IE9 vs Chrome: In my own words

They're getting very close in many ways, but after having been a die-hard Chrome user for several years, here's what I miss in IE9:

• Right-click "Paste and Go" in search boxes
• Right-click “Inspect element”
• Integration with Google Voice (hey, I use it a lot)
• The logic behind the new tab suggestions list doesn't jive with my "most used" and "most recent" sites for some reason (same on all four computers I've been using it on)
• Many sites, even parts of Facebook, use outdated CSS forks that look for "IE" and not versions, so they break rendering expecting IE6 or 7.  The "Write a Note" feature for example doesn't work properly until you click "Compatibility Mode" and refresh.  I'm sure it will get fixed as the beta runs along.
• As for the new tab suggestions, I prefer thumbnails over big icons. Just sayin’
• The taskbar “pinning” feature is nice, but hardly “new” since other apps (yes, even Chrome) have done that for a while already.

But... I really like the new UI overall. The new downloads management feature is great.  The "less is more" UX is borrowed from Webkit (Chrome, and Safari, sort of) but overdue.  The speed is much better than IE7 or IE8 and on par with Chrome 6.x and FF4.  I'd like to see customizable right-click features (a la Windows "Send To" and task bar pinning API's) but those too may be forthcoming.  The add-on “accelerators” are becoming very useful, finally. Akin to Google Chrome’s “extensions” (which they borrowed from Firefox), they allow you to extend and customize the browser.

I have to admit I’ve always liked IE’s options features.  That sounds redundant.  Hmmm..  But the “less-is-more” stuff is only viable for the main interface.  When it comes to configuring things, I like shitloads of buttons, checkboxes, listboxes, sliders, spinners, bells and whistles.  That’s just me.  I mean, really, if you poke your head into the flight cabin of your next airplane ride and it looks like an iPod (one button) wouldn’t feel a bit uncomfortable?  We all feel better seeing that massive field of buttons, dials and knobs and levers.  It conveys “control”.  That’s what an “options” console should convey also.  Just sayin’.

One thing that Chrome annoys me with is when I right-click and press “R” expecting “Refresh” (yes, I know about F5), while it works in IE, it means “Print” in Chrome.  Doh!

Windows 7 Achillies Heal: IE8

First of all, I'm very impressed overall with Windows 7. It is a huge improvement over Vista and definitely over XP. Everything you read about it is true: faster, cleaner, leaner, stable-er, and so on. But WTF is with IE8?

It seems the IE team is working inside a vacuum. Even a casual look around would make that obvious. Rather than designing v8 to address comeptition, they're choosing a myopic comparison with IE7. Maybe looking at Firefox. But this is 2009. Think about that when you open IE8 next time (if you ever do). In 2009: is that the best UI they can design for a browser? Seriously?

This is probably THE one place they could have put some careful, innovative UI design effort and produced a meaningful impression that Windows 7 is more than just a "Vista 2" update. In most respects, Windows 7 appears to be just that, which is very misleading. But what I'm talking about here is making IE8 *only* for Windows 7. Why bother back-porting it? There is no business case for building a version for XP. Can anyone explain a clear business case for back-porting it? I can't think os a single one. It just seems dumb to me.

IE8 Beta 2 is Out! OMFG

I'm like a 10 year-old girl at a Jonas Brothers concert in the front row. I'm just kidding. I have been eager to get beta 2 however. I still use Firefox 3.x heavily, but I've been having a good experience with IE8 Beta 1 so far as well, but only when running in IE7 Emulation mode. Gotta run. I'll post my results soon.

IE8 Beta 2 Privacy Features

I'm not going to regurgitate the same news on this that everyone else has already blogged to death about. No. Actually, what I found humorous was how some of the blogs are framing the scenarios for this feature. In other words: providing example situations where this would be beneficial to you, the little guy. Like this one. Yeah, sure. Buying gifts. Kiosks. Whatever. C'mon. We all know why people want browser privacy features, and it has nothing to do with "respectable" usage habits.

