Comments on: Why is IE7 different?

By: David Weinberger

David Weinberger — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 16:14:04 +0000

Rich, I use Firefox all the time, and have to resort to IE7 maybe once every couple of weeks. And, like you, I find IE7 really hard to use now. But you and I aren’t the ones Microsoft has in mind, if indeed they are playing the game Paul English suggests. They’re after the IE user who looks into Firefox because they’ve heard it’s so much better.

By: ken

ken — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 10:24:09 +0000

at least they didn’t put a brown skin on it, like that iZune thing ;)

By: Rich Magee

Rich Magee — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 23:14:44 +0000

Ironically, I find myself in just the opposite situation that you describe: I use Firefox 90% of the time, and I’m finding that IE 7 is the pain in the butt instead! Since IE’s button placement isn’t matching up to FF’s, I find IE to be the hard one to work with. Once I went to FF, it would be hard to go back.

By: Jay Fienberg

Jay Fienberg — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 19:25:05 +0000

The conspiracy theory is plausible, IMO. But, the browser UI conventions we have now in Firefox and earlier browsers largely come from 1990s Mosaic and early Netscape Navigator.

Mozilla does incredible and often innovative work, but user interface design is not a major area of their focus. So, it’s possible that someone could make the web browser “better” by making its UI “better.”

Microsoft seems to be focusing on UI design more now than in the past, as I think they have come to terms with the fact that they’re losing ground to competitors who offer superior interface design / user experience (e.g., Zune vs iPod).

Since IE 6 set a standard of stagnation in browser development, and we don’t tend to notice areas where Firefox’s design has stagnated, as much as we notice areas where Firefox is far outpacing the IE 6 standard.

So, it’s interesting to imagine that IE 7 might set a higher standard that spurs on cool new stuff from Mozilla and Apple (Safari) as well.