What is Digg?117 Comments
- editopen, on 10/12/2007, -12/+70This is very good.
I really, really, really can't understand why the industry and the web still stands for IE with its poor support for CSS, XHTML (etc.) Web Standards. I mean if all other browsers can function properly why can't IE?
Having recently spent nearly 2 weeks solid testing a site on IE for one tiny little bug I really can understand the people that refuse to design for IE now.... I'm going to change my ways. I'm going to stop designing for IE. I can't afford it, but I'm going to have to as the hulk of burning code that IE is slows me down sooooooo much! - Hardcase, on 10/12/2007, -6/+37Possibly because IE has such a startlingly huge installed base? Quantity over quality.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+26@r2d7
Its obvious that IE7 will surpass IE6 and will be the dominant competitor for Firefox. IE7 is going to be provided through Windows Updates... so users will be upgraded without much effort.
For people to switch to Firefox requires a bit more work. They have to hear about it first, then decide to download the executable and install it. For Firefox to increase with so much against it is very notable.
IE6 and Firefox will be surpassed shortly by IE7. Thats obvious. What the industry will be looking for is how many people go from using IE7 to Firefox or switch from IE6 to Firefox instead of upgrading to IE7. One other note... Users of Windows 2000 will not have the choice of using IE7 since MS will not make it available to Win2K. Likely, many of these users will want tab browsing as it becomes more mainstream and will find alternative solutions such as Firefox, Opera, Camino, etc... - tempusrob, on 10/12/2007, -6/+25"it doesn't load pages properly"
-- Translation: "I frequently develop/view IE-only websites."
"it loads slower than IE"
-- Translation: "It's not dangerously integrated into the operating system."
"and it eats RAM like a fat kid at a buffet,"
-- Translation: "*GASP* It takes advantage of available system memory!" - VirtualCtor, on 10/12/2007, -2/+18falcon707: How about ALL of the browser developers get together and develop an international standard
There are international standards.
HTML, XML, XHTML, CSS, etc. are W3C (http://www.w3.org) standards.
JavaScript is an ECMA (http://www.ecma-international.org) standard. - Tricky, on 10/12/2007, -6/+22The one reason I would use IE is if a page required ActiveX, but ActiveX is too dangerous. I only open IE when I have to, and I run Firefox with NoScript.
- falcon707, on 10/12/2007, -8/+22I have an idea! How about ALL of the browser developers get together and develop an international standard (kinda like PlaysForSure but done the right way).
It's a crazy idea... I know... - pushmouse, on 10/12/2007, -3/+15The two people in this thread that mention WC3 are being modded down. That's pretty disturbing.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -12/+22Unfortunately Firefox marketshare increasing 0.1% is "diggworthy" news.
What's most interesting is to see the footnote that says IE7 has grown from under 1% to 1.7%. That's a higher growth rate than Firefox, but the author offers excuses both for that and the smaller rate of Firefox 2.0 users.
IE7 +0.8%
Firefox + Opera + Safari = +0.58%
I'm actually seeing IE gaining based on their numbers ... - Area51mafia, on 10/12/2007, -4/+14Errmm: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_layout_engines_(CSS)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_layout_engines_(DOM)
Gecko (layout engine used in Firefox) has a large number of CSS/DOM properties implemented that IE either doesn't have at all, or doesn't have correct. Saying that Firefox doesn't load pages correctly is laughable in comparison to how IE renders pages. - Sukino, on 10/12/2007, -6/+15yes
- Estazor, on 10/12/2007, -7/+14Eh it only went up .5%. Though it was interesting to see IE7 going up. I'm curious to see how it does when it's released publically as a replacement for IE6.
- editopen, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10@0siris, h2d2
The issue is not designers working and what browsers they choose to design for it's the fact that in any other industry something like IE that doesn't work as well as it should would get cast aside. I wonder why it doesn't? Oh yes, It's a Microsoft product.
The web is built on XHTML, CSS, PHP why can't Internet Explorer support it? WHY? Why make a web browsers that doesn't support the internet? WHY?
- victorycig, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9I would be willing to bet that a decent chunk of IE7 users are developers testing out the browser...
- rkettner, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9I'm a Firefox user myself... and hope the browser continues to succeed. But really, do you think Microsoft is worried at all? They will continue to bundle IE with new PCs, and can turn up the push when they really feel threatened.
