just how crappy is ie6?

[VBboy]

Oogle, first of all, great post. I agree with what you are saying regarding the standards.
But standards are not the most important thing when it comes to using a product. IE has a very friendly and easy-to-use interface; it's well-documented; it's very stable. It got much slower with rendering huge tables, compared to the version 5.0, but I got a faster CPU Netscape felt clumsy and its shortcuts were not "native" to Windows.

I'm looking forward to the next version of IE.

 

[sandorski]

Well, it's likely mostly me, but after a recent hardware failure I was forced to use another PC which had IE6 on it. It was stable and all, but after using NS7/Mozilla for a year, IE6 was a PITA! Microsoft dominates the browser market, but it's not due to a superior product.

 

[Oogle]

Originally posted by: VBboyBut standards are not the most important thing when it comes to using a product.

Exactly. That's the point I am trying to make. Web consumers have and will only care about the user experience. That's the top priority. Standards are a distant 2nd. The problem is with the people that bring you the user experience: the web developers. Without stardards, developers have to concentrate more on giving users compatibility, and less on providing valuable content.

Have you ever been to a flash only site?

http://generals.ea.com/
http://www.daredevilmovie.com

These are examples of situations where the developer has completely given up on a browser's ability to implement standards. These developers have decided to follow a new standard: Flash. Flash is a well designed and fully implemented standard, so to speak. Developers who make content for Flash can now worry less about user compatibility complaints and more on providing great content.

So is that the kind of web you want? Do you want a web where you have to download a standardized plug-in to do the net surfing for your inadequate browser? Or do you want your actual browser to do the work by fully implementing a standard interface that all developers can follow, as the W3C intended? I personally prefer the latter.

 

[JellyBaby]

Man, I'm really getting tired of such comments. Surpassed HOW? What features missing?! Can you people be more specific? Or is it just a "X sucks because X sucks" type of statement?

Wow you are ignorant. This has been discussed over and over here. Pay attention now are you ready? Here we go:

Tabbed browsing, personal CSS application to ANY page, full and decent cookie management, pop-up window management, in page zoom, an adequate help system, a Save as feature that actually works, a find feature that allows subsequent searches without the damn find box up, built-in customizable web searching, skinning, abundant keyboard shortcuts and user-defined mappable key commands, better bookmark system, download management with auto-resume, ability to toggle on/off multiple settings like "enable java" with a keypress and a click, ability to resume your browsing exactly where you left off with all pages pre-loaded and ready to go, very fast page rendering. These are my personal favoriate improvements in Opera.

Is that enough to prove IE has been left in the dust, vboy? If not you're probably incapable of making a critical analysis of much of anything.

 

[Buddha Bart]

Oogle,
very nice.

Web develpers are quite screwed, they're caught between a rock, a hard place, another rock, and another hard place.
1.) browsers won't work with standards, so they have to do freakishly more work to get the site looking decent
2.) users who don't give a crap about stanards, and just want the site to look pretty in their browser
3.) web developers (or schmucks using wysiwyg's) who don't even know what the standards are, and think "well it works in my browser so it must be ok".
and here's the kicker that most people just aren't capable of understanding the importance of
4.) atypical user-agents that need standarts compliant websites to work.

By #4 I mean cell phones, pda's, search engines, browsers for disabled people, etc. These represent an extremely rapidly growing market share of who uses websites. In two or three years there will be no difference between a cell phone and a PDA. People will expect to be able to do anything on their device because it will just naturally become a part of their life. If your site is coded with a <table width="650"> you're screwed already. Or if your layout depends on all your words and links to be embedded in images. And its not like the web developers have much of a choice. They can give up on CSS and use tables+images, but they screw all these other user agents. They can go for the standards and make their site much more future proof and content rich, but at the cost of that whiz-bang first impression that everybody seems to think is the most important thing in the world. (its not, pretty much all focus groups, market studys, and psychological research prove that its drastically more important to have fresh, well organized, and constantly updated content. However when you walk into display the new design to your pointy-haired-boss he's gonna go "couldn't you jazz it up a bit, look what bob came up with in Dreamweaver").

Honestly though, things do seem to be getting better. Browsers are slooowly coming around. More and more websites are realizing that web media is not print media, and content is more important than design. Wired's new site is a breath of fresh air. The thing is, XHTML 1.0 Transitional is not hard at all. All you have to do is not be too lazy to validate, and force yourself to read about 15 minutes worth of CSS articles.

