phil wilson :: a geek commodity

8:30 PM

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Wednesday, February 04, 2004

Until recently I’d forgotten how much Internet Explorer lags behind in the browser stakes from a user perspective as opposed to a developer perspective. No tabs, no mouse gestures, minimal customisation of menus. Rubbish. Of course, you can get MyIE2 to cure most of these ills, but then that comes with its own bloat, including over-complicated menus and preferences dialogs, inconsistent internal behaviour (such as how to close tabs) and (as far as I can see) a completely uncustomisable menu. Rubbish.

Interestingly, whenever I’m demoing the latest site I’ve put together to someone, it’s always under Firebird, and they never notice the difference from IE until I use a mouse gesture (I have the gesture trails turned on), at which point, to a man, they’ve all gone “hey, that’s good, is that IE?” at which point I go “Nah, it’s called Firebird, it’s a free download from the web, it’s really quick, too” which almost always sells them more on it than any lecture on web standards would.