thoughts

What do I miss when browsing with Internet Explorer?

2004-12-24

You might wonder what all the fuzz about (bad) Internet Explorer and (holy) Firefox is about. Well, Internet Explorer (IE from now on), is now some years old and lacks implementation of major parts of the CSS 2.1 specification (which is mostly the same as the 2.0 specification form 1998, long before IE 6 was released).

Does that mean you can't browse the internet or miss information? Not quite. In my opinion it's a webdeveloper's task to make sites work in all commonly used browsers. This task however is rather difficult, because IE in many cases displays (renders) the webpage other than expected by specification. So for webdevelopers who do not know the quirks of IE, this is really a pain in the ass. That's why they shout loudest IE is an abomination (love that word) at least.

And what do you (regular internet user) suffer from the improper implementation of specification by IE? There are (beginning) webdevelopers who do not know much of specification, browserquirks and so on, their sites will probably be built up with bad HTML and might only be tested in IE. IE is forgiving, it will still properly display a page. Other browsers (like Firefox or Opera), are not that forgiving, so many webpages, built by starting webdevelopers are best viewed in IE. I think that's one reason for the ever lasting popularity of IE.

Developers that do know the various specifications and choose to build webpages following those, will probably build webpages that are best viewed in Firefox, but also visible and readable in IE, despite the lack of some parts of the toolbox.

My own page for example looks somewhat different in Firefox and Opera than in IE. A small list of differences:

• External links are marked with an icon (in Firefox and Opera).
• Paragraphs are numbered (in Opera).
• Images are numbered (in Opera).
• The publication date window at the right top of every page is expandable (in Opera and Firefox).
• On printed pages the URL of links are displayed (in Firefox and Opera).
• Code blocks have a header identifying the type of code (in Firefox and Opera).
• When targetting a specific paragraph on a page, this paragraph is indicated (in Firefox).

These differences do not mean you can't view and understand my site, but it is much more rich in modern browsers.

Another benefit of for example Firefox is tabbed browsing, all your different pages can be viewed in one window. You might not like that, but I do, it saves me from a lot of clutter in my taskbar. Also Firefox had built in popup blocking (which is now added to IE by service pack 2 as well) and there are much less virusses and exploit programs for Firefox than for IE.

Firefox is free and installs well next to all other programs, so why not give it a try? If you don't like it, feel free to uninstall and go on with IE like you used to. If you are a visitor of small (hobby) webpages, you might find them not working, but in that case, you still have IE (Firefox does not overwrite or uninstall IE). Here is the link, give it a try.

If you have trouble reading small text, Opera is a very nice browser for you, it can zoom the entire page. Firefox can only increase the font size and IE can also do that, but not in al cases.

Opera is also free, but comes with some advertising bars, which can be removed by buying the thing. It is however a very quick browser and does support some more little nice things than Firefox (as you can see in the list above). Download it at Opera.com.