Date: 2008-11-02 11:52:02 Created: null
The thing with IE is ...
... well, it's just that it doesn't do anything! Sure, it starts fast in Windows and it displays many things the way you expect them to, but that's about where the fun ends.
Then comes all the various nags people have about IE, and in the end I always end up with another browser, keeping IE only for emergencies, Windows Update, the odd webcam window, and the fact that it's rather hard to get the damn thing uninstalled even if you want to :-) ...
There was a time when IE was the browser doing all the cool stuff. And it still does, only problem is that you come to realise it does it in that IE specific way, the way nobody else does. And when the competition does their stuff by following all the standards out there, and following them better than IE as well, the coolness of IE falls rather hard.
Then there's the fact that by now, IE has the least feature-rich interface around. No tabs, no download manager, no mouse guestures, no popup control, no nothing. What's there works, but it doesn't have anything you want after you've seen better things.
However, a thought that struck me right now is that Microsoft might be leaving IE behind deliberatly, to get away from all the bad blood for including a free browser with Windows. If it's barebones and just to get people going, then who can complain? I wouldn't mind if they threw in Mozilla just so people could try another option easier of course ...