What does Edge do that Internet Explorer doesn't that would make it even the slightest bit desirable?
Not to mention over other popular browsers (*cough* Chrome *cough* Firefox).
I've yet to run across anyone giving even the slightest hint as to why they would prefer to use Edge, other than they like riding the XAML bandwagon or are too naïve to know they can reconfigure the default Windows 10 browser.
I even did performance comparisons. Internet Explorer rendered every page I tried - even complex ones - as fast or faster than Edge, in every single case.
I have not used a browser from MSFT ig years. they just suck ass too bad. I to this day STILL have the forefox 1.0 version that i started with. before that i believe netscape was my prefered browser!
Post by Bayer A.User on Feb 19, 2016 10:42:55 GMT -6
JeezLouise i can doodle on a webpage in real time ! Nifto Neato ! I can delete all my bing search history...wait a sec.. No, i can't log in with my deactivated msa
no,Edge doesn't offer any advantages in the real world.
So far the very best (only?) reason I've heard to run Edge is because it's out there, and web pages need to be tested with it.
Who funds the development of such bullshit? How does that project get approved? Do people sit around and go, "IE sucks so let's take its guts out and put it in a XAML window, which sucks just as bad - the two will get along."
>Reader view which removes all ads?
Not applicable here. I see no ads anyway, and I sure as hell don't want the browser full screen.
I thought you were doing the hosts file thing already to trash ads/tracking/malware, Mike.
-Noel
Author of the "How to Configure the 'To Work' Options" series of Windows books. Not feeling enough love to do one for Windows 10.
You still would prefer the browser content filling the full window without the white blocks where the ads are supposed to be right? Hey, you wanted a reason so I put one out there.
Honestly, I've never craved the empty spaces be filled in. Their being there, empty, actually gives me a feeling of triumph. I just read the content where it normally is. With lots of monitor space quite a lot of it is still showing on most sites.
Don't get me wrong; I'm not complaining - thank you for listing a potential reason that's a real feature, such as it is!
-Noel
Author of the "How to Configure the 'To Work' Options" series of Windows books. Not feeling enough love to do one for Windows 10.
Post by Bayer A.User on Feb 23, 2016 7:58:48 GMT -6
I don't believe they created Edge to be better than iex11. Edge is about integration with Cortana and all the other aspects of 10. Thats why it does'nt have the numerous options that "internet properties" provides iex. Also,that would explain why they continue to support iex11 for enterprise use where safety is paramount as opposed to doodling on a twitter webpage.
Except for the weak default settings,nothin' wrong with iex11.
My personal favorite is Opera. current version 35.0.2066.68 for windows PC's.
I almost exclusively used Internet explorer until version 11 came out. Since then, I've been bouncing around trying out other browsers mostly because I've grown tired of seeing that error message that my browser is "out of date and I need to upgrade" !!!, Huh? I've played with Edge, but personally I haven't had much use for it either.
Can't say I've had any problems with Internet Explorer myself. It delivers what I need.
"Out of date and need to upgrade"?
Not seen that here.
Sounds like possibly something being delivered to your browser from some site that will not be visited if you're using my hosts file generator to blacklist badware sites.
Also, deconfigure its ability to run ActiveX and the fancy scripting features from the wild Internet. Like Bayer said, the default security settings are lacking.
Can't say I've had any problems with Internet Explorer myself. It delivers what I need.
"Out of date and need to upgrade"?
Not seen that here.
Sounds like possibly something being delivered to your browser from some site that will not be visited if you're using my hosts file generator to blacklist badware sites.
Also, deconfigure its ability to run ActiveX and the fancy scripting features from the wild Internet. Like Bayer said, the default security settings are lacking.
-Noel
The following is an extreme example of what I have encountered and I know there have been many complaints about it on answers.microsoft.com. Usually, what happens when you encounter a web site that doesn't like IE-11, you will get another screen telling you your Internet Explorer Browser is out of date and gives you an option to upgrade to a supposedly newer version of IE or you can pick something else such as Firefox. Sometimes, you can by-pass this screen and continue onto the site though you end up dealing with scripting errors in addition to the page not looking right. The other option is to hit the F12 key for Developer Tools, check the and re-adjust the IE version level and refresh the page as I have indicated in my pictures. The only problem with this is the moment you close the F12 screen, the setting is lost and the page reverts.
That web page comes up fine here, after a short delay. The delay is because of the server it appears - a look at the HTTP traffic shows that the site is just slow to deliver its responses (many of them are between 100 and 200 ms, and the page script seems to be waiting for responses in many cases before issuing the next GET commands.
