having things the way I really like. And I guess jokes about IE are still fun even if they are no longer valid. And of course... The problem that remains is that a number of people still have old crappy versions of IE... I'd suggest all website developers to simply detect if that's the case and force their visitors to upgrade it if they really want to stick to IE. But the websites that actually refuse to show up at all in any version of IE (because the developers decided it sucks and they won't support it) are a bit ridiculous in my opinion. Playing politics, webmasters? Congratulations, you're just going to have less visitors, because not all the internet folk feels like changing the browser they've been using for years.
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11 years, 2 months ago
14 Feb 2013 23:05 CET
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