Last week I got an email from Brian asking me to write a post here about IE and why it’s no good. He’s right it’s no good. It’s so “no good” that I’m having a hard time not writing vulgar words about it. I have my self-control turned up to 11, so I think we’ll be okay.
For full disclosure, I should inform you that all I did to get info for this post is search for “why internet explorer sucks” on Google. I am going to pull extensively from a post at lockergnome.com because his post follows the same flow that mine was going to and that way I don’t have to write as much. I’d suggest you go and read that post, too.
Let’s start then.
Security
This is going to be the reason that convinces more of you than anything else. I will not be offended if you leave this post immediately after this section and download another browser right away.
Put simply: IE is not secure, and this is even more true as you look at older versions.
Pop-ups, viruses & the like will always have an easier time getting to your system in IE because IE is integrated into your system. The fact that Firefox, Chrome and the like aren’t seamless is a good thing. You always want to have something in between you and anything that might have a virus – the argument is exactly like a safe-sex talk, except less dire.
Lockergnome:
…most other browsers don’t make it so easy to install malicious software on your system without you knowing about it. IE makes it relatively trivial through two features called ActiveX and Active Scripting. These technologies were designed specifically for the purpose of giving Web sites more control over a user’s computer.
Web Design Standards
Most people don’t know this, but there are standards for web design and coding on the internet developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international community that develops standards to ensure the long-term growth of the Web.
These standards deal with how the different coding languages (HTML, CSS, XHTML, etc.) & image formats should displayed on a browser. This is why everything looks virtually the same in every browser. The reason that I say “virtually” is because Microsoft has, in the development of IE, essentially decided that they are too big and important to be bound by the rules that everyone else on the internet seeks to follow.
Lockergnome:
Ask yourself why a company would choose not to support standards that benefit everyone? The way I see it, it’s for precisely one of two reasons – either they are unable to, or they don’t want to. Given the fact that they are a multi-billion dollar company (one of the richest on the planet), I can’t help but lean toward the second option. Without going into too much detail… they have their own plans, and those plans involve implementing their own standard and forcing it upon the world. Call me a geek/hippie, but the idea of a multi-billion dollar corporation snubbing its nose at agreed-upon standards is nothing short of infuriating.
Others
There are other reasons, but they all boil down to customization. I like to browse the internet in a seamless fashion, and other browsers let me do that. I’d suggest reading a series of posts I wrote on CruTech.org a few years ago. They specifically talk about Firefox, but the argument and the options apply to Chrome and other browsers as well.
