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Microsoft Is Planning To Renew IE Development
jm.one writes "In his weblog the Mozilla developer Gervase Markham (aka Gerv) points out that Microsoft is re-constituting the Windows IE team. You can save Mozillazine's bandwidth(they've been /.ed every day this week) by directly checking out this post at Dave Massy's WebLog at MSDN.
They even have set up an IE Feedback section in their channel9 wiki."
Microsoft doesn't improve their products-- ever-- except in the presence of a viable competitor
Give me full XHTML and CSS2 compliance please. Oh, and transparent PNGs.
Too much to ask?
...would that be a good thing for Microsoft? You seem to be forgetting MSIE's purpose: As a lock-in tool to other Microsoft products. A browser which is a drop-in replacement for Mozilla-based browsers-- and thus conversely has Mozilla-based browsers as a drop-in replacement for it-- doesn't serve this purpose at all.
Dear Microsoft.
patch the holes that make malware so easy to infect a machine so my job's a whole lot fucking easier.
- every goddamn ISP tech support staff.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
I consider the recent addition of pop-up blocking in MSIE (XP SP2) bad news. Advertisers will just find more obnoxious ways to place their adds, making the pop-up blocker in Mozilla less effective.
I can say though that somewhat vague requests for "better standards support" are not as useful as a specific example of what you'd like to see changed and specifically why it would improve things. - Dave Massey
What part of "better standards support" does he think is too vague? Does this guy need it spelling out to him or what (rhetorical question by the way)!
I should have kept quiet yesterday. ;-)
;-/
Right now, I am hacking away on an article about browser competition on the desktop and how Firefox is gaining ground. Now this! Well, looks like we have reached the point where Microsoft copies OpenSource innovation. It used to be the other way round. That's the good part. Another upside is that there is still time left. Longhorn is far away