A few weeks of having to revert back to using IE in a work capacity has made me realise exactly how much and intensely I dislike this slow, clunky excuse for a browser and how infuriating it is. I wasn’t using an “Old” version either, we use IE10 in work and the machines are all decent windows 7 enterprise boxes.
The main massive reason I hate this program is that in my normal internet browsing activities, there are a certain type of website you come across, usually any moderately multimedia rich website like that of the walesonline or anything that links off the Google news page and what you find on these websites loading is that IE freezes up on loading the page, you are locked into the page for at least 10+ seconds if it releases the page at all, this can be despite all major java/flash/shockwave plugins being absolutely up to date also.
I also loathe how much each version appears to differ internally from the way in which previous versions of IE work, I am in an environment where its not really practical to have to explain to users about Compatibility Mode within IE, but I am being forced to train my users about using this feature as every new iteration seems to break pages that they use regularly as part of their work, every time we look at this package and go between versions it has caused issues with browsing.
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The other thing that forces my hand with IE is any website that uses the Sharepoint technology behind it, MS force you to use this horror because of this technology and its compatibility with their existing platforms, stuff just doesnt work well like Outlook Web Access unless your using this browser.
Its no secret I am a chrome user, on the desktop and chromebook that I am typing this on pages load fast an generally fly along without any issue, same for Firefox which I use a lot also in work, both of those browsers have it right, in that page load times are absolutely fantastic, FF even going so far to allow you options like nglayout.initialpaint.delay to make pages nearly insta-load for you.
MS please either adapt to be a lot better or kill off this product, as both of these better browsers have GPOs and work with your existing AD system, proving you don’t need massive amounts of configurability if you program something to “Just Work”, which they seem to do more securely.