Could Anything Make You Use IE9?

20 Replies

There’s been a fair amount of publicity lately about Microsoft bringing Internet Explorer much more in-line with modern rendering engines with the upcoming release of Internet Explorer 9.0 which they plan to unveil at Mix10. There’s talk of strong HTML5 support, improved CSS compliance and even some support for CSS3. Everything we’re hearing is that 9.0 will do what some (naively) hoped IE 7.0 would do: bring IE in line with the “better” browsers of the world so we could earnestly look forward to the day we could stop saying, “I’ll do that when it’s supported in IE.” All of it got me thinking: as someone who hasn’t used any version of IE as my daily browser since Firefox was called Phoenix, is there anything Microsoft can do today that would make me want to use Internet Explorer?

Disregarding for the moment that my primary work and home computers are both Macs, would any version of IE be able to erase years of near torment the earlier versions have caused myself and other developers? I tweeted this question earlier today but I wanted to open it up to even broader discussion.

Suppose IE 9.0 really is all that and a bag of chips. Suppose that it’s rendering engine passes Acid 1, 2, and 3 with flying colors and in the same time as Webkit and Gecko. Suppose that the Javascript engine runs circles around V8. Suppose the same set of HTML5 elements are supported out of box. Basically: suppose that IE 9.0, by every measure that we routinely use the demonstrate IE’s inferiority, ranks ahead of the competition in all of these areas.

Would you use it?

Asking myself this question honestly, I don’t know that MS can do anything with IE to make me forget the connotation that the previously harmless two letters have in my eyes. Even when used under different context, I can’t help but cringe when I hear the letters “I and E” put together.  There are some out there that would view IE’s closed-source nature as a serious hindrance and refuse to use it on ethical grounds alone. I’m far more interested in the web development community as a whole: would you really use IE if it were *gulp* better?

I hope it doesn’t matter.

I truly hope that the answer to this question is moot; it will mean we’ve finally reached a day where users have real choice in browsers As developers, we’d no longer have to fear the extra work that will be caused by users who choose to use the default.

  

  • http://twitter.com/adamstegman Adam Stegman

    The brand is a huge drag on the family of browsers, for sure. Same reason I doubt I'll like Windows Phone 7.

    But it depends heavily on the interface as well. Even though Safari is a great browser, I like Chrome's interface better and have chosen it for that reason. IE8's interface is pretty horrible, and I really doubt IE9 would improve much on it, especially if they focus on improving the internals.

  • http://rubiii.com/ rubiii

    it's an interesting question, but i don't see ie catch up to modern browsers soon. they've got a lot of work to do, so i may ask myself that question in 2011/2012.

  • http://rubiii.com/ rubiii

    oh and there are some errors at the bottom of this page. looks like some php output.

  • http://twitter.com/jpc101 James Cooper

    I'm a mac and I don't think I'm even gonna get the option ;) But even if I could, like you the sound of the two letters together still send a shiver down my spine!

  • http://leeand00.tiddlyspot.com/ Andrew J. Leer

    With the promise of Job security sure! I hope it sucks worse than IE6 it would give me job security in this profession for life!

  • No Friggin' Way

    Not even if a nuke were set off in Cupertino, Google abandoned Chrome, Mozilla were eaten by a giant, fire-breathing zombie panther and Opera politely bowed out like a good Scandinavian. In that scenario, I'd get myself a Linux box, crank up Konqueror and give up web development.

  • http://www.learningjquery.com Josh Powell

    It took a lot of effort to get me to switch from IE to Firefox to begin with. IE back in the day was the far better browser (better then netscape), then they did nothing for years and years and years. Firebug is what got me to switch to Firefox initially. I now need it to debug while coding. The only way IE will get me to switch back is 1) Make IE work on macs… cause I use a mac & 2) provide something for me better then Firefox does. IE doesn't look like it will do that, it seems content to play catch up to the other browsers, so no. IE will have to do something better, not just as good as, Firefox for me to switch back.

  • http://twitter.com/kevadamson kevadamson

    I truly hope IE9 is awesome. Not because of any brand loyalty or bias. But because I am a web designer and developer, and it will make my work more pleasurable and my time more productive if it “flys”.

    OK, so in our spare time we are 'consumers' like everybody else. But as professionals I feel it is important we put aside preference, and view the environment we work in for what it is. Warts and all.

    Browsers are becoming like designer labels. Which is fine for consumers. But when you see developers turning a blind eye to relevant browsing environments or technologies because they're not 'cool', well, that's not a good thing IMO.

    I guess my point is I will use anything, produced by anyone, as long as it is a good product.