I'm glad to have browser choice, but if this is about threatening MS... I don't think it's going to happen. Google has more chance of doing some damage. - spydrlink, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Yes, IE has terrible standards support...and although IE 7 is a little better (that's a stretch too), it's still lacking in many basic areas. Many developers may be aware of it's poor standards support and therefore use other browsers but the bottom line is "John Q. Public" could care less what your site looks like in IE. If they can click a little blue link and get to the page they want to then that's all that matters. Unfortunately...that's about 80% of the people on the internet. As long as you have that kind of user base then Microsoft will continue to lack in standards support...simply because it's not that big of a deal to them to bend over backwards for the other 20%. 80% is still a "B". I don't agree with it but that's the unfortunate reality.
Unless MS starts getting a low C they'll never change. - kolywater, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6@pushmouse
"The two people in this thread that mention WC3 are being modded down. That's pretty disturbing."
why? falcon707 was clearly making a sarcastic comment. people that are mentionining w3c simply didn't get his joke. - SimonDonkers, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6I'm an active Firefox user as well but I still think the arguments mentioned here are meaningless to the average user.
"-- Translation: "I frequently develop/view IE-only websites."
While webmasters that only focus on IE are narrow minded that doesn't help people who need to use these sites. My school policy is that only IE5.5-IE6.0 exists so I need to use IE to view the intranet. While I can't logically blame this on FF it still means I won't switch to FF for these sites.
"-- Translation: "It's not dangerously integrated into the operating system."
The average user doesn't care at all. They happily do whatever is faster because they have techie friends who can fix there PC.
"-- Translation: "*GASP* It takes advantage of available system memory!"
Firefox is a memory hog, I have Firefox open non stop and my PC frequently needs my virtual ram to do everything. Why should users buy extra RAM if they can just use IE and it runs fine.
Before everyone mods me down, I'm an active Firefox user and happily support it but I see plenty of reasons not to and Firefox certainly isn't the right solution to everyone.
Non techie people don't know what tabs are and won't use them and care more for it working and being fast then being able to get extensions or not having to call your techie friend so regulary to fix your PC. - Arkonnan, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5As a happy Opera user, this news is exciting to say the least. As long as SOMEONE is stealing away Microsoft's marketshare, webpage developers will eventually have no choice but to start writing their pages to W3C standards. As more attention is being brought to alternative browsers, the days of IE-only content is slowly coming to an end. As an example, look at pages like Youtube or Google video. They could have set their site up to utilize active-x plugins but instead went with flash.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Of course it is, but nobody can admit that. I guess when I use FF and see the pages loading up to twice as slow, I guess I must be tripping on acid, it's not REALLY happening. FF is actually faster. It's just IE is so evil, it gives the appearance of loading faster, weird...
- Robotsu, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Seeing all the "Don't develop for a specific browser" comments dugg down, it's pretty obvious a majority of Diggers did not pursue web design as a career. Those comments should absolutely be modded up, and despite being an enthusiastic Firefox user (actually I started with Phoenix) for a very long time, and an open-source developer, it is simply not right to design for one browser over another, for a multitude of reasons. Microsoft should _absolutely_ get a ***** clue and start implimenting standards in their browser, but it is still _absolutely_ childish, uneffective, and impractical to develop for Firefox only.
- Zach978, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5I agree, FF isn't all that great. I usually use Opera, but when Opera isn't around I'll usually just use IE...
- dear1mr1kilgore, on 10/12/2007, -18/+20No browser functions "properly"... like you said, it's the level of CSS/(X)HTML/Javascript support.
I feel your pain for rendering issues with MSIE (especially 6), but no one should be designing for any particular browser, but should aim for web sites that degrade properly across browsers. The real issue is not _designing_ for a browser, but the number of hacks the designer must include to ensure that MSIE versions will render an attractive and useful page.
MSIE will continue to hold a significant percentage of users (even if 7 is the last version... yeah, right), meaning we designers will have to work around its render bugs and poor CSS support. We're doing it for our children!!!
@falcon707
>> How about ALL of the browser developers get together and develop an international standard
W3C. - r0Ot3d, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Firstly I'm going to say this I'm an Opera user, I have my reasons and I'll keep them to myself ( pointless to cause silly arguements)
What worries me most is not the people in this thread that mention WC3 are being modded down.
But the ones who use Firefox and admit to the memory leak problem being modded down by who I can only guess at, those of other Firefox users.
Christ on a browser, get a grip. - Wolfman18336, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Yesssssssssssss! I am a personal user of Firefox. I even have it on my U3 drive. Microsoft IE7 I've tried it in the beta, and I,m glad I made the switch to Firefox.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -6/+8While Firefox is a great alternative to IE, it has many issues. I'm forced to use Windows at work, and Opera doesn't like our network's authentication script for some reason, so FF is what I use alongside IE7. I find FF highly unstable and resource hungry compared to Opera or even IE7 (not a fair comparison because of the Explorer shell, but still). At least twice a day I end up with a "Not responding" error with Firefox and am forced to restart it.
- cpc197c, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3@r2d7
Ya, that!
IE7 usage could also be gaining share from the numerous users of the Vista betas. RC1 is out, and many people are just using it in vista to avoid the hassles of installing it. I'm sure when Vista becomes mainstream, the current browser trends will just continue the way they are. Then again, IE7 and Vista intergrate that "Protected Mode", so people may switch to IE7 even if it is not safer. (I don't know either way)
And other things will always, at least until IE7 is upgraded, prevent long-time FF users from switching (Ex. Inline Searching, Extensive library of plugins, etc)
All I know for sure, it's FF for me until they at least add inline searching. - sleepyness, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2@vdog
Did you also show him FF used up all his avaliable memory as well? -.- - Bamborzled, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2- I know no gaming, tech, or programming site that is IE only, Firefox just sucks at CSS and DHTML
Translation: I don't know what I'm talking about. I just picked up DHTML because I heard it somewhere. I don't know that Firefox supports preliminary CSS3 and JavaScript 1.7 with E4X.
- Is that all you can come up with?
Translation: I don't know what YOU were talking about. I don't know that non-integration with the operating system is actually a huge benefit of any other browser.
- I have 768 ram, Firefox shouldnt be using up 200 megs of it for 5 tabs
Wait! Look, I know Firefox has memory problems, but 200 megs for five tabs? I have twelve open and it's taking half of that. One tab is using Flash. - captainjy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2"r2d7, no-one familiar with both Firefox and IE would choose IE. His browsing would be far more efficient with Firefox (I deny any idea of personal preference being an issue here), so it is for his own good to force him to try Firefox."
Far more efficient? Please give me a thorough, technical reason why his browsing would be more efficient? As technically minded as most Digg users sound, I am appalled by the very notion that the reason you switched to FF was because it's more efficient. It may be more secure (IE 6) and more "compatible" to particular standards, but it in the practical world, FF is not any more efficient than IE. Many Digg users switched to FF because they want to feel special and stand against the mighty Microsoft. Sorry, we don't need any more revolutions because their's nothing revolutionary about Firefox. It's a fad that I am more than happy see fade away. The only thing good about FF is that it made MS update their browser, from top to bottom. Thank you FF! I have used IE since the first version and have had almost no security or compatbility problems. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -5/+6I was an avid Firefox (and swiftfox and flock and camino) fan for a long time. I loved the plugins, i loved the tabs, the extra security, etc.
But after using Opera 9 on my ubuntu box for a couple of months, i'm really not looking back. It's a shame opera isn't open source though. It's fast and just as secure and increased usability as firefox. Actually.. faster than firefox, by a ton.
I just really loathe the bit torrent client built in, they're way of "content blocking" is annoying, i miss NoScript a ton, and their built in mail client sucks balls too. - riven0, on 10/12/2007, -5/+6I completely agree with you. I was a longtime Firefox user until I discovered Opera 9. Now I won't take anything else.
On a side note, how can 83% of computer users still be using IE?!! You would think that with all the security breaches out there people would learn, but they continue to be dumb. - h2d2, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3@victorycig: Just like most of Firefox users are geeks/nerds and their immediate family members whom they've converted to Firefox.
P.S. My primary browser is Firefox. - findhostcoupons, on 03/21/2009, -0/+1No doubts that FireFox is more convenient solution comparing with IE! Having tried this browser first time I realized that IE leaves much to be desired!
- aleander, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2@dear1mr1kilgore
The problem is that the degradation is dependent on correct standards support too, and IE breaks that (i.e. it does try to implement the box model, but the implementation is bugged). This makes it impossible to develop for WWW "correctly" unless you limit yourself to lowest common denominator features - and that's really a small subset of current WWW technology. - joer80, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Firefox is good but it gets unstable with many addons.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2It's not just knowledge of these browsers. At my last job i ran a test run. I installed Mozilla Firefox on approximately 20 users machines. They ranged in age and in gender (from about 30yrs old to 50 yrs old) I even tweaked the about:config to maximize memory efficency and page speed rendering. I told each of them to use FF instead as it was far more secure. ( i was merely testing behavior here, nothing else). And what i thought would happen did happen.
More than 90% kept using IE afterwards merely b/c that's what they were familiar with. I don't know if it was branding, or a comfort with the GUI that did it. But that's what they stuck with.
People that don't know computers, don't adapt well to new applications at all. I've seen and heard the bitching and whining when custom applications get major overhauls in corporate offices. People complain of "why fix what's not broke" and "they spent all this time training us, and now we gotta learn it all over again.".
