Ask HN: What would it take for IE not to be hated? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What would it take for IE not to be hated?

8 pointsandrewcross14 comments

After watching the new Microsoft troll ad for IE 10 on TechCrunch (which is actually pretty good), I started thinking about what it would take for IE not to be hated by the tech community.

For those that have done web dev, you'll know the pain it causes. CSS properties aren't supported, the debugger is terrible, etc.

Would solving those issues be enough for you not to hate IE? If not, what would be required?

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I think it's very hard, if not impossible. It is deep in people's mind, and that is more a problem than the browser's actual features/problems. I think that IE has done a lot of steps forward and is now a decent browser. Unfortunately there are many people that are considered "those good with PCs because they spend a lot of time playing games", that believe that IE sucks because everybody thinks so, and it's not going to be easy to change their mind, it's like "fan boys" but with hate.

I think this is because IE has been bad for many releases before being decent. Android has been near the same fate. Everyone thought that Android has a crappy user interface and a lot of people still think it even if now Android completely changed. Lucky it changed quickly, and so more people are giving it credit. But with IE, it's another story. In conclusion, possible, but it will take a lot of time and a lot of effort. I wonder if it's worth it. Microsoft should come up with some crazy revolutionary "killer feature", other way there will be no reason to switch back.

Direct link to video for others who don't read TechCrunch:

http://youtu.be/lD9FAOPBiDk

I don't hate IE, but for me to consider start using it, it would need to run on all major platforms and be open ala Chrome and Firefox. Otherwise, I don't see the point.

That's actually a pretty clever video.

For me it has nothing to do with being open source or aligned with the "free" philosophy. I don't like IE because it makes my job harder without any real reason.

Why can't it update automatically and save millions of dollars? Developers cost money and companies have to pay tons of unnecessary hours making a web page work on broken IE renderings.

I would not hate IE, and maybe even use it, if it could update itself without needing it's crap Windows Update thingy.

I feel a bit disrespected by that ad.

See, I'm a IE 'hater' not because 'IE sucks' but because in my current project I have 746 lines of CSS hacks to bring IE 7/8 to 2012 because MS is incapable of rolling out a functional, continuous update system.

The update system was not fixed.

I think Microsoft and IE haters alike often overlook one HUGE reason people won't switch to IE 10: There is no reason to switch back to IE because it doesn't offer any reason to. Even your question points out that there is no obvious reason why users should be switching. If it did, it would have started with something like "Now that IE has X will you switch?"

Chrome, Firefox, and Opera have proven innovative not just in the realm of CSS, JS, and HTML5 standards, but also in things like extensions, community, update cycles, etc. IE is constantly catching up, so even when it does become the "fastest browser" it is only that for a month. Then a new version of Chrome or Firefox comes out that is faster and has new features X,Y, and Z.

I think it would take IE not working for something a lot of people want to do. The problem with IE is that it works for end users. devs build websites that work on IE so most everyday people never even notice or care that IE is such a pain. I remember when facebook dropped IE6 support. That was a nice day, pretty soon IE6 support was more or less dead (at least in user-land, corporant behemoths are another story...). Basically, big players would just have to quit IE support entirely and force ms to do what opera does and build a decent browser.

As others have said, I don't think it's possible. I think Microsoft could gain some trust by bundling Chrome and Firefox with Windows, and possibly even abandoning IE, but I think that's fairly unlikely.

[edit] their best bet is to make the browser 'go away' so you can't even tell when you're in IE. I think they're actually taking steps towards this with the 'metro' version of the browser in Windows 8.

It would need to have a default start page that does not insult my intelligence, rather than one like this: http://twitpic.com/9y42i1

By using Webkit

If they'd admit that Trident wasn't a great engine and swapped it with something else (Webkit), maybe.

time travel?

Perhaps for those of an older generation (if not more generally), it's not primarily that IE is IE -- it's that Microsoft is Microsoft.

We're always wondering when the rug is (once again) going to be pulled out from under us.

die?

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