    I'm hoping MS have turned the corner for the sake of overall progress within the industry. Have you noticed how quiet people are about Windows 7? That's a massive complement. Who would dare “big it up”, and risk being shunned by the other kids in the developers' playground? :P

  • kevindees

    As a friend I would make all my friends and family use it. It would mean one less piece of software to support and install for them.

    As a developer, I would continue to use Firefox and Chrome.

    For me it simply comes down to features, and I don't consider standards support a feature… its a requirement. If you want my market share IE add better features, ones I will use, all the rest should come standard, because that's what they are. I don't buy cars without brakes and I don't Install browsers without the basics, aka standards support, either.

  • Dylan Parry

    Regardless of how feature-rich and how many standards IE9 supports on the day it’s launched, it’ll soon be behind the times. That’s the problem with IE—it’s not actively developed and released on a regular basis, unlike almost all of its rivals. Chrome seems to have a new dev channel release almost every week, and the likes of Firefox, Opera and Safari release new minor versions a couple of times a year at least.

    In the gap that there will inevitably be between IE9 and a presumable IE10, the other browsers will once again be miles ahead in terms of support for the latest, greatest standards.

    That’s why I’ll never use IE as my default browser—I don’t want to use a browser that’s always one step behind the rest.

  • http://twitter.com/retro212labs Mihael Konjević

    I actually want 2 extensions to switch. First is Firebug (because I'm web developer) and second is Tree style tab (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/…) because it handles 100+ tabs gracefully. Other than that, nothing keeps me with Firefox. Firefox got bloated and slow, and if you do any serious Javascript development it leaks memory like crazy (which is probalby caused by Firebug, of course ;) )

  • http://www.adequatelygood.com/ Ben Cherry

    No, almost certainly not. Partially because I'm a Mac user now, but even on my Windows machine I would not, because I prefer using the same browser across machines, which means Firefox or Chrome.

    But, more realistically, it would need to have a better interface than Firefox (more like Chrome) and have dev tools on par with Chrome or Firebug (the IE8 ones are not) in addition to the aforementioned speed and standards support, before it would be a consideration at all.

  • http://briancrescimanno.com/ Brian Crescimanno

    Thanks for the note; I took care of it. I don't know exactly how it got there but I'm looking into that now too. :P

  • Martin

    I've already started to use IE, as the latest version of Firefox gets bizarrely slow (loading a page in three minutes) as soon as I have more than about 100 tabs open simultaneously.

  • http://www.mstechpages.com/ Dustin Harper

    Sure I will. I'll use it for a while. I try and use a browser for a while to see how it goes. I've switched several times. From Netscape to IE to Firefox to IE8, now I'm on Opera 10.5. And Opera is amazing. But, I'm not going to shoot a browser down because of it's maker. I tried Safari for Windows. Can't say it was enjoyable. I use Dolphin on the Android phone.

    I'm a huge Microsoft fan, so I may be biased. But, as far as browsers go, I go for the one that works the best for me. Same with pretty much everything. Android phone > Windows Mobile.

  • http://twitter.com/CraigBuchek Craig Buchek

    As a web developer, it doesn't matter if I use it — it matters if the users of my web apps are using it. And if it improves the experience for them and/or makes it easier for me to develop web sites, then I'm all for it.

    But I'm VERY unlikely to use it much myself, beyond testing purposes. For one, I'm usually on a Mac or Linux. Second, I like my Firefox add-ons. I do use Safari as a backup, but primariy use Firefox because I've got it customized with add-ons that don't exist for other browsers.

  • http://qcm.ro/ Alex Apetrei

    if , and only if by magic IE9 becomes awesome and does what all the “cool” browsers do . I will consider thinking about using it.

    If it will be distributed to linux machines as well ;D.

    But chances are microsoft will continue to fudge it's browser, because of silly “Management” sticking it's head in the PR department's job.

    When you release a tool that does what you want it to do for you , not what the user needs it to do for him well … you pretty much kick yourself in the groin.

  • Alan

    I would keep using Firefox, because of the extensions. By the way, it's = it is

  • http://ericharrison.info Eric Ryan Harrison

    I would use it if they gave me one feature that I absolutely MUST have in a web-browser:

    Firebug.

    I absolutely am unable to live without Firebug.

  • 1observer

    you're kind of an idiot… no offense but who cares? it is a browser, the only reason there was ever ANY negative sentiment towards ie was because version 6 did nothing to advance the status quo for so long and by doing so frustrated devs and hurt the internet a little bit. you are what we call a fanboy/fanatic and the fact that you would have trouble choosing which FREE browser you want to use because of the branding troubles you is a little ridiculous. good luck deciding less important things like what you want to be when you grow up…