I dream of the day CSS boxes work.

bart

 

[VBboy]

Originally posted by: JellyBaby

Man, I'm really getting tired of such comments. Surpassed HOW? What features missing?! Can you people be more specific? Or is it just a "X sucks because X sucks" type of statement?

Wow you are ignorant. This has been discussed over and over here. Pay attention now are you ready? Here we go:

Tabbed browsing, personal CSS application to ANY page, full and decent cookie management, pop-up window management, in page zoom, an adequate help system, a Save as feature that actually works, a find feature that allows subsequent searches without the damn find box up, built-in customizable web searching, skinning, abundant keyboard shortcuts and user-defined mappable key commands, better bookmark system, download management with auto-resume, ability to toggle on/off multiple settings like "enable java" with a keypress and a click, ability to resume your browsing exactly where you left off with all pages pre-loaded and ready to go, very fast page rendering. These are my personal favoriate improvements in Opera.

Is that enough to prove IE has been left in the dust, vboy? If not you're probably incapable of making a critical analysis of much of anything.

1. Almost everything in IE has a shortcut. Some people just don't know them. What is the point of user-mappable keys?
2. Skinning is useless for most people. "Oooh, my browser's toolbar looks pretty!". It follows the XP GUI style, so it's all that most people need.
3. Save-As works perfectly for me.
4. Fast page rendering? Yes, they used to have better "on the fly" (partial) rendering. I liked it too.
5. IE already has auto-resume if the server supports it and the file fit in the cache.
6. Better bookmark system? Just browse to the Favorites directoery, and you can do whatever you want. Search, cut/paste, move, etc.

Tabbed browsing and multiple configurations like you said for Java would be nice.

Why I don't like Opera:

- The latest beta I tried (2 months ago) still didn't have smooth scrolling (crap!)
- Completely non-standard (to Windows or IE) shortcuts
- Most pop-up menus are a huge step away from how IE defines them

So mostly I don't like the fact that they didn't follow IE's conventions. Who would like it if Windows XP 2.0 looked absolutely different, had triangular windows, all copy/paste/delete shortcuts changed, etc? 9x% use IE now, so why not take the best from IE and add what it's missing?

Good day, sir/madam

 

[Swanny]

It's a lot better than IE 5 was.

 

[FrustratedUser]

Using IE6 but I have no clue what the difference between IE5 and 6 is, except a shitload of Mb to upgrade.

 

[JellyBaby]

VBony, looks like you're an IE fanboi. Nothing wrong with that, just that you won't admit to IE's failings and the fact other browsers have it beat in terms of feature set.

So mostly I don't like the fact that they didn't follow IE's conventions.

Oh I'm sure you use some software that doesn't follow MS defined interface standards and manage to go from step 1 to 2 easily.

Now I also have the neat ability to learn new approaches and interfaces so when I run into some app that does things a bit differently I have no trouble at all. Hey, some people buy off the rack, some people have things customize tailored. Whatever floats your boat sir/madam.

 

[JellyBaby]

Ooops, I forgot the standard-fare, line-by-line chastisment of your comeback. Here we go:

What is the point of user-mappable keys?

Personalization. F8 in Opera is = to ALT-D in IE. I prefer ALT-D because it's quicker for me so I remapped F8. Neat, huh?

Skinning is useless for most people.

I'm not into jazzy skins but some actually are worth applying and enhance usability (smaller buttons, shading that denotes status, etc.)

Save-As works perfectly for me.

I'd say about 20% of the time IE 6 returns, "Unable to save page." I never see this in Opera.

Yes, they used to have better "on the fly" (partial) rendering.

Opera 7's rendering is faster than ever.

IE already has auto-resume if the server supports it and the file fit in the cache.

Does IE have a download manager? Nope. Can it stream multiple downloads without a registry hack? Nope. Can you hide the transfer window? Nope.

Better bookmark system? Just browse to the Favorites directoery

I loath IE's Favorites scheme. It's proprietary and works only with IE. I personally use PowerMarks because it works with all mainstream browers.

Why I don't like Opera:- The latest beta I tried (2 months ago) still didn't have smooth scrolling (crap!)

Smooth scrolling?

Completely non-standard (to Windows or IE) shortcuts

You can remap any key in Opera 7.

Most pop-up menus are a huge step away from how IE defines them

Not sure I follow you here.

Anyway, when Opera 7 goes final I'm sure it will gain even more popularity. IE is waaaaay behind and needs to play catch-up in numerous areas.