Why I won't be turning off Internet Explorer 8
Microsoft updated its Windows 7 Engineering blog Friday by discussing its decision to allow users to turn off features in Windows 7. It also released a list of Windows 7 options that can be turned off in the upcoming Release Candidate.
"For Windows 7 we've engineered a more significant list of features and worked to balance that list in light of the needs of the broad Windows platform as well," Jack Mayo, Microsoft's group program manager for the Documents and Printing team, said in the post. "We want to provide choice while also making sure we do not compromise on compatibility by removing APIs provided for developers. We also want to strike the right balance for consumers in providing choice and balancing compatibility with applications and providing a consistent Windows experience."
To achieve that goal, Microsoft has released a screenshot showing what is ostensibly the complete list of features that users will be able to turn on and off in Windows 7. It includes games, an FTP server, Windows Search, and more. But the most important option (and the one that gets the most attention) is the ability to turn Internet Explorer 8 off.
Internet Explorer 8 cannot be uninstalled from Windows 7. According to Mayo, any feature that's turned off "will not be available for use, which means binaries and data are not loaded by the operating system (for security-conscious customers) and not available to users on the computer.
"These same files are staged so that the features can easily be added back to the running OS without additional media. This staging is important feedback we have received from customers who definitely do not like to dig up the installation DVD," he continued.
That's understandable and a welcome option. I will be turning some features off, like all of Microsoft's media services and a few extras like the FTP server and Tablet PC components, which I won't use any way, but Internet Explorer 8 is a different story altogether.
I'm sure some are excited to see they can finally kill Internet Explorer, but I'm not. I won't be using it, but I won't be turning it off either. Why should I?
I've found that Internet Explorer is one of the worst browsers I've used. On a Windows machine, I use Opera or Firefox, depending on my mood at the time. Internet Explorer stays dormant on my desktop.
So why not just disable it and never look at it again? Because I think it'll be a downright hassle to disable it, and doing so could mean that I'll be forced to go to the "Windows Features" pane and turn it back on when I want to go to one of those annoying sites that works best with Internet Explorer, or to a Microsoft page that requires Internet Explorer to download what I need.
Whether we like to admit it, we still live and play in a Microsoft world. Say what you will about Firefox or Opera and how much better they are than Internet Explorer, Microsoft's browser is still important and still required software if we're running a Windows machine.
And consider the fact that Google (with its 1 percent browser market share with Chrome) joined the Mozilla Foundation (with its 22 percent market share with Firefox) and Opera (with its 0.71 percent market share) last month in condemning Microsoft's 67 percent share. And consider that Google applied for third-party status in European regulators' case against Microsoft for allegedly using Windows as a vehicle to control the browser market, and it becomes blatantly clear that Internet Explorer won't go away with a simple on/off toggle.
Nor should it. Based on what I do with my own computers, I simply don't see any reason to turn Internet Explorer off. I realize the on/off option is a handy tool for some, but for me, it'll just be an annoyance when I'll need the browser. And if I really don't want to use it, why can't I just set Firefox or Opera to my default and never open Internet Explorer? That solves the same basic problem.
Do I like to use Internet Explorer? No. Will I use Internet Explorer in Windows 7? Not unless it's necessary. Will I turn it off? Not a chance. To me, the value of doing so doesn't outweigh the value of just leaving it on my desktop and ignoring it like I do now. You never know when you might need it.
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Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
I'll give IE 8 one week of use to convince me it's worth keeping. If not, it's switch shall be switched with a vengeance.
However, Don did not cite this as an example. If don't use it and won't expect to use it, then I would turn it off as well. As the article mention, you can turn it on anyway...
If it's there and I don't use it, it's just clutter. So it more than annoyance -- it's a distraction.
3 or 4 years ago these types of sites were common, where designers would make a site for IE and fell it wasn't worth it to make it standards compliant for other browsers. Now most web designers make a site that works in firefox/safari/opera, and then add hacks to make it work in various versions of IE.
Based on my testing of Windows 7 and IE 8, I would be completely indifferent to using IE 8, Firefox or Opera (I won't use Chrome because it is not very secure).
