Internet Explorer Woes

As time rolls on, I sometimes get to wondering why people still use IE. It's simple enough I guess: buy a computer, use the internet. This happens to be Internet Explorer, and that's fine for most people.

Anyone I know, who seems to think they know anything about computers at all, is using Firefox. A good choice. I use Chrome as my primary browser of choice, and fall back on FF for anything that Chrome seems to choke on (not much). if that doesn't work, I'll fall back to IE8, just to see if it will work, and if that doesn't fix the problem the website is having, I usually chalk it up to webpage design and move on.

HOWEVER, IE has so many quirks and quarks.

Working in IT, it's plainly obvious that IE relies on jscript.dll for the javascript function calls. It's also plainly obvious that the Java runtime included with Windows/IE is terrible, at best. It's almost always replaced with Sun Microsystem's JRE. It's also plainly obvious that without Javascript, almost all flash will not function, since the calls made to make the Flash work, is largely JScript fueled.

There lies your three most problematic components of IE. Now, I'm sure FF isn't terribly better, but seems so, because not as many inexperienced users (who are getting viruses and messing up settings) are using it.

So, if JScript works, and Java works and Flash works, you usually have a good-enough browser for anyone.

Here's the problem. it seems, that 64-bit dll's and 32-bit applications don't mix well.
In Microsoft's "infinite wisdom", Internet Explorer 8, 32-bit and 64-bit, both use the same registry keys for normal operation, which streamlines settings. If IE8 32-bit gets setup for a proxy, then the 64-bit version will also use that same proxy.

The problem lies in the fact that once the 64-bit jscript.dll file takes over the registry key, you're basically FUBAR for getting javascript to run in 32-bit IE. While Javascript will run in the 64-bit IE, nothing else really works well, or at all.

Sure, there's a 64-bit workaround for Flash, and a 64-bit JRE from Sun, but installation is painful at best and nothing, besides those three things would ever work with the browser, probably for many years (possibly ever).

This has all become painfully obvious to me since I had a customer at work who has a copy of Windows 7, Home Premium, x64, with both 32 and 64 bit Internet Explorers, installed.

Personally, I havn't found a good solution for the customer. I was excited to give it a good try today when I saw the chat session (at the time, upwards of 30 hours connected), drop into the queue. I'll also be looking for them tomorrow and the next day, hoping to pick up their chat. (I may even give them a call back to try to resolve it).

I suspect reassigning the jscript.dll to the 32-bit version would fix the issues they're having... I would just need to make sure they won't accidentally drop into the 64 bit version.

Two questions remain for that: first, where the heck is the jscript.dll reference in the registry for IE? second, would the system even have the 32-bit jscript.dll installed?

I'm not sure of either, but I'm excited to try.