News Microsoft to secure IE for XP only

I still use Phoenix (1.3.0.0).

Phoenix begat Firebird.

Firebird begat Firefox.

It loads faster than IE (6.0.2600.0).

I haven't found a website it has not rendered correctly.

It highlights clicked links.

I can highlight text with no problem.

It does Java and Fixed backgrounds without blinking.

It isn't full of security holes.

It doesn't require patching every 7 minutes.

I also get with it:

The best popup-blocker I have ever used.
A Google search function.
Tabbed browsing.
Mouse gestures.
Mouse Chords.
Alpha transparancies with *.png files (lets see IE do that one...).
By typing 'fish <URL>' I get a babelfish'd translation of the URL.
I don't get malware installed via ActiveX controls (like IE).

Still think IE is the be-all and end-all?

I work for Microsoft and use Phoenix..what does that say? I still love XP - it is the best OS I have used but IE? No thanks.

*n

 

So are you trying to say that IE does not need extencions like Java, Flash, Quicktime, etc... To be honest FireFox comes with java packed in but IE needs Sun Java to be installed.
And personally I find the configuration menu of FireFox simpler.

 

1.0PR actually

Gecko is a much more superior rendering engine, it's quick fast and standards compliant. Opera and Safari are both valid alternatives.

Oh yeah? It's almost impossible to tell how much memory IE uses up because it's been spread across a bunch of different processes.

Never noticed this as a problem, do you mean colouring visited links properly? Sometimes web designers make the unvisited and visited links the same colour.

Yes you can.

Firefox and Opera can handle Java just fine.

I've got a fixed background on my blog, and it's fine in both IE and Firefox. Got an example where it fails?

I don't hate IE or Microsoft because it's fashionable to, I hate IE because it's insecure, badly written and doesn't follow standards correctly (if at all).

You need to install Java, Flash and Quicktime for both IE and Firefox... and Opera too. Firefox doesn't install Java itself, Opera will if you download that version of it.


BTW: One major difference in the way IE and Gecko render pages is that IE works from the top down, while Gecko renders the text first then the images. Content is more important than style/graphics.

 

I'm old-fashioned, 98SE (and cover-disk IE versions before MS stopped them) installs IE with the MS JavaVM and WMP, which is better IMHO than Quicktime for most av files. But the 4Mb-odd Firefox download doesn't include any plug-in extras.

I find both browsers load the same, annoying as the text bounces about in both if the page code doesn't contain image size placeholders.

 

no.

mozilla runs faster than ie (for me at least)

mozilla may have a larger footprint than other stuff, but I really don't care, I have 768MB, and I use 300 max

I don't really know what you mean with this one...

ie is clunky because it crashes

well, I can

mozilla is a couple times faster on 1.5Mb dsl than ie

java 5 (beta) works better in mozilla than the pos runtime ms includes with ie

if the code is good, mozilla will display it correctly

I hate ms, not because it's fashionable.

 

thats your opinion. i prefer a broswer that can actually structure the webpages correctly. i admit the fact that ie doesn't render dots on boxes in css correctly (i think it draws little dashes). but the others are not valid alternatives when they cant render my physics homework webpage www.masteringphysics.com (i with you could visit to see but it costs like $50 for access) at all.

since ie is basically integrated into the os, the bit thats always running shouldn't count, as in that instance its part of the os. this is another reason its more efficient, its sharing itself between browser and os. no need to run the same code 2x. in task manager i can take the total system memory usage with and without ie running. this will give me a pretty good estimate of the memory footprint. it is a bit smaller, not a whole lot, a few megs more for every page.

no, actually i mean coloring visited links immediately. in ie when you click on a link on a page it changes the link's color. in opera, mozilla and safari it doesn't change color till you resresh the page. I can see why it's this way becuase if you click on a link the the page changes and when you go back the color will be changed. but the exception to that is pages with frames, where it becomes noticible.. anyways it drives me nuts. maybe noone else considers this anything to write home about.

(referring to highlighting issues in firefox et al)
your right, i should rephrase that. firefox has some issues with highlighting text while scrolling. at least on the 2 machines i tried it on. (home computer and a computer in the library at the uni.

