IE 11....What a Mess!

On 02/18/2017 06:05 PM, Ken Blake wrote:
But we all have different views. Two of the things that perplex me are
how many people like Chrome and how many people like Edge.
It may have a lot to do with browser history. If I view a ton of sites
other than yours, I may never see those issues. I use Chrome and have
no browsing issues. Of the one in 300 pages that give me issues I jump
to Firefox.

But you said it "We all have different views" and a poll (and some have
been done of course) will show all sorts of variances depending on maybe
a biased poller?!

OREALLY wrote:

Yes...thanks Done all that. I'm now experimenting with delaying IE startup.
We'll see.

You are loading IE on Windows startup? Why?

"Ken Blake" wrote


But we all have different views. Two of the things that perplex me are
how many people like Chrome and how many people like Edge.


I didn't know people liked Edge. My understanding
is that Edge and IE are dropping very quickly. But
I am surprised how many people are happy to use
a spyware browser from Google. I think it's more
than half. I suppose that as with Macs and GMail,
simplicity is a big selling point. If there are no
settings there's nothing to learn.

Mayayana wrote:

I didn't know people liked Edge. My understanding is that Edge and IE
are dropping very quickly. But I am surprised how many people are
happy to use a spyware browser from Google. I think it's more than
half. I suppose that as with Macs and GMail, simplicity is a big
selling point. If there are no settings there's nothing to learn.

Firefox has built-in features that facilitate spying, too. It's up to
the user to configure their web browser the behave how they want, and to
stay up to date on vulnerabilities found in each web browser (some of
which are deliberately built into the web browsers as features but users
don't realize how they can be abused). Site preferences, DOM storage,
geolocation, customer experience (aka telemetry), synchronizing to the
cloud, search providers (the default ones), pre-fetching of linked
pages, HTML5 Canvas reads, continued support for Flash (even as NSAPI is
dropped), and extensions (aka add-ons) themselves are just some of the
vulnerabilities promoted as features.

Mayayana wrote:

I think of Mozilla as more like "spending too much time with the wrong
crowd".

Hanging around with the wrong rich friends: they pay, you get a free
ride, but they influence you.

If I were going to use a Chrome browser I'd probably use SRWare Iron.

I'd probably go with Opera; however, you have to edit a config file to
eliminate them sending some searches to their proxy. They have the
feature to download pages to their proxy and then to you but I wouldn't
use that. There is an option to not send searches through their proxy
and it mostly works. I found Google (and another but don't remember)
were still configured to go through their proxy. I'd have to change
their redirection in a config file. But then there are all the other
mentioned "features" that I'd still have to disable which would have to
get configured in almost all web browsers - except maybe Epic but I'd
have to dig again into that one to see if they really are secure and as
private as they could be configured.

But I don't see any reason for that. Firefox, despite the problems and
despite that I now need a half dozen extensions to make it behave the
way I want, is still a very good, flexible product.

Alas, I needed 9 extensions for Google Chrome/Chromium just to get it to
have the built-in features intrinsic to Firefox, the first of which to
install is Tabs To Front.

I don't consider anything else, other than Mozilla browsers, to be an
option. But I think your point is especially apropos for people who
don't deal with settings. Those people are allowing FF to do an
awfully lot of calling home.

Users would be much more likely to configure Firefox away from its
defaults to be more secure and private if the settings were exposed in
the config UI, not by having users research the settings and drill into
their advanced editor (about:config) which is nothing more than a text
editor into their config files.

I remember long long ago having to config the Apache web browser using
the same laborious and mundane config file editing. This is like having
to use the registry editor to configure the behavior of Windows
programs. It was disappointing when first trialing Firefox that I had
to keep digging into about:config for the majority of tweaks. Hell,
they even took away some, like disabling Javascript which forced users
to use an extension that could do it programmatically (wonder when
Mozilla will take that API function away).

On 18/02/2017 8:00 pm, Mayayana wrote:
"OREALLY" wrote

| There are significant advantages to IE.

I can't imagine what those might be.

The main one is the amount of memory it uses. I have an old laptop with
limited memory running Windows 7, and both Chrome and Firefox have
become so bloated that neither will run successfully on it at all.
Internet Explorer 11 loads in a fraction of the time the others take and
then runs just fine, albeit slowly. Other than that, I agree with you.

--
Bob
Tetbury, Gloucestershire, England

You don't stop laughing because you grow old, you grow old because you
stop laughing!!!

On 18/02/2017 11:05 pm, Ken Blake wrote:
On Sat, 18 Feb 2017 15:00:38 -0500, "Mayayana"
wrote:


The Edge userAgent is designed to look like Chrome:


Yes, I thought the same thing; ranking browsers from best to worst,
starting with Firefox at the top, to me the three worst ones are
Chrome, IE, and Edge, in that order.

