Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

IE6 SP1 Will Be Last Standalone Version

Posted by michael on from the end-of-an-era dept.

mokiejovis writes "Program manager Brian Countryman stated that "as part of the OS, IE will continue to evolve, but there will be no future standalone installations. IE6 SP1 is the final standalone installation." See the Microsoft TechNet article." Several of the people submitting this story have come up with elaborate theories about why: killing competition, etc. etc. I think the truth is just that Microsoft intends to integrate DRM very tightly with their OS and browser, and they're aren't going to try to backport that to, say, Win98, so they just aren't going to release new versions of their browser for old, DRM-less operating systems. In the future server-side browser detection may be more about detecting whether the browser supports the DRM your "web service" uses than what version of Javascript or CSS the browser supports.

4 of 723 comments (clear)

  1. Re:No more bugs in IE! Yea! by shepd · · Score: 5, Informative

    >Does this mean Microsoft will just abandon all of their users still running older versions of Windows?

    Yes. They already have for windows 95. Windows 98 isn't far down the road, as is ME.

    --
    If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
  2. Re:No more bugs in IE! Yea! by gordyf · · Score: 5, Informative

    They're referring to IE6 SP1 as a version number, like Mozilla 1.4 RC1. They aren't referring to the service pack itself.

    And yes, they will abandon older versions of Windows. Do they still support Windows 3.1?

  3. Re:So how exactly has IE evolved in the last 5 yea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative
    MS and DOM, you must be kidding.

    Opera, Konqueror and Mozilla supports more DOM modules than MSIE 6 SP1.

    On MS website, they clam that.

    The Internet Explorer team has put a great deal of effort into providing fast and stable implementations of 100 percent of CSS 1 and 100 percent of DOM level 1 with this [MSIE6] release. With the emergence of other browser versions over the last year supporting these standards, this is clearly a step forward in interoperability of browsers. [1]
    This is not true....

    According to Microsoft own claims, through the document.implementation.hasFeature() method, Microsoft Internet explorer 6sp1 claims that it do not support DOM Level 1 HTML, but the DOM Level 1 XML returns true on the support question.

    But...the node-type constraint, which is defined by the Node interface is not defined my MSIE6 SP1. In other words, Microsoft do not support ANY DOM modules at all.

    Microsoft believes very strongly in Internet standards and the standards process, and is committed to implementing appropriate standards when driven by customer demand. [1]
    Oh, so just send in a lot of Mail to M$... You all know that MSIE have full PNG support[2] since MSIE 4.... Thats what they promisted[3].

    ----
    Mike Menk
    Grimstad,Norway.

    [1] http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url= /library/en-us/dndude/html/dude03262001.asp
    [2] http://osys.grm.hia.no/html-repguiden/sshoot/
    [3] http://www.petitiononline.com/msiepng/petition.htm l

  4. Re:Browser detection by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Go to This school's online student services with Mozilla/Firebird/Opera/Konqueror/Lynx. Note that faking the user agent string doesn't always help. The best part is that the actual page and its services work perfectly with Mozilla/Firebird/Konqueror. I assume several other institutions have bought this services package (Pipeline), and that there are other services packages from different companies with similar checks.

    So, yes, real places still give the 'download or die' messages.