Hello,

This has always plagued my mind, why is there so much hate for Internet Explorer and so much love for Chrome? I'm an IE user btw and I <3 IE10, so if you are going to shoot me, make it quick.

Chrome publishes all this propaganda about all the amazing features it offers, but then I look at Internet Explorer, and it does the same thing, ok it defaults to Bing, but a couple of clicks and you have Google, or yahoo, or ask Jeeves (assuming that's still a thing).

I often ask people why they use chrome (showing my tattoo of IE symbol (metaphor)), and they yell at me saying its so much faster, really people believe that? even if it is faster, people explain its noticeably faster.

I just did a quick test,

[searching on google] can cats fly - IE 10: 0.20s Chrome: 0.19s

a whole .01 of a second (but bare in mind I have a few more pug ins on IE)

So why all the hate for IE?

What browser do you use and why?

Haven't used IE for anything serious for a long time now. Last time I used it was when I was writing some html5 code and wanted to see how it behaved in different browsers.

So, i don't know about now, but in the past, IE had some pretty bad security problems, had no real support for ad blocking, no tabbed browsing, and didn't seem to support many web-standards. The security issues were in small part due to the fact that IE was the most popular, by far, browser - so it was the target of most exploits. A lot of people felt that that was only a small part of it, though, and the major security problem was just bad programming.

Recent versions also seemed to have support for other things like tabs, ad blocking etc... not that's all of the features.

I don't hate IE or its users, I just won't use it again. To be fair, my experience with Firefox was equally bad at one point, with a lot of sluggish elements, crashes and other crap. I also don't use Firefox that often. I also don't use Chrome due to the tracking build into it. Yes, google has a ton of my information, but that doesn't mean I want to freely give them more.

The browsers I use, in order of most used to least used: (also the only ones I have installed)

Opera, SRWare Iron, Firefox, and on rare occasion IE.

I use Opera for maybe 98% of my browsing, and Iron for the other 2%. Firefox and IE get no love from me.

I agree but it is my opinion that they are all equally buggy and unimaginative.

Why would you "hate" IE or its users because you're not using it yourself? Why does everything have to be black and white..

Besides, your difference in 0.01 secs could be due to latency, cpu scheduling or the position of the moon. The real difference could be much bigger, or smaller. But really, does it matter?

If you like IE, use it.

why is there so much hate for Internet Explorer and so much love for Chrome?

I think the issue is just part of the browser wars over time.

Almost universally the browser in the lead has been the one with rapid iterations and no cost.

The Mosaic/Netscape era from '93-'97, Mosaic/Netscape was focused on growth, usability, and reliability.

Back then everyone who wasn't using Mozilla Netscape was just weird. There were graphics like "If you can see this, you are using Mozilla"; using a text-based browser like Lynx earned derogatory labels. (Even so, I verify my sites on Lynx even today because that's basically how search engines see the site.) Arena was slow and basically just there to test the standard on.

Then Internet Explorer came out, and grew rapidly. IE1.0 came out in August 95, was at version 3.0 in 1996, and version 4 that shipped with Windows 98. At that point few companies were actually innovating and rapidly iterating. When it shipped with the OS there was little incentive for most users to upgrade, so they didn't.

The tide turned. Netscape fumbled, and there was much open mocking and loathing of Netscape.

Forward to 2005, at that point Opera was still doing rapid iterations and had many good features but was a paid app. When Opera become free it re-invigorated the market. Their browser had tabbed browsing, integrated source viewer, integrated BitTorrent client, and was the first to pass the ACID2 test. Suddenly Mozilla had competition and IE needed to take action.

So why all the hate for IE?

Internet Explorer was built into the operating system and most people didn't upgrade. They moved to IE6 for XP and never upgraded. Many people are still on it because they are still on old, unpached versions of Windows XP.

When many people think "Internet Explorer", they think about IE6 that was released back in 2001.

Like all major software it has been shown to have many bugs. The integration with the OS meant those bugs were often severe.

The goodwill was further eroded by the users continuing to use IE6 because they don't know better. You see the grandmas running IE6 on their unpatched windows 98 and XP boxes and equate it to the entire product line.

Much of the hate comes because that is the frequent mental image of an Internet Explorer user. It's a grandma with an ancient computer running ancient software.

Last time I used it was when I was writing some html5 code and wanted to see how it behaved in different browsers.

Today it is all about HTML5 support and guidance. They all want a share of the HTML5 standard, but they need to prove themselves relevant in order to do so.

So each browser is doing their own marketing to try to prove that they are the One True Path to HTML5 and future relevancy.

The hope is that whoever 'wins' HTML5 dominance will be the leader in marketshare and money over the next few years. There is an incredible financial incentive for being the victor, so the browser wars heated up.

Just build a website that even thinks about doing anything fancy, and then discover that IE doesn't support xyz capability. They liked to have their own way to do things, and while your code would work on 3/4 browsers IE always tended to be the one that just didn't display things the right way, and i'd have to run around looking for a patch. Also lets not forget that tons of users use a variety of diffrent versions of IE, so now you have to make sure you site runs the same across each iteration. Some of this is excusable(such as using something that came out after the particular version of the browser was released.) at the end of the day, developing for IE tends to be a pain in the ass, which is why i have hated it for so long. Of couse IE10 is leagues better than it's predecessors, so i no longer have an undying bate of IE.

Just build a website that even thinks about doing anything fancy, and then discover that IE doesn't support xyz capability. They liked to have their own way to do things, and while your code would work on 3/4 browsers IE always tended to be the one that just didn't display things the right way, and i'd have to run around looking for a patch. Also lets not forget that tons of users use a variety of diffrent versions of IE, so now you have to make sure you site runs the same across each iteration. Some of this is excusable(such as using something that came out after the particular version of the browser was released.) at the end of the day, developing for IE tends to be a pain in the ass, which is why i have hated it for so long. Of couse IE10 is leagues better than it's predecessors, so i no longer have an undying bate of IE.

Anything over IE8 is pretty solid. I honestly fix more Firefox quirks than IE these days. Feels good not to have to support IE6 and IE7!

Because for as long as we've run the site.. there has been the Netscape/Safari/Firefox/Chrome/etc way of making a web page.. and the IE way. The Microsoft folks burned a ton of web devs for a long time on their attempts to force everybody to come up with special hacks to support IE. Now the hatefest is a byproduct of there being several extremely viable replacement candidates that everyone can pretty much say piss off to Microsoft and IE.

I like Google Chrome design. That's it.

My hatred is a new thing, personally, and unrelated to IE6 (although I did hate it back then, that hate faded). My new hate is entirely unrational, and entirely fueled by those godawful annoying hipster-targeted ads that keep interrupting shows I watch, with volume set at about 6 notches above the volume of the show. God, I hate that crap. I hate that crap so bad.