Browser Wars

[Monk]

Could anyone tell me why a very few peoples posts (Craigs, exophase's) display as about a mile tall on my PC? IE7 and, ah.... just puzzled is all.

Ta.

 

[gruso]

Sounds odd, Monk. They both have guru badges, is it happening with other guru posts as well?

You really should ditch IE.

 

[craigix]

I don't know anyone who uses IE, even my granddad has firefox (he got it himself too), where are these 70% market share IE users?

Sorry, rant over.

 

[Tom`]

I don't know anyone who uses IE, even my granddad has firefox (he got it himself too), where are these 70% market share IE users?

Sorry, rant over.

A lot of people who browse the internet from school or work PCs have no other choice - in fact, my workplace still requires every PC to have IE6. That accounts for a lot of it, but there are also people who distrust anything not made by a major corporation (sound familiar?)

 

[Sphinxter]

Over a billion downloads, the margin depends on who you ask but most sources seem to agree firefox is mopping up the floor with ie.
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

 

[Username]

IE might as well be firefox's love slave.

 

[MrBlais]

IE sucks.. Ruined my computer the first time around. Actually, Windows One-Care did. I was going to develop the OST for that Space RTS, but the program went down with my computer..

Sad day..

-More on topic: I'm glad to see things starting to flesh out. Any news on how the case is coming along? From what I have seen it seems like that's that last piece to this jig-saw puzzle.

 

[Squidge]

A lot of people who browse the internet from school or work PCs have no other choice - in fact, my workplace still requires every PC to have IE6. That accounts for a lot of it, but there are also people who distrust anything not made by a major corporation (sound familiar?)

It's quite the opposite here, Firefox is installed by default on all PC's, and if your caught using IE you get a slap. If you continue to use IE after that warning, you lose your internet access.

 

[gp32rich]

A lot of people who browse the internet from school or work PCs have no other choice - in fact, my workplace still requires every PC to have IE6. That accounts for a lot of it, but there are also people who distrust anything not made by a major corporation (sound familiar?)

It's quite the opposite here, Firefox is installed by default on all PC's, and if your caught using IE you get a slap. If you continue to use IE after that warning, you lose your internet access.

Wow! That's progressive!

Mustn't be a big bureaucratic company. Or one of a tiny minority not run by beancounters and shys- *ahem* lawyers

 

[Asmo]

Could anyone tell me why a very few peoples posts (Craigs, exophase's) display as about a mile tall on my PC? IE7 and, ah.... just puzzled is all.

Ta.

For a variety of arcane reasons I use an old PC with IE for the web too, and in the last week several threads on here cause my browser to hang. Most of them only on the first page of the thread, once they roll over onto a second page I can open that no problem. Even page 1 of this thread took me several abortive attempts.

 

[WoD]

Over a billion downloads, the margin depends on who you ask but most sources seem to agree firefox is mopping up the floor with ie.
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

Quoting a single source, particularly when it's one where users are likely to be biased toward one product over another, is not exactly proof positive that Firefox has a greater share than IE.

It does, however, demonstrate that amongst intelligent users of the internet Firefox is the popular choice.

At work I have IE6, IE7, IE8, Chrome, Firefox and Safari for giggles. Damned CSS.

Anyway, moving swiftly back on top topic, where's the Pandora porn!?

 

[chole]

At work I have IE6, IE7, IE8, Chrome, Firefox and Safari for giggles. Damned CSS.

For giggles? I have IE6 on my SuSE machine and Konqueror on my Windows box. Most of my browsing is in the form of opera running over ssh on a desktop computer less powerful than this little handheld we're all waiting for.

 

[Monk]

Sounds odd, Monk. They both have guru badges, is it happening with other guru posts as well?

You really should ditch IE.

Sadly, I can't dump IE. On any of my computers

Yup, looks to be all guru badge holders.


Thanks for your comment Tom - it's nice to hear from someone who understands that not all choices are necessarily in the users hands

I would simply upload a couple of images, but I can't get the board to upload images (don't tell me the forum can't host images for discussions??)

I don't know anyone who uses IE, even my granddad has firefox (he got it himself too), where are these 70% market share IE users?

Sorry, rant over.

We are in education or businesses, mostly. So now you know someone who uses IE - on multiple PCs even. Nice to meet you. Can I have my Pandora now, please? Or do YOU not deliver either?

Bad day to chew me out for using the "de-facto" industry standard without having a clue why. This does not fill me with confidence - I HATE getting the "Oh - you use the market leader? Well no WONDER it doesn't work then! You should use THIS stuff instead" response. Hoiw hard is it to make a forum that can be read on a handful of different browsers? It's not like you can seriously expect no-one to be using IE7 yet... is it? {blink}

 

[Monk]

further on the "GP Guru" thing... it definately looks like something screwy in the "Guru" badge area. Where I might see something like this for most people:

Group: GP32 Hardcore
Posts: 264
Joined: 17-September
05 Location:Norwich, UK
Interests:Games and gadgets

A guru's text ends at:

Group: GP Guru

followed by screen and screen of blank before some bland coloured boxes before their posts end.

While IE can't even keep some pages open - for example, I cannot view:

http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/48964-how-are-you-feeling-right-now/page__st__15

getting an error message that IE can't open the page (AFTER it has opened it... but it hides it away darned quickly once you dismiss the error).

Phew. I'd love to be taking my Pandora into London tomorrow

 

[Squidge]

Mustn't be a big bureaucratic company. Or one of a tiny minority not run by beancounters and shys- *ahem* lawyers

It's just considered that Firefox is more secure than IE, plus it means that inhouse applications only have to target a sensible, erm, I mean, single browser

 

[fishybawb]

further on the "GP Guru" thing... it definately looks like something screwy in the "Guru" badge area.

