Check out the new Internet Explorer Beta

[alf]

Lots of cool stuff added, i like it

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/default.mspx

[HardDrive]

Tabbed browsing.

Wow. Thats new.

[nostatic]

hey, they're finally up to where Firefox and Safari were two years ago. And with only 10x the development budget/staff. Bully for MS! Tabs (not our Tabs) and native RSS...what will they think of (borrow) next?

[alf]

Tough crowd Yeah, tabbed browsing and RSS taps have been available on other browsers and as IE plug-ins for sometime.

I tried Firefox, it blew up some pages, went back to IE for my own use. As the owner of a e-commerce site, i design it to the highest installed base browser and that is IE, i am happy to see MS improving it.

I like the new IE.

[87coupe]

Originally posted by alf
...As the owner of a e-commerce site, i design it to the highest installed base browser and that is IE ...

Any e-commerce site that is not cross-browser compatible is doing themselves a major disservice. There is no business reason for it to not be.

[McFly944]

Originally posted by 87coupe
Any e-commerce site that is not cross-browser compatible is doing themselves a major disservice. There is no business reason for it to not be.

I thought the same thing, but there are actually a number of sites out there that don't like Firefox. I have been using FF since it came out, and love it. Got a "extention" for those pesky sites that will open the site in a "IE" tab so it shows properly. My career isnt in web design, but all the sites I have built and designed were cross browser friendly.


Back to the topic at hand, the new Explorer is very nice, been using it for about 6 months, but habbit and functionality brings me back to FF.

[masraum]

Yeah, I use IE as little as possible. I use Firefox. I also have the "IETab" plugin which allows me to open IE compat pages in Firefox, but I've found that many of the pages that didn't work in Firefox a year or two ago are now working. I'm not sure if Firefox fixed something, or the site did. The only sites that I have a problem with these days are on my companies intranet and are very MS specific.

I agree, anyone that has a site that sells stuff that only works with IE is probably loosing customers. It seems poor planning to not design a site that works in most browsers.

[RickM]

Spellcheck on this site doesn't work properly with Firefox....at least for me....on two different machines. I do run into other incompatibilities every now and then but have been "bug" free for a quite some time.

[Jims5543]

I use firefox and the spelchek doesnt work for me ether.

Its knot lik I ned it or enethin.

[Mr_Wizard]

Been using the IE Beta for a while now. Have had a few problems with some pages, some active X problems, but not to bad.

[bryanthompson]

Originally posted by 87coupe
Any e-commerce site that is not cross-browser compatible is doing themselves a major disservice. There is no business reason for it to not be.

+1

IE only sites come from piss poor development. Any site should be useable in any browser, including lynx.

[arcsine]

Originally posted by nostatic
...what will they think of (borrow) next?

Which raises a question I have had regarding MS for a while; what has MS ever developed on their own without buying, borrowing or stealing first? I cannot come up with anything that MS did that was not a reaction to what others had done or someone else created and MS saw the benefits and marketed it.

[HardDrive]

Originally posted by arcsine
Which raises a question I have had regarding MS for a while; what has MS ever developed on their own without buying, borrowing or stealing first? I cannot come up with anything that MS did that was not a reaction to what others had done or someone else created and MS saw the benefits and marketed it.

Microsoft has created some cool products, but they are not inventors, they are a software marketing company. Their business model is more like Dell. Let others invest in the bleeding edge stuff, and bring their own versions of vetted technologies to market.

Peoples views of MS are so strange sometimes.

So why did MS just come out with a browser that supports tabbed browsing when everyone else has had one out for years? Is it because they couldn't do it? Oh please......MS is well aware IE is behind the times, and they plan on keeping it that way. The illusion of competition is of great utility when you have Euro wankers trying to constantly sue you.

Duh.

[Halm]

I have been using FF since early betas and was getting tired of it so I gave the IE Beta a try. TERRIBLE product. It won't run Outlook Web Access worth a hoot!

[thrown_hammer]

I use firefox exclusively. If I need IE to open a page I find a different page. It's that simple. I have yet to find anything on a site that required IE that I couldn't find on a site that was FF friendly.

[dd74]

Yeah, there are certain problems with FF and the Pelican BBS. With FF, one can't define graphs with a ctrl-shift-down arrow when responding to a previous message. So it has to be done manually.

I used IE7 beta for about a month. FF is still better, though IE7 Beta is lengths better than IE6.

[Owain]

Originally posted by McFly944
[...] but all the sites I have built and designed were cross browser friendly.[...]

Mine too. They work in Lynx, too Yeah, they're not very exciting, but at least they are available to everybody.

I use FF almost exclusively. I have machines running Windows and Linux both at home and at work, so I appreciate the ability to do the same thing on all machines. If I run accross a site that doesn't display in FF I just go somewhere else. If it's not worth the developer's time to do it correctly then it's not worth my time to look at it or buy from there or whatever.

Also, I don't need the (in)security headaches that seem to come bundled with IE. I probably won't bother trying the new one until I'm forced to.

[alf]

Good feedback! For the folks using FF and other not IE browsers, if you have a moment please take a look at my site www.japanesesword.com and see if it works ok.

I am not a developer, just built that site off frontpage, it is a hobby business that started as a class project in grad school.

alf

[arcsine]

Alf,
I'm on FF and it looked OK to me.