Would You Use Ie Explorer Even If It Wasn't Bundled With Windows?

[onkarnath2001 0]

Netscape Navigator was the leading browser in the market before Internet Explorer (IE) was forced onto people who bought the Windows operating system. If I'm not wrong, Bill Gates didn't believe in the potential of the internet at first and that's why Microsoft didn't release any mainstream products relating to the internet in the early days. However, when they saw how successful other companies became due to the net, they hurriedly put together the clumsy browser called IE, bundled it together with a new Windows version (I believe it was 95?) and threw it out into the open.
At that time Windows' popularity was only increasing, so it was only natural that people who bought the OS used the browser readily since they weren't required to download and install a new one. This is the secret behind IE's "success".

Anyway, that was a long time ago and now many people are ditching the browser for better ones. What about you? Are you one of those who still uses IE because it's ready-to-use or do you take the trouble t install a better browser?

For a while it looked as if Mozilla's Firefox browser was destined to become a huge threat to Internet Explorer in the web browser wars. Firefox has continued to slowly but steadily eat away at IE's market share, and for good reason. In many ways it was just a better overall browser than IE 5 or 6. Enter Internet Explorer 7. With many of the same features that helped spark Firefox's popularity as well as its intimate coupling with the Windows Vista operating system, Microsoft's newest browser offering has raised doubts as to whether Mozilla's market share can continue to grow at its current rate.

Both of these browsers have their own respective appeal and deciding which one may be right for you can prove to be a daunting task. This article attempts to make things a little easier for you when decision time arrives.

[user681 0]

For a while it looked as if Mozilla's Firefox browser was destined to become a huge threat to Internet Explorer in the web browser wars. Firefox has continued to slowly but steadily eat away at IE's market share, and for good reason. In many ways it was just a better overall browser than IE 5 or 6. Enter Internet Explorer 7. With many of the same features that helped spark Firefox's popularity as well as its intimate coupling with the Windows Vista operating system, Microsoft's newest browser offering has raised doubts as to whether Mozilla's market share can continue to grow at its current rate.
Both of these browsers have their own respective appeal and deciding which one may be right for you can prove to be a daunting task. This article attempts to make things a little easier for you when decision time arrives.

IE is horrible to develop on..

[TheDarkHacker 0]

I am not sure when exactly but i am sure switching from Internet Explorer to Firefox was fast.I hated internet explorer very much.It made my internet connection slow,i have broadband internet connection.I will never use it again.If it was or if it wasn't, on any way i would not use it on my windows computer.If it was other OS maybe i would choose internet explorer only because it is popular and if it is faster then others.But on windows platform,never!But anyway,Firefox is working on Linux,MAC OS X,WINDOWS - isn't that enough.Internet Explorer is very buggy and slow.Few months ago i didn't understand but it was something that Internet explorer was hacked...

[The Simpleton 2]

For a while it looked as if Mozilla's Firefox browser was destined to become a huge threat to Internet Explorer in the web browser wars.

Firefox came out of nowhere! I still remember the buzz that surrounded the release of version 1.0. People everywhere were screaming with joy that this new browser was much faster and secure than IE. And that excited bunch of people spread the addiction to everyone around and today Firefox has become a household name (at least in the computing world!). IE is now famously infamous and it will never get back its good name again (did it have one in the first place?!)

[deadmad7 4]

if it weren't bundled, no way man. Ie is slowest web browser out there! That only reason i still have it is because you can't uninstall it!

[kleong 0]

Me too. Most probably I wont use it either. Thou FF is good, somehow, I am stuck with Chrome. Find a no frill, light-weight and quick to load to browser. Unless I need to make use of FF's plugin, I will be sticking with Chrome.

[Emmagine 0]

I've never really used IE. I think Firefox has always been much faster, nicer looking, and all around better. That's just what I prefer, and I haven't really tried any others, so I'm not really speaking from experience.

