Another Reason To Give Up Ie

[Rico]

Akuma, I haven't had the pleasure of IE covert installations yet, and I explicitly forbid almost all ActiveX from running, but I agree with you, I'm sure it can still be done. Not that I use IE at all these days except for Housecall (a virus checker).

Also:

Doesn't look like a massive userbase to me...

 

[NssOne]

Shrug, I solved the problem easily - got Ad-Aware with Ad-watch. Ad-watch pops up if annything is attempted to be installed on your system and lets you choose between accepting it and blocking it.

yea, but thats things slowing your PC Down

nah, it's frikkin k++ that's dragging down my system.

 

[Akuma no Houkon]

Akuma, I haven't had the pleasure of IE covert installations yet, and I explicitly forbid almost all ActiveX from running, but I agree with you, I'm sure it can still be done. Not that I use IE at all these days except for Housecall (a virus checker).

Also:

Doesn't look like a massive userbase to me...

How can you possibly base your statistics on an INVALID chart?

I've said this before and ill say it again, my firefox browser REPORTS ITSELF AS IE 6. Any website I goto that checks my browser or version, it reports as IE 6 (sometimes I turn that feature off but 99% of the time its on) So any charts or graphs you come up with showing usage statistics, are not valid in the least bit. A LOT of Firefox/Mozilla/Netscape users have the plugin that reports itself as IE, its the only way to access many many pages on the internet.

The plugin that does this is one of those most popular Mozilla/Firefox/etc... plugin that is downloaded. a HUGE % of Mozilla/Firefox/Etc.. users have their browsers reporting themselves as IE 6 (or 5.5. or 5, etc... based on what version of the plugin you use or what you choose to report as).

Not only is it invalid based solely on that, but this is also just a chart for those browsers specifically using google. I have been surfing the web for over 13 years and just recently (6 months ago) started using google. So the report itself is just a what browsers use google report, not a report about what browsers are used arround the world. And again you can never get an accurate report like that because of the simple fact that lots of mozilla/firefox/etc... users have their browsers report themselves as IE.

Obviously, regardless of the invalidities of the statistics, IE is the most used browser in the world, thats simply because windows is the most used OS in the world and IE comes default and is UNREMOVEABLE, so people just use what they already have rather than go and download something else. It doesnt prove whats best or not, it just proves that people are lazy and afraid to try new things.

Not to mention that I "use" IE about 5 times a day, not wanting to. I click on a link in a video game or in a software program that has a website link, and they have IE hardcoded into their "launcher" instead of simply launching your default webbrowser.

 

[sebastian_insua]

IE's never done that to me and i've been on hundreds of "Warez/Crackz/etc..." sites, usually a box comes up (at which point you decide the site is crap- and get off).

the only reason i use IE is because its on the PC and can't be uninstalled (as related to explorer), otherwise i would use an alternative.
Akuma no Houkon, i think you over estimate the actual size of the firefox user base, it is NO WAY as big as the IE userbase (because IE comes pre-installed- and the majority of users find IE ample for their needs, why fix what isn't broken)

 

[thebluenewt]

IE has got to be at least 75%

"88.2% of statistics are made up on the spot." - Vic Reeves

 

[Huxley]

It doesnt prove whats best or not, it just proves that people are lazy and afraid to try new things.

Hmm...I wouldn't call all IE users lazy...maybe they don't even know a better alternative exists? Mozilla's advertising is almost non-existant, after all!

EDIT: My Firefox doesn't have that IE plugin. And all the Firefox/Mozilla users I know of don't have it installed, either.

 

[Steve-O]

hhmmm, Im just gonna stick with IE.. havent had a problem with it yet, dont see the need to change yet

 

[finty]

my sister said that, then she got windows xp and now she has a porn virus, change before its too late!

 

[lizard808uk]

Well at least the effects weren't too bad, I mean fair enough I was dumped off the internet and got pictures of women popping up on my desktop err enjoying themselves But it was nothing like "old school" viruses like Chernobyl, or the memory hogging ones in the old days.

The most vicious one I've come across was one that rewrote the flash bios so the motherboard was dead. That was nasty (happened to someone I knew @ Uni)

 

[Huxley]

hhmmm, Im just gonna stick with IE.. havent had a problem with it yet, dont see the need to change yet

I don't hate IE, but I really, really, really recommend you change to Firefox, Mozilla or Opera. They're just faster, better and less risky. Honestly, you won't regret it.

