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Looking for suggestions on a replacement for Internet Explorer

jothkijothki Registered User regular
Up until recently, I've been using Internet Explorer and have been completely satisfied with it. However, since it's being depreciated in favor of Edge, I figure that I should look into a replacement for it. This concern has been accelerated by the appearance of some sort of data corruption that is preventing my normal account from downloading things through IE, which doesn't appear to be fixable without flat out recreating my account, which I want to avoid if I can.

Since I actually like Internet Explorer, which alternative browser would provide the most similar experience?

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  • Some_tall_guySome_tall_guy Registered User regular
    I hear Netscape is doing well these days.

    For reals though, Firefox or Chrome would be your best options. What version of IE have you been using up until now?

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  • FoomyFoomy Registered User regular
    edited June 2015
    You really only have about 4 choices in browsers: IE,Firefox,Chrome,and Opera.

    They all look/work just about the same way these days, some slight changes but nothing that you wouldn't get used to in a few days.

    And chrome/Firefox have a ton of add-ons that I'm sure could make the experience closer to IE if you really really wanted that.

    So um, just pick one and try it out.

    Foomy on
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  • jothkijothki Registered User regular
    I hear Netscape is doing well these days.

    For reals though, Firefox or Chrome would be your best options. What version of IE have you been using up until now?

    Just IE11.

    So none of them have any sort of "features" that I'll grow to loathe, then?

    I'll probably get Firefox, thanks for the help.

  • jothkijothki Registered User regular
    Okay, the default GUI for Firefox is hideous.

  • SeñorAmorSeñorAmor !!! Registered User regular
    Many of us would say the same about IE since we're used to a different browser.

    Nothing we can say will help you get over the "blerg, it's new and I don't like it" hump. You have to do that yourself.

    What we can tell you, however, is that if you want a standards-compliant browser that has the ability to be customized to your liking via plugins and themes, you're going to have to do away with IE.

  • jothkijothki Registered User regular
    Someone at least tell me how to make it look and function in a sane manner. I know I've used Firefox before without it being terrible, is there a way to get it back to where it was a few years ago?

    Failing that, I might have to look into Opera instead.

  • jothkijothki Registered User regular
    Okay, found the title bar and the menu bar, so that's good. The default theme doesn't handle them very well, though, are there any recommendations on how to improve that?

    I still don't like some of the design decisions, but it's at least workable now.

  • wunderbarwunderbar What Have I Done? Registered User regular
    None of the current "major" browsers have the file--edit-view menu bars by default anymore. I don't even think you can turn them on in Chrome. It's just an old UI paradigm that is going away, including in Microsoft Edge.

    You may just have to get used to it if you don't like the heme/look in FireFox. It's mostly there for legacy now.

    XBL: thewunderbar PSN: thewunderbar NNID: thewunderbar Steam: wunderbar87 Twitter: wunderbar
  • jothkijothki Registered User regular
    I guess I shouldn't worry too much about the theme for now anyway, since there's a good chance that Windows 10 is going to disrupt the title bar anyway. Unless there's a theme built specifically to make things blend together well?

  • wunderbarwunderbar What Have I Done? Registered User regular
    my advice: turn off the title bar and try it for a few days without. It's hard to fairly judge something when you look at it for 5 minutes, decide you hate it, then try to change it without actually giving it a chance.

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  • jothkijothki Registered User regular
    edited June 2015
    Found the Classic Theme Restorer addon. I think I can work with this.

    Edit: Tabs on bottom, background color extended to menu bar. Excellent.

    jothki on
  • MichaelLCMichaelLC In what furnace was thy brain? ChicagoRegistered User regular
    While you're on the World Wide Web, check out the new super spider search site, http://www.altavista.digital.com

  • jjae2123jjae2123 Registered User regular
    Also, I believe they are keeping ie11 around for legacy Web Apps.

  • HandgimpHandgimp R+L=J Family PhotoRegistered User regular
    jjae2123 wrote: »
    Also, I believe they are keeping ie11 around for legacy Web Apps.

    Holy necropost, J. Get back in your Timberwolf!

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  • NbspNbsp she laughs, like God her mind's like a diamondRegistered User regular
    Firefox is a piece of shit, I can't believe no one recommended Chrome over firefox?

  • a5ehrena5ehren AtlantaRegistered User regular
    edited July 2015
    Chrome has been getting kinda bad lately. Right now the non-IE browsers are all different varieties of not-great while IE11 is just the worst.

    a5ehren on
  • jothkijothki Registered User regular
    Nbsp wrote: »
    Firefox is a piece of shit, I can't believe no one recommended Chrome over firefox?

