The World’s Worst Web Browser: Internet Explorer
Aug 25 2007
IE is WWW. But in this case WWW means World’s Worst Web (browser experience).
…but you already knew that.
IE is the browser the behaves differently from all others… It is so out of whack with respect to other browsers that is just funny. Opera, Safari, Mozilla, Firefox, others all work/render content similarly… but IE render the same content totally different. Hello! What is wrong with this picture? Hint, hint to IE engineers, if your code behaves differently from ALL other browsers, doesn’t that indicate something is wrong with your implementation (even though you might be doing things by the book)?
ceo
Dark Green
Wordpress
Ash Haque
XHTML Strict
Completly agree! Even with the respect to Microsoft for all the achivements with operating system the IE is the worst browser ever and in my opinion, with every new release it’s just getting worse!
So your argument goes… “it’s different to everything else, so it must be the worst”.
It is perfectly possible for a product to be different to everything else, and yet be the best. The iPhone, for example.
Maybe you’ve just had a bad day with some advanced CSS selectors or transparent PNGs or something, but it’s hard to tell. Hopefully this isn’t just an anti-vendor rant, apropos of nothing.
(Incidentally, there are plenty of things that other browsers do differently to each other. Never struggled with the Safari’s buggy Javascript for-in implementation, for example?)
Anyway, please explain *why* you think it’s the worst. I’ve no interest in defending Microsoft, but your post does need to exhibit basic logic.
My argument was VERY clear. It is about consistency! To have pretty basic CSS content render same in IE as in other browsers, CSS must be tweaked so the content looks in IE the same as in other browsers. IE is always the exception.
Referring to your example about the iPhone, the iPhone browser is based on Safari/Web Kit, which renders as expected.
Just look at this blog in IE vs. other and you will see how it looks different.
This time around, I have no time or desire for debugging or changing the CSS to “fix” it for IE; this time I am like “fuck it”.
What browser are you using?
ceo
I use FF2, S60 and IE7 in probably equal amounts. Safari for Windows occasionally.
In my job I can’t afford vendor religion. And it’s very liberating, judging things on their merit
Every product has its own flaws, weaknesses and divergences.
I think you must, in this case, be referring to {text-align:center} cascades
However, experienced mobilists in particular have learnt to be tolerant of browser incompatibility. (Which is a huge shame, but, right now, real-life).
Given your background, that perhaps explains why the zeal of your post seemed so surprising to me.
I am obviously frustrated that IE is still needs to be treated as an exception w.r.t. compatibilities when compared to all other browsers, for things as simple as text alignment. Yes, every product has its flaws. Mobile has always been slower to catch up when compared to desktop (and I am used to that), but in this case I’m talking about (a pretty mature) desktop browser; they should know better by now… Thanks for the feedback, and apologies if I came out too strong on this topic.
ceo
While I agree IE is a horrible browser, I have recently realized that Safari is actually the world’s worst Web browser.
Safari just doesn’t understand CSS very well. For some reason it doesn’t like to look at what the background tag has to say in CSS, nor does it treat list items as other better browsers such as Firefox or even IE7 does. It also doesn’t support AJAX very well (take netflix.com, for example).
Don’t get me wrong, I’m an IE hater all the way, but given the improvements made in IE7, I just don’t think it can be labeled as the world’s worst Web browser, like Safari can. Maybe IE6 and Safari can share that title.
I hear you.
I was very frustrated when I wrote the above. :-/ Oh well…
ceo
I dunno, I found developing for Safari to be far more annoying than developing for Safari (although it doesn’t help that Safari has the world’s worst frickin’ dom inspector wheras IE’s is better than even firefox’s). Firefox is nicer, but honestlly if IE would recover from a crash by completely resuming all your browing session tabs so it was liek it never happened (like FF does), I would put firefox and IE on about par.
I have never used Safari, so indeed Safari could be worse the IE. But what makes IE “the worst” in a broader sense is its sheer popularity despite being awful, ie. the fact that Microsoft spent all their energy not on making a better product, but on ensuring that IE become synonymous with “web browser”. This way, most people would eventually find it inconceivable that they could actually do without it, no matter how much it sucks. If people had been given an option and not had IE shoved down their throats, IE would have sunk immediately, since better browsers existed from the beginning. But Microsoft made sure that stores sold PCs with IE ONLY preinstalled, and even made it (on earlier versions of Windows) UNINSTALLABLE. If you throw that in the mix, IE comes out the all-around winner for worst browser, not just in its function, but in the manipulation behind it.