I love firefox, mozilla, opera and Safari more than any IE based browser. Why?
1. Because I am a professional web developer that needs websites to work with ANY browser and any PC platform, and IE happens to be the worst in that arena.
2. IE allows for execution of arbitrary programs, known as ActiveX components. This is why windowsupdate.microsoft.com only works with IE. ActiveX is explicitly an IE component, unless it is set to run Server-Side, on an IIS server. ActiveX is much like Java except that it can cause your computer to run programs on your computer, and thus, this is the big deal with IE able to obtain computer virus' more frequently than any other browser. ActiveX components cannot run on Macintosh (without the IE browser for Macintosh), nor on any other browser, making website utilizing this to REQUIRE a person to use IE.
3. IE will "close" website html tags, most of the time, in whatever way it thinks it should. For those in the HTML know, forget a </td> and </tr> and save a page, IE will close them and display what looks like a proper webpage, working as intended. Most other browsers will barf, Firefox included. Why? Because the web developer didn't check their work or use an HTML validation tool (
The W3C Markup Validation Service ) or CSS validation tool (
The W3C CSS Validation Service ). I want to see if I forgot to close HTML tags, and I want to know when my website doesn't work.
4. Firefox and other browsers are, for the most part, "Standards Compliant". Web developers need to program to standards in order to ensure their websites look the same no matter which browser they use. Why use standards?
WDVL - Mastering the Art of Online Magazine Creation Who's standards?
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and where to get html help?
How to Start an Online Business & Make Money Doing It | WebMonkey Internet Explorer is the least standards compliant browser in the world.
5. "It works so why not use it?". I'm not saying
don't use IE and use Firefox, I'm saying these are the reasons why I do not.
I am very opinionated when it comes to HTML and Web development. I see web developers creating sites with PHP programming langauge that I can hack in a matter of seconds. Because they don't know how to properly code w/ PHP. I see websites that look like confetti... that is, if I look at a simple website, and there is over 2 million lines of html code to make it display... Those in my end of the web world (my coworkers that I have encountered) refer to it as "MS Frontpage Generated". I have let web developers go from my last job because though they developed nice looking websites, they didn't know how to make them work in all browsers, and create them securely. This is a big deal to people when you're talking multi-million dollar companies, accept perhaps Microsoft
So that's my opinion... I'll be quiet now B)
~ Jaraeth
PS:
Validate This