[BuffaloHelp 24]

While functionality of Firefox have made my surfing, researching and programming a lot easier, I would continue to use Internet Explorer for the purpose of testing out web designs and scripts.Although I may not use the Internet Explorer there are users who still use what is the "norm" for their computer. And from a certain aspect, ActiveX is still a huge part of the business world--which is native to Microsoft's programming.I have purchased and maintained particular security and closed caption circuit television DVRs for alarm companies. And majority of them require ActiveX to remotely view their camera or recordings. And so Internet Explorer is still the choice of browser for many clients and monitoring stations. And because it will be a long time to change them from ActiveX to the next generation, it's a sure bet that I'll be writing codes that are relevant to Internet Explorer.

[wayne 0]

While functionality of Firefox have made my surfing, researching and programming a lot easier, I would continue to use Internet Explorer for the purpose of testing out web designs and scripts.
Although I may not use the Internet Explorer there are users who still use what is the "norm" for their computer. And from a certain aspect, ActiveX is still a huge part of the business world--which is native to Microsoft's programming.

I have purchased and maintained particular security and closed caption circuit television DVRs for alarm companies. And majority of them require ActiveX to remotely view their camera or recordings. And so Internet Explorer is still the choice of browser for many clients and monitoring stations. And because it will be a long time to change them from ActiveX to the next generation, it's a sure bet that I'll be writing codes that are relevant to Internet Explorer.

For the abovestated reasons alone, IE is still useful, and bound to survive the challenge of the new players. It's association with Microsoft means that it will ultimately share in the success of Microsoft Operation systems. My preference is for Firefox, and Opera.
Edited December 29, 2009 by wayne (see edit history)

[nolan 0]

Referring to "better" browsers is really subjective. Internet Explorer has come a long way over time. Internet Explorer 9 is expected to have full CSS3 (already nearly witnessed in the beta) and HTML 5 support, along with many other improvements, and previous versions have adhered a lot more closely to W3C standards than their predecessors. Not only that, but if you're the kind of person that actually knows that browsers exist other than IE, Firefox, Safari, and perhaps Chrome, Opera, and Konquerer, you know there are a lot of browsers that are much worse than IE. Most people, however, never bother to look beyond the popular few they're already familiar with.

Personally, I'm a web designer, so I work with several browsers, from text-based to popular to obscure. Some have neat features that none of the most frequently used browsers have, and some of the browsers that are best known for being "good browsers" have horrible performance in certain areas (typically JS engine performance or resource usage overall).

In the end, my recommendation is for people to just find a browser they like and are comfortable with using and to stop dissing (pointlessly) on other browsers. Everyone has their own preferences. What works for you might not bode well with someone else and vice-versa.

Netscape Navigator was the leading browser in the market before Internet Explorer (IE) was forced onto people who bought the Windows operating system. If I'm not wrong, Bill Gates didn't believe in the potential of the internet at first and that's why Microsoft didn't release any mainstream products relating to the internet in the early days. However, when they saw how successful other companies became due to the net, they hurriedly put together the clumsy browser called IE, bundled it together with a new Windows version (I believe it was 95?) and threw it out into the open.
At that time Windows' popularity was only increasing, so it was only natural that people who bought the OS used the browser readily since they weren't required to download and install a new one. This is the secret behind IE's "success".

Anyway, that was a long time ago and now many people are ditching the browser for better ones. What about you? Are you one of those who still uses IE because it's ready-to-use or do you take the trouble t install a better browser?

[Nameless_ 1]

I used to use it, because well, as you said, it was bundled with Windows and I used Windows before and I couldn't be bother installing a new browser, but now that I have a mac, I use both the default safari and the mostly loved firefox. I mainly used firefox though, I don't really use safari anyway, I don't really know why, but they seem the same to me.Safari's a bit more convenient if you want to delete your bookmark bar's links, and emptying your cache, but I guess I use Firefox now for some reason. It's sometimes really annoying though, with the offline mode thing and such, but the main reason why I use Firefox is for Xisto, because I can now post on Xisto without having to get kicked out of the system ever few minutes and having to log back in again.