I use Firefox in Vista, I think IE 8 does not work well with Vista, it hangs alot on startup for me, but in Windows 7 it runs really well.
Don't be so quick to dismiss something new just because it is made by Microsoft; I know that is the in thing to do.
It wouldn't be a Microsoft world if sheeple would take off their blinders and remove IE from their machines, thus forcing the Web to stop tailoring itself (coding workarounds and infuriating IE-only sites) to crappy IE "standards."
Think different, Don.
Fact is, there are those sites, mostly Microsoft's, that will only play nice with IE. The number of these sites isn't increasing any, but you may find yourself at one. Who are you harming more by not allowing yourself to visit a web page with information you may need on it? Microsoft REALLY needs those extra few seconds of usage and a few page hits because they care CLEARLY the underdog with 67% market share. If ever IE usage actually is the underdog, I don't think they will limit any site they create to only work with IE. They are not that dumb.
Leaving IE on your PC will save you the trouble of reinstalling it. Of course you'll be angry, but not as much as if you had to wait through an install. Just never use IE, unless 100% needed. Simple as that, same effect.
A key security principle is that if you don't use it, you shouldn't install it. At least IE gets patched, but it is still more secure to not have it installed at all, nor active x. The only justifiable components would be enough of the rendering engine for applications with embedded html.
Also, the web was originally designed to be cross browser, based on standards. While many vendors have been guilty of embrace and extend, MS dug to the lowest depths in an attempt to break the web specifically for the purpose of holding it back and making it dependent on Windows. Hence why activeX (exposes the Windows API to the web, really stupid and insecure) and MS specific technologies. Sites do need to move away from this, and sites that aren't cross browser should be made to eat crow. I wouldn't mind a regulation requiring all government sites and public service utilities (you know, those government sanctioned monopolies providing your power, water, etc) to support 99.99% of all browsers/OSes. After all, they should belong/serve the people, not MS.
Accessing the web is only ONE USE of a Windows machine. I run LOTS of standalone apps, like Adobe Photoshop, or my scanner software, or my development tools, or Turbo Tax. Crippling the stability of local apps just to make some people happy in a browser war would be a big step backward. As a developer, html rendering is something I expect to be an intrinsic OS feature now, and IE is the built in component to do that rendering. This also doesn't stop anybody from installing any other app that can communicate via http and render html. I have at least 3 apps that can display a JPEG, some do a better job than others (like get the color right), but we don't have a JPEG viewer war.
Why don't you just ship an html renderer with your application. That way you can be sure that the renderer is well tested with your html, since you can't be sure what version of IE might be on the end-user's machine or what they may have done to cripple it. For example, I remove mshtml.dll from my system and effective remove the trident engine altogether. Your app won't work on my machine as a result. Instead of depending on the trident engine, you could try shipping XulRunner and embedding it in your application. If you program in .Net, you can use the GeckoFX library to interface with XulRunner or if you program in C, you can just go directly to the XPCom interfaces.
Because we do indeed live in a Windows world, and because I don't like it.
Apple took safari and virtually turned it into chrome but thats okay?
IE 8 has tons of features that none of the other browsers had they copied it.
No they don't force Apple to unbundle Safari but its apples and oranges as so many people are fond of pointing out around here. Apple is a closed ecosystem if you will. OS X isn't installed on HP's, Sony's, IBM's, Dell's, etc. so usually they fall under different laws than Windows and Microsoft because of the pervasiveness of Windows and IEx.
Apple comes together with Safari. Any Linux distro comes together with a browser. But somehow when Windows comes with their browser, the IE, that's bad. So bad that EU feels the need to sue. In my opinion, the rules should be the same for everybody. But apparently for the EU, the rules depend on your market share. Which is to say, on how deep your pockets are. Linux guys won't pay a billion dollar fine. Microsoft did. And that's the only reason why EU sues Microsoft and not Linux or Apple.
