Sore Eyes

Oh my... that's incredibly bad.

Totally unreasonable. The link of the lead news story on MSN.com is:

http://g.msn.com/0US!s5.31472_315529/60.a3636/2??cm=TodayOnMSN1

Are those "O"s or zeros? Gee, it's too bad we don't have a technology that'll just let you click on links instead of typing them. Then I wouldn't have to ask such silly questions.

Give Microsoft a little while and they'll come up with a solution, I'm sure. If we'd all just move over to the Microsoft Internet^TM then I'm sure they'd come up with a web browser which was immune to all this spoofed-URL stuff. (Just as they've come up with 'secure' email which allows the sender to control who can read/copy/print/forward your messages, just as long as you're using the very latest versions of Microsoft Office and don't mind using Microsoft Exchange as your mail server.)

Mozilla Firefox kicks ass. Dump IE and run!

If you're on Windows, I agree: Mozilla was fine when I was still using Windows at home, and I'm confident that after another year or so's development work Firefox would be better still. MacOS X it's a different story: Firefox is still nice, but Safari and the beta of OmniWeb 5 are better still.

IMHO.

YMMV.

HTH.

HAND.

:-)

Well, I did a google search for 'IE sucks' and this blog entry was the first hit...Anyways, this website should be yahoo.com's first page or something...really, IE is a threat to the stabilitity and future of the internet.

Wow, he's right! First out of 417,000 people thinking that IE sucks. How about that?

I don't know that the Warning page you link to is the most useful page to use in educating users. The whole "terrorists may benefit from your use of IE" angle may be somewhat accurate, but I prefer to emphasise how much more usable their computer would be if their browser wasn't a bug-ridden piece of junk that was designed by people more concerned with consolidating market share than they were with providing users with a usable web browser.

IE is evil! Mozilla Firefox is the browser of the future.

John, you know, it's not too hard to convince someone to use something other than IE once you show them Opera (my fave) or Mozilla. Both of those browsers are way ahead of IE, and people are happy to switch. But, unless someone is showing them, in person, they're likely to just remain ignorant and say "IE works fine, I'll just keep using that".

The Browser Warning is no joke, nor is it an exaggeration. Sadly to say, every phrase mentioned is linked to a genuine published news article about the very same topic. None of this is hypothetical.

What's really disturbing is that criminals are getting into other people's computers through IE, and innocent people are actually, right this moment, getting set up for long prison sentences. There's probably at least half a dozen criminal cases worldwide that have been dropped due to uncertainty of who's controlling computers that are involved in crimes. Who knows how many cases HAVEN'T been dropped...Those are innocent people in prison - It can, and does, happen to anyone who uses IE to browse the web.

Sometimes, Internet Explorer is mentioned specifically as the means by which criminals gain the ability to make it appear that someone else is commiting their crimes. So, don't take this lightly - It's not about silly run-of-the-mill viruses anymore. You're the first hit on Google, hopefully this will (literally) save lives.

When I still used a Windows-based PC I paid for and used Opera for years, and switched to Mozilla when later versions of Opera became overloaded with pretty icons and features I didn't need. I acknowledge that they're both decent web browsers, but I disagree that they're necessarily the answer for every user.

The free version of Opera displays ads, and that would be enough to put some people off. Being asked to pay for an ad-free version isn't what your average IE user would call an advantage. And in both cases, the true non-techie can easily be put off the first time you have to explain to them that the bank/online retail site they want to access is malfunctioning because it assumes they'll be using IE. I know the route cause of the problem is usually idiot web designers and the executives who hire them, but like it or not the average user just doesn't care about W3C standards and if IE will do what they want then they'll go back to it.

Similarly, when they hear about a neat browser add-on like the Google toolbar and discover that they can't use it with Mozilla or Opera then they'll assume that IE is doing something right. The more adventurous and technically-minded users will go off in search of something functionally similar for their browser, but again most users will be put off (or will require a tech-savvy user to act as tech support and install and configure the add-in for them.) I'm emphatically not arguing that you can't persuade non-techie users to abandon IE: I just think that it's less than straightforward to persuade non-techies to do so unless you're willing to sign on as unpaid tech support.

