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Microsoft Wins Browser War, Abandons 'Innovation'
rocketjam writes "Web developers are expressing frustration with Microsoft's apparent abandonment of its 'operating-system-integrated' Internet Explorer web browser. An article on C-Net points up the efforts of the Web Standards Project as well as Adobe Systems to prompt Microsoft to fix long-standing Cascading Style Sheet bugs in IE as well as continuing to add other improvements which have virtually ceased since Microsoft won the browser war. While alternatives such as the Mozilla Project and the Opera browser still exist, their marketshare is miniscule." In a related story, an anonymous reader points out that the bugs aren't just in rendering, they're security holes as well: "iDefense and eEye have basically said that Internet Explorer is full of holes and just surfing the Web using it is "unsafe". There's 31 un-patched holes in IE, but MS won't talk about it... It took them nearly a month to roll out a new patch after this one was found to be more or less useless."
Huh. I wish.
Wait - Microsoft are going to be the first browser developers to release the new innovative "Do you want to run this plugin? [OK]" pop-up technology! They're way ahead of the game!
Jolyon
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
this is a classic sign of monopoly. no incentive to change, no incentive to repair, no incentive to improve, no incentive to innovate.
Integrate browser into OS. Continue working on OS, ignore browser.
Would work fine if the browser wasn't a point of failure for the OS. How do they expect to secure the entire package when pieces of it are so full of holes?
Just an honest question.
MS needs to either secure IE, or remove it from their core OS installation (make it an addon) if they're really serious about security IMO.
The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
...but "winning" seems to be accurate if the stats at thecounter.com and W3Schools are at all trustworthy.
On the other hand, I'm not sure if, in these numbers, "Netscape" includes "Mozilla".
P.S. This HTTP POST request sent by Mozilla.
The Army reading list
Let's get Apple to port Safari to Windows just like it is doing with iTunes.
It's a bloody great browser... although having thought about it, theres no reason for Apple to let the hoardes have its pretty software for nothing...
I can tell you this though... if you think your browsing and computing experience is slowing down in terms of innovation and invention, switch to the OSX platform... my god, there's enough new stuff every week to make you do a sex wee.
-Nex
This sig has been deprecated.
Let's see what happens after a year or so. First, the whole security thing is a BIG issue now. It's no longer a discussion amongst geeks. As more and more companies and the government buckle down on their security initiatives, they will either force Microsoft to have a secure browser (anyone want to predict the probability this will happen?) or they will abandon IE for more secure browsers.
Safari is making (understatement?) inroads on the Mac side and Macs are picking up momentum. Safari can tandem on that aspect alone.
Let's not forget...the tide really can change. Remember when Netscape was the undeniable champion? Look where they are now. Who's to say this can't happen to IE?
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
I switched to Mozilla a few months ago. Not out of zeal, but because Mozilla's better software. And it's hard to beat that native pop-up blocking. Using Mozilla, I forget that the web is infested with pop-up ads. When I have to use IE for some reason, I'm quickly reminded.
Really, why should they add more feauters now when they've won. It's sad but still true, average Jennie won't download a 5-15MB browser when she gets it with her 'internet ready' computer, esepcially not when most large websites 'optimize for ie'. The users thinks the problems is with opera/mozilla/ns when they can't use sites they've always been able to access with their beloved explorer
This is hardly surprising. Microsoft's intention was never to build the greatest browser, but to simply build a browser that would net them the largest market share. With the other big player out of the way now, there's little incentive for further "innovation".
IMO, this is one of the fundamental differences between Open Source and commercial standard development. OS projects are often made "for fun" or "for advancement of technology X", whereas commercial projects are usually (!) made "for profit". Both have their places, they just use different mind-sets: academic or business.
"While alternatives such as the Mozilla Project and the Opera browser still exist, their marketshare is miniscule." :P
A small current marketshare can in no way infer that "The Browser Wars are Over" and that Internet Explorer will ALWAYS be the de-facto standard. Sure, Mozilla may have not have a huge marketshare at the moment, but then again, neither does Linux in terms of common Desktop usage to the average user.
I feel that when Linux really takes off as a real Windows alternative to the average user, Mozilla will really begin to shine, and it's market share will increase as Linux's market share increases.
The Browser Wars are certainly not over yet...they are just being postponed for a little while.
In related news, ruthless dictators neglect the human rights of their people.
Phlegm at 11.
Tim
(Most) People only use IE because they are scared to install some software (I don't want to break my computer!) or they don't know there are options (What are you using - why do I get all these pop-ups?)
Use MS tactics! Force a new browser on them!
Tell your friends about Firebird. If anyone ever voices a complaint about IE or any other browser for that matter, i point them in Firebirds direction.