    Chrome suffers from the disadvantage of resembling Chrome, though. Firefox did as well out of the box, but I was able to fix that with an addon that lets you restore a bunch of stuff that was in earlier versions. If Chrome has something similar that can fix the interface, that would be helpful to know.

  • wunderbarwunderbar What Have I Done? Registered User regular
    wunderbar wrote: »
    my advice: turn off the title bar and try it for a few days without. It's hard to fairly judge something when you look at it for 5 minutes, decide you hate it, then try to change it without actually giving it a chance.

    XBL: thewunderbar PSN: thewunderbar NNID: thewunderbar Steam: wunderbar87 Twitter: wunderbar
  • jothkijothki Registered User regular
    I really do hate what I've read about Chrome's design philosophies, though. Firefox let me basically tear apart most of the interface toolbars and put them back together according to my whim. Apparently Chrome doesn't even allow toolbars?

  • NbspNbsp she laughs, like God her mind's like a diamondRegistered User regular
    I certainly have a toolbar in chrome, don't know what you're seeing.

    I looked at some screenshots of internet explorer, it looks almost the same as chrome in some cases except the tabs are below the address bar.

  • wunderbarwunderbar What Have I Done? Registered User regular
    Nbsp wrote: »
    I certainly have a toolbar in chrome, don't know what you're seeing.

    I looked at some screenshots of internet explorer, it looks almost the same as chrome in some cases except the tabs are below the address bar.

    in IE you can return all of the legacy toolbars if you want. Personally I've long moved past them. Hated it at first, in any app, like Office 2007 when I first tried it, but man, a few years later, and I try to use an app that has the old style file-edit-view style toolbars and they just feel so inefficient it's kind of hilarious.

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  • NbspNbsp she laughs, like God her mind's like a diamondRegistered User regular
    Oh yea, those a pretty ridiculous. Didn't even know that's what the op was referring to.

  • jothkijothki Registered User regular
    I've not even talking about that, though of course I've turned it back on in Firefox (and removed the corner button, since the menu bar makes everything in there redundant and anything that I actually need easy access to can just go on a toolbar). From everything that I've seen, Chrome's toolbar is tiny and impossible to customize.

    Though now that I look back at it, so is Internet Explorer's. Though that's more a fault of modern Internet Explorer too. I guess I've already become so used to what Firefox lets me do that I've blanked out on what things used to be like. Having toolbars with some heft to them just feels so nice after having to deal with everything crammed together at the top.

    Though I'd probably still be hating Firefox if I hadn't found the Classic Theme Restorer addon. The newer versions of Firefox make some GUI design decisions that get in the way of what I want my browser to look like, but the addon adds a bunch of customization features that fix that.

  • ASimPersonASimPerson Cold... and hard.Registered User regular
    jothki wrote: »
    Nbsp wrote: »
    Firefox is a piece of shit, I can't believe no one recommended Chrome over firefox?

    Chrome suffers from the disadvantage of resembling Chrome, though. Firefox did as well out of the box, but I was able to fix that with an addon that lets you restore a bunch of stuff that was in earlier versions. If Chrome has something similar that can fix the interface, that would be helpful to know.

    If you like pre-FF29 Firefox: https://www.palemoon.org/ currently supports Windows and Linux with a beta version for Mac.

  • jothkijothki Registered User regular
    Just look at this gloriousness. If this is heretical, I don't want to be orthodox.

  • NbspNbsp she laughs, like God her mind's like a diamondRegistered User regular
    Chrome is almost exactly the same, but way better performance and renders pages more accurately, unlike FF which doesn't support a bunch of shit

  • tsmvengytsmvengy Registered User regular
    Yeah, I don't get what that screenshot has that every other browser doesn't. The file/edit menu? Do people still use that stuff?

    Maybe the bookmarks button, but I bet there is an extension for that OR you can have the bookmarks bar always-on in Chrome anyway.

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  • NbspNbsp she laughs, like God her mind's like a diamondRegistered User regular
    My browser actually has MORE because I have buttons for AdBlock and Pocket and some other extensions.

    Other than the File/Edit menu, my Chrome is exactly the same.

  • jothkijothki Registered User regular
    tsmvengy wrote: »
    Yeah, I don't get what that screenshot has that every other browser doesn't. The file/edit menu? Do people still use that stuff?

    Maybe the bookmarks button, but I bet there is an extension for that OR you can have the bookmarks bar always-on in Chrome anyway.

    Me, I use that stuff.

    It's mostly just a bunch of little things, like a full titlebar, a little minimally functional icon at the upper left instead of a clickable menu, and the icons and tabs shuffled around a bit. Everything where I want it, rather than being shoved off to the side in a corner menu.

