[/caption]Be Warned: This post has very little technical value, more just a rant against my most hated enemy
I hate Internet Explorer, with a fiery passion. Normally I just code along in beautiful browsers and use cross browser CSS and JavaScript frameworks. It's gotten to the point that I can code something up in Firefox and make it pretty and go over to old IE-saurus Rex and load it up and it looks 90% of the way there and a few hacks later it's fine. You see I still hate IE, but I've ingrained in my brain somewhere what things are "safe" and will probably work in that POS browser and which will require hours of tweaking, reading, googling, hacking, gnashing of teeth, and general misery. I try to avoid the latter.
So If I've developed this system to insulate myself from the misery of IE, why the hate today? IE9, that's why. I've read several reviews both positive and negative, but at the end of the day I'm not switching browsers, so I really care about one thing and one thing only, does IE9 make my job as a web developer better or worse. I've come to the conclusion that it's worse, and for that I have a lovely pile of "Fuck You" cake sitting right here with IE's name on it.
Not Available for Windows XP
First of all, IE9 is not available for Windows XP. Great, game over right there you fucking idiots. I don't think people should use 10 year old operating systems, but people are stupid, see: the continued popularity of American Idol for proof. Firefox is taking the responsible route and helping these poor souls bring their browser into the 21st century even if they are fine with an ancient OS. As Firefox Engineering Director Johnathan Nightingale says about XP, "...the best metrics that we’ve got say 40 to 50 percent of the web is still on XP. That’s too big for us to just leave them behind"
Missing a metric ton of shit
IE9 is just missing a ton of stuff. Stuff that web developers care about, stuff that would make our lives easier and happier, stuff that IE9 rapes right before sleeping soundly on a pile of skulls. Paul Rouget of Mozilla makes this case, let me quote some of the juicier parts.
No CSS3 for you
Here's a list of CSS3 stuff IE9 won't support: CSS3 Transitions (for animations), CSS3 Text Shadow, CSS3 Gradients, CSS3 Border Image, CSS3 Flex box model. Great news, don't put photoshop away just yet, you are going to need 1px wide gradients and text with shadows baked in, and fuck it.
Suck it UX
Hoping you might get HTML5 History API, Drag'n Drop from Desktop, or Web Workers to speed up your applications. Not with IE9 you won't.
Not the point though
Let's not get caught up in a feature list shoot out though, because that's not the point. Let's move onto the next subject.
Fractured even further
Does IE9 make my job easier, nope not at all. Microsoft's all consuming obsession with backwards compatibility means that they won't force anyone to upgrade. While other major browsers are moving to a model of strongly-recommended / automatic background updates to keep everyone on the latest and greatest, Microsoft is still playing the game by the old rules. Now the browser landscaped is fractured even further, I have to make sure my code works in IE6, IE7, IE8, and IE9, and if I want to be really sure I should also check in IE7-compatibility, IE8-compatibility, and Quirks Mode. Microsoft has never made it easy to run different IE versions side by side, I've used several products to do this and they all work to varying degrees. Now I will have to run another different virtual machine with either Vista or Win7 so I can test in IE9. And with no / terrible developer tools for all of these browsers, well its a fucking nightmare.
Conclusion
I wish I had one. At this point the only thing I've concluded is Fuck You Very Much Internet Explorer. Here's an idea, stop already Microsoft. I don't care how good you make IE10, the fact of the matter is that since you won't force upgrades, it isn't fucking helping. The only thing you are doing is making more work for the people that actually make the web beautiful. I fucking hate you. Fuck you very much.
Quite possible that I may have to unsubscribe from your RSS feed now, thanks for that. Can't obscure that word a little? F%$* or some such? Nine times in one post? I'll probably show up on a filter report at work now.
ReplyDeleteI don't see the point of censoring myself, as though someone wouldn't be able to see past my cunning and realize that F%$* means Fuck. It is the concept that is offensive not the juxtaposition of letters. I did not intend to get anyone in trouble for my writing and if you suffer some ill-consequence because of it you have my apologies.
ReplyDeleteSorry to hear your woes Matt.
ReplyDeleteI design for Firefox/Webkit etc, and if it works in IE great (most stuff I work on looks ok in IE8). Before I specialize sites for IE I think of mobile css (been seeing issues with font sizes and page heights). If you need to support everyone you invariably get hosed. Browser market fragmentation will have to gravitate around the standards for mutual benefits or it'll continue to diverge (would be interesting).
Give windows a few more years, many users will migrate to alternative OS and default browsers. I'm seeing signs of life for Apple in enterprise (uphill), linux and bsd have made incredible inroads but still have limited consumer desktop adoption.
