h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Undoubtedly the best way to avoid problems with internet explorer
is to forget it and use a browser that doesn't have the foul stench of
brimstone to it. I'm not going to suggest one (unless Mozilla's working yet)
but anything must be better than using a MicroShit (TM) product.

Yesterday, I posted instructions as to how not to let the abysmal IE appear in anyone's system in the first place in the IE-5-is-great forum, just for info. Oh, yes, of course: Ahem....... : )

And what are your *precise* objections to Microsoft? These days, they're doing a pretty good job of implementing HTML standards. Not perfectly of course, but the same applies to every other browser.

These days, MS as well as Netscape/Mozilla are implementing all sorts of things into their browsers that have nothing at all to do with the current HTML standard in order to push them into the HTML 4 standard, while some features in the current standard still aren't properly working on the latest browser versions. MS are an especially bad example.
That's why.

Here is my precise objection to MacroHard's IE. When you install it it takes over your computer. I can't uninstall it now. Believe me I've tried.

IE 5.0 is especially shady... It doesn't notify you that it has taken over your OS. It just pops up now and then sucking the RAM from your system.

Beware the Setup Wizard (Weasel)

MicroSoft are just inconsiderate. When you install any other piece of software, at the end it will say "You need to restart the computer so that your software will work" and you are given the option of not restarting your computer.

However, when you install a MicroSoft product, it says "We will now restart your computer, because now that you have MicroSoft, you will want to use it right away, and you won't want to use any other kind of software." You aren't given the option of not restarting.

Also, the other problem I have with MicroSoft is the fact that they are using their market position to squash all other competition. Netscape used to be used by 60% of people on the internet, but now that MicroSoft have started to give IE away with Windows, 80% of people use IE. Not only that, but they insist on beauty over funtionality - their apps take over half of your disk and all of your CPU usage but do very little that you actually want them to.

I have one huge and fundamental objection to IE5: it cannot be uninstalled. If the product is so great, why nail it in like that? Apart form anything else, it makes life difficult if I want to test IE4 compatibility of some feature of a site I'm building, as without reinstalling NT into a copletely new location on my HD I can't install IE4 and hence can't get compatibility mode on IE5 either.