All this nonsense about Apple being a closed ecosystem is just that - nonsense. Nobody forces you to buy a Windows PC. Don't like Microsoft? Buy Apple, or get a Linux box. But no, you want Windows, but then you want to dictate how it should be done. At least that's how the EU Commission looks like and that's quite unfair, not to say silly. But what would you expect from a bunch of bureaucrats.
In addition, it is often cheaper to develop a site for IE (particularly for say a very small organisation who doesn't have the time, money or resources to test for accessibility etc). It is a sad state of affairs I'll agree but a reality.
That being said, just like being able to finally kill that M$ paperclip, I'll be saying no thank you to IE too. Not because I don't use it (which I don't) but because of all of the other security implications of having this invasive hack/virus-magnet on my machine.
we both have exactly the same story lol. except i use firefox portable to go through some of the internet restrictions like when the admin teacher blocks the internet i'm not affected, but everyone else using IE is. whats wierd though is that firefox IS installed in every school computer, but it won't run properly or even open for that matter. unfortunately it still can't get past the proxy, keyword, and content restrictions :(
On that front, it's true that the fix was in years ago. Now that Netscape's flawed (overly narrowly drawn) antitrust suit was fought and effectively lost (no thanks to Bush II's blatantly pro-corporate agenda at the DoJ), now that the Europeans had to take up the mantle to give MS the slap they deserved, and now that Obama's less corporate-lackey-driven administration is in power, the least we can ask for is Microsoft to finally stop acting like like they own the world and give customers and OEMs the ability to disable that backdoor revenue generation/monopoly-extension engine in the form of IE.
Turning into a bit of a double standard.
What if I want to use something besides safari on my iPhone?
MS lets you install other browsers with no hassle so I don't see what the deal is.
What difference does it make if FF is in IE's place Firefox is getting fatter
Typical Linux distros come with no less than 3 browsers! Lynx, Konqueror/KHTML engine, and Firefox. You cannot point to linux as being in the same boat as Apple and Microsoft. And as far as those two are concerned, I'll let you figure out which one is a convicted monopolist.
It may be that every browser is vulnerable, but some browser are more so (IE) and have greater damage capacity (being integrated with the OS for example, providing an easier path of privilege escalation). To same that every browser is equally vulnerable is ignorant, and certainly displays a real lack of understanding of just what the hell you are talking about. :-)
Also ... it has no reversed 'doomsday clock' of memory leakage like FF has.
IE has ActiveX. 'Nuff said there. It also fails Acid3 testing... horribly. Even with IE8b, although M$'s answer there is "that they weren't striving to meet with that standard." With those two glaring faults, IE is still rather prominent because it's installed by default on your machine, which Joe Schmoe is going to use because he or she doesn't want to have to go out and download new, unfamiliar software. A geek telling Joe that FF is better doesn't mean a damn thing if that person has to change what he already has into something he or she is completely unfamiliar with.
Which is the reason why my GF still uses AOL. (Yes, please shoot me.)
I still have IE6 on my XP machine, personally, but I use FF3. The only reason why I have IE is that some pages NEED ActiveX (like SystemRequirementLab's Can You Run It) or don't display at all without IE (like certain components of the Army's crappy AKO website).
I do hate FF's memory leak issue. But I'm used to leaving FF on in the background, playing games and multitasking and I'm actually USED to the slow performance of my aging P4 machine with 2GB of RAM. *le sigh*
Even with FF's other issues, I will never go back to IE again... willingly. And that's because I'm convinced that FF is better than IE.
I have never run into a site in the past few years outside of Microsoft.com where I had to use anything but my browser of choice, which is not IE. And in fact, when MS demands I use IE, I just say no. How else will be make the web safe for everyone to browse?
Stop being a shill for Microsoft. Stop using IE.
It is like anything else in life. If you want to use something else JUST USE IT!
I have used Firefox, Mozilla, Netscape, Chrome, Safari and returned back to IE for a simple reason. When i am using IE i know its simple to use, tells me what to do and doesn't required a long list of plug-ins to make things work. A normal daily user doesn't have time or understanding of the plug-in world and its difficult for them to download some thing and then start a chain of plug-in to make things work, even when they are free to cost.
