User:Connel MacKenzie/ie7

Some have noticed I've been on a particular "I hate Microsoft" rant lately. To clear the air, it is not because their spell-checker(s) always try to correct (or auto-"correct") "Connel" or "MacKenzie" to incorrect forms.

No, I hate Microsoft because they never allowed a software user preference feature to let the CAPS LOCK key function in a similar manner to a typewriter. (As, you may note, all other terminals did, for decades.) But that, even I recognize, is just a personal problem.

IE7 on the other hand, is problematic. IE (all versions) have cookie truncation problems. As much as I thought this was a non-issue in the past, it is pretty crippling here in wiki-space, where those that have the ability to control cookies, do not have the ability to work-around Microsoft's shortcomings. (That is, I can't just go off a server-side session variable, HERE, as I would on an application I was writing.)

IE7 has two really nice features with tabbed browsing: 1) closing the window with multiple tabs open will prompt you to reopen them when IE next starts up. 2) closing the last tab closes the window (with ctrl-F4). Now, both of these could be considered bugs, if I were being pessimistic...(option to reopen those tabs should happen when IE restarts instead of interfering with a shutdown directive; closing a tab should never close a parent window.) But hey, let's call them beneficial features, and move on, shall we?

IE7 is brain-dead. Using hot-key navigation (e.g. ALT-C, or similar, in this window) doesn't actually do the hot-key action, it merely focuses the URL-selector so that you can then hit return.

IE7 is brain-dead. Opening new tabs uses the same "broken" sequencing that windows itself uses. In Mozilla (Netscape/Firefox, etc) open up several tabs, and use Ctrl-TAB to scroll through them. Now try that in IE7. See? Random tab selection ordering. Why? Why, or why?

IE7 should have the "close tab" button on the far right of the tab bar, not cluttering up each tab. Horizontal space is already at a minimum. At least give a Tools/Options setting to turn that off!

IE7's EMCA scripting support is intentionally poor. "And error occurred on this page." Um, thanks. And the error is? Well, if you find the debugger lost somewhere on microsoft.com, and change all your user preferences to show the error that occurred, it sometimes tells you what line number the error occurred on. But even then, it never tells you which included javascript file it was, that contains that line number - you have to use a process of elimination to figure that out yourself. The debugger itself will sometimes highlight the correct line of code, but magically still does not tell you what the filename is...often, the code is recognizable enough to figure it out, at that point.

IE7's DOM support is, well, ...hmmm...words fail me here. "Fictional" doesn't quite cover it. "Malicious" might be hard to prove. Ditto "Satanic." Why can't they just fall back to standard mode for compatibility's sake? It wouldn't be hard to put that in as an option in Tools/Options would it?

IE7's handling of innerHTML is unique. Instead of just doing it, it throws elaborate errors hither and yon. OK, waitasec...even though IE is the only browser that breaks from "innerHTML" directives, it really is a Good Thing, that it does. InnerHTML is the JS equivalent of a GOTO in BASIC...a convenient shortcut that is hard to maintain. But still, by default, BREAK? Come on dude, throw a warning and continue for fuck's sake.

IE7 puts the "Location" bar above the toolbar. Why? And why can't it be moved back to where it belongs?

IE7 allows extended Unicode to appear in the DNS name, without showing the encoding. In fact, you can't even force it to show encoding. Can you visually tell the difference between ց and g? զ and q? բ and p? е and e? а and a? And people wonder why phishing attacks are becoming more successful? AND YOU CAN'T TURN IT OFF! Wild.

So, yeah. Even if it weren't for the companies I've worked for, even if it weren't for MS' monopoly, even if it weren't for their inexcusable greed, no, I'll never be able to say that I enjoy using a MS product. I will always resent the fact that their shoddy implementations always need tweaking at application layers, to work around their defects. I will always resent the fact that they, for the sake of their greed, have converted usable, computational devices called computers, into nearly useless electron-wasting non-programmable consumer entertainment devices. Really: is the best use of your computer checking e-mail, or watching a DVD? (Sarcasm note: could you imagine the original computer inventors' reactions, if they saw that those two uses account for 90% of computer CPU cycles today? Web browsing and gaming combined might account for a whole percent - but that of course, is equally frivolous.)

OK, back to making MediaWiki:Monobook.js work-around IE7 now...

--Connel MacKenzie 22:27, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

P.S. Please, for the love of all that is precious and holy, download Firefox, Opera, Safari, or SOMETHING ELSE today.