 

[Steve-O]

my sister said that, then she got windows xp and now she has a porn virus, change before its too late!

goto www.pandasoftware.com/activescan/ com/activescan_principal.htm that should get rid of it if its a Virus... Or Spybot Search and Destroy should..... hhmmm

 

[Akuma no Houkon]

User Agent Switcher
This extension adds a menu to switch the user agent of the browser. It is designed to provide functionality similar to the "Browser Identification" feature of Opera and allows you to configure the list of user agents to display in the menu.

Download Here:
http://www.chrispederick.com/work/firefox/useragentswitcher/

What this basically does is lets your browser pretend its any browser you want. There is even a little test script on the website to verify that its working.

This is what my browser reports:

Before Switch (in Firefox):
user agent Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7b) Gecko/20040414 Firefox/0.8
browser Mozilla 1

After Switch (in Firefox):
user agent Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)
browser Internet Explorer 6

What Real IE6 Reports:
user agent Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)
browser Internet Explorer 6

 

[Rico]

Well done there. Install a plugin so that all webmasters assume IE 6 is the only web browser around and don't bother fixing up their CSS & JavaScript, thus making the problem worse.

Oh, and regardless of the accuracy of that graph, it at least undermines your claim that firefox etc. has a 'fairly large userbase'. To 95% of companies, including some big online banking and music download sites, Gecko is something easily ignored. It's far from ideal but don't deny it; act on it. Which means keeping your old user agent and refusing to use/e-mailing bigot webmasters who make their site IE-only, regardless of whether Gecko can render it correctly or not.

 

[Akuma no Houkon]

I know using such a plugin is just detrimental to the Firefox/Mozilla cause, it does more harm than good. Thats not the point, the point is that, with such a plugin available , you cannot get an accurate browser useage chart.

However, it in no way undermines my claim that firefox and mozilla etc... have a fairly large userbase. I didnt say it had the majority, or even close, I said it had a fairly large userbase, which is completely subjective. To me, 200,000+ is a fairly large userbase (and thats not counting MacOS users either). Which is large by any defintion of the term. Just because its not a huge % in the grand scheme of things, doesnt make it not a large userbase.

 

[Daz_Genetic]

Mozilla Firefox runs significantly slower on my 1.2Ghz laptop system than Internet Explorer. I tried it out, but I've switched back to IE for now, I don't care if IE's all embedded in my OS. If that's what it takes to make it perform well, then I say "Go ahead!".

I have a virus checker, spybot checker, I keep regular updates. I've never had a single problem with virii or spywware. And I've visited some Really dodgy sites in my time.

 

[Akuma no Houkon]

Its odd I just went to check what exactally IE6 reported as my client (see a couple posts up) and it took FOREVER for IE6 to load up (about 4x what it takes Firefox to load). And I am running an 2.6ghz PC with 1 GB DDR.

I figured, maybe its because its the first time its been run since I booted (so its loading the DLL's into memory), so I closed it and opened again, and again, and again, each time it was just as slow, about 4x as slow as Firefox is.

Which just goes to show you absolutly nothing. Some PCs will load IE faster, some will load Firefox faster, thats the way software has been since the dawn of home PC's.

 

[NssOne]

For those of you that do still use IE, if you use IE enough, I would suggest getting or at least checking out SlimBrowser.

 

[mattmagoo]

OK, Im been flicking through this forum, and I get the same 1on1 thing, it even crashes my PC, but could sum1 possibly gie me a straight answer:

Can it dial up if ure on ADSL/B-band (Im on BTinternet)

Thanks coz if i get charged a tonne of money my mums gonna murder me

 

[Huxley]

OK, Im been flicking through this forum, and I get the same 1on1 thing, it even crashes my PC, but could sum1 possibly gie me a straight answer:

Can it dial up if ure on ADSL/B-band (Im on BTinternet)

Thanks coz if i get charged a tonne of money my mums gonna murder me

No, it should be fine. As long as you've not got a regular modem connected to a phoneline then the autodialler is harmless.

Do get rid of it and start using an alternate browser, though!

 

[lizard808uk]

If you google it then there are a number of ways of getting rid of it. The best way as a stop gap solution is to open notepad, write something and select save as type "all files", then save the file as "1on1.exe" in the windows folder. Make this file read only too, so it can't be written over after your "alterations". From now on when it tries to load it will crash, but you should still remain online.

I have never conclusively got rid of it. In the end since my windows partition is contained, I just formatted the son of a beech and reinstalled the things I needed.

I think Mozilla is fine for what I need right now. It may not be popular (going on the poll in this forum) but it gets the job done. No more automatic downloads thats for sure!