Chrome silently updates in the background, although they are not going to stop you if you use an older version, for most users they will just keep updating right along and never know it. Safari updates as an OS level update and OSX bugs me every few days if I say "Not Now" to update the browser. Firefox will pop up a little bar reminding me to update and makes the upgrade path seamless and simple. Fire up IE6 and nothing, no "Hey you are using a 10 year old browser, bad monkey!" not even a "Hey we have a new browser that will make your life easier." The sad thing is that for a lot of people, whatever browser comes installed on their computer, that will be the browser they use until that computer stops functioning.
ReplyDeleteBrowserShots is nice if you want to see if a layout looks ok and don't mind waiting up to a few hours for all the shots to come back. If you want to test interactive functionality, when I click this button in IE6 and it fires this javascript to fold down this div, does everything look ok? You need to have actual running browsers to test those kinds of complex things.
I would absolutely love to forget about IE6, sadly I don't get to make those kinds of calls so I will keep coding for it. At least I've been able to convince management that "functionality" is the only requirement for IE6.
Quote:
ReplyDelete"I don’t think people should use 10 year old operating systems, but people are stupid, see: the continued popularity of American Idol for proof. Firefox is taking the responsible route and helping these poor souls bring their browser into the 21st century even if they are fine with an ancient OS."
The language isn't a problem, it's your ridiculous notion that all things are equal everywhere. The whole world doesn't upgrade just because M$ demands it, and there are significant percentages of people on our planet without the means to keep buying hardware to run the latest OS from MS. They are not dumb idiots, they are not numpties. XPSP3 is an incredibly stable OS, it works. The fact that it comes with IE6 is neither here nor there for a lot of users because Firefox, Chrome et al have been available for a while. I coded sites for years, and I also loathe and detest IE with a passion, but just leave the sodding XP users alone, age doesn't make something useless you narrow minded git.
The latest release of CSS3PIE sez:
ReplyDelete"After this beta 4 release, the priority for development is introducing proper support for missing CSS3 features in IE9, notably linear-gradient and border-image."
http://css3pie.com/
I am also hoping to see a collaboration with another dev to bring proper text-shadows to CSS3PIE:
http://r.je/css3-in-ie.html
after i have to code on a web project , i always feel the need to read someone feeling that match mine on IE 5,6,7,8 and 9
ReplyDeleteso many thanks for your blog a now know i'm not alone that feel that hatred over IE
Thank , Thank and Thank again ...
Fuck you IE
You seem to be getting a bit of grief in these comments about your use of language etc. but let me join you in saying -
ReplyDeleteFuck You Internet Explorer!
It's good to have a rant now and then and I agree with the points you make, IE is and probably always will be a POS.
Nice post :)
I "upgraded to IE9....and after 20 minutes promptly rolled back to IE8. I hate "bing" with a passion, but its obnoxious and odious presence seemed to be the sole reason that IE9 even exists. Decision engine my ass...that's like saying an airline hijacker is a "destination engineer".
ReplyDeleteAll I want to do is surf the web for random nonsense, play games, and send/receive email. Bing and its apsberger/OCD/thieving nature makes this impossible. I'm not a huge techie, but I do know a big steaming heap of shit when it is dumped in my yard, and IE9 is the dog responsible.
IE 9 --- Press F12 Gives you a backwards compatibility mode, and debug.. Which is quite useful. I would point out that,
ReplyDeleteI'm getting old and, and I really don't like wasting my time on simple things. How can you charge by the hour when it takes you 4 hours to get a piece of text to line up properly across a few browsers. It makes you feel just dam stupid. Works fine in firefox, then you take ages tweaking and pushing to get it to work in other ways..
But a lot simpler would be :-
In IE have a firefox implementation DOCTYPE, and likewise in Firefox why don't they have a DOCTYPE that specifies IE implementation. Then we can just concentrate on one style, whichever is best for the website you are designing. That way you can code for the advantages of ONE model at a time, instead of hacking stuff together.
IE7 is a terrible browser indeed, although a step up from the IE6 disaster.
ReplyDeleteMore recently however, frameworks such as Bootstrap and Foundation can abstract the cross browser issues for you.
Of course, it's not exactly a trivial exercise to convert a legacy 100+ page web application to a new CSS framework...I know, I'm there right now.
The main reason for hating IE isn't that it is an inferior piece of crap browser so much. The icing on the cake for me is that M$ still, even after many many demands from people all over, still won't make it at all possible for people to completely remove it from their computer. Heck, the entire Windows operating system is so built around that stinking browser. Think about it. That is just such a lame way to create an operating system. No OS should be that centered around just a mere browser like that, in my opinion. And, as the sheeple keep on flocking to American Idol year after year, they keep on flocking to Microshaft Winblows. Pretty pathetic, isn't it?
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P.S My apologies for getting off-topic but I had to ask!
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IT'S in my face everyday all day long........I hate you
ReplyDeleteEXPLORER 9......HATE...HATE...never...NEVER!