Yep, same for me on IE8 at work. No choice about browsers there, SBS Remote Web Workplace needs ActiveX.

 

[rabidpoobear]

Bad day to chew me out for using the "de-facto" industry standard without having a clue why. This does not fill me with confidence - I HATE getting the "Oh - you use the market leader? Well no WONDER it doesn't work then! You should use THIS stuff instead" response.

Uhm, being the market leader doesn't necessarily mean it's better. Have you ever used FoxIT PDF reader? It's more stable and incredibly faster than Adobe's PDF reader, which is definitely the market leader. And you know all those people who do video editing on Mac's? I'm pretty sure Windows is the market leader.
It's stupid when people make generalizations in any context. But it's also necessary for quick conversation. His statement was that Firefox is better than IE, and from many metrics, it is. It complies with web standards better, it's (arguably) more stable, it's more secure, it gets updated more frequently, etc. etc.

Craigix wasn't saying that no one uses IE, just that no one he knows uses IE. I'm a grad student in Computer Science, and most of the students, when meeting up to do work in the labs, will actually go through the trouble of bringing their laptop and set it in front of a working Windows / IE computer so they can use Linux/Firefox. I personally just use IE on the computers in the lab, but when I get home I don't use IE. I don't use Firefox, either, although I think it's a decent browser. I use Chrome. I guess the questions are (1) why do you use IE at home, or (2) why are you reading the forums at work?

I see your point about the site not working in IE. I just hate that browser so much that I can't be mad that the forum doesn't work in it.

 

[dflemstr]

Bad day to chew me out for using the "de-facto" industry standard without having a clue why. This does not fill me with confidence - I HATE getting the "Oh - you use the market leader? Well no WONDER it doesn't work then! You should use THIS stuff instead" response.

Uhm, being the market leader doesn't necessarily mean it's better. Have you ever used FoxIT PDF reader? It's more stable and incredibly faster than Adobe's PDF reader, which is definitely the market leader. And you know all those people who do video editing on Mac's? I'm pretty sure Windows is the market leader.
It's stupid when people make generalizations in any context. But it's also necessary for quick conversation. His statement was that Firefox is better than IE, and from many metrics, it is. It complies with web standards better, it's (arguably) more stable, it's more secure, it gets updated more frequently, etc. etc.

...and this whole discussion is flawed since Firefox IS the market leader. And it is generally accepted among web developers to not make a site IE compatible, because the amount of hacks required is way too large. IF a site doesn't work with IE, it's not the sites fault, it's IE's.

Firefox isn't an ideal browser - I would argue that it's almost as bad as IE, since it uses very inefficient systems, has it's own UI library that further slows things down, and has a messy API. It at least conforms to the web standards, however.

(I'm pretty browser agnostic, and use Chromium, Konqueror, Arora, Rekonq and such browsers. Mostly WebKit browsers, though; WebKit is the future of browsers, hands down)

 

[Monk]

Uhm, being the market leader doesn't necessarily mean it's better.

And never has, and almost certainly never will. All it means AFAICS is that a lot of copies ship - in this instance mostly because it's bundled with Windows and Windows Update.

I guess the questions are (1) why do you use IE at home, or (2) why are you reading the forums at work?

Not really to me - to me the question is more along the lines of why does elitist bullshit crop up every time anyone mentions they are having a problem and use IE (or Windows or... whatever the item of the day is).

I see your point about the site not working in IE. I just hate that browser so much that I can't be mad that the forum doesn't work in it.

I hear where you're coming from, but as someone who uses IE it's easier to imagine that site designers ought to be reasonably interested in their sites working in it, at least to a decent standard.

...and this whole discussion is flawed since Firefox IS the market leader. And it is generally accepted among web developers to not make a site IE compatible, because the amount of hacks required is way too large. IF a site doesn't work with IE, it's not the sites fault, it's IE's.

FireFox IS the market leader? Interesting, if rather unproven IMHO. But that isn't what "the argument" is. I couldn't care less which is "best" or which of us has the larger manhood. What I care about is that a a forum site be reasonably viewable in "a" major and well-known browser (which I suspect IS the market leader simply because it is pre-installed). Just like the site used to be, and just like every other forum I visit still is. If the team managing this site find that too difficult a task then I'm afraid that doesn't make me think "Oooh, IE is so terrible". I don't get this problem elsewhere ergo it is not an IE problem, IMHO

 

[dflemstr]

FireFox IS the market leader? Interesting, if rather unproven IMHO.

Well, it really depends which sites you analyze. It's impossible to find out which browsers are used the most since the stats will be different for every site.

Interestingly enough, the usage of Firefox usually is higher on sites that are related to web development in any shape or form. An example that just springs to mind:
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

I wonder why this could be...

I would also claim that the percentage of Firefox users on a site is proportional to the average IQ of the users of that site. Try to prove me wrong on that one

I don't get this problem elsewhere ergo it is not an IE problem, IMHO

Well, that IE doesn't conform to web standards is a fact that can be checked very easily. IE is compatible with most standards actually, but the things that are missing are really vital for web pages to work, so some times web developers need to write 50% more code just to get their pages working in IE, and it's really a PITA to do.


EDIT: Actually, if you want to check how compatible IE really is with various standards, run the acid3 test (just click that link) while using IE. Almost all modern browsers today get at least a score of 90 on that test.

Also, if you want to see how FAST IE is compared to other browsers (just for the heck of it), run the Peacekeeper test.

Now, can this browser discussion please end?