Back to IE
on 07.23.05, 07:52pm in windows • comments (6)
Dear Firefox,
I had been watching you with silent curiousity since you sprung onto the scene, and finally decided to give you a try two weeks ago. Let me start with this: I really wanted to like you, so many people do. And, while you have some really neat stuff (like tabs, which I never use) and a pretty cool plug in system (I really like your webdav sync bookmarks), there’s just too many sites that I access that you don’t work with properly. And, while I may not be IE’s biggest fan, it’s certainly less annoying for me.
It probably wasn’t a good sign that the extension I used the most was "open in IE". Perhaps someday we’ll meet again and I’ll give you another try, but for now, it’s back to old faithful. I’m not saying that IE doesn’t have it’s problems (if it was perfect, I wouldn’t have switched in the first place), but it just works better for me.
With fondest regards, Steve
Phil Ringnalda (July 23, 2005 @ 10:07 pm)
I imagine it would be tough for you: when I find a site that’s utterly broken in Firefox (or Firebird, or Phoenix, since it’s been my default browser for almost three years), I view-source and usually find that it was created with Visual Studio or FrontPage. Luckily for me, that’s pretty rare in things I use regularly, but I’d guess it’s a touch more common for you.
I think I read somewhere that ASP’s going to learn that Firefox is neither Netscape 6.0, nor Netscape 4.x, sometime in the not too distant future. Maybe that’ll help. I know it’s possible to use Microsoft tools to produce HTML that isn’t utterly broken in everything but IE, because I’ve got friends who’ve done it, but the things they say while doing it make me blush, despite my ability to offend truck drivers and sailors.
Steve Makofsky (July 24, 2005 @ 8:07 am)
Additionaly, firefox isnt the best over resources with NTLM security (for example, the webdav bookmark sync only works with basic).
G (July 25, 2005 @ 1:59 am)
Personaly I like Opera. It seems to work reasonably with most sites. Infact the only site I can’t use is MSN!
Dave (July 25, 2005 @ 12:30 pm)
Wow, Steve. I’m a more than a little surprised - it sounds like you didn’t even give it a chance. Don’t write off tabs so quickly. Long term IE users sometimes just don’t get the tabs. Why not use those wonderful plugins and install the tabbrowser preferences? Ultimate tab control - I like my new tabs to open the homepage automatically. And I like to be able to open an old tab if I close one by mistake (undoclosedtab extension). And the middle click suddenly has a use - open in a new tab. It’s great when you’re researching stuff and you don’t want a billion IE windows open.
I really don’t know what websites you look at, but I’ve been using Firefox more and more since version 0.9 and I started using it as a replacement about 10 months ago. At first I was a bit frustrated with some broken sites, but as Phil pointed out, these sites are usually shoddily built with M$ tools (not that I’m suggesting M$ tools lead to shonky results - I use and love VS.NET 2003). Over time these sites are being forced to rework their design and sometimes implentation to meet standards. There aren’t many sites now that don’t work right in Firefox.
I beg of thee, try it again for a while. Even if I am a Firefox bigott. LOL.
Steve Makofsky (July 25, 2005 @ 6:02 pm)
Consider this: I work for MS. Most of the sites (regardless if they’re shoddy or not) that I access on a day-to-day basis are built with MS tools. Thus, they dont render right with Firefox.
apb (August 3, 2005 @ 2:00 pm)
Well, it looks like you’re (obviously) a special case. However, please recognize that this is not a fault of FireFox, but a fault of the MS tools used to build these websites. Firefox is much more standards-complient than IE (it still isn’t perfect, but it’s closer).
Myself, I have come across one or MAYBE two websites that didn’t work properly in Firefox, and I’ve been using it since it was called Phoenix.
Here’s a hint - some websites actually check to see if you are using IE, and if you aren’t simply give you a “This site can only be viewed in IE” message. You can get around this by using the User Agent Switcher Firefox plugin - it ‘fools’ websites into thinking you’re using a different browser (you choose which).