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.

HTML and Web 2.fail

For the most part, the concepts of Web 2.0 and other HTML and webpage driven concepts are excellent, but lost on the average user.

I remember back in the golden age of the .com bubble, when geocities was hot, and everyone had to have a page of their own creation. The biggest problem was that 90% of users were using Windows XP, which had never been customized, and Internet Explorer 6. This was the root of all problems.

First, a user would create a webpage (going beyond their means, I might add), and they'd show it to a friend.... to clarify, an unconfigured Windows XP install defaults to a screen resolution of 1024x768, which, at the time, was huge for most users (who were previously used to the Windows 9x default resolution of 640x480... or something).
Add that to the fact that they were using one of the worst browsers in the history of the internet, and you have a recipe for failure.

The page did look fine though, and to all their friends (also using 1024 wide display resolutions and IE 6), it looked fine too. but then a mac user would come along, or someone with a correctly configured display would take a look and they would wonder, what the heck was wrong with your site.

First of all, the sites were programmed by users, who didn't know how to correctly create effects you see on almost every webpage (eg. tables, graphics, etc); nor did the users understand when it was appropriate to use these technologies and when it was appropriate not to. Even something as basic as an unordered list would be beyond the scope of a users understanding.

Then add graphics, and all the various graphic editors, like paint. Where someone would create a background on paint and upload the BMP file to geocities, they would see it fine, where, the rest of us, wouldn't see it at all (because it was still loading)... Even when it did load, if the user viewing it had something non-standard, they would probably see large white bars surrounding the image that the person who created it, had no idea were there.

Now-a-days, this doesn't generally make problems, however, the reason for me reviewing all this fail that so many took part in, is because recently, someone who I regularly follow, due to blind interest in what they're doing, generated a Twitter account that had customized graphics which I couldn't understand... until I resized my browser.

Their background image is set up to be a static image so that as you scroll, it remains in the same place on the screen, which is great right? however, the image itself doesn't repeat, nor is it repetitive so it can be repeated, there's strategically placed text on both margins, and there's a white bar of nothingness just beyond the 1280 pixel line. The creator has a 13" Macbook, which has a native screen res of 1280x800, so, all of this, they cannot see, but the text meant for the right margin, on my screen, is behind the twitter feed, and the right margin just contains a large white, vertical stripe.

I'm not trying to put down or speak ill of this person, obviously they simply do not know, nor do they have the capability to check these things... but it reminds me of the days of old when people would hap-hazardly put things up not realizing that if you view them on any system that's configured slightly different, then it not only doesn't look the same, it downright looks terrible.

To the web designers out there: don't forget to check your page at several different resolutions for consistency, and check it in multiple browsers (IE, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera, etc).