The web browser is the most used application on your computer, period. Even when you’re not using it, it’s probably minimized to the taskbar/dock/panel.
Unfortunately web browsers still to this day have a fair degree of suck factor. Here are 5 reasons why web browsers suck:
1. Plugins are the browser’s own worst enemy
I call them plugins. Call then "add-ons" or "extensions" or whatever else you want. They’re plugins.
Plugins are a wonderful way to seriously screw up your browser in short order.
In Internet Explorer 8: In Manage Add-ons there is absolutely no way to uninstall anything there. Not possible. This sucks. You can "disable", but not uninstall. This is because add-ons in IE are "tied" directly to external programs. So in order to get rid of it, you must actually go uninstall the program that uses IE – assuming you know which to uninstall.
In Mozilla Firefox: Many plugins create SQL tables internally to the browser in order for them to work. On an uninstall of many different plugins, files are left behind and the SQL tables remain – in several different places. And darned if you know which tables within Firefox you’re supposed to drop. Thought you could kill this stuff with a registry/file cleaner? Wrong. Has to be done manually. This is assuming you actually know where to look.
And, of course, whenever a new version of the browser is released, plugins break.
2. Proprietary crapola
Internet Explorer is the one to blame for this catastrophe. The fact there are still web sites to this day that are "IE only" is simply ridiculous.
And if you put a tag on your site that says, "Best viewed with Firefox", that’s just as bad. You should be ashamed of yourself for doing such a thing.
3. Copy/paste text from a web page is still a nightmare
Sometimes all you want to do is copy a little piece of text rather than type it out. Good luck with that, because you’ll need it.
Some web pages have it so you can copy/paste text easily. But on others when you attempt to highlight anything this huge BLOCK of text is copied. Then when you try to adjust the highlight you made, it gets even worse.
Let’s say for the moment you’re successful in copying some text to the buffer. Okay, we’re good, right? Wrong. On paste into something as simple as Notepad these huge SPACES happen. "Wait, wait.. I didn’t copy any big-ass spaces.." Well, Mr. Browser thinks you did.
Out of frustration you just have to type out whatever you wanted to copy yourself.
4. Printing web pages is still terrible
Some web sites make it easy to print things. For example, many bank web sites smartly offer PDF versions of bank statements for print-out. This is great because PDFs always print exactly the way you see them.
But let’s say you’re not on a bank site and you want to print something out. The text is either too big or too small on the printed page, the graphics (should any exist) look terrible, and what is that font that printed? That’s not what’s on the web page..
5. Slow!
Believe it or not, there was a time when IE was a really fast browser. That was way back at version 3. And it was wonderful.
Believe it or not, there was a time when Firefox was a really fast browser. That was way back at version 1.5. And it was wonderful.
Both are now are memory hogging, plugin-infested lumps of digital slowness.
Want to know why Google Chrome and Safari appear to run faster? It’s not because of less memory consumption or faster scripting. It’s because you’re not using the same plugins as in your IE or FF.
Unfortunately most don’t like Chrome or Safari.
Am I saying to run IE or FF with no plugins at all? Well, if you can browse that way, I’d say go right ahead. Ditch the toolbars and any plugins installed to breathe life back into the browser. It will speed up quite a bit. That is until you open up a few tabs with some Flash, and then.. it.. gets.. slower.. and….. slower…… and, well.. it would be faster for you to go to the kitchen and make a sandwich.
What do you hate about web browsers the most?
Let us know by writing a comment or two.
I hate when I go to an URL and the web browser simply stop responding until the page loads. I suppose this has something to do with the way they deal with plugins. Even in tabbed browsers this happens sometimes. I end up opening another browser window to continue surfing.
I tried to use Google Chrome for some time. The first version seemed quite nice and fast, but then it started to run things in the background without my consent to update itself or doing whatever. My firewall has IDS and kept saying that some “setup.exe” was trying to run in some temp folder. At first it seemed a malware, but it was Chrome. I couldn’t find a straightforward option to disable this sucking behavior.
Then version 2 came up and I gave it a try to check if this had been fixed. But exactly the same thing happened! Chrome has some nice features and I enjoyed using it. But running stuff without my consent and without providing me a way to disable it is a no no! Maybe I’ll check it up again when the next version is released.
You’re probably referring to the Google Updater service, which I consider to be a nasty bit of software. Google products including Earth v5.0 install this whether you want it there or not. In order to disable it you must specifically launch the updater software and instruct it to disable checking for new versions (hence the setup.exe crapola). It is *not* done within the client software itself but rather the updater program. Shifty/sneaky? Yeah. A bit.