IE ends up in Edge mode and renders the page just fine without any intervention from me.
I wonder what you have configured differently than I have.
What Add-ons do you have enabled? I have a bare minimum.
The above test was on Win 8.1, but it also works fine in Win 10, except that in Win 10 it shows 11 instead of "Edge".
LOL, the Add-ons page is just broken in Windows 10 build 14267 (note the Status).
The above was my re-tweaker test setup. My stable Win 10 build 10586 setup also works with that page, but actually shows proper status for Add-ons:
My pictures were taken from my Windows 10 Stock install partition where I was testing with your Windows 10 Re-Tweaker program. Nothing else was added or configured. On my Win10 Preview partition, I get exactly the same thing happening. I've just re-checked going to that web page on in Edge and in a couple of other browsers on my Win10 Preview system, No problems in displaying the page either except for IE. Curious thing though, I do not have an Edge option for versioning when I checked using the F12 Developer Tools in IE-11.
It was my Win 8.1 setup that shows "Edge". I mentioned that above in an edit. "Edge" mode was Microsoft's nomenclature for "the latest" right up until they split Edge off from IE.
I can't explain why your setup won't display that particular page. All I can say is that it works here, and I suggest that settings differences may be responsible.
You have a lot more Add-ons enabled than I do on my Win 10 or 8.1 systems. I'd start looking at what happens if you disable them. As quickly as I can after installing a new system I turn off IE's ability to do ActiveX, and as I said, there's not a whole lot I'm prevented from doing.
By the way, version 1.5 of my Windows10Retweaker script no longer disables the diagnosticshub.standardcollector.service, which is needed to see network traffic with IE's F12 Developer Tools mode.
What does Edge do that Internet Explorer doesn't that would make it even the slightest bit desirable?
Not to mention over other popular browsers (*cough* Chrome *cough* Firefox).
I've yet to run across anyone giving even the slightest hint as to why they would prefer to use Edge, other than they like riding the XAML bandwagon or are too naïve to know they can reconfigure the default Windows 10 browser.
I even did performance comparisons. Internet Explorer rendered every page I tried - even complex ones - as fast or faster than Edge, in every single case.
Your thoughts?
Well. . . I think this is where our biggest disagreement lies, but since you asked, I guess I'll share my perspective on the "browser wars" too. The biggest reason to use Microsoft Edge over Internet Explorer is the same reason you'd use Firefox or Chrome over Internet Explorer: Up to date technology support and speed. Internet Explorer has always been way behind compared to Firefox or Chrome, and as development has been shifted to Edge, it is unlikely to see Internet Explorer improve much from where it is now. But then the question is "Why use Edge when there's Firefox or Chrome?" There isn't really a good reason; Edge isn't even touch friendly like the Metro Internet Explorer in Windows 8 attempted to be, so you might as well use a real web browser (Firefox/Chrome) regardless of platform.
Just for example, below are the test results for two tests—HTML5 test (a technology support test), and Peacekeeper (a browser performance test):
The features Firefox is missing are mostly trivial things like specialized input selectors. Internet Explorer (and Edge) are missing important things that can make some pages not work correctly, or increase compatibility efforts needed by web designers. Internet Explorer has been nothing but a pain to us web designers and a serious security vulnerability for average PC users for over a decade, and as such receives only my disgust for holding back web technology and helping infect computers. IMHO, all Internet Explorer is useful for is downloading Firefox. And recently, while setting up a brand new Windows 10 computer for a customer, it wouldn't even do that and I had to bring Firefox in via a USB drive (silly SmartScreen blocked Firefox and wouldn't let me ignore the warning). That makes it completely useless—even if only for a week (Microsoft resolved the issue).
Anyway, while Internet Explorer 11 isn't missing very many features that will cause pages to render incorrectly without annoying and specialized workarounds (unlike previous versions, particularly 9 and earlier), it is still missing some rather important features that Firefox, Chrome and Opera all support:
Internet Explorer 11
Microsoft Edge 14
Mozilla Firefox 44
Google Chrome 48
Chromium Opera 35
Responsive images
X
X
X
X
WebM media container (for Opus, Vorbis, VP8, VP9)
X
X
X
Ogg media container (for Opus, Vorbis, Theora)
X
X
X
Theora video
X
X
X
VP8 video
X
X
X
VP9 video
X
X
X
Opus audio (world's best, universal and open source audio codec, mandatory to implement WebRTC standard for over 3 years! Also used by YouTube for HiFi audio.)