It really is a wonderful browser that is lightweight, fast and it has a host of cool features like popup blocking, password manager (for the less paranoid), tabbed browsing.
Their market share is miniscule because no one knows about it!
- Word Processors: When WordStar was king and WordPerfect came along and dominated, Word was the upstart. Microsoft kept throwing more and more features into the product. Fast forward a few years: Word is king, innovation slows to a trickle. The Word you use today is like the Word you used half-a-decade ago.
- Programming Tools: When Borland was kicking Microsoft's butt in IDEs and compiler technology, Microsoft had to add features like mad to get their market share back. Fast forward a few years: The Visual IDEs are king, innovation slows to a trickle.
- Web browsers: When Netscape was king, blah, blah blah. The IE you use today, blah, blah, blah.
Monopolies traditionally stagnate as often as they can get away with. Ain't nothing new here. Move along.... to go back to the "Page best viewd in" messages on the bottom of pages. But this time with a little link to Firebird. If people start coding for the standards-complient browsers instead of IE, people might realize what they're missing out on. Or just get frustrated (and/or curious) to the point of installing it.
Who doesn't like free music?
I remember very well the MS site reading in bold headlines "U.S. Department of Justice Vs. The Freedom To Innovate" when they were in the thick
of their Anti-Trust lawsuit with the USDOJ.
I guess this is Microsoft's new form of "Innovation."
Proof positive of the negative impact of Microsoft's monopoly in the browser market coupled with the fact that they received little more than a slap on the wrist from the USDOJ in the end.
Use IE only when you *have* to.
.
uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
Microsoft is a company, not a carity organisation. Improving IE would cost them money without getting any revenues - they are giving IE away for free.
Innovation and improvement made only sense when they had something to achieve: pushing Netscape out of the market. But this is no longer the case.
I would not even blame them. If the customers were keen on good browsers, they would rush to pay money for better versions like Opera. But they aren't. They are simply whining that MS is not innovating, but they won't do anything themselves.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
(PS - you can still get your page to work with IE if that situatioin applies to you, you just have to get the submit button title from the x and y click coordinates titles [which IE is so thoughtful not to ignore])
This is a central question that I've been asking in every "What makes you think MS is evil?" discussion I've had lately:
Why is Microsoft, the player in the browser market with the most resources by an insane margin, have the piece of software that's the most egregious offender in terms of standards compliance?
You can come up with a lot of answers, but I've come to believe that it's because they understand something:
(1) The lock in principles that we're all familiar with
(2) You more easily make money by letting others waste their time making things work than by wasting your own resources
(3) It's possible the IE 6 codebase really is hard to polish and move forward at this point.
Focus on #2 for a moment. They steal time from every single developer who has to use their products to deliver a product -- and that's everyone who's delivering a web application, at least. How do they steal it? Just recently I lost hours of my time (and possibly business) because of some bug that makes images that display all right and proper in every browser -- except IE. You just had to know that in certain situations involving nested, CSS positioned divs, unless you set the most immediately containing div to position: relative, the images would not render. Anyone here who's ever tried CSS positioning and the accompanying loosely semantic markup knows what I'm talking about. This happens in a hundred small ways.
It's not just IE, either. I have to use MS Word XP at work to occasionally do *page layout*. Nevermind that it's the wrong tool for the job, we know that, it's just that sometimes our customers demand stuff in that format. The gyrations necessary to do things in those programs are ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous. I've used two other word processors who make it an order of magnitude easier -- hell, sometimes I'd rather do page layout in the same bug-ridden CSS/XHTML combo I mentioned above. Again, who is the player with the most resources? Who does not have the easiest or most powerful toolset?
Seriously, someday I think people will wake up and realize that Bill has been wasting several GDPs worth of people's time, and that's how he's amased his wealth -- Microsoft would much rather let customers and developers waste their time than spend their own dimes creating truly effective software.
Tweet, tweet.
What?
The developers are complaining that they have to create non-standards compliant websites because 95% of the userbase use a non-standards compliant browser.
You make it sound like it's the web developer's fault that MicroSoft have produced a crappy browser.
To belabour the point: developers produce sites that work best with the most widely used browser - if the browser doesn't work in the logical and 'correct' manner, then a lot of time is spent hacking and trial-and-erroring trying to get the effect that the client wants. Clients aren't going to give a sh*t whether their site is fully W3C compliant and looks exactly as it should in Opera, Mozilla, Safari, Konqueror or whatever if it doesn't look as promised in IE
=#= Man, you are such a loser! Why can't you be an individual, like the rest of us?
Try Avant Browser if you must use IE. It adds a shell around the browser for tab integration, popup blocking, and all those other goodies you like best about Opera and Mozilla.
Sadly, it can't do anything for IE's HTML or CSS support....
I was a long time IE user, and even advocate in some cases.
I also work with several people who felt the same way.
