Internet Explorer

[jeffro]

We all know it is crap/slow/useless - but why?

I use other browsers and have done for as long as I can remember but I thought today, how in this day and age can it still be so bad?

I don't imagine that the tech boffins and engineers at Microsoft are any less intelligent than those at Mozilla etc so why can't they seem to get it right?

Answer me this, chums.

[master]

IE 10 and 11 have actually improved to a usable level, mainly because of Microsoft copying some feature from better browsers.

[RAILS!]

When you release Windows 8 and it's as shitty as it is, i guess IE is the least of your problems. ha.

[tecnic1]

There was an ELI5 on Reddit a while back on this that was really really good.

I don't rembember the details, and i can't look it up at work, but basicly IE used it's own language for awhile, while Chrome, Oprah, and I think firefox all used webkit.

I'll look for it when I get home.

[reebzor]

There was an ELI5 on Reddit a while back on this that was really really good.

I don't rembember the details, and i can't look it up at work, but basicly IE used it's own language for awhile, while Chrome, Oprah, and I think firefox all used webkit.

I'll look for it when I get home.

firefox uses gecko, not webkit

Safari also is webkit based

[Alex.]

From that Reddit thread:

tl;dr; Up until Internet Explorer 9, Internet Explorer (IE) was very much behind modern advances in Web browsing and also required a different way to do things than other browsers. Since IE was installed on every PC, it still was the market leader in browsers so Web Developers had to use more tedious and non standard methods when developing in order to make sure the largest market share could use their Web site. This made their job a lot harder.
Source: Web Developer
The long winded answer:
Internet Explorer was actually very innovative (http://www.nczonline.net/blog/2012/08/22/the-innovations-of-internet-explorer/[1] ) in the early days of the Web. The major players in the Web space were Netscape and Internet Explorer. Netscape developed JavaScript - which is the primary language on the Web used to handle interface interactions and rich Web applications. JavaScript was a proprietary language owned by Netscape (not open source), and therefore in order to compete, Microsoft developed JScript - its own language similar to JavaScript but a different engine. This is important, because proprietary ownership is a big reason IE became what it is/was.
It was until a year after Internet Explorer 3 that Netscape submitted JavaScript to ECMA International for standardization. At this point IE already had their own version/engine and so did not/could not make the switch without major modification to Internet Explorer's code. This is when JavaScript really became open sourced.
In 1999 AOL bought Netscape, and Netscape open sourced its browser - becoming the foundation for Mozilla and Firefox, an open source browser. 2 years later, another open source project KHTML was used to form the open source project Webkit, the foundation of Apple's Safari and Google's Chrome. Both Chrome and Safari based their JavaScript engines off the ECMA standard, not IE's implementation. These three new browsers, based off of open source projects and lots of contributing developers, were able to/can move quickly to adapt to the rapid nature of the Web.
Because IE was proprietary to Microsoft it had 2 problems: 1) only Microsoft developers were working on IE and its JScript engine, 2) IE was important to the operation of Windows. Therefore, the update path for IE was tied directly to the update path of Windows - and operating systems traditionally require longer development cycles than browsers. It is the reason why you can't install IE9 on a Windows XP machine. Windows XP only supports up to IE8. Microsoft didn't see this as a problem at first - for a while IE was the only real player in the browser wars, but as adoption for Firefox, Safari, and Chrome grew, IE lost market share.
Since Microsoft used its own proprietary standards instead of the standards used by the other popular browsers, developers had to start making special exception in their code to support IE users. This led to a lot of frustration from the development community towards IE - and a lot of people rallying against using it.
IE9 tried to correct a lot of the problems of past IE by bringing its standards in line with Web standards. However, the damage to its brand and reputation is significant. Also, IE is still a Microsoft/Windows only product, which makes it difficult to test against if you are writing code on a machine other than windows. There is still a big frustration among developers and IE since many still do have to support IE8, since Windows XP is still in heavy use and their isn't an upgrade path for those users to newer version of IE.

[dude...]

internet explorer is great for downloading firefox and chrome on your new pc

[powell]

IE is supposedly getting scrapped soon fore a new platform called Spartan, which come out sometime this year I believe.

[blueee]

I have a windows phone
fucking blows
but for $50 i can afford to go through four a year

[streetStreet]

NSA bruh

[Cellmember]

I have a windows phone
fucking blows
but for $50 i can afford to go through four a year

Hah, bought a windows phone, sold it the same day, lesson learned.

[LuckyLuke]

Didn't Microsoft just announce they are dumping IE when Windows 10 comes out. Making a completely new browser.

[MilkyWilky]

Didn't Microsoft just announce they are dumping IE when Windows 10 comes out. Making a completely new browser.

Yea.

IE is supposedly getting scrapped soon fore a new platform called Spartan, which come out sometime this year I believe.

[blueee]

why does microsoft live (hotmail.com) run shittiest/slowest/glitchyest on internet explorer?