X
X
X
Vorbis audio
X
X
X
PCM audio
X
X
X
X
Web audio API
X
X
X
X
2D graphics blending
X
X
X
X
2D graphics path
X
X
X
Secure iFrame with inline contents
X
X
X
X
Content security policy
1.0
1.1
1.1
1.1
Shared workers (for performance)
X
X
X
X
Web Notifications
X
X
X
WebRTC (Real Time Communication)
Object
X
X
X
Webcam access
X
X
X
X
There—that's my take on why to use Edge over Internet Explorer.
Last Edit: Feb 24, 2016 0:49:51 GMT -6 by Techie007: Fixed formatting
Microsoft, is Windows 10 the best you could do? Really? After promising to listen to our feedback, what a letdown!
Post by Bayer A.User on Feb 24, 2016 5:28:32 GMT -6
I went through the same thing with iex denying downloads for a week or so. Vista with iex9, same problem. Win7 with iex11 ? Don't recall. Win10 with iex11, Yep ! Refused download of MSRtool from MSFT webpage ! Like you say,they fixed it since then.
Browsers are like ex wives, when one gives you problems just use the other.
Thanks to Techie007 for the complete, informed post, though last I checked - and I admit it's been MONTHS - I found IE to render complete actual real-world web pages equally fast and in some cases faster than Edge. I love benchmarks but responsiveness in real use is the performance I find most important. Perhaps I will try doing some more testing again with my Win 10 build 14267... I'm motivated.
I have for a long time been saying that it's likely that given enough attention the XAML realm will ultimately grow up and finally start to deliver some "must have" Apps. I'm not sure the feature columns you laid out inspire me, though... I have no need nor want for my browser to have "Webcam Access", for example. As for the others, I suppose it's possible I don't know what I'm missing, but the bottom line for me is this:
IE starts instantly and when I browse to a given site it shows me the content (and nothing else) usually in a fraction of a second. I guess when that stops happening I'll look for an alternative.
What I don't know right now about Edge is whether as much of it is locked-down as with my reconfigured IE settings. I know it doesn't run ActiveX (a plus), but does Edge allow scripts to do more things? I have disabled all but the minimal scripting support for sites in the Internet Zone on IE.
I *do* know that Edge requires UAC to be on, and that's just a non-starter for me at the present time.
-Noel
Author of the "How to Configure the 'To Work' Options" series of Windows books. Not feeling enough love to do one for Windows 10.
OK, I created a standard user account on my 14267 VM.
Time to do some comparative, side-by-side checking. IE on the left (it's more conservative, after all) and Edge on the right.
Test 1 - my business web page
As you can see above, both render my own web page correctly though Edge takes more vertical screen space to do it owing to the big touch icons and tons of wasted space at the top. IE has wasted space too, but just not as much, and it looks more elegant. Comparative timing: Both painted the page in an eyeblink (literally probably 0.2 seconds). Not a surprise - I don't load my web pages up with crap. Too close to call, but IE wins the round for being "slightly prettier".
Test 2 - this Win 10 Epic Fail site
IE paints the banner on the home page a little bigger, and fits about half a line vertically more on the page. Timings in seconds to paint the page (multiple samples taken for each):
Since this site can be balky, I opened the "Developing a Windows Update Strategy..." thread by following the link from the Recent Threads box.
Edge showed the thread in 3.8 seconds - just long enough to start to notice that it was taking a while. I scrolled by dragging the (fairly narrow) scroll thumb and the experience is nearly interactive and smooth. Quite a pleasant surprise.
IE showed the thread in 3.6 seconds. Not much different than Edge. I scrolled by dragging the thumb (which is a little more space-wasting than the one in Edge) and the response was choppy as hell.
Summary: IE seemed to get to each new page a fraction of a second faster, but once on the site Edge made the interactive experience smoother. Almost a tie, but in my subjective judgment I'd give a slight edge to, well, Edge in this case for making the experience a bit more pleasant.
Test 3 - Youtube
As before, initial browsing to the page is slightly faster with IE - 2.2 seconds vs. 2.4 for it to be painted. Once there, as you can see both browsers gave an indication that the ad on the top part was blocked. Edge's message was slightly more readable.
Scrolling down through the video thumbnails with the mouse wheel was equally interactive and smooth on both browsers.
Clicking on the "STAR WARS: A Bad Lip Reading" video thumbnail brought the video page up in about the same amount of time (around 2 seconds), again with a missing ad, and the video played fine with both browsers.
