Question: IE v. Firefox
 

long story short: I am coordinating weekly "tech tuesday" staff training on Word and other software/tech stuff we use.

I showed everyone how to strip off the fancy page styling from websites for readability (View--Page Style--No Style), and how to increase the text size (CNTRL +). Then it was pointed out to me that only works for Firefox.

duh. Anybody know how to do those things in IE?

You're probably not allowed to do those things in IE. That could make it useful and friendly.

right. Unfortunately, everybody uses it at work.

I checked my I.E. (I am a Firefox user too).

Style - in I.E. is View>Style>No Style or Default Style.
Text - in I.E. is View>Text Size>Smallest, Smaller, Medium, Larger or Largest.

I don't have a "style" selection in my IE View menu. (IE7) Although I do see the text size selection there.

Tools/Internet Options/Accessability/Format documents using my style sheet

Don't know what a syle sheet is, or does, or where to get one; but that's where you apply it.

style sheet would be CSS code? I has none

You could take a Reset CSS example, copy and paste into a text editor, save it, and use that.

I found a shortcut that works on both! If you hold the ctrl key down and use the wheel on your mouse, it will zoom bigger or smaller depending on what way you are moving the wheel.

OMFG!

very cool!

I hate IE, it take so much time to load. I use firefox and its my favorite.

I'm with moon.

I watch the trendy browser crowd with amusement. Not that there's anything wrong with it, I just have a different persepctive, working in IT and using applications which HAVE TO run, as a literal life and death matter. I run vanilla XPP SP3 IE7, and when I (rarely) encounter something which does not run on a generic windows box, I just say "how cute, the developer is twleve" and move on.

:lol:

Seriously.

Before I got rid of my PC and got my Mac, I ran Google Chrome. It is faster than Firefox.

@Flint.
I had so many problems with IE on my last computer that I took UT's and mbpark's advice and went with Firefox. I am NOT in IT and don't understand why or ??? All I know id I've had no probs with Firefox so I stuck with it. I do have a nice shiny new gazillion gig computer now.
Should I go back to IE? Can you explain the difference in layman's terms?

The difference is IE works just fine for me, never had any issues, and it does everything I need it to do. Don't know what kind of issues you were having, but in my environment we can't just give up and switch applications when we encounter a problem. 99% of our vendors do not support the "trendy browsers" which means, if you are running the flavor-of-the-month hipster browser on your machine, they won't even talk to you. When it absolutely, positively has to run every time, stick with straight Microsoft and you can't go wrong.

Does this browser make my butt look big?

My computer would freeze and it took forever for pages to load. When watching movies or videos they were all jumpy and would start/stop constantly.
I haven't used IE in probably 3-4 years, if not more. Maybe I'll give it another shot.

"How cute, the developer wrote to web specifications that IE7 failed to implement. And now my retarded IT department is choosing to ignore the specs too - because, for some damn reason, they think the Mac, all smartphones, the majority of tablet computers and every other browser on every other platform will never be used in this enterprise."

IE's share will fall below 50%, probably next month -- despite being bundled -- and at that point, who's the one with a trendy browser religion?

^This^

And IE still has more holes than a colander.

That argument will surely go over like hotcakes with any huge coproration such as GE (call them, see how far you get), whose published requirements are IE7. This is a practical matter--IE7 is actually REQUIRED in my environment--not by "retarded" policies but by the vendors.

There is a reason for this. Well, reason(s).

So, IE goes below 50% general use. I'm talking about business, not Facebook.

fixed for you
 

Well then, GE will be in for a lot of work when the US Gov tells them they have to switch browsers for national security purposes.

The government has a lot of great ideas that are not immediately applicable in the real world.

You can't just snap your fingers and make things happen.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Undertoad, but we don't have the results of the studies that tell us whether you have cancer or not, because the government told [healthcare IT vendor] that they have to start using the FacebookGoogleFox High-Def SuperBrowser, Widget Factory, and Smartphone Extravaganza as their platform, instead of the previous platform that had been verified through years of product development and testing to be stable with 99.999% uptime. We're sorry. Maybe you have cancer, maybe not."

When Firefox becomes king, and becomes the access to the treasury, then firefox becomes the target.

^ what he said ^
 

The security myth of the "better" browsers/OSs is known as "security through obscurity" and it will diminish as their poularity increases.