As to the warnings about the diverse ways criminals can misuse your computer, my concern isn't that the stories are untrue. It's that emphasising that angle isn't going to get people to change their behaviour unless they're already seeing stories about such dire consequences of having your PC hijacked every week in the papers. Such scaremongering is about as effective as the tactic adopted by UK film distributors who run adverts in the cinema arguing that video piracy funds drug runners, prostitution and terrorism: the audience sniggers when it's told that civilisation as we know it will fall if you watch a pirated DVD. (Also, it's worth noting that Microsoft have done a superb job of disassociating IE and Outlook Express and Windows from the security problems they cause. How often do mainstream news reports mention that the latest worm is only a problem if you're using IE/Outlook Express/Windows? Not that I expect the average reporter to append a recommendation for Opera/Mozilla/Linux/OS X to their reports in this area, but it would be nice just once to see some acknowledgement that users of non-Microsoft software probably needn't worry too much. Better yet, instead of a computer consultant thinking of two numbers and multiplying them together to calculate the potential economic damage caused by a worm, let's hear them talking about how backwards Microsoft's priorities are. MS are way too fond of the "Our users told us they wanted X" defence: I don't think their users ever said they wanted their computers to be available to any script kiddie to exploit on a whim, and if the users did say that then it was up to Microsoft to ignore them.)

Finally, to nit-pick, I'd add that the undoubted security problems discussed may become evident when you use IE but the real problem is Windows itself: if Microsoft designed Windows with halfway decent security features and enabled them by default then the vulnerabilities exploited by script kiddies and the like wouldn't be half as dangerous. IE is the most visible source of problems, but it's just part of the picture.

Have you used the latest opera? It's 7.50 now I think. It's fantastic, the ads are in a tiny one-line strip that's really unobtrusive, unlike the gargantuan banners they used to use. Opera isn't overloaded with features either, it's a remarkably lean browser. It's only 3.5Mb, and all the extra features like news, chat, and email can be turned off so they no longer consume memory or GUI space. Also, most of the features of the Google toolbar that people want are already built into Opera.

Both opera and mozilla are excellent browsers, and anyone I've showed them to, tech-savvy or not, has switched. Whenever a website doesn't work, they just use IE for that website, and then continue on with their new favorite browser for everything else. No big deal. They don't lose IE if they use a better browser, but they gain all the benefits of using the better browser. It's win-win.

Also, the real danger of IE isn't that it's more or less insecure than the rest of MS stuff. The real danger is that IE attacks can circumvent firewalls, and many other security systems through normal use. I don't know what's behind every link I click, no one does. It's the best way to get into a windows machine - Everyone is a target, no matter how savvy they are. IE is the "kick me" sign that everyone unknowingly wears.

So yes, the core of the problem is windows and microsoft, but many of those problems can be tucked behind firewalls and spam filtering. IE cannot.

This isn't fear mongering or scare-tactics. This is real. Everyone seems to be afraid to challenge IE's dominance, usually people with webdev in their work history. The fact that using IE could put one into a really bad situation is beside the point as well. The point is, there's better browsers that are free, more secure, and more capable than IE. It's an easy sell, if only people would realize how far behind IE is, and start spreading the word.

It's awfully frustrating to listen to people defend IE, especially when they should know better. I'm above beating people over the head to convince them to lift a finger to help themselves. If people arbitrarily refuse, and continue using IE, it's their problem, they've been fairly warned....Well, it becomes everyone's problem when their machine is used to attack other parts of the internet...But if self-serving interests won't convince people to use a better browser, then not even Jesus Christ could be more convincing.

People take you seriously when you downplay IE's shortcomings. In fact, it's the unwillingness of people to say it like it is that encourages unsophisticated people to confidently heap praise on IE, when in fact, IE is by far the worst browser on the market today.

You know, you're right that the browser warning page, and the FUD methods it uses aren't the best way to educate people about web browsers...the best way is for people to hear about it from someone they trust, like you and your weblog, or even you in person. People don't usually react to the first thing they hear, but if they hear it more than once, from different sources, it has more credibility.

FUD works, so does features. In this case, IE loses and the other browsers win on all fronts. I dare you to approach someone who you know is entirely unaware of the browser wars, and show them Opera or Mozilla. See what happens. In fact, you can show them this screenshot to get the ball rolling.

Luckily for me, Opera crashes less often than either IE or Mozilla, and when it does crash, it starts up again with all the webpages I had open before. There's 120 webpage open on that screenshot - Try that with any other browser. IE can't even begin to handle that much with it's GUI (standalone IE instances that clog the taskbar). Mozilla might be able to pull it off, but since it doesn't recover from crashes, I'd never want to try it.