Following quite a number of additional links, even to the point where I had videos playing in two tabs in each browser, worked equally well. All videos played fine. The audio mixed well in all cases.
Verdict: Near tie game - everything worked as expected in both browsers - with a slight overall nod to IE for completing the rendering each new page visited a few tenths of a second faster.
In summary, as I found before IE is consistently quicker to render pages initially , though I did find it interesting that Edge made the scrolling experience in one case smoother and more interactive. This forum is pretty much the only site I've ever experienced choppy scrolling like that in IE (maybe it's that gray arrow overlay thing on the right, I don't know). Notably both browsers scroll here smoothly when the mouse wheel is used (rather than dragging the thumb).
IE Pros: IE is quicker to reach a given site, doesn't need UAC enabled to run, is more efficient to use vertical screen space.
IE Cons: IE wastes a tiny bit more horizontal screen space (fatter scroll bars), and doesn't composite the W10 Epic Fail site quite as interactively.
I welcome your suggestions for further comparative testing! I'd especially like to hear about other sites that make it attractive to use browsers other than IE or Edge. Though I actually HAVE those browsers on hand, I'm pretty much in a condition where I don't know what I'm missing, since I don't use them much at all.
I almost exclusively used Internet explorer until version 11 came out. Since then, I've been bouncing around trying out other browsers mostly because I've grown tired of seeing that error message that my browser is "out of date and I need to upgrade" !!!, Huh? I've played with Edge, but personally I haven't had much use for it either.
Here is another example of what I've been talking about. You can navigate to the general website with no problems, it's when I was trying to log-in, the error shows up. Upon checking the F12 key Developers Tools option, the browser tells me it has defaulted to IE7. When I reset this to IE11, I can then view the webpage as long as I keep the F12 window up. I don't have this kind of problem when using other browsers including Edge. It's like Microsoft is purposely trying to discourage people from using Internet Explorer.
Post by Bayer A.User on Feb 29, 2016 17:30:56 GMT -6
Interesting, is it possible that 's an example of "Enterprise Mode" in IEX11 ? A recent security update for IEX11 ,KB3134814: included a mystery hotfix KB3141092 that fixed sites written for iex7,8,9 not rendering in iex11. Enterprise (compatibility)mode is supposed to emulate older versions of iex.
I almost exclusively used Internet explorer until version 11 came out. Since then, I've been bouncing around trying out other browsers mostly because I've grown tired of seeing that error message that my browser is "out of date and I need to upgrade" !!!, Huh? I've played with Edge, but personally I haven't had much use for it either.
Here is another example of what I've been talking about. You can navigate to the general website with no problems, it's when I was trying to log-in, the error shows up. Upon checking the F12 key Developers Tools option, the browser tells me it has defaulted to IE7. When I reset this to IE11, I can then view the webpage as long as I keep the F12 window up. I don't have this kind of problem when using other browsers including Edge. It's like Microsoft is purposely trying to discourage people from using Internet Explorer.
Here is another example of what I've been talking about. You can navigate to the general website with no problems, it's when I was trying to log-in, the error shows up. Upon checking the F12 key Developers Tools option, the browser tells me it has defaulted to IE7. When I reset this to IE11, I can then view the webpage as long as I keep the F12 window up. I don't have this kind of problem when using other browsers including Edge. It's like Microsoft is purposely trying to discourage people from using Internet Explorer.
I think you must have something misconfigured, because it just doesn't do that for me!
I'm willing to compare notes in detail. Let me know whether and where you want to start...
I can get to the login screen well enough. The error comes up when I actually try to log-in. The same sort of thing has happened to me on a few other sites and it has even happened to me back when I was still running IE-11 under Windows 7.
I've just tried going back to this particular web site on my other Win10 setup. This one has been left as a stock install other than applying your Win10 ReTweaker program to it. I've also just tried it on another computer here running IE-11 under Windows 7, 64-Bit edition. The same error still comes up on both computers when I try to log-in on that particular webpage. So where would you like to start to comparing notes?
I created an account and logged-in (tried it both on Win 8.1 and 10). Still no problem.
Something's clearly different between our systems. I don't know what I've done right to make IE more compatible, but I've apparently done it everywhere.
I went and reset my IE settings to default and tried the website again, still no go. So, I proceeded to match my setting to yours and I did find some differences to what settings are available between yours and mine. It looks like some of it is due to OS differences. I'm currently on Win10 Pro x86 (32-Bit), Build 14271. I have few Add-Ons with most of them disabled. I did notice you have an extra one called "Classic IE Settings" which I'm assuming came with Classic Shell or was it just a separate one you had installed? Anyway, even after adjusting my setting to match yours, I still get the error. I did not touch settings that that were different between us. I also re-booted my system just to be sure.