In January or so I switched over to Opera because I got sick and tired of the pop-ups and IE had no good defense against them.
I had been using Mozilla at work for some time--having to develop for both IE and Mozilla platforms--but I hadn't been too impressed with it until about the end of the summer.
These security holes and the apparent lax nature by which MS is handling them in IE have actually scared most of my coworkers away from Internet Explorer for their day-to-day ops.
I mean, of course, when you go to the MSDN web site, you can't find a damn browser out there other then theirs that displays their pages with any kind of reliability (and I'm sure that's intentional). But for almost anything else, most sites written for IE display relatively well in Mozilla, better IMHO in Opera, and seem to display almost the same as IE in the latest build of Konquerer. And quite frankly, things seem quite a bit zippier in any one of those than in IE.
Most people won't switch because their too lazy to download the latest builds of the alternative platforms...fear though, is quite a powerful motivator.
"God is dead!" - Nietzsche
"Nietzsche is dead!" - God
Perhaps a smaller, niche market OEM could start marketing "Security-Enhanced" desktop computers that come with built-in firewall software (a la Zone Alarm) and either Moz or Opera as the default browser. Then, instead of recommending someone like Dell or Gateway to friends and family (to get them out of our hair for support issues), we could recommend this special OEM's "Security-Enhanced" computers. Hell, Alienware could do it since they're into selling bleeding-edge systems for a premium.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Actually you can use a IE only CSS Kludge to get Full Alpha-Transparency Support. I agree though it should be completely integrated.
Something else about PNGs that I have found rather odd is that IE will render the colors a shade or two darker than Photoshop and even other browsers. I can make a PNG with a color like #3366CC and IE will render it closer to #0066CC. Very subtle difference but noticeable.
The problem with Microsoft is that because they're a monpolist (well, and because Slashdot doesn't like 'em, frequently for good reason), *any* deviation from published standards gets 'em raked through the coals. I doubt Mozilla, Opera, Konq, etc are fully standards-compliant either. Linux certainly isn't -- Linux says "this POSIX standard is broken", and it just gets ignored. The thing is, they don't catch flak for it.
So while I agree that "embrace and extend" *is* a real tactic that Microsoft has used historically, every time they deviate from a standard, they aren't deliberately out to get folks.
In good news for Mozilla, once a Microsoft product starts to stagnate, it tends to stay stagnant. So if the Moz people can keep trudging along, AOL or Dell or someone can ship Windows bundled with Mozilla (or Linux just plain catches on on the desktop), they may have a much better shot.
Microsoft dissolves development teams once a development project is over, and can have a tough time finding people to start up a long-dormant project. The Samba people have said it before in frustration, when they tried tracking down a Microsoft SMB developer to answer a question at a networking conference. There just wasn't anyone left who *knew* how Microsoft's SMB implementation worked. The Samba lead said in frusteration something along the lines that they knew Microsoft's SMB implementation better than anyone left at Microsoft.
May we never see th
Scientists have discovered that the liquid phase of dihydrogen monoxide has a peculiar property called 'wetness'.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
First of all, I think the difference between #3366CC and #0066CC is quite noticible, but that's beside the point. The reality is that IE is actually operating the way it's supposed to - the PNG standard includes a feature called "gamma correction" where a gamma number is stored into the PNG image and the given viewer is supposed to correct for the gamma on their system.
Obviously, something's wrong with the gamma support in one of the applications - either Photoshop is saving an incorrect gamma value, or IE is using an incorrect gamma correction routine and is making the image darker than it really is.
For web use, you should disable gamma correction by not saving it to the PNG file - this will prevent gamma correction from taking place and make a #3366CC color come out as #3366CC in any viewer so that it matches an HTML #3366CC. It's a simple checkbox in the Gimp (where I do most of my simple PNG editing - I'm a programmer, not a graphic artist), but I don't know how to do it through Photoshop. I'd imagine it's possible, though.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
I've come to appreciate Firebird even more. It even tends to launch faster than IE on my computers (and MUCH faster than Mozilla itself). And my experience with Firebird leads me to the impression that the pop-up blocker is even more effective than Mozilla's.
How so? It's the exact same technology. In fact, Mozilla is going to split up into Firebird and Thunderbird soon. So, Firebird is simply Mozilla without the e-mail client.
No it's not. Firebird is a completely different application based the Mozilla Gecko core technologies. It shares much of the Mozilla backend but it is not "simply Mozilla without the e-mail client." If you want to use "simply Mozilla without the e-mail client," then select Navigator only in the Mozilla installer. Compare that to firebird and you'll see how they're quite different applications.
--Asa
Even though Microsoft lost, Bush's DOJ stopped pursuing the case and that was that. Nothing ended up being done.
