Internet Explorer: the browser you can't ignore
Posted 1 August 2007 at 9:15AM by Simon Dickson in Website development
Like it or not, Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser is a fact of online life. It still boasts a market share in excess of 75%, despite increasing and better organised competition from the likes of Firefox and Apple's Safari. If you're building websites, you have to treat IE as your default use case; and indeed, many less conscientious designers treat it as the only use case.
But although it's impossible to live without it, it is possible to make life with IE a bit more bearable. Maxthon is a free web browser from Beijing, which first appeared on the scene in 2003, and has just delivered its version 2.0. There are innovative features to make browsing easier and faster for 'power users' and novices alike. It looks pretty, too. But significantly, it works alongside Internet Explorer, using IE's 'rendering engine' - the bit which turns the HTML code into recognisable pages.
So crucially, a page will look exactly the same in Maxthon as it does in IE. This could be good news for web professionals, many of whom prefer Firefox (etc) for their web browsing, and miss all the extra tricks and tweaks when they inevitably have to switch over to IE. It's a relatively small download, and uninstalls easily, so it's worth a try.
My own preferred solution is a Firefox add-on called IETab. This puts a button into your Firefox interface which, when pressed, switches from the Firefox rendering engine to the IE engine. Inevitably you lose some of the Firefox functionality, but at least it keeps you within a familiar environment. For those few cases where a website only works with IE, you can store a list of addresses which will trigger the switch by default.
Tags: browsers, firefox, ietab, internet explorer, maxthon, safari
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Comments
2. At August 1, 2007 7:42 PM, kelvin thompspn wrote:
I use opera. Secure and easy.
3. At August 1, 2007 10:28 PM, John J Flynn wrote:
Opera is my Choice
4. At August 2, 2007 8:35 AM, J G Dawson wrote:
Yep! Opera gets my vote too...
5. At August 2, 2007 8:37 AM, Graham Brack wrote:
Mark me down as another Opera user. I've used it since version 4, and it's faster, less flaky and saves pages in a more compact manner.
6. At August 2, 2007 9:11 AM, David Crowther wrote:
While I think Opera is a great product, I just can't do without my Firefox extensions...
7. At August 3, 2007 6:23 PM, Alasdair McTavish wrote:
Unless I'm using my Mobile or my Wii I just can't stick Opera. It saddens me to say it but I'm a bit of a IE7 lover.
Originally a Mozilla Suite user then moving over to Firefox during the beta days but ever since the launch of the first IE7 beta I haven't been comfortable in anything else. It has some rendering flaws but nothing compared to IE6 but it loads quickly and integrates into both XP and Vista nicely.
When designing sites some of the Firefox plug-ins are essential and technically Firefox, Safari and Opera are better due to their superior XHTML and CSS compliance but none of them seem as fluid as IE7. I guess it all comes down to personal preference.
8. At August 7, 2007 7:16 AM, Mark Thorpe wrote:
I agree with the above. I've always been an IE user, but since installing vista (contrary to my recent vista post), I have had numerous problems. Primarily that now that I have vista installed I get a blank "cut out" where the address bar should be....hmm...
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1. At August 1, 2007 12:27 PM, Michael wrote: