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The Persuader
My personal blog, started in 2006. No paid or guest posts, no link sales.
Posts tagged ‘Internet Explorer’
11.04.2022
In 2011, I was definitely on Firefox.
I believe I started browsing as many did, with Netscape. But not 1.0 (though I had seen copies at university). I was lucky enough to have 1.1 installed first.
I stuck with Netscape till 4.7. Its successor, v. 6, was bloated, and never worked well on my PC.
Around this time, my friend Kat introduced me to Internet Explorer 5, which was largely stable, so I made the leap to Microsoft. IE5 wasnât new at this point and had been around for a while.
I canât remember which year, but at some point I went to Maxthon, which used the IE engine, but had more bells and whistles.
By the end of the decade, Firefox 3 was my browser of choice. In 2014, I switched to Waterfox, a Firefox fork, since I was on a 64-bit PC and Firefox was only made for 32-bit back then. A bug with the Firefox browsers saw them stop displaying text at the end of 2014, and I must have switched to Cyberfox (another 64-bit Firefox-based browser) around this time.
I went back to Firefox when development on Cyberfox stopped, and a 64-bit Firefox became available, but by 2017, it ate memory like there was no tomorrow (as Chrome once did, hence my not adopting it). Vivaldi became my new choice.
There are old posts on this blog detailing many of the changes and my reasons for them.
Iâve always had Opera installed somewhere, but it was never my main browser. Maybe this year Opera GX will become that, with Vivaldiâs latest version being quite buggy. We shall see. I tend to be pretty loyal till I get to a point where the software ceases to work as hoped.
Tags: 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, 2020s, 2022, Cyberfox, Firefox, history, Internet Explorer, Maxthon, Microsoft, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, technology, Waterfox, web browser
Posted in internet, New Zealand, technology | No Comments »
21.06.2012
I realize software crashes can happen to anyone at any time, even Microsoft Windows president Steve Sinofsky, when demonstrating the new Microsoft Surface tablets in front of an audience in Los Angeles.
However, it does remind me of the year where Internet Explorer 9 would not work on any of our computers. The question must be asked: if one of Microsoft’s own bosses can’t get Internet Explorer to work, what hope do the rest of us have?
Tags: bug, California, error, humour, Internet Explorer, Los Angeles, Microsoft, software, USA, web browser
Posted in humour, internet, technology, USA | 2 Comments »
23.02.2012
Con Carlyon inspired this post today. He’s kept an eye on the best browser and forwarded me a test from TechCrunch where Firefox, Chrome, IE9 and Opera 11 are pitted against one another. The victors are Firefox and Chrome.
My needs are quite different from most people. For starters, the number-one criterion for me on any browser is decent typography. Firefox has been, at least since v. 3, the most typographically aware browser, picking up the correct typefaces from stylesheets, and providing access to all installed fonts on a system through its menu.
I had done these tests before, but I thought it was about time I revisited the main four browsers and their typographic capability. These were all done on the same machine, and the full screen shots are available if anyone wants to see them. Firefox and IE9 were already on my system but were checked to be current and up to date. Chrome and Opera were downloaded today (February 23, 2012).
This is not a test about Java or overall speed, just typography. But I would have to give the speed crown to Chromeâbearing in mind that my Firefox is full of extensions and add-ons.
The Lucire home page
Not the latest HTML, but there is a fairly standard stylesheet. Here is how the four browsers performed.
Firefox 10.0.2
I am used to this, so I don’t see anything unusual. Firefox is my browser of choice (though I have since tried Waterfox 64-bit, and noticed no speed difference). It picks up the web font (Fiduci, in the headline), kerns (see We in Week) and the text font, Dante, is installed on this machine. It’s the first type family specified in the stylesheet.
Kerning: 1. Font fidelity: 1.
Chrome
Not much difference on the left-hand side. However, Chrome fails to pick up Dante, even though it’s installed. It’s opted for Monotype Garamond for the body text. It’s the eighth typeface family specified in the stylesheetâan unusual choice. At least two of the other typeface families preceding Garamond are installed on this machine.
Kerning: 1. Font fidelity: 0.
Microsoft Internet Explorer 9
Awful. IE9âs bugs have already been documented on this blog, and it is very limited on which fonts it allows you to access in its menu (TTFs only). There is no kerning, and Monotype Garamond, again, has been chosen as the text font. There were some even less attractive choices on the home page that I didn’t take a screen shot of.
Kerning: 0. Font fidelity: 0.
Opera 11.63
Interestingly, Fiduci is picked up for the headlines and Dante for the text. But a bug that Firefox had back in v. 2 in 2006, and which I filed with the makers of Opera in 2010, remains present. Opera fails to display characters above ASCII 128 properly, and when it hits a ligature, it will change the following characters to a different typeface, in this case, Times. No kerning, either.
Kerning: 0. Font fidelity: 0¡5.
A Lucire news page
Much the same comments apply from the above, but it gave me confirmation of each browser’s issues.
Firefox 10.0.2
The first choices in each CSS spec are picked up.
Chrome
Instead of the Lucire typeface in the central column, Chrome specifies Verdana, the sixth typeface family for the spec.
Microsoft Internet Explorer 9
Same as Chrome, except without the kerning.
Opera 11.63
Correct typefaces, but for the changing fonts in the middle of the line.
Conclusion
If I really didn’t care about typeâand most people don’tâI would have a hard time choosing between Chrome and Firefox. On this test alone, Chrome was the fastestâbut I suspect a Firefox without add-ons would be comparable. But once you factor in type, Chrome makes some very odd decisions, as does IE9, about which fonts it chooses from the installed base. It doesn’t, consistently, pick the first oneâand previous versions did.