Here are my screen shots of the differences in IE Settings I have found:
Mine is Win 10 Pro build 10586. This could imply IE is being systematically degraded as we speak. That is NOT good. What could be even more interesting is that according to the About box at least some part of my version of IE may actually be newer than yours. Why does one piece of software need so many different version identifiers?
Yes, the Classic IE Settings Add-on is part of Classic Shell. At least I thought so, though it's pretty interesting how a Publisher is not shown. I'm going to make very sure what that's from.
Edit: Yes, it's considered an "extension", loaded via registry key "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Extensions", and lives in file: C:\Program Files\Classic Shell\classicie_32.exe
I checked the dates and the specific file is definitely part of the latest distribution of Classic Shell. It's main function SEEMS to be to add "Classic IE Settings" to IE's Tools menu, though I'm not sure whether it has other functions as well. Can we imagine that Classic Shell is correcting a misbehavior in IE somehow? I tried disabling it and found no change in behavior with regard to the Workopolis site, so, no, I don't think so.
I don't think I'm getting into Enterprise Mode, as the web page shows 11.
The question really boils down to what have I done - on both my Win 8.1 and 10 systems, that you have not done? Or what have you done that I have not done?
I'm open to ideas.
-Noel
P.S., I can see why this would frustrate you. I hope you can see why I have more respect for IE.
<Rick> Good video. It's almost hard to believe that at one time Windows 98 was the resource hog, but even then, it still ran circles around what Windows 10 can do on today's modern hardware and look a heck of alot better doing it.
May 25, 2021 22:55:12 GMT -6
<Rick> As stated elsewhere, So much for the launch of Windows 11, "The Great Crash." Myself, I had a hard time getting into the site listed above, when I did get in, the video was partly done and then it crashed. There has been many other reports of crashing.
Jun 24, 2021 9:52:33 GMT -6
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<Rick> I see Microsoft has been very quick to pull down reports of site crashing regarding the Launch of Windows 11 on the Microsoft Insiders forum.
Jun 24, 2021 9:57:31 GMT -6
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<Rick> The rebroadcast is working okay.
Jun 24, 2021 11:00:25 GMT -6
<Rick> With reports of people being able to install the dev-edition of Windows 11 on machines not meeting spec, I thought I would give it a what-the-heck try. Lucky me, I'm caught in the downloading, doesn't meet spec, clearing, re-downloading loop on my machine!
Jul 2, 2021 7:08:46 GMT -6
<Rick> I've recently purchased a license for ArcaOS from www.arcanoae.com/ to play with. First impressions, it's still OS/2, but it now has a Linux twist to it.
Jul 2, 2021 7:32:53 GMT -6
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<dozrguy> laptop shit out and am stuck buying a new one. os win11 as fucked as win10 was?
Oct 2, 2021 12:56:10 GMT -6
<Rick> Let's see ..., my impression of Windows 11 is that it is a spruced up version of Windows 10 requiring a 64-bit processor plus a piece of security hardware that is less than 4 years old in order for it to run.
Oct 4, 2021 18:25:49 GMT -6
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<Rick> On the plus side, Microsoft is supposed to be supporting Windows 10 for some time to come for those of us still using systems with I7 or older processors.
Oct 4, 2021 18:44:35 GMT -6
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<dozrguy> i tried installing win10 om the 'shitout' pc this morning usung media creation. EPIC FAIL! went into an endless bootloop. win7 reinstalled just fine
Oct 21, 2021 11:23:38 GMT -6
<dozrguy> STILL so much bullshit and so little time for the kiddie ideas from the hill. My new laptop (MSI GE 11-UH461) would be an awesome "10" machine but because of Winblows I can only give it a "2"......wasted $3500
Oct 27, 2021 9:36:47 GMT -6
<Rick> Hello. Just checking in.
Mar 17, 2022 10:46:54 GMT -6
<isidroco> Each new w10 update adds >100000 useless files to \Windows\Servicing\LCU\Package_for_RollupFix... folders. Even in a SSD takes time to delete that stuff. In each version they manage to worsen stuff.
Mar 27, 2022 16:14:51 GMT -6
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<dozerguy> still traffic here?
Oct 9, 2022 17:32:44 GMT -6
<Rick> No, there does not seem to be very much traffic these days. I still check in from time to time.
Oct 9, 2022 20:08:58 GMT -6