  • DehumanizedDehumanized Registered User regular
    edited July 2015
    The "icon at the upper left" is actually a Windows feature for anything built in WinForms (WPF changes the convention... see Office 2010+). Chrome breaks windows UX but can't remove the functionality, so if you click on the top left corner of the window you'll get the same behavior. Another fun fact: You can close any WinForms window by double-clicking on that icon space.

    Dehumanized on
  • jothkijothki Registered User regular
    Huh, didn't know the doubleclick thing. I did know that single-clicking it brings up the right click menu for the titlebar.

  • wunderbarwunderbar What Have I Done? Registered User regular
    this is just pure curiosity, but how do you use windows explorer or any modern version of office, or any other modern app made in the past 5 years that has done away with the legacy file/edit/view menus?

    I'm trying to think of a piece of software I've used in the last several years that still has them and aside Photoshop and lightroom I'm coming up blank.

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  • jothkijothki Registered User regular
    edited July 2015
    Thankfully I've gotten used to treating windows explorer like the standard file-picker dialogs, most of the functionality that was removed from menus is still available through right-clicking.

    Though when I opened up Paint for the first time in years in order to paste and save that screenshot...ugh. Now that has to be the worst design that I've ever seen. It's like they ran down through a checklist of every single modern Windows UI element, and made sure that all of them were implemented somehow.

    Edit: I went and poked around in Windows Explorer for a bit, and was surprised to find that there isn't an in-program options menu. It still exists, but for some reason it's shuffled off to the control panel. I can see why that makes sense to put it there since it'd likely affect desktop icons as well, but why isn't there a link to it inside Windows Explorer itself?

    Edit again: The moderniest thing that I use is probably Matlab, but even then I find the ribbon to just get in the way of things that I could do more easily if it would let me have menus.

    jothki on
  • wunderbarwunderbar What Have I Done? Registered User regular
    I mean, to each their own I guess, you just literally go against every statistical metric that has been shown about UI in the last 5-6 years. There's a reason file/edit/view have gone away, and it isn't because people wanted to take away a superior option. It has been shown to be the most inefficent UI paradigm.

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  • NbspNbsp she laughs, like God her mind's like a diamondRegistered User regular
    Don't change jothki, don't change.

  • FremFrem Registered User regular
    Nbsp wrote: »
    Chrome is almost exactly the same, but way better performance and renders pages more accurately, unlike FF which doesn't support a bunch of shit

    Performance is pretty neck-and-neck in most places. Standards support is also back and forth between them. I've seen sites that break on Firefox, but it's usually the site that was doing something screwy, not Firefox.

  • NbspNbsp she laughs, like God her mind's like a diamondRegistered User regular
    edited July 2015
    Frem wrote: »
    Nbsp wrote: »
    Chrome is almost exactly the same, but way better performance and renders pages more accurately, unlike FF which doesn't support a bunch of shit

    Performance is pretty neck-and-neck in most places. Standards support is also back and forth between them. I've seen sites that break on Firefox, but it's usually the site that was doing something screwy, not Firefox.

    Pretty sure Chrome passes way more web compliance tests than firefox

    Nbsp on
  • FremFrem Registered User regular
    edited July 2015
    Nbsp wrote: »
    Frem wrote: »
    Nbsp wrote: »
    Chrome is almost exactly the same, but way better performance and renders pages more accurately, unlike FF which doesn't support a bunch of shit

    Performance is pretty neck-and-neck in most places. Standards support is also back and forth between them. I've seen sites that break on Firefox, but it's usually the site that was doing something screwy, not Firefox.

    Pretty sure Chrome passes way more web compliance tests than firefox

    I'd be interested in seeing which tests Firefox has trouble with. Do you have any links?

    Edit: I've used this site in the past. Doesn't look like either one has a huge lead?

    Frem on
  • DehumanizedDehumanized Registered User regular
    http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/the-best-browser-internet-explorer-vs-chrome-vs-firefox-vs-safari-vs-project-spartan/

    Here's the very first link I pulled out of Google. It's from back in April so the results are going to be unkind to Microsoft Edge (which was still named Project Spartan at the time), and there's certainly been improvements in most if not all of the browsers in the past few months, but it shows Chrome having a definite lead on HTML5 compliance.

    Note that, unless there's majority browser support for any given HTML5 feature, supporting said feature is mostly academic because it'd be a very bad choice as a web designer to build a feature that only a small percentage of your users could take advantage of.

  • darren66darren66 Registered User regular
    Standards compliance is silly.

    The real web standard is whatever browser works the least well between Chrome, Edge, IE and FF.

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