Interestingly, Chrome now displays Facebook in Verdana. When I first encountered it, it displayed Facebook in our in-house Lucire 1, which we had programmed to substitute for Arial on our older machines.
So somewhere along the line, someone changed the way Chrome picked fonts, but having something installed is no longer a guarantee it will even show up on Google’s browser. That can’t be good for corporate environments where companies have paid a site- or company-wide licence to have the correct fonts installed. But I’m glad Chrome now uses the kerning pair data in fonts, and that’s made a positive difference to legibility.
IE9 is simply terrible. It made the same wrong calls as Chrome, but, to make things worse, it won’t even use the kerning data. Of the four tested, it comes dead last.
Opera is not far ahead, mind, at least based on the arbitrary point scale I assigned above. While it picks up the correct typefaces, some might think its irritating habit of changing fonts mid-line to be more annoying. It could well be, as this does nothing for reading. Imagine every quotation mark and every word with a ligature changingâfor no apparent reason. As mentioned, this bug was in Firefox in 2006, and Opera knows about it, but evidently Opera users are not displeased with the glitch and it remains unfixed.
Typographically, Firefox 10.0.2 is the victorâand that’s no surprise. When I discovered bugs in Firefox 4, I was met with professional developers on the forums who actually understood type and the niceties behind the OpenType spec. Those are details some professional typeface designers don’t know. It looks I won’t be changing browsers any time soon.
Tags: 2012, Chrome, design, Firefox, fonts, Google, internet, Internet Explorer, Microsoft, Opera, technology, typography
Posted in internet, technology, typography, USA | 6 Comments »
25.03.2011
I was prepared to put up with the epic fail of IE9, since I hardly use the program. In the years I’ve had IE8, I’ve only opened it accidentally (e.g. when certain programs are removed, they load IE for the ‘Why did you remove it?’ customer screen).
But I forgot one thing: some programs rely on IE to display their information, like the Windows sidebar gadgets and McAfee.
Bit of a problem when IE9 doesn’t actually display anything.
So Microsoft’s ineptitude has consequences that reach far further than its crappy browser.
I wish I could tell Microsoft. Many, many years ago, after registering some Microsoft product, I was asked to sign up to the Microsoft Network. So I did.
Then, one day, Microsoft insisted that I sign up for a Microsoft Passport, because this was the one sign-on that I needed to get in to every one of its services. Well, I didn’t use any other than registering software. But I did anyway.
Problem: that no longer works, because Microsoft now insists that I sign up for a Windows Live ID.
MS, this is just stupid.
In 1999, we had a Yahoo! Group list. We no longer run it after we moved our users on to an in-house mailing list. And, you know what? My little company, a fraction of the size of Microsoft, will still honour the requests from the old Yahoo! members.
If we can keep old user data, how come Microsoft can’t keep hold of registered customersâ data and move it over to each successive service? How can I be assured that this doesn’t actually hook me up to a third Microsoft service when in fact I only expect one?
Or was MSN for the 1990s, Passport for the 2000s, and Windows Live for the 2010s? That we have to change each decade because Microsoft doesn’t work on a long-term basis?
Even though quite a few people suffer from the blank screen problem of IE9, Microsoft won’t be hearing it from me.
I understand that this bug had plagued IE9 even at beta stage, if the McAfee forums are to be believed.
You’d think it would be pretty serious if an internet browser couldn’t display, but it looks like Microsoft never fixed it for its final release.
The one thing it did right was providing instructions on how to remove IE9, which I followed tonight. I am glad my gadgets have returned, along with text in my McAfee security program.
Frankly, I don’t think McAfee or any other software developer should rely on IE to deliver screens, though I can understand why, with the standardized installation of the program in Windows.
What a pity, then, that Microsoft cannot deliver a browser that works with its own products.
Tags: bugs, computing, customer service, errors, internet, Internet Explorer, McAfee, Microsoft, web browser
Posted in business, design, internet, technology, USA | 2 Comments »
15.03.2011
Microsoft has released its Internet Explorer 9 to much fanfare at SXSW. I’m really not sure what the fuss is, because it appears, as usual, the browser hasn’t been tested.
Here it is on my Asus laptop, running Vista.
That’s apparently my company’s home page. Looks slightly different to how Firefox, Chrome and Opera display it:
I might dislike Chrome but at least that browser shows something other than pitch black with a few tiny details.
Let’s go to the most well known website in the world. Surely IE9 can display that and that its beta testers must have been to Google. Unless Google is banned at Microsoft and everyone uses Bing. Here’s what Google’s home page looks like:
I knew Microsoft was aiming for a minimalist look, but isn’t that taking it a bit far?
You won’t see it on the screen shot above but there is a blinking cursor. You can begin typing, but nothing echoes on the screen. On pressing âEnterâ, you do get a search page, and, lo and behold, it resembles the usual Google results’ pageâkind of.
What if I scroll down?
Conclusion, based on one machine that can run every other browser: Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 is a load of cobblers. I managed to crash it twice on the first two web pages I visited, within the first two minutes. The rest, you see above. I couldn’t be arsed doing more with it.
Mr Gates, if you want to come back to me when your team has actually tested your browser, I will be happy to give it another shot.
Tags: design, Firefox, innovation, internet, Internet Explorer, Microsoft, Microsoft Windows, Mozilla, technology, USA, web browser
Posted in business, internet, technology, USA | 15 Comments »
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