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Comment by com2kid | Hacker News Reader

Because HP never upgraded my graphics card drivers on my laptop, I cannot upgrade past IE9 on my Windows 7 machine. (For whatever reason IE10 takes a dependency upon some point release of DirectX that requires driver revisions).

So, umm, gee thanks Google? Ugh.

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Get Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Maxthon, or any number of modern, standards compliant browsers, and use that. Windows != IE, you can use one without the other. And it's not that they are doing it just because. IE9 is missing a ton of needed HTML5 features which can make Google Docs better. Would you like IE9 support or better docs app. Because that's the choice.

That's easy to say, except the web is so fragmented, different browsers work to different levels of functionality on different sites.

Heck, Pandora.com is most functional in Opera. Go figure.

And yet IE is the browser that I would say has the least amount of functionality judging by the fact that it doesn't support a lot of modern features (<IE10 that is.) So if you're complaining about the 'web not working the way you want it to' then I would say you really shouldn't be using IE.

That is nice and all, except I just came across a website the other day (a catalog for eyeglass frames) that did not function in the latest Firefox but functioned fine in IE. The online catalog was a brand new addition to the site. Even better is when I hit some site where some features work better in IE, some work better in FF, and some work better in Webkit browsers. That is always fun.

Web developers are of varying quality. If they target their site at one given browser (which of course they shouldn't do, but bad ones very well may), that browser is going to perform better on that site.

Most well developed sites will work well in Chrome, FF, and IE10. IE8 is generally well supported for now, but it's only because developers have to bend over backwards to support it, because they think they have to. Then, there are websites that are designed to work only in IE, because they use non standards compliant functionality.

So, IE8 has a bunch of extra features it should not have, because they are not part of any standard, and is missing a bunch of features it should have to provide HTML5 support.

What I find a lot more annoying is the fact that for some unknown reason Microsoft used to designed IE in such a way that its so woven into the operating system that you have to update the entire OS just to get the latest copy of a browser. Supposably, IE11 is going to be better about this.

Simple fact is, dropping support for IE9 allows one to build better software.

As to the page you referenced, the one that does not load in FF. Can you provide a link? I would love to take a look.

It appears the site (http://www.morel-france.com/catalog/catalog.php) has since been updated to work in Firefox. That said, I browse around enough, I'll hit sites that break in either IE or FF often enough. (More often broken in the latest IE than in the latest FF)

IE10 functions even when the fallback video driver is being used, which certainly doesn't provide hardware acceleration. Are you really sure DirectX or the graphics driver is the cause of not being able to install IE10?

Also, DirectX isn't a separately updatable component, at least in recent versions of Windows. It gets updated as part of regular Windows updates and service packs. (Some software still uses the DirectX redistributable as part of its installer, but in recent versions of Windows, this only installs an optional part of the DirectX 9 interface library.)

Outdated graphics drivers can't provide features introduced with a newer DirectX version, but they shouldn't prevent you from installing IE10.

IE10 will not even install on my machine due to DirectX dependencies.

The DirectX update will not install, it complains about video driver issues. It tells me to download a specific version of my video card driver. Downloading and installing that version of the driver does no good, the DirectX installer still complains.

As for the DirectX update, I had to specifically search on error codes from the IE10 install to find the MSDN page with the DirectX update in it. (The MSDN page is actually what informed me of what video card driver I needed).

This is the problem with discreet graphics cards in laptops that user manufacturer specific drivers. Bleck. Not like the driver works, I have to change versions based upon which game I am playing, it is just like the bad old days on the desktop.

Also the GPU occasionally decides to just stay on 100%, though I think might be a Firefox bug. (IIRC WebGL content in a tab open somewhere)

The crap I go through to have a gaming laptop.

Wonder if you tried to install KB2670838 + KB2834140 manually.

There's always Firefox and Chrome. No one is forcing you to use Internet Explorer.

I think he means his work laptop has these driver limitations, so he's stuck.

Reading the chain of issues on your machine, are you sure there's nothing else wrong with your machine? I have had very good experiences with Firefox running for days without issue. I don't have hundreds of tabs like some people, so that might be the reason there.

Oh I crash FF on every machine I have it on. Hundreds of tabs, and RES is known to leak memory like a sieve. I can watch FF's memory usage grow by the minute as I browse Reddit.

Hundreds of tabs? You need to fix your garbage collector and close some.

Why not choose a different browser?

I use a variety of browsers, but some websites work best in some browsers. I've seen sites not work in FF or IE that work great in Opera, sites that fail in IE and work fine in FF, and it is not to uncommon to find sites posted here that only work in Chrome.

FF leaks memory, or at least the plugins that make FF great leak memory. (If I kill Reddit Enhancement Suite and AdBlock+ FF tends to stay alive for more than a few hours).

I'm opposed to Chrome, I prefer a browser that isn't designed to track everything I do. (Although Google already tracks everything that I do, so I'm really not winning much of that battle.)

On my Windows 7 machine, IE is my browser that has no plugins installed. It is really fast, light, and insanely stable. FF is my plugin laden browser, as such it tends to go down in flames with some frequency.

I am annoyed with the IE team for taking a dependency upon DirectX, annoyed with DirectX for taking a dependency upon video card drivers, and annoyed with HP for not updating their drivers. (To be fair, there is a very short list of Laptops that the particular DirectX update doesn't work with, mine just so happens to be on that list!)

Open FF in privacy mode without plugins enabled. Or disable Chrome's "tracking" mechanisms (there aren't many). Problem solved.

> Open FF in privacy mode without plugins enabled.

Then the internet is a much worse experience! I have those plugins installed for a reason; Flash, AdBlock+ and Reddit Enhancement Suite.

You're making your own problems, it seems... Purchasing from HP in the last six years was a good way to start off on that foot, at least!

HP was the only laptop manufacturer at the time offering a laptop with a dedicated graphics card of reasonable performance and a 1080p screen in a 14" form factor.

They were quite literally my only choice at the time.

Aside from having shipped with bad sticks of RAM, and the current stale video card issues, the machine is rock solid stable and after putting an SSD in there, lightening fast.

Lenovo ThinkPad. Nothing good ever came from buying HP.

I mean as an alternative to IE. FF with no plugins is better than IE.

I would love to know which sites work great in Opera but not at all in FF. Seriously, as a web dev, that would be very useful research material - please post some reference URLs if you can.

Pandora.com! The scroll wheel for the station selector works best in Opera. It is buggy and slow in Chrome, or at least it was a couple of months ago when I last checked across all browsers.

Even better, Pandora's station selector is 50 types of borked in IE9 and 10. I gave them a bug report complete with a video capture repro a couple of months ago, nothing has changed. In Firefox the scroll wheel just doesn't do anything at all.

It is hilarious, this has worked for literally YEARS and then they broke it a few months ago.

To continue the oddness, Pandora works with pure HTML5 (e.g. no Flash) in IE but demands Flash when using Firefox. Joy!

Use Chrome, FireFox, or blame Microsoft/HP?

So why don't you get the drivers directly from AMD, Intel or NVIDIA, as appropriate? Don't rely on computer manufacturers to supply up to date drivers.

Laptop with a dedicated GPU. AMD's unified drivers were, last time I checked, still unstable. I am stuck using HP's custom drivers, which never receive updates. This isn't too uncommon for Laptops.

Driver updates aren't always compatible. I had a Dell laptop that would blue-screen consistently with the latest NVIDIA drivers, but was fine using the version Dell provided.

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