But we all have different views. Two of the things that perplex me are
how many people like Chrome and how many people like Edge.


After using Firefox from it's inception I dropped it in favour of Chrome
a short while back. There were several other reasons, but the main one
was Firefox's lack of compatibility. It's OK in the desktop version, but
on a phone or tablet it's useless. Chrome runs just fine on all of them
(even with the proviso that it takes up a lot of memory on the desktop)
and the data syncs between all of them just fine. In these multi-device
days, Chrome is the only real option, despite any faults it may have.
I'm with you with Edge though - that is singularly useless.

--
Bob
Tetbury, Gloucestershire, England

You know you're old when your partner says "come upstairs and make love"
and you know you can't do both.

On 02/19/2017 01:34 AM, VanguardLH wrote:
I found Google (and another but don't remember)
were still configured to go through their proxy. I'd have to change
their redirection in a config file. But then there are all the other
mentioned "features" that I'd still have to disable which would have to
get configured in almost all web browsers - except maybe Epic but I'd
have to dig again into that one to see if they really are secure and as
private as they could be configured.
You couldn't expand on the Chrome config file particulars could you?
I personally like Chrome but am concerned about phone home concepts.

On Sat, 18 Feb 2017 17:47:42 -0500, Paul wrote:
No, that's what happens when someones Internet Banking only
works with a specific version of Internet Explorer (ActiveX
etc.). Other than some quirk like that, it doesn't really
have any advantages at all. But your bank probably likes it.
The banks even like to drag their heels, optimizing for
IE10 when IE11 is out.


Two banks in succession, Bank of the Internet and the local B&M bank
Tompkins Trust, lost my business for exactly that reason. They said
they were fine with Firefox, but they weren't. Tompkins Trust
initially had home-grown software that was clunky but worked; then
they bought a version of the software that had driven me away from
the first bank. Numerous support calls and a couple of talks with my
branch manager failed to solve the problem.

I've been with my present bank for almost three years, and they know
how to do software right. Plus there's cash back on certain
transactions.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://BrownMath.com/
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
Shikata ga nai...

On Sat, 18 Feb 2017 16:00:19 -0700, Ken Blake wrote:

On Sat, 18 Feb 2017 15:32:32 -0500, Stan Brown
wrote:

On Sat, 18 Feb 2017 13:05:02 -0700, Ken Blake wrote:
On Sat, 18 Feb 2017 11:36:54 -0800, "OREALLY"
wrote:
There are significant advantages to IE.

If that's your view, that's fine with me. But it's not mine at all. In
my opinion, Edge is the worst browser out there, and IE is a close
second. Almost any other browser is preferable.

Ken, I suspect you've fallen for a troll. The initial rant was silly
enough, since -- as you rightly pointed out -- it's quite easy to
switch to a real browser. But the claim of "advantages" to IE11 is
even more silly, and I can't imagine that anyone including the OP
believes it.

You could be right. I thought that might be the case, but I didn't
want to jump to conclusions.

The chosen nym is a danger sign also.

I'm waiting with bated breath for what he tells us are IE's
advantages. g

I predict your breathing will gradually return to normal, your
curiosity unsatisfied. :-)

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://BrownMath.com/
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
Shikata ga nai...

On Sat, 18 Feb 2017 16:05:23 -0700, Ken Blake wrote:
Two of the things that perplex me are
how many people like Chrome and how many people like Edge.

People's loyalties to software bring up Chateaubriand's "Le coeur a
ses raisons".[1][2] There's a guy at work who actually uses Bing for
his preferred search engine, even though on several occasions he
failed to find something he was looking for and I immediately turned
it up in Startpage, using the same terms.

Firefox is my workaday browser, but I do occasionally use Chrome. For
instance, I was on a site that wanted to do a popup, which I wanted
to see, but Firefox never gave me a chance to allow it. (I do get
permission prompts from Firefox for other sites.) I was able to view
the page in Chrome.

Chrome's developer tools also feel a little bit smoother to me, and I
like the ability to explore the effects of different window sizes
right in the browser, without actually resizing the window.

[1] A bit of research shows that it was actually Pascal, rather than
Chateaubriand:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dict...3ur%20a%20ses%
20raisons%20que%20la%20raison%20ne%20conna%C3%AEt% 20point

[2] Apparently there was a French comedy series that ran for three
seasons:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0444950/
After the first couple of hits in Startpage, most seem to be about
that.



--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://BrownMath.com/
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
Shikata ga nai...