This is just blatant (and incorrect) Bush-bashing. The Clinton administration had backed away from going after Microsoft years before (and the states coalitions self-destructed almost as soon as they started, once MS leaned *hard* on OEMs and parts suppliers all over the country.) In fact, the DoJ began actively "losing" their case long before Bush was even a candidate. They did this in many ways, but mostly by restricting the entire argument of MS's misbehaviour to one tiny thing, which was a relatively small offense, given al lthe MS had done wrong: bundling the browser with the OS. Other huge infringements that could have been used were completely ignored, as MS had Reno bought and paid for within weeks of her press conference announcing the DOJ was going after Microsoft. The things ignored included the truly damning evidence from the Caldera suit, which clearly showed Gates and other top MS honchos were directly involved in deliberate efforts to ensure that other products could NOT operate with Windows, even if that meant adding encrypted code specifically to break those products: a very clear abuse of monopoly power.
In reality, the Bush administration just looked at the hash that Reno and the DoJ had made of an eminently winnable case and (quite correctly) decided that there was no point throwing good money after bad. The damage was done - Reno and the DoJ had had the best of all possible positions, and totally blown it. As much as I would have liked to see things turn out differently, this was the right call, given the situation.
And yes, I'm pretty familiar with what went on, as I was up to my armpits in IBM lawyers dealing with this from IBM's perspective for quite a while, and left Dell to avoid having to lie to the DoJ to protect Microsoft, which my boss quite probably would have expected had I stayed. (He did not hold a particularly high view of the law, even after being directly responsible for Dell having to shell out the largest corporate fine in Federal Trade Commission history - with "no admission of wrongdoing", of course...)
There's no question MS abused thier monopoly power, but the Sherman antitrust act has really been a complete joke since the forces for monopoly managed to keep Teddy Roosevelt from being elected president in 1912. (No that I think they were directly implicated in his shooting (there's no evidence I'm aware of there), but they cetainly did everything they could to capitalize on it, kmowing that he was the only candidate that would be sure to cause trouble for the monopolists, and would very likely ask Congress for even stricter regulations and penalty of monopoly abuse. The game's been over since then, and the monopolists won..)
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
It's true, other programs have been "king of the hill" before, only to be dethroned. But look at your examples and tell me who did the dethron-ing? Microsoft.
What we have today is different than what has happened before. Before, one company dominated word processing, another had a lock on spreadsheets, another was the king of databases. But look at the situation now. When it comes to "productivity applications" (i.e. the programs that 90% of users use 90% of the time), the leaders are products FROM A SINGLE COMPANY.
Word Processing: Word
Spreadsheets: Excel
Presentation: PowerPoint
Planning: Visio
Database: Access
Web Browsing: IE
Email: Outlook
It goes on and on. No one is going to dethrone MS because they control the whole field. No one can get money and mindshare by succeeding in one area and then move into others, because MS controls ALL the areas. MS makes sure that most PCs come with MS applications that do everything, obviating the need to purchase any other software. If you're Joe/Jane User with limited funds, and your $500 Dell comes with programs to do all the things you need to do, why in the world would you spend more money or more time installing other programs that do the same thing?
Microsoft has a lock on the whole computer, especially now that they're extending their reach into the BIOS. The only reason they need to add more features now is to force users to upgrade their computers and feed the upgrade cycle.
As long as people can spend less than $1000 on a complete system that comes ready to use and has software that does everything they need it to pre-installed, and works pretty well most of the time, no one is going to switch to anything else.
Well, that's pretty interesting... So you figure the case was hobbled long before Bush dropped it? Well, that's interesting because the case had ALREADY BEEN WON, and Microsoft had ALREADY BEEN FOUND GUILTY. So, how do you figure Reno let them off the hook?
It was your hero, President Bush, who decided not to pursue the case any further, because he is 100% pro-big-business and where will you find a bigger business than Microsoft? Bush took a case that had ALREADY BEEN WON and basically, let Microsoft off the hook.
Think of it in terms of fishing. Janet Reno and her crew caught a twenty-foot marlin, wrestled it into the boat, and picked up the club to bash it in the head. Then, before the death blow, the boat changed crews -- Clinton, et al, got off and Bush, et al, got on. Bush looked down at the marlin, asked "what's that doing here? Get that thing off my boat..."
Bush bashing? No. I'm calling a spade a spade.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
My copy of Mozilla reports itself as IE (the default case) as does my copy of Opera. Haven't checked Firebird or Safari but I can make an educated guess at the former ;)
;) and changing the preferences to make Mozilla or Opera correctly report their version is not way up on most peoples list
Can we really trust these statistics if browsers default to misrepresenting themselves as IE?
I know quite a few people who moved from IE when they realised it was keeping undeletable hidden logs of the pages they visited (guilty conscience I suppose
Just my 5c
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