That's kind of a misunderstanding of the term "security through obscurity".

IE is closed source, and is written to Microsoft specs, therefore IE takes a security through obscurity approach.

Firefox is open source and is written to open and independent specs. There is no obscurity at all. You are invited to look at the Firefox code to see whether you can find any security problems. And you are invited to fix them as well. Firefox bets that there are more "fixers" than "exploiters" in the world. So far it has proven out well.

Meanwhile Flint you have settled on technology from October 18, 2006, the last IE7 release, and is it even supported by Microsoft as a platform? Have you guys considered the end of life product cycle on it? If you run into something serious and call Microsoft, will they tell you to shove it? Will they tell GE to shove it? Good luck with all that, I guess.

GE is just an example. Read "GE" as any one of 100s of clinical, financial, and logistics vendors that are locked into a certain # of 9s on their uptime (or face real, tangible financial penalties). The latest greatest browser is not what is going to deliver that, the “October 18, 2006” browser that their development teams have had 4 years to work out every possible thing that could ever go wrong in a million years is what is going to deliver that. And when they collectively, as an industry, decide to make the natural progression to IE8, that will happen with little fanfare. Just another day at the office.

I can guarantee that faster downloads, killer graphics and sweet facebook apps are not what is going to drive business decisions. Some things are serious, and the “uncool” browser is going to be unsurprisingly the correct choice for people who have actual work to do.

And some are still on IE6.

Huge, say, like IBM? The IBM which has standardized on Firefox? That kind of huge?

In any case, that sort of argument doesn't matter to individual users who can choose whatever works best for them. What's best for GM is no longer what's best for America - if it ever was.

Nuts to IBM. They wish they were EMC.

IBM wishes it were the Evangelical Methodist Church?

BAN THEM BOTH! DO IT NOW!

You can't win, Darth classic. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.

:lol2: That's funny right there, I don't care who ya are.

...in 2010. In 2012, though, maybe all three will be critical.

There's nothing particularly wise about "business decisions". A thing is not to be considered "quality" because a Fortune 500 company settles on it. The IT hive minds have routinely missed major trends - not noticed it until upstart companies were killing them by taking advantage. If business were really in charge, we would all have Lotus Notes instead of email and web, and people would pay $70/month for remote desktop capabilities.

That's 3 years and 11 months longer than they actually needed.

Except if they want to work at home

Or on the bus on their Android phone

Or at the beach with their iPad

Or at their friend's house with the Mac

Or any of the platforms and places we haven't thought of yet. Can't do any of that because of "business decisions". Because of ƒuckin MBAs and CIOs who get their information from places like Information Week so they can do exactly what everybody else does.

Thus preventing them from having any competitive advantage from any competitors, who operate in exactly the same way, by hiring the same consultants and making the same safe decisions and cashing their big-dollar paychecks for doing it...

I ƒart on their graves.

Sometimes it's okay to just go with what you know. With what you know will work because you've seen it work before. You don't always have to try to be George Jetson, riding your rocket car to your space office. Newer isn't always better. Traditional things get to be traditional because they have a solid track record. There is an acceptable risk you have to calculate when you feel like going out on a limb, and "being cool and edgy" is not one of the things that factors into that decision.

Incidentally, how exactly does using Windows prevent me from working at home/the beach/the bus ???

When you got Win 7 pre-loaded with the new desktop it didn't match your platform choice.

Me?
I don't even know what a platform is.

Sparky, stick with Firefox man. You can't go wrong. It's for everybody - "platform" people and non-"platform" people.

lol - thats what I figured. I was just thinkin that I must have used IE to download firefox that first time. Guess I have used it.

That's the best use of IE. To download Firefox.

Repeat Protip: after taking your Windows computer out of the box and connecting it to the net, open IE and visit ninite.com and select all the best free or semi-free applications. You download and run one single install package, and boom, your system is usable!

Thanks I'll bookmark that for when my kids tell me I need one of whatever they are :)

Question, does anyone else have an issue with Firefox crashing frequently (v 4.2, WinXP SP3)? I seem to crash every other page (including this one) when using Windows but have no problems when using the same browser in Ubuntu.

Maybe I will simply go back to the previous version which worked and wait until a bugfix comes out.

Nope, as I will not going to Firefox 4 until it has been out of beta for a bit. :)