Unfortunately the Mac OS X version of Opera lags behind its Windows equivalents (not to mention that the user interface is distinctly un-Mac-like) so I haven't tried Opera 7. I did use Opera up until version 6 under Windows 95 on my previous PC, so I'm well aware of how lean-and-mean it was compared to IE. (Incidentally, that rather impressive screenshot would scare off a lot of users, the sort of people who couldn't imagine wanting that many browser windows open.)

My experience is that the average non-techie user won't want to use two browsers to get round problems with sites designed with IE in mind. The attitude could be summed up as: "IE is the only browser I ever see. All my friends' PCs use it. If IE will work with all the sites I want, surely the problem is with the other browsers." Bear in mind that the sort of user I'm talking about here will tell me "I'm buying a new PC and I need to get MS Word to write letters." I'll then say, "Do you really need Word, or do you just need a word processor?" and go on to recommend OpenOffice/StarOffice. Some people will take one look at OpenOffice and decide that the icons don't look the same and aren't in the same place, so it's not for them. Others will decide to take the plunge and be just fine, but it'll only take a couple of bad experiences (usually with the import of Word documents which rely upon formatting based on a bunch of nested tables or some such mess) to persuade them that OpenOffice (or Mozilla or Opera, to go back to the browser experience) isn't quite ready for prime time. One of the problems with a software monoculture is that way too many people learn how to use a particular software package and imprint on it, whereas those of us who came to computers in the 1970s and 1980s were used to having to learn how to use a completely different package as we went through half a dozen hardware standards/rudimentary machine-specific operating systems before landing where we are now.

Even though Opera and Mozilla (and Safari on Macs) have some concrete advantages over IE - most visibly, that they can kill pop-up windows - my experience is that this isn't always enough to convince people to switch. Particularly since I long ago decided that I'm perfectly happy to point people in the right direction when it comes to software and hardware but I'm no longer prepared to do very much hand-holding past the initial stage of installing software, setting up proxy/POP3/SMTP server details and suchlike and pointing out how to import bookmarks or whatever. I'm happy to point out to people that there are better options than IE, but if they choose to stick with the devil they know then in the end that's their affair.

Well written John. I couldn't have said it better myself. - Scott

I would LOVE to use mozilla, firefox, whatever. however they crash ALL THE TIME. IE doesnt. simple as that. they make me stop crashing ill use them, until then forget it. that's my 2 cents. im so pissed about these crashes why cant they just friggin work for me.

"I would LOVE to use mozilla, firefox, whatever. however they crash ALL THE TIME. IE doesnt. simple as that. they make me stop crashing ill use them, until then forget it. that's my 2 cents. im so pissed about these crashes why cant they just friggin work for me."

Hard to say; I've not had a crash in Firefox in months, but I am also able to write in grammatical English that is spelled correctly. It's entirely possible that ability to use one system is not related to the other, but I immediately hypothesize that inability to use English punctuation and grammar might be related to inability to use another software system. This is quite likely wrong, but I don't know. Generally speaking, I assume that if people can't use one logical system, it's no surprise if they also can't use a second logical system.

I'm not sure what the equivalent of use of ALL CAPS in Firefox is, but I'd not be surprised to find that it works as badly as it does in English.

Firefox rules.

That is all

"I would LOVE to use mozilla, firefox, whatever. however they crash ALL THE TIME. IE doesnt. simple as that. they make me stop crashing ill use them, until then forget it. that's my 2 cents. im so pissed about these crashes why cant they just friggin work for me."

I am going to try and answer this in more mature manner than the last person to respond. Anyway, Firefox shouldn't crash very often on Windows, so I am assuming there must be a reason. I have heard that programs randomly crash on Windows if you have a ton of stuff open, or if you have a lot of junk on your computer. Maybe this is the case? Or maybe, you didn't install the latest version of Firefox. (Currently a Preview Release for 1.0.) If that's the case, hit mozilla.org and download the latest version. Good luck on your browser hunting.

"I am going to try and answer this in more mature manner than...."

Casual observation: only kids worry about this, and answer this way. Actual older folks don't question that they are, like, older.

Just a thought.

(I'd go with "try to answer..." rather than "try and answer...," but people still debate that.)

(I'd go with "try to answer..." rather than "try and answer...," but people still debate that.)

Either one is fine.

Firefox is good. I downloaded Firebird 0.7 back when I was using IE,just to check it out. (I used to have alost of browsers for testing my websites, but primarily used IE.) Since then, I have naver used IE.

firefox rules

Funny stuff - I noticed free e-mail @explorersucks.com

It is at http://www.explorersucks.com/email/

By the looks of the main page, they support Firefox.