Nerd Rant - browsers
Jan. 26th, 2006 09:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
same_skyYou know what pisses me off? And you'd better hear me out before you start flaming me because I'm not saying what you think I am. Firefox pisses me off. (And btw, this is so long and irritated that I am actually embarrassed to post it but I've been typing so long that I'm tired of sitting here and I hate to miss two days in a row.)
See, I think Firefox is a fine browser. It's a thousand times better than Internet Explorer. I believe I got defriended once over my IE opinions (which was, if you'll allow me to digress, unbelievably stupid but someone who defriends for reasons like that is really not someone that's going to break my heart by going) but here's the thing. IE is worthless. Except for the the advantage that IE users have with the whole "This site's designer is an embarrassment to the industry and so you can't view this using any brower other than Internet Explorer 5.5.05.5* HAHAHA" thing that you see done in certain places, there is NOTHING GOOD about IE. There just isn't. It's crashy, it's not secure, it's featureless, it will burn your house down if you don't watch it closely. It appears to work, and that's why people use it, but it's being held together by the virtual equivalent of duct tape and twine. And then you sit there and listen to people say things like "But it works! Why wouldn't I want to use it!" Well, the answer, in short: IE is ruining the internet. It is holding back standards-based designs, new features, new designs.. all because everyone has to pander to the lowest common denominator. Oh, and it's so much slower than anything else.
Designing for the flaws of IE6 (which is, btw, what? Six years old?) is a pain in the hind-end, so I am all for people using Firefox when possible. Where would we be if everyone had given up on IE years ago? I don't know, but I can tell you this: the internet would most likely be much cooler. Okay, anyway. Microsoft said for a long time that they weren't going to do a new version of IE. They've since changed their minds and will be releasing something maybe this year, and it is apparently going to include some features. (I don't say "more features" because there ARE NO features in Internet Explorer... just the ones that are part of the definition of being a web browser.) In any case, I'm going to leave Internet Explorer out of this from here on out as much as possible. I just wanted to give a bit of an explanation as to why I am not considering it as a viable option, and also, why I think that other browsers.. any browsers.. are better alternatives.
As I was saying, Firefox is good. It seems to work well, it has customizable aspects, it's more secure than Internet Explorer and its coders more responsive when there ARE issues. I use it when I work in the administration section (adding content, etc) of Mosaic Minds because of a tiny little thing it supports that just makes my routine work quicker, not worth explaining. I like it just fine--I'm not in love with it, but if Firefox had the majority, I'd be happy. Opera is better, but it's not for everyone.. I totally get that. What pisses me off about it is not the product itself at all, it's what people say about it. People are so excited that there was finally an alternative to Internet Explorer, one with exciting! new! features! It was just such a big deal in certain circles when it came out and even when it was in development. But.. it came out as a a browser with fewer features than Opera, which had already been out for years and years. I was reading this article in PC World today--what? You thought I was only joking about being a geek?--today about the three browsers. (That would be IE, Firefox and Opera.. which is [standard disclaimer] what I use.) And still, the development cycle goes like this most of the time: Opera adds a new feature in a new release. *wait* *wait* Firefox adds a brand! new! exciting! never-before-seen! feature. Everyone is abuzz with how wonderful Firefox is and how cutting edge. And it IS good. It's very good. I like it. But usually, Opera has already had that never-before-seen feature for months. Or years, in some cases. And I don't CARE how many people use Firefox rather than Opera. I will encourage you to download Firefox if you're thinking of switching from IE and don't like Opera for whatever reason. It's just that for once, it would be nice to see the browser that I have been ecstatic over since before it was completely worth being excited over get the credit that it's due. But everyone is so busy beaming at Firefox's revolutionary new stuff that no one ever thinks to do that.
This is all a little vague as to what I'm talking about. Here's a bit of an example from the article I was reading of what drives me crazy:
"The new version of IE will finally allow you to open multiple Web pages on tabs in the same window, a capability that Firefox and Opera have offered for a while." (Yes. In 1998, when I downloaded Opera for the first time, it already had this capability. Firefox? Released last fall.)