Also most of the web world keeps IE as a reference for developing sites. So every day you end up in all those alternate browsers with sites which either don't work fully or don't work efficiently. Take hotmail for example. Safari 4 just doesn't open your emails. How can a company like apple miss testing hotmail while releasing a new version of browser? and how asked them to put all those web sites in my startup page?
The truth of the matter is that every company is trying to throw its weight around and pushing (add google toolbar with every god damn software they offer, add yahoo bar with every damn software, add other blah bar)... They all are doing it. Microsoft is being accused just because its a top dog and others feel they can make money by proving to be innocent.
In my thinking this doesn't work any more. Microsoft should not even disable it and tell the judges to ask other companies to ask a simple questions "Make this browser my default" and skip the useless debate.
Even a fresh download of Firefox, Chrome, or Opera without any extra additions is better than Internet Explorer. Anyone who understands what a browser rather than referring to it as "the Internet", and isn't a Microsoft fanboy understands this
What you fail to realise is that the option of not installing IE is a security option NOT a 'oo I like this browser because it is shiny' option. There are many things going on in the background that I for one do not want on my machine. There are many things to consider when making an informed choice about a purchase including computer hardware and software. Ease of use, performance, memory leaks, bugs, etc these are all things to take into account. But so is being a magnet for unauthorised content or sending my personal details to other sites without my permission.
Intel, sony, M$ (to name a few)- these are all famously guilty of these things and this sort of thing should influence your decisions. That doesn't mean you stil won't go and buy a Intel 'I like sending your details to vendors you don't want to have your details' P4 machine with IE7/8 'don't validate incoming data' browser and a nice Sony back orifice built in, but do so in an informed manner so you at least know what you are up against.
Your mood, really? This is what bothers me about tech writers, they say things that make no quantifiable sense, and are probably lies designed to prove to the rest of us nerds that they're not novices.
What you really meant to say is: "I'm defending IE here, but I'm not a tool, seriously! I am familiar and have installed at least two other browsers, honest!"
I'm a web developer, and I have all the major browsers installed, but regardless of my "mood," unless I'm testing for compatibility, I only use Firefox. There's nothing wrong with that.
If you're willing enough to forget about it, why keep it and clutter? If it's as easy as you claim, Mr. Reisinger, to just turn it off, certainly it's nearly as easy to turn it back on.
I can't wait to turn off IE. That will be the most satisfying thing I've done on a PC in awhile.
I've had no problems using Firefox to do everything I've needed it to.
- by comput31 March 10, 2009 1:46 PM PDT
- HI I must say after reading the following article. I must say that even now that I have a new computer and it has internet Explorer 7 installed on it I try very hard never to use internet explorer 7. I choose not to use internet explorer 7 simply for one word security. I worry about use internet exporer 7 because I am concerned with some high jacking it or I worry that if someone really wanted to they could find my passwords through internet explorer since I have recently read that the file that your passwords are kept in is not encrypted at all. So if you ask me if I will ever use internet explorer 8. No i will never use internet Explorer 8. So if you ask me witch feature I would be in favor for I would be grateful if Microsoft did not even install internet Explorer on any windows computers that I am going to use or buy period end of topic. But as we all now Microsoft will try to convince all of us to use internet Explorer anyway. I am just happy to have my own choice and use a different browser like Firefox.
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- by HeyUGuys March 11, 2009 6:26 AM PDT
- if IE isn't installed onto a brand-new PC, then how are you going to download FireFox, Opera, Chrome, or other browsers?
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- by CrashPad63 March 11, 2009 8:15 AM PDT
- IE is not weaker than the others on security, as a matter of contention FF was the most patched followed by Safari. And speed is all relative to the user.
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Showing 1 of 3 pages (95 Comments)Also, sure IE is weaker in security than the other browsers, but all browsers are vulnerable.
The best security is human knowledge. If you know that you shouldn't give out your credit card number or install a "program" when an email and pop-up ask, then any browser will work.