"VanguardLH" wrote

| It was disappointing when first trialing Firefox that I had
| to keep digging into about:config for the majority of tweaks. Hell,
| they even took away some, like disabling Javascript which forced users
| to use an extension that could do it programmatically (wonder when
| Mozilla will take that API function away).

And blocking 3rd-party images. I think that was the
first to go. They not only removed the UI option but
also changed the name and optional values for the
setting itself, in an attempt to stop people blocking
ads from their master Google/Doubleclick.

I noticed that SeaMonkey still has that setting, but
I don't really want to acclimate to another FF
offshoot, and I don't like that it's tied into a "suite"
of software.

I think all of this is a good example of how corporate
computing has provided a toehold for services. The
corporate model blocks employees from controlling
settings and software. IE became very popular in the
corporate world due to it's obscure settings that could
easily be controlled by admins. Companies could make
their own browser. Netscape did something
similar by providing obscure, nonsensical settings that
only an admin could love... which eventually became the
Mozilla system. Both approaches are predicated
on the corporate model -- the idea that the person
using the computer should not be able to control it.
And back then, corporate success was the only success
for a software company. So they disabled functionality
through obscurity.

"Bob Henson" wrote

| | There are significant advantages to IE.
|
| I can't imagine what those might be.
|
| The main one is the amount of memory it uses. I have an old laptop with
| limited memory running Windows 7, and both Chrome and Firefox have
| become so bloated that neither will run successfully on it at all.
| Internet Explorer 11 loads in a fraction of the time the others take and
| then runs just fine, albeit slowly. Other than that, I agree with you.

I think one reason IE loads instantly is because
it's already running, for the most part. It's very
much tied into the system, and to Explorer. Only
the tiny iexplore.exe graphical front-end and a couple
of things like shdocvw.dll actually need to be loaded.
IE graphics is Windows graphics. IE cookies and cache
are defined as Windows cookies and cache. Much
of the Windows network API is indistingushable from
the IE API. Other browsers bring their own versions
of those things.

I wouldn't argue with the point about bloat, but I
don't find any problem running FF on an average
Win7-64 system or on this XP system where I spend
most of my time. I've got about 3 GB RAM to spare,
after accounting for graphics. But I almost never
get close to using that. Both Pale Moon and Firefox
load pages almost instantly. I should note that I
don't normally enable script, don't enable video to
load, and rarely leave a lot of windows open. But
you're saying they won't run at all. I just don't
see anything like that.

I haven't allowed IE online since about '99. It
started out because IE5 started running like
molasses and I couldn't figure out why, so I switched
to Netscape. But then I got into programming
and began to realize just how dangerous the IE/
system tie-in is. I love the options IE provides,
like writing HTAs. But I would never allow it past
the firewall.

By the way, thanks for your other comment about
Chrome on phones. That's the first time I've heard
anything that might explain the popularity of Chrome
and the falling number of Firefox users. As someone
who rarely uses a computer phone and has never
needed to "sync" anything, I've been unaware of
that aspect.

"Stan Brown" wrote

| Ken, I suspect you've fallen for a troll.....

| You could be right. I thought that might be the case, but I didn't
| want to jump to conclusions.
|
| The chosen nym is a danger sign also.
|

Do a search for his "nym". He seems to be a
person with legitimate questions who just doesn't
digest new information very quickly. In any case,
so what if he was a "troll"? Are you afraid he
might make a fool of you if you answer him? What
difference does it make? The question and thread
could lead to useful info for others. A long subthread
about who's a troll will not.

On Sun, 19 Feb 2017 09:34:40 +0000, Bob Henson
wrote:

On 18/02/2017 11:05 pm, Ken Blake wrote:
On Sat, 18 Feb 2017 15:00:38 -0500, "Mayayana"
wrote:


The Edge userAgent is designed to look like Chrome:


Yes, I thought the same thing; ranking browsers from best to worst,
starting with Firefox at the top, to me the three worst ones are
Chrome, IE, and Edge, in that order.

But we all have different views. Two of the things that perplex me are
how many people like Chrome and how many people like Edge.


After using Firefox from it's inception I dropped it in favour of Chrome
a short while back. There were several other reasons, but the main one
was Firefox's lack of compatibility. It's OK in the desktop version, but
on a phone or tablet it's useless. Chrome runs just fine on all of them
(even with the proviso that it takes up a lot of memory on the desktop)
and the data syncs between all of them just fine. In these multi-device
days, Chrome is the only real option, despite any faults it may have.
I'm with you with Edge though - that is singularly useless.



Your choice of course, and you're far from alone in your liking of
Chrome. I think it's terrible, but I'm talking about the desktop
version.