"In a recent study, security analysis and software company Secunia found that Firefox had 3 unpatched security risks out of 25 discovered problems, compared with 20 unpatched risks for IE out of 86 found. Opera had them both beat, with no unpatched holes out of 8 detected." (And people gush about how secure Firefox is--and it is! I totally do not disagree with that, and of course, people target the larger browsers so the discovered problems thing can be discounted, but still. IE has fixed less than 77% of its discovered vulnerabilities, Firefox has fixed 88% of them, but Opera's fixed 100%. )
And here's the one that really chaps my ass:
"But because many Web pages are exclusively tested with--or written for--Internet Explorer, which tends to disregard Web consortium guidelines, the standards-loving Opera programmers have to work hard to ensure pages display properly in their browser." (WTF? That is not it AT ALL. That thing about standards-loving is just the key here. Designers who code for Opera don't have to work hard to ensure that pages display properly in their browser. That's what "standards" means. A site designed for Opera should--in most cases--work in any other standards-compliant browser. It doesn't, that's the problem--but the problem isn't with Opera, it's with IE.)
Umm.. anyway. *blush* Sorry about that. Didn't mean to get so into it but my fingers just won't shut up sometimes. I don't even know why I care except that I have an unreasonable fondness for my browser. And so I hope you get that I do really like Firefox.. I'm very glad it's been released and that people are using it. I just wish they would stop talking about it like it's got new, never-been-done-before stuff. It's irritating. :) Good features, but they're hardly the only ones to be using them, as they seem to get their inspiration from the best parts of Opera. (And also for the record, I don't have a problem with that either. Features are pretty common among similar programs so it's not surprising that they end up with the same ones, really.)
*p.s. I made up the version because I can't be bothered to look up valid specific releases of IE.
See, I think Firefox is a fine browser. It's a thousand times better than Internet Explorer. I believe I got defriended once over my IE opinions (which was, if you'll allow me to digress, unbelievably stupid but someone who defriends for reasons like that is really not someone that's going to break my heart by going) but here's the thing. IE is worthless. Except for the the advantage that IE users have with the whole "This site's designer is an embarrassment to the industry and so you can't view this using any brower other than Internet Explorer 5.5.05.5* HAHAHA" thing that you see done in certain places, there is NOTHING GOOD about IE. There just isn't. It's crashy, it's not secure, it's featureless, it will burn your house down if you don't watch it closely. It appears to work, and that's why people use it, but it's being held together by the virtual equivalent of duct tape and twine. And then you sit there and listen to people say things like "But it works! Why wouldn't I want to use it!" Well, the answer, in short: IE is ruining the internet. It is holding back standards-based designs, new features, new designs.. all because everyone has to pander to the lowest common denominator. Oh, and it's so much slower than anything else.
Designing for the flaws of IE6 (which is, btw, what? Six years old?) is a pain in the hind-end, so I am all for people using Firefox when possible. Where would we be if everyone had given up on IE years ago? I don't know, but I can tell you this: the internet would most likely be much cooler. Okay, anyway. Microsoft said for a long time that they weren't going to do a new version of IE. They've since changed their minds and will be releasing something maybe this year, and it is apparently going to include some features. (I don't say "more features" because there ARE NO features in Internet Explorer... just the ones that are part of the definition of being a web browser.) In any case, I'm going to leave Internet Explorer out of this from here on out as much as possible. I just wanted to give a bit of an explanation as to why I am not considering it as a viable option, and also, why I think that other browsers.. any browsers.. are better alternatives.