What many people forget is that applications on your desktop are only the end of the line for data flow. You can cloak and scrub and obfuscate your local data cache all you want. But that data had to arrive over a connection (wireless or LAN wire), which goes through one or more hubs or switches and more than one router. Any of these points of hand-off are easy to monitor to see what you're doing. There's no shortage of this being exploited, and most of the time for bad reasons.

Aside from desktop/local cache management, you can rest assured that Microsoft will abide by their long-standing enterprise focus by making it possible to control this feature by using IEAK or Group Policy settings. After all, if you're on the hook for SOX, HIPAA or FISMA control, you want to be able to know what your employees are doing on the web. So this feature is obviously a boon to home users, who most often do not have an Active Directory domain in their network. Regardless, as I've said before, I'm eager to get my hands on IE8 Beta 2.

Third Impressions: Internet Explorer 8 Beta

Star Date: 20080823195105...

Captain's Log:

I have once again hit myself in the head with a brick and installed Internet Explorer 8 (beta): Build 8.0.6001.17184, on my Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit computer. I'm not sure which hurts more, the brick or IE standards compatability mode. Ouch!

First impressions of Beta 1: Crap

Second impressions of Beta 1: It crashed too often to form an opinion.

Third impressions of Beta 1: Not bad.

I have found that I absolutely HAVE to run it in IE7 Emulation mode to get anything done however. It works in that respect and am able to function. So far it has crashed less often than Firefox 3.01 on my same machine. FF3 seems to be buggy compared to FF2. FF2 hasn't crashed on my very often but 3.01 crashes at least three times a day if I work in it all day. Shame too because it's actually a better browser from a UI aspect. The way it stores and manages form entries, spell checking and the general layout of the tabs and features is much better than either IE7 or IE8.

I really wish they would move the stupid "fixed" icon bar which is squished into the tab strip to the right. Still as it is in IE7, but with even more crap stuffed in. Dumb. I'd much rather have a single button with a drop-down/pop-up menu strip instead of all those dumb buttons. It just looks sloppy and poorly thought out. My humble meaningless insignificant worthless opinion of course.

In native IE8 mode I cannot even post to Blogger or any Community Server blogs. I can't navigate GMail worth a crap and Hotmail is really unstable. If I use the drag-and-drop features in Hotmail for example and drag a message into a custom folder it frequently locks up and I have to kill it with an axe and a can of gasoline. Some sites just don't work with it very well at all.

The problem is that Microsoft ignored everyone's begging for them to support "standards" for so long that developers just gave up and started intentionally breaking their code ("forking" is the same as breaking, I don't care what you call it) to make it play nice in IE6 and IE7. Then came IE8 and now they're finally coming down from their secret treehouse to play ball with everyone. But everyone was half-way up the tree attempting to meet their demands to change the rules, so now everyone has to stop and climb back down? Boy, that's a very tall order. I imagine it could take years to get even a significant portion of web sites modified to work properly in IE8 (that would be like IE11 by that point).

IE11. Sounds funny doesn't it? Why not IE 2008? System Center 2007, Office 2007, Windows Server 2008, but IE8? The Product Naming Department seems to be sharing their dope collection with the Versioning Department at Microsoft. I think there's a contest internally to see who can get by with the longest product name. The winner gets to somewhere where it doesn't rain as much as in Redmond I suppose. Oops! - I slipped off topic again. My bad.

So, there are actually some nice features in IE8. It's not ALL bad actually. :)

The context menu that pops up when you highlight things in web pages is very useful. And you can modify it a little bit to include your own "activities" such as adding Gmail or Google Maps to your list of things to execute on behalf of what you have selected. See the screen capture below for an example...

I'm getting a little more excited to see the next build arrive. Word has it that Beta 2 is close to release and I'm really eager to check it out now.

The features in IE8 Beta 1 are good, but the UI needs more work. I give it a grade of C+ at this point. IE7 gets a D+ and IE6 needs to just stand out in the hall and wear the Dunce cap. FF2 gets a B and FF3 gets a mixed grade of A for features, but a C+ for stability and reliability. Opera is in the lunchroom digging in the trashcan. Safari is passed out on the bench in the playground.