Not like we can use anything else so you just have to put up with it, don’t think it’s that bad anyways :S
Well, there’s always lynx or dillo.
Small businesses have little choice but to “target” a particular browser when developing websites, then advertising that if their user wants the best experience. There just isn’t time or money to develop for all the permutations of browsers. But yes, that is a big reason why they suck.
Great unbiased look at web browsers, though.
i want to remove print primopdf
I hate printing from browsers. There may not be a more rage-inducing feature that browsers have.
you say heres 10 reasons then only give 5?
Typo. Fixed.
For me the biggest beef I have with browsers is compatibility with websites. Being a web developer, I’d prefer if every browser would render my pages exactly the same. Seriously, the W3C exists to set a standard that nobody follows. It’s a royal pain in the .
Also, way off-topic, but there’s what looks like a smiley of some sort in the lower-left corner of the page.
http://shadowserve.ath.cx/stuff/images/smiley.png
Filehippo.com has the older versions of the browsers.
Filehippo.com has the older versions of the different browsers.
Filehippo.com has the older versions of the different browsers.
Quite often, less is better. But try to tell that to companies who bring us software.
http://browsers.evolt.org is the ultimate place to get old versions of web browsers, should you want to use them. There’s probably browsers there you never knew existed.
Some plugins/addons/extensions are very nice, and really enhance the browsing experience. If they slow your computer down, well, either upgrade your computer or don’t use plugins/addons/extensions.
But yes, the breaking when updating sucks. But that’s just going to be a fact of life when you have addons that are created and maintained by third parties.
[...] our last episode.. I talked about how much web browsers suck. But now it’s time to discuss how great they [...]
I have poor DSL service and web pages rarely load on one try. Then they rarely render correctly the first time. Why do I have to keep re-trying? If the address is one I go to 100 times every day, isn’t it brain-dead for the browser to tell me it doesn’t exist??? And why can’t the browser detect unsuccessful rendering and redo it???
I should mention that I use the Firefox tryagain add-on but it is so slow that I usually just click reload myself…
Regarding plug-ins, I installed Firefox 3.5 two days ago and I am still unable to download the Norton 360 hotfix to recover the identity toolbar (Norton FTP site does not respond)…
Wait – one more peeve – I frequently fill out a long form, e.g. for medical reimbursement. When I try to print or submit it, the link fails and all data disappears and has to be retyped. Why can’t the browser recover the filled-in page???
This has actually been a longstanding complaint of web browsers for years. You type in a bunch of info but the browser doesn’t save it in buffer if the connection fails on submitting the form. Hitting the back button doesn’t work because the browser prompts a “resend” error that means nothing, then shows the form again with nothing but white spaces where you have to type everything all over again.
The advice I give to people is this with forms: Have Windows Notepad open. Right before submitting the form, COPY AND PASTE all your form text into Notepad. If the form fails, you’ve got a “backup” so you can copy/paste it back if you have to.
I suggest this for all forms, be they for comments (like this one), blogs, forums, etc. You can’t trust the browser, so “backup” with Notepad for a quick fix.
I really hate IE. When I installed IE7 it just updated itself to IE8 that is too slow. It isn’t actually working on my laptop although it’s a DEll XPS >.< And if we talk about Firefox then I have to say that it works better for me than IE but I prefer Google Crome!!!! I just love it and don’t understand why others don’t like it!! It’s easy to use, comfortable, fast and not so complicated as IE or FF. I can quickly favorite my fav sites and I see them on top of the screen.
Well, I recommend Google Crome ^_^
Oh, thank you for the article – it was very interesting ^_^
Nothing is standard, anywhere on the desktop for browsers. The best you get is a loose set of agreements so many users have to have a couple of browsers so that they can actually see some of the cutting edge sites.
I could go on forever with my peeves about every web browser that is out now. IE(8) is just too buggy and finicky. It is hard to just let an entire site / page run without jumping through hoops and clicking on permissions. Even when you give a site the okay, it still restricts sub-addresses and the security (privacy report) window is a mess. Try approving every little address in that window – there can be hundreds of them!
Firefox 3.5 is just not as compatible as the previous ones – and it is notorious for breaking addons!. It’s slow and freezes up more often than any version of FF I’ve ever used.
Opera is my favorite “alternate” browser – but the lack of compatible apps that I commonly use drives me insane, and whenever I go to Facebook it feels speedy and responsive – but I get signed out for some reason I don’t know.
Safari is cute and all that, but over time it has gotten slow and lacks third party support that I need almost as bad as Opera.
Almost all of the browsers have major problems with Flash and Quicktime.
So you get what you get – and lately we haven’t gotten much worth praising in the way of browser performance.