Things not to hate about ie6 (!?)
This is the time of the day when I'm getting cranky. It is 11.24pm GMT (at the time of writing this, of course) and I've spent most of the evening making small visual adjustments to this site. Internet Explorer has been driving me positively fucking insane and to make matters worse my wife has been watching Big Bloody Brother downstairs at a volume level high enough for me to hear. Id have asked her to turn it down but was instead compelled to drown it out with Alanis Morisette's Jagged Little Pill after leaving a no doubt unpopular comment on Simon Kitson's blog proclaiming my liking for it. I'd rather listen to her screaming than that of the Big Brother housemates.
Anyway, whilst debugging in IE I noticed that upon refreshing it restores you to the position on the page you were previously at, as opposed to FireFox which returns you back to the top - a little annoying when testing multiple small CSS changes on the bottom of a large page.
Make no mistake, my dislike for Microsoft's devil child is as strong as the next designer's, but putting that hatred temporarily to one side my question is this: Are there any other ways at all in which Internet Explorer 6 is better than FireFox? Toughie, huh?
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- Dated: 30 May 2006
- Comments: 10
- Spam Blocked: 4
About the Author
Steve Tucker is a 23 year old web developer living and working in Huddersfield, England
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02/04/2007 
8 Comment(s)
On 31/05/2006 Elessar said:
I tried the IE 7 beta 2 and it was still a resource hog. It finally displayed PNG images (finally!) but the layout for the tabs is less then desirable. Perhaps im just too use to Firefox but i prefer the tabs in FF much more then IE7 b2.
Sadly, the only thing IE is good for are pages that require it, which will hopefully shrink as time goes on.
On 31/05/2006 P.J. Onori said:
I think the only thing IE6 seems to be better at (for me) is application load time. It's nearly immediate whereas Firefox takes a short time. Now this isn't a major issue, but it definitely is something I have noticed.
It's pretty sad if that's the only thing a person can think of though.
On 31/05/2006 Elessar said:
I'd also like to add that i think MS took way too long to make a new browser to compete with Firefox...
On 31/05/2006 Rik Lomas said:
Whilst I agree that the IE "feature" of returning back to the same place is good, I can see *why* Firefox does that.
The difference is that in IE, it refreshs the page - i.e. keeps you where you are, but makes the alterations to the page. Firefox *reloads* the page - i.e. shows the current page as if you'd just gone to it.
It would be nice in Firefox 2/3 for the option for either refreshing or reloading - whether it will happen is a different matter!
Incidentally, IE7 is terrible - everything about it. I'm not usually a massive Microsoft hater like most people, but everything from the UI to the CSS rendering is just bad. Microsoft are still way way behind other browser vendors, which is unfortunate as ~90% use it!
On 31/05/2006 Jonathan Snook said:
Where IE excels is as a platform for web applications; admittedly, in non-standard ways. Helpful DOM methods, showModal and showModeless dialogs, etc.
As a rendering engine, IE's old box model sure made more sense. Also, as gimmicky as it is, some of the filters that are available are cool (even useful).
For day-to-day web sites, though, it's fallen way behind.
On 31/05/2006 Jonathan Snook said:
Oh, I'd also like to add that FF's scroll mechanism is just awful. For example, if I resize text half way down the page, maintain my focus. Instead, what I was reading is now off screen. Now that's annoying. IE7's new zoom feature is nice. Opera's implementation seems nicer but I never was sure why resizing just the text was better than resizing the whole page. And FF f*cked up the keyboard navigation in the last version. The update seems to have fixed it (thank god). You'd never see that in an IE release!
(FF is my default browser, btw. :) )
On 31/05/2006 Steve Tucker said:
@Jonathan - glad you mentioned FF was your default browser - never would have guessed! :D
Just thought of another one - Internet Explorer renders <FIELDSET> elements more elegantly than Firefox with fancy curved corners.
On 31/05/2006 kitsimons said:
I like the "click" you get when you click links in IE.
You didn't buy that did you? I honestly can't think of one thing. I suppose load time as P.J. said but that's not really one up is it.
btw - I'll forgive you for liking Jagged Little Pill Steve. I have to confess I quite enjoy it (when in the right frame of mind)...
On 01/06/2006 Steve Tucker said:
@kit - Yeah, the "click" sound is a truly wonderful idea from theose boys down at Microsoft. No wonder they're getting paid so much.
On 03/06/2006 Damien said:
Yes, what will they think of next? =P