As I was saying, Firefox is good. It seems to work well, it has customizable aspects, it's more secure than Internet Explorer and its coders more responsive when there ARE issues. I use it when I work in the administration section (adding content, etc) of Mosaic Minds because of a tiny little thing it supports that just makes my routine work quicker, not worth explaining. I like it just fine--I'm not in love with it, but if Firefox had the majority, I'd be happy. Opera is better, but it's not for everyone.. I totally get that. What pisses me off about it is not the product itself at all, it's what people say about it. People are so excited that there was finally an alternative to Internet Explorer, one with exciting! new! features! It was just such a big deal in certain circles when it came out and even when it was in development. But.. it came out as a a browser with fewer features than Opera, which had already been out for years and years. I was reading this article in PC World today--what? You thought I was only joking about being a geek?--today about the three browsers. (That would be IE, Firefox and Opera.. which is [standard disclaimer] what I use.) And still, the development cycle goes like this most of the time: Opera adds a new feature in a new release. *wait* *wait* Firefox adds a brand! new! exciting! never-before-seen! feature. Everyone is abuzz with how wonderful Firefox is and how cutting edge. And it IS good. It's very good. I like it. But usually, Opera has already had that never-before-seen feature for months. Or years, in some cases. And I don't CARE how many people use Firefox rather than Opera. I will encourage you to download Firefox if you're thinking of switching from IE and don't like Opera for whatever reason. It's just that for once, it would be nice to see the browser that I have been ecstatic over since before it was completely worth being excited over get the credit that it's due. But everyone is so busy beaming at Firefox's revolutionary new stuff that no one ever thinks to do that.
This is all a little vague as to what I'm talking about. Here's a bit of an example from the article I was reading of what drives me crazy:
"The new version of IE will finally allow you to open multiple Web pages on tabs in the same window, a capability that Firefox and Opera have offered for a while." (Yes. In 1998, when I downloaded Opera for the first time, it already had this capability. Firefox? Released last fall.)
"In a recent study, security analysis and software company Secunia found that Firefox had 3 unpatched security risks out of 25 discovered problems, compared with 20 unpatched risks for IE out of 86 found. Opera had them both beat, with no unpatched holes out of 8 detected." (And people gush about how secure Firefox is--and it is! I totally do not disagree with that, and of course, people target the larger browsers so the discovered problems thing can be discounted, but still. IE has fixed less than 77% of its discovered vulnerabilities, Firefox has fixed 88% of them, but Opera's fixed 100%. )
And here's the one that really chaps my ass:
"But because many Web pages are exclusively tested with--or written for--Internet Explorer, which tends to disregard Web consortium guidelines, the standards-loving Opera programmers have to work hard to ensure pages display properly in their browser." (WTF? That is not it AT ALL. That thing about standards-loving is just the key here. Designers who code for Opera don't have to work hard to ensure that pages display properly in their browser. That's what "standards" means. A site designed for Opera should--in most cases--work in any other standards-compliant browser. It doesn't, that's the problem--but the problem isn't with Opera, it's with IE.)
Umm.. anyway. *blush* Sorry about that. Didn't mean to get so into it but my fingers just won't shut up sometimes. I don't even know why I care except that I have an unreasonable fondness for my browser. And so I hope you get that I do really like Firefox.. I'm very glad it's been released and that people are using it. I just wish they would stop talking about it like it's got new, never-been-done-before stuff. It's irritating. :) Good features, but they're hardly the only ones to be using them, as they seem to get their inspiration from the best parts of Opera. (And also for the record, I don't have a problem with that either. Features are pretty common among similar programs so it's not surprising that they end up with the same ones, really.)
*p.s. I made up the version because I can't be bothered to look up valid specific releases of IE.
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no subject
Date: 2006-01-27 02:53 am (UTC)But I think it's been quite a lot longer than that... at least a year. (Maybe you mean Fall 2004?) But still, your point is right on. If nothing else, folks should be ACCURATE in their reporting :)
no subject
Date: 2006-01-27 03:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-27 06:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-27 01:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-29 02:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-29 02:54 pm (UTC)(Of course, my Swede has to occasionally grumble about Opera being a Norwegian product, but being good even so...)
no subject
Date: 2006-01-27 05:39 pm (UTC)At work we test our public web site and web applications on IE6 and the latest versions of Firefox and Opera (and make sure pages validate using the W3C's validator). Generally we develop mainly using Firefox then test on the others. It's unusual for us to have to do anything to get stuff working on Opera, but getting stuff to work properly under IE6 can be a pain though and we can spend ages fiddling with the CSS.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-29 02:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-30 06:26 am (UTC)