I don’t have proof or statistics, but it seems like I run up against this more and more often, where a website just doesn’t work properly on IE (using version 11). Isn’t there still a sizeable number of users who use IE as their primary browser? Is Microsoft too difficult to work with? What’s going on, and why?
For you who are itching to tell me that I should have abandoned IE long ago, I’m not particularly interested in advice at this point, my request is for help in understanding the situation. Thanks.
Modifying code to support a browser’s quirks and bugs takes time and money. IE and Edge combined are about 7% market share and dropping so many probably don’t consider it worth it.
Microsoft is rebuilding its Edge browser on Chrome and bringing it to the Mac from theverge.com has a good review of the situation. It notes that “Developers are optimizing for Chrome, and Google has also been creating Chrome-only web services because it’s often the first to adopt emerging web technologies. Microsoft has struggled to keep its Edge rendering engine in stride with Chromium.”
If Edge is having trouble keeping up, then I.E. is only going to be in worse shape. This article also reports that “A Chromium version of Edge will also arrive on Windows 7 and Windows 8”, so you might find that an acceptable alternative to I.E.
In IE’s early versions, being intentionally incompatible with other browsers was the point. Microsoft was strategizing that the bulk of websites would be coded up to match its quirks, and work best (or at all) only in IE. And the strategy worked very well in its early years.
Unfortunately for MS, the strategy stopped working (browsers started being evaluated by how standards-compliant they are, and the “best viewed in Internet Explorer” badges went away) but the legacy of that prior strategy stuck to IE. IE is expected to be compatible with the quirks of the previous versions of itself, but other browsers are not, so IE development is relatively hampered.
Well, I confess I had no idea that the market share was so low, but these explanations make sense.
I don’t like Chrome all that much, only because there doesn’t seem to be a way to replicate the favorites list, which I rely on quite a lot. They have the bookmarks bar but that takes up a lot of space for the same number of items. Is there some solution to that I’m not seeing?
So now I am soliciting opinions. Is there a good browser choice besides Chrome? I’ve heard the names of a few others but I have no idea whether they are still viable nor how good they are. I’m not clear from the above discussions whether Edge is or is going to be a good choice or not.
A friend of mine used to design websites for small businesses. As of a few years ago, she was having to optimize those pages for four browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and IE. What she told me, at the time, was that IE was routinely the biggest pain for getting things to work properly, and that HTML code which worked just fine in the other browsers wouldn’t work right in IE.
If that’s accurate, combining that fact with IE’s small market share, and the fact that it’s no longer the default browser on newly-shipped Windows machines, explains why web developers aren’t building for IE any longer.
You eliminated Chrome but, unless I’m misunderstanding what you are saying, Chrome handles a favorites list scenario just fine.
I put my bookmarks into folders on the bookmarks bar (meaning, add the folders to the bookmarks bar but don’t add links to the bar, add the links inside the folders). Each folder can have a large list of bookmarks and that list is displayed when you click on the folder. In addition you can have subfolders inside the folder that are expanded when you click on them.
I use Firefox. However I hear it’s vanishing, and pretty soon websites will only need to be compatible with Chrome. I hate Chrome’s lack of a proper menu.
I actually like some parts of Internet Explorer. I think their bookmark system is great. Unfortunately Edge got rid of that, and copied Chrome’s lack of a proper menu. (Unfortunately there was a bookmark manager for Firefox that emulated IE. Not anymore. Lame!)
IE is outdated. It’s less secure, and it doesn’t work on some sites. Worse, one update forced my computer to reset every few seconds, even when I wasn’t using the program. I will literally never use IE at home. At work I used to have to use IE only, but now I have a “choice” of IE and Edge. Between the bookmarks and proper menu I always use IE.
For years I have been forced to use Firefox at work, never seen such a buggy browser. In my new job I have a new Windows 10 machine with Edge, it works great.
Here’s a place that tracks browser share. Note that FF is below IE (which doesn’t include Edge).
The Mozilla folk have just stumbled on a lot of things for quite a while. Their main “brand” was “We’re not IE!”. Once Chrome took off it had little to offer regular folk.
And keeping the tech cognizant around has been a problem, too. Hence all the forks. A lot of work is diluted or just plain not done.
Yes, it’s for Chrome. At least on Mac the menu at the top of the screen has File, Edit, View, History, Bookmarks, Tools, Window and Help. It also appears about halfway down the dropdown menu you get when you click the “hamburger” (the three dots or lines depending on OS in the upper right corner).
ETA: “It” in the hamburger menu refers to “Bookmarks”
If I understand you correctly, what you want is a sidebar that shows your bookmarks, rather than a toolbar.
Chrome doesn’t have this built-in, but the beauty of modern browsers is that you can install extensions. The bookmark sidebar extension has you covered. Just follow that link after installing Chrome to enable the sidebar.
Firefox, on the other hand, does have a sidebar built in. But it’s not on by default. Install Firefox, and then use the instructions on this page to enable the side bar. It’s pretty simple, and will help you learn how to customize Firefox.
Not even Microsoft recommends you stick with Internet Explorer. It’s just there for old sites that don’t work without it.
Thank you, I will try the Chrome extension you linked to. The problem with Doug K.'s approach is that it doesn’t work that way for Windows. When you click Bookmarks on the Windows version of that menu, you get a sub-menu that includes such things as Show Bookmarks Bar, Bookmark This Page, Import Bookmarks, etc. but nothing about a side bar.