Something as simple as moving a button on a toolbar can throw user's for a loop. - farffa, on 01/24/2008, -0/+1I´m not surprised :)
- Botrax, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Firefox does not even respect padding values in HTML tables. That's BASIC HTML... I mean, really.
- thestu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1IE can't afford to lose .5% of the market to FF simply because it cannot support XHTML, CCS, and PHP. this could prove to be advantageous for IE if they wake up and reconfigure. one step back, two steps forward...
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3I disagree. At my company the mess we're in now is because previous employees coded for IE. If they would have coded following web standards and THEN addressed tiny IE quirks instead, the site would be a lot easier to maintain.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2@estazor "I'm curious to see how it does when it's released publically as a replacement for IE6."
Depends if MS push it through as a Critical Update via windows update (looks like they will), so we'll see a 3 month period where IE6 usage shrinks dramatically and is replaced by IE7. - spadgos, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2As a web designer/developer, I do a lot of work using CSS and javascript. I could not even begin to tell you the number of hours lost to bashing my head on the desk because of Microsoft's complete arrogance in ignoring the standards. If you've ever had to debug a javascript error in IE, you'll know exactly what I mean. Error messages like:
Error: "null" is null.
Line: 6
Character: 4
...and then you look at line 6 and it's a blank line, and you just want to cry. Well, cry, or buy an uzi and a ticket to Redmond...
IE6 is 6 years old now. It is outdated technology that any sane IT manager would scrap asap. Depending on the client, everyday I am having less and less qualms about saying that IE will not be supported. - drlog, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I share your pain!!!
IE7 *should* fix a lot of our problems. The problem could be fixed NOW if everyone used firefox/opera/something decent though :( - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1no, a guy sucking ***** is gay.
a web browser or news story doesn't have a sexuality.
thanks, come again. - RyanJones, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2In reply too Hardcase:
> Possibly because IE has such a startlingly huge installed base? Quantity over quality.
If thats the case why bother developing anything? If everyone truly wanted that we could have stuck the web in the days where there as only simple HTML and images were hard to implant into web pages. Progress if great, it allows people to innovate their sites and attract people by providing new and exciting features.
I am carefully choosing my words here because for one I am VERY glad the IE developers are back on the standards support road, even though only minor improvements everyone is a step in the right direction.
The point I'm making is simple, why wait for all the browsers with better standard support to gain high market share? The more people use these new and powerful standards in their site, the more the IE developers (as well as Firefox, Opera etc.) will be motivated to add them to the browsers.
Just my honest opinion on why its quality not quantity. - tsupersonic, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Yeah I have Process Explorer, except I'm too lazy to start it up. I just did, and it reports Firefox is using 24.4 MB of RAM. I just restarted it though w/ 5 tabs.
- tsupersonic, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Well I got a screenshot to prove you wrong. I'm using Firefox 1.5.0.6, which is the latest one. I just leave Firefox running all day. It really does depend on what sites you go, how much multimedia, how much text it has, etc... I have 4 extensions, a different theme, and as you can see, 6 tabs open. With all this going on, Firefox is using 42,532K.
Damn Photobucket, they only let you upload max res of 1024 * 768 and I'm running 1280 * 1024
http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f33/tsupersonic/firefoxlowmem-1.jpg
Laptop Specs:
Intel Celeron M
1GB RAM
40 GB 4200 RPM HDD
Yeah, laptop is weak, but hey it was free. Can't complain. - anphanax, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1That's some nice spin, tempusrob. I like your how you dismiss firefox's memory usage. On this old 667mhz, 193mb RAM machine (running close to the latest Ubuntu Linux release), the memory usage issue becomes quite painful. Ubuntu already runs doggish on this machine (Like gEdit takes several seconds just to pop a window up), and Firefox does horrible on Digg. [Off-topic: I have nothing against F/OSS or Linux, but XP Pro ran faster - I just don't want to pay for another license].
"writing their pages to W3C standards."
That's great, until everyone starts heavily working on implementing more of CSS3, and we end up with more buggy implementations (Opera and Mozilla included, as each has had issues - and still do with only partial support of features). For instance, why isn't inline-block supported in Firefox 1.5.x? - anphanax, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Because not everyone knows about the existance of Firefox or Opera, for one. If you just use the internet for email, shopping, and fantasy football, I don't think it's too likely you'll be visiting sites like this.
You also have to remember the idea of "installing software" scares the bajeebers out of some users, terrified they'll screw something up.
You also have people out there who don't want to use anything but IE, because they've simply gotten used to it, and don't see a big enough reason to switch. -
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