Why do people hate internet explorer so much?

At the risk of getting exposing my technological ignorance, I honestly notice little to no difference between IE and Firefox. I have IE on my personal computer, and I've used Firefox at the library and I can't notice any difference. Nerds act like Firefox is a godsend, and IE is the devil.

What am I missing? I mean, what's the big deal about IE?

The first reason is because strong fandoms tend to create strong counter-reactions. IE has been long thought of as "The Internet" as default, with many people 5 years ago not knowing what a browser really was. If you have a browser that's much better and more sensible than The Internet, you need a strong argument.

That been said, when I first switched from IE 6 to Firefox 2 way back when, I really did notice a difference. A browser no longer had a noticeable lag time before it started to run. Also, the customizable add-ons were cool and tabbed browsing has been really useful. Nowadays I won't feel comfortable using a browser without tabs.

Much of the bad vibe against IE stems from IE 6. It's been called obsolete and insecure by so many different sources and many security vulnerabilities were found and left unpatched. IE has since made some steps in progress: IE 8 was "usable" by standards a few years ago and IE 9 is "good enough" but still no reason for anyone using Firefox/Chrome/etc. to switch back.

Actually, nowadays I find Firefox to be as bad in terms of lag and swtiched to Chrome.

Also, I heard that it is a nightmare to make websites compatible with IE, especially when you're making a browser based MMO.

It's also due to security issues that are inherit with it being the most widely used browser, though that's also changing.

1. It sucks compared to everything else.
2. It's full of holes security wise. (Or at least pre-Win7 versions were.)
3. It's too inflexible in that I can't easily pop on an adblocker add-on like Firefox or Chrome.
4. It's a terrible development platform owing to Microsoft proprietary HTML tags. Use those accidentally (common with WYSIWYG's) and suddenly you have very noticeable changes between browsers and failing the W3C test.

Now if that's your thing, good on you. Just be aware that while IE isn't a bad system, everything else is better.

I don't know why myself. I don't have a beef with Internet Explorer.

With that said, downloading the latest version of Adobe Flash Player (or something like that) apparently requires the downloading of Google Chrome. I've tried out Chrome, and I think I actually prefer it to IE.

Well, for me personally, my laptop just abruptly decided that he hated IE and would freeze every time I opened it.

I'm actually using IE 8 on my laptop now. I love it; there have been many good times enjoyed with this browser.

I have Chrome on my desktop though. It was Chrome or IE 9, which I find flashy and not much else.

I've been using Firefox since about 2006. I really only started using it because at the time only Firefox had tabs. I didn't know about the security and lag issues. I still think that Internet Explorer has some lag issues, at least on my computer.

Personally, I only use Firefox because of the add-ons. If IE had that (and, obviously, better security) I'd use it like I used to. Same with Chrome, minus the "used to."

I still use Firefox mainly for my real-life priorities, such as my personal e-mail and academics. It's still more intuitive of a browser to me and it makes for easier transition if someone used IE before.

I do most online business (such as Tropes) with Chrome, but lately my computer's Chrome keeps crashing when I'm viewing a video. I'll have to see if that applies to Firefox.

On campus, some have Chrome and some have Firefox so I use either or.

Because Chrome and Firefox didn't crash on me every time I tried to upload a video to youtube.

I dunno, IE seems to work fine for me with uploading videos, sometimes even better than Firefox.

What killed Internet Explorer for me was tabbed browsing. It was in Firefox months before it was in IE, and whatever they did in IE originally made the computer slow way down whenever I opened a tab.

These days I concede that they've done a pretty decent job catching up and not breaking internet standards (that's Chrome's job these days). I just don't like the interface layout they have, and there's too much bad blood in my past with it to go back unless absolutely necessary.

It still feels slow on the computers I use it on. Tabs don't feel intuitive either.

That I'm now used to Firefox may have something to do with this, but the lack of add-ons to fall back on for my browsing experience in internet explorer merely ensures I won't go back.

I don't hate internet explorer (I don't even understand the reasoning behind Microsoft being sued for cornering the browser market in it's own OS), but I tend to download Firefox as soon as I can. And get right back to my optimal browser configuration.

It was about bundling.

Microsoft's products included an operating system, an office suite, and a browser. They were including the office suite and browser in their operating system, and since their OS was the top seller, nobody was buying anybody else's office suites or browsers because they already had them.

These days, browsers are free, so it doesn't matter as much on that front.

Uh. That just sounds dumb.

I certainly think you could do worse for a browser in the late 90's/early 00's.

Wikipedia says that's about the time IE overtook Netscape.

... God, Netscape.

I remember Netscape.

However:

Firefox is the best browser for internet use. Chrome is the least CPU-intensive. IE is generic. It's okay, but it's not good.

It's monopolistic. If you buy our OS, you get our browser and our office system. You can certainly go buy others, but why would you? That's why Netscape Navigator went out of business. Why buy a browser when you already have one?

I think IE was good enough back then. It wasn't until they were at the top of the food chain that they got sloppy and tried to set the standard for how The Internet was programmed.

Relevant. (If you don't fully get it, read the alt text)

I don't hate IE. After all, one can download other browsers with it.

Joking aside, I'm not the one to notice the intricate things of browser differences. So, I don't really know what's so bad about IE, myself. But one thing, that I certainly notice is that it lags on my computer a lot. It may be because of my slow connection, but it still only happens in IE.

What I prefer about Firefox is that it's the fastest browser (on my computer, that is, which browser is the fastest on any individual PC seems to vary a lot). The plug-ins are also pretty neat.

Then there is Opera, which... is the first browser I used (the one time I used IE to download it notwithstanding) and it doesn't lag like IE.

Oh, and Chrome. Never got into that thing. Alone the complete lack of a menu bar, tool bar or pretty much anything that's not a tab bar puts me out of my comfort zone. And beyond that, I never saw anything that speaks for it (and/or against other browsers), besides "it doesn't lag like IE".

Chrome is better at displaying HTML 5 toys, but that's usually because those toys were written with Chrome in mind instead of W 3 C standards.

I really don't know enough about early IE to compare at all, since most of my early internet usage was through CompuServe, though I do kind of recall Netscape Navigator. I know I used it a few times, but I don't remember why or how it was.

Come to think of it, I can't remember at all when my household made the switch from CompuServe/dial-up to Internet Explorer/broadband, or when I made the switch from IE to mostly Firefox. I think it was after IE crashed one too many times for me to stands. I'm sorry, but Microsoft, you're wrong, isolated tab crashes do bug the whole browser, at least with how you have it set up.

I still think a big factor in Chrome early adoption is because Firefox had a really unstable release when Chrome launched. The memory leak was at its worst, and it crashed every half hour or so if you couldn't feed its hunger for RAM.

Partly because it's not a very good browser and partly because people want to be edgy by sticking it to Microsoft. Firefox isn't much better and the cult-like behavior of some of its users can be annoying.

Personally, I use Chrome.

edited 14th Nov '12 2:49:45 AM by Talby

To me, IE looks plain hideous. :/