If you were a good little Windows users and still use Internet Explorer, the latest !CRITICAL! patches may cause your computer to crash if you visit certain sites.
If you pay for Microsoft support, don’t visit their special site: it’s one of the “problem sites.”
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Established: 21 November 2004
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4 comments
…some video’s at MSNBC (another small irony, eh?) are absolutely crashing my laptop all the way to the “hold the power button down for 5 seconds” wall. I guess I’ll stay a Mozilla guy and not watch the video’…
Probably part of the same problem as compression seems to be involved in the conflict.
I have a fully patched version of IE, but only because HP uses it for their update, not giving me the option of Firefox.
HP uses it for their update, not giving me the option of Firefox.
That is understandable for Microsoft but inexcusable for any other vendor.
For one thing, the constructs and technologies once missing in non-Microsoft browsers (e.g., all the XMLHttpRequest stuff and the oh-so-essential innerHTML property) are now present at least in Firefox and, I believe, all the other Mozilla/Gecko/etc.-based browsers, so there’s really no reason to go outside the de facto standard feature set even if you exceed the W3C DOM a bit.
For another, if it’s too much bother to restrain oneself just a bit on the use of features, there are libraries that can insulate you from the differences. I don’t use ’em, though I’m thinking about using the Yahoo! UI library (free BSD license) for AJAX stuff.
Does HP think its customers won’t notice? does it have a deal with Bill? or are its web developers just lazy? Nah… not lazy. Someone ordered this.
On my current job, the specified target platform is recent versions of IE, but I’m testing occasionally in Firefox just so that when they change their minds they won’t be stuck.
As for the Windows patches, I applied ’em, but the only negative effect so far is a strange empty error message popped when I start SQL Server Management Studio. Dismiss the message and everything works fine. Sheesh!
HP has integrated IE in all of their “helper” programs, their update program, just about everything. It’s probably part of a bulk licensing agreement, and probably illegal, but that’s the way the business is.
I get a lot of stupid meaningless messages, that require nothing more than a click to get rid of, but I have to click.
I see no point in limiting yourself to a particular platform, especially in business. Making things difficult for potential customers is not a winning practice.