[Xalor 0]

Probably not since its pretty annoying to work with. I feel that it loads really slow especially on a new machine, that came from the manufacturer. Microsoft makes money this way anyway, and so do these OEM manufacturers such as Dell, Acer, Asus, Lenovo, IBM, Compaq, Ferrari GTI, iBuyPOWER, Cyberpower, alienware, voodoo, and the rest, they bundle crapware and useless toolbars to the point where its horribly crushed and slowed down by useless ActiveX addons, which by far makes a horrible experience, since there is no easy way of removing them once they get a hold of your computer. By far the worst is HP who bundles so much garbage its annoying. And Since i expect Microsoft to bundle something with IE to make up for it being free, its only free on Windows so they can control the whole experience, I wouldn't download it, its the same as paying for Netscape Communicator, and actually I'm happy that IE did come around at that time, made for some competition since Netscape Navigator and Communicator had been sitting around and just wallowing in their wealth.

[k_nitin_r 8]

Hi!@The SimpletonNetscape Navigator was a pretty good web browser even back in the day when Microsoft Windows 95 was first available. My ISP provided me with the Netscape Navigator installation disks and it included an email client, an HTML composer, and a web browser, all in the same package. The integrated nature of Netscape Navigator as a web 'suite' rather than simply a web browser made it more pleasing to work with. With computers of the time, running both Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator at the same time was difficult due to the limited memory available in most computers. This isn't really an issue now as computers come equipped with 3GB or more of memory. The icon on the Windows desktop labelled "The Internet" did seem like a very convenient way to browse the Internet for most people who had somebody install Windows for them (during the age of the cheap assembled PCs that ran a pirated copy of Windows). Eventually, people made the switch over to Microsoft Internet Explorer entirely because a large number of users who got their PCs without Netscape Navigator installed had to be catered to as both web browsers acted differently - in terms of Javascript execution and HTML rendering.@allI used Google Chrome as my primary browser because it was rather quick, but due to the stability problems that I have been experiencing with Google Chrome, I switched back to Mozilla Firefox. Microsoft's Internet Explorer was pretty good in terms of end-user experience in the earlier releases - Internet Explorer 6 was pretty responsive, though after tabbed browsing came along, it didn't make much sense to stay with Internet Explorer 6, although Yahoo did introduce a browser plugin that brought tabbed browing to Internet Explorer 6. However, Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8 are pretty slow. Microsoft Windows 7 seems to pre-load the browser (Internet Explorer 8, but a slightly different version from the one available for Windows XP and Windows Vista) but the lag does show, at times.@Nameless_Apple Safari seems like a pretty good browser, but I guess some of the keyboard shortcuts that we have grown pretty accustomed to are missing in Safari. Chrome and Safari are both Webkit based so theren't a pretty close resemblence between the two browsers.@kleongI don't really have a need for all of the plugins available for Mozilla Firefox other than the FireBug plugin for web designers and web developers alike, but they are all there when I need them, which is why I'd never un-install Mozilla Firefox and it's the first thing I would install after re-installing Windows.@Nameless_You've mentioned that you get 'kicked' out of Xisto when not using Mozilla Firefox. I've never experienced that, but I do get an error indicating that I am flooding the board with messages and that I have to wait for 15 seconds. It's odd because it certainly does take me longer than 15 seconds to type a message. I get the error even when I make sure that it's been over a minute since I posted the last message. I'm not really sure of which forum I can bring up the issue in since most of my posts are simply replies to existing posts and a post or two in the programming forums.

[Mencarta 0]

I stopped using it when JavaScript broke on me in IE. Instead I now use FF. The only reason I will touch IE is to check out my site to make sure it looks good in the leading browser.

[k_nitin_r 8]

Hi!As soon as I get one of the infrastructure guys to setup a virtual machine for me, the only web browser that I have available is the Microsoft Internet Explorer.Now, ordinarily, I would stick with Microsoft Internet Explorer for the duration of my session on the server, but the Internet Explorer Security Enhanced Configuration drives me nuts, asking me to add every site that I visit into the safe websites list. That's the point at which I download Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome and continue to work with the alternate browser.If Microsoft hadn't made Internet Explorer so unusable on the server editions of its platform, I would've actually used it, but alas!BTW, I have tried unsuccessfully in disabling the Security Enhanced Configuration on Windows 2008 based servers - disabling the feature doesn't work, and neither does turning off protected mode and manually reducing the security settings to the minimum for all of the zones.