Not acording to my mastering physics webpage they can't.
their system requirement say it should be working but it never renders right till you refresh a few times and even then it doesn't display right. (and this is on high bandwidth at school so its not timing out)

Minimum System Requirements for MasteringPhysics™
Windows: 98, NT, 2000, ME, XP
Macintosh: OS 9.2, 10.2, 10.3
RedHat Linux 8.0
All:
64MB RAM (or greater)
1024x768 screen resolution (or greater)
Browsers: Internet Explorer 5.1, 5.2, 5.5, 6.0; Netscape 6.2, 7.0, 7.1; Mozilla 1.2, 1.3, 1.6; Safari 1.2

again, i was unclear and i must apologise. what i mean is that when they do it it slows the scrolling down. it sorta "stutters". The admin at another forum i frequent, once added a fixed backgroud (they were recently hit by this antimicrosoft mozilla thing). anyways the BG lasted like half a day because everyone was complaining that when scrolling it wasn't smooth anymore in firefox. I tried opera and it was crappy there too. in Ie it was as smooth as if it were not fixed. Maybe it was his programming, i dont know. I do know that everything he programs on his forum he makes 100% standards complient, he keeps harping on that.

it follows microsofts standards, since more people use IE that makes it the dominant "standard". this isn't a good thing IMO and i hate how microsoft controls everything on the internet and in gaming. but thats just the way it is. for now. and it is ,unfortunately, easier to use.

content being more important than style/graphics is an opinion. Im instantly bothered by a page displaying wrong (even if only at first). but the problem with this for me is because im on dial-up at home. and firefox/opera seem much less tolerant of low bandwidth. so they stop loading the page before it loads completely. thus I get pages that dont look right at all till I reload them 4-5 times. IE loads them completely, correctly, and quickly.

Also could someone please explain the love of tabbed browsing for me? I just never saw the difference between having a series of buttons on the taskbar vs a series of "tabs" in the program besides that tabs take up page viewing space. but maybe if you have grouping of similar windows on the tastbar, that ruins it, i dont have windows set up that way so grouping isn't a problem.

Oh and to those harping spyware and popups. If you have popups or spyware, you have done something wrong. You dont get spyware or random popups(not ones built into webpages) in IE (or any browser) unless you have INSTALLED something bad. You don't just get them from using IE. Installing a popup blocker doesn't fix random popups, it only masks the problem. you need to remove the malware you have installed. popup blockers are only usefull if you dont wanna see the popups pages have built in. (blocking them is a problem sometimes because popups are usefull on some pages).

If you have your system bogged down so badly that firefox loads faster then IE then i worry for your computer. since IE is pretty well always loaded it should come up about instantly. Maybe youre running a lot of skinning programs and since IE integrates really well it picks up a lot more effect from those skinning/style programs. I personally turn off all themes the and extra clown makeup windows XP comes with. So maybe that's it.

Ick, long post sorry...

(if any of this sounds like its being mean or angry, then i apologise, I don't mean anything to be a flame. I'm just trying to have a discussion. just so ya know )

 

the thing is, you can't get spy/mal-ware through anything except ie, really

some pop-ups install stuff... don't forget that

I hope I didn't miss the point of that post, it's late here

 

If the page has been written badly in the first place so it'd only work in IE, then there's no way you can even call that anywhere near "correct". Correct should equal viewable exactly (or as damn near as possible!) the same way in ALL graphical browsers.

Please stop calling them "standards". The only standards they should be following are those ratified by the W3C. There was a reason why it was set up, to try to get everyone following the same set of rules, there is no point making up your own. This is why Microsoft are no longer allowed to make their own JVM.

No it's not. You should be able to turn off all images and stylesheets and STILL be able to read the text. Not everyone uses a graphical browser - i.e. Lynx. Not everyone can actually see the screen very well, so they use Screen Readers which converts the text to speech. Style is not important, content is.

Not making your sites viewable in many different browsers (including Screen Readers) could wind you up on the wrong end of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 in the UK.

Case in point: Odeon. Broken in almost every browser but IE, and inaccessible to many disabled people. Although they have amazingly updated their site very recently and created a new "Text Only" section, it's still broken and hardly standards compliant.

IE has had hundreds of security holes discovered over the years. A lot of these have been used to SNEAK malware onto your PC WITHOUT user interaction, using well publicised bugs patched eventually by Microsoft. Also including the same broken engine in Outlook Express and Outlook has caused millions more people to be infected with viruses simply by opening an email or clicking on a web page. You do NOT need to click OK or run a program to be infected the majority of times these holes have been employed.

Almost all of these bugs apply only to IE (and its engine), not the other browsers which have largely been safe from the same vulnerabilities. There's been enough written on this subject.

 

I had major problems with Firebird/Fox & Sun Java on any page using Java. Toolbars and some frames would load mainly black and the toolbar menu item boxes would turn the right colour on mouse-over; a refresh or minimise/maximise fixed things. IE6/JavaVM worked fine. The problem stopped when I changed monitor & drivers, so maybe that would sort your school system.

That's my favourite feature of Firefox - single browser mode, tabs for every link from a different base url, middle-click to close or undo a closed tab...

I find it far easier & quicker to navigate between sites, less mouse movement. And with a basic Google search bar extra in FF I've very nearly as much height left as in IE and can auto-hide the task-bar for more height.

 

OK personally, I hate the tabbed browsing. It’s screwed me up countless times. On my dell (it only uses mozilla because it got plagued with spy ware to the point that IE does not load anymore) when I use mozilla and I have tabs open, I accidentally close all of mozilla instead of the tabs. So to get around this, I have to open up more bloatware mozilla windows. Mozilla has been getting slower and slow with loading pages. Occasionally I can get ie to run and it runs much faster than mozilla. Oh yea don’t think mozilla is spy ware immune, because yesterday the homepage was hijacked.

 

If you install the TabBrowser Extensions extension in Firefox, then you get a setting to warn you if you've got tabs open. It's incredibly useful!

 

Yea but despite what options i set, it never warned me

 

This screen might help.

 

As I said earlier (or did you ignore my post), one of my main pet hates with IE is its use of Active X controls...Such exploits mean that you do not need to actively do anything for IE to allow malware, spyware, viruses, trojans et cetera to be installed.

You are wrong.

*n

 

If everyone programed perfect webpages, I would use firefox as my primary browser.

However since most people don't, and the firefox is almost completely intollerant of bad code, some pages do not display correctly or have odd little errors. Having coded to satisfy both browsers, this is really freaking annoying. A "quirks" mode would be real nice.

Firefox does take longer to load (in fact I can press the button, wait a little while, press the IE button, and IE is still ready to be used before firefox), but I imagine that has something to do with IE being integrated into the shell.

I actually tried switching to firefox for a week (removed access to IE and everything), but I got so annoyed that I went back to IE. If IE would just add tabbed browsing, I would see no significant reason to switch to firefox

Edit: after reading the article again, I saw this:

So don't get your knickers in a knot. You will still get security updates, just not new features.

 

Like i said, Mozilla is stupid and will not change. i pick a different option and i hit ok or apply, but it still does not warn me. I will uninstall slowzilla when i reformat the computer next week.

 

Fs, guys stop using opinionated crass arguments 'I hate tabbed browsing so it's ****', 'IE's full of spyware so it's ****'. The simple fact of the matter is that, IE is a perfectly good browser it's just prone to being exploited because it's microsoft (admittedly ActiveX doesn't help). Firefox is also good (though not mozilla - it's bloated and ugly, but it can't be directly compared because it's actually a suite of programs anyway.) I've had no problems loading any pages (please send some links to ones that don't work) and I haven't noticed it being any slower. The crux for me is the google search bar and the tabbed browsing, how can you not find them useful!? When I've got outlook, nero, photshop, etc. open and I'm browsing the infraweb I can just have one browser to open up with five pages on it.

Thing is, some people have had bad experiences with both and take that as being absolute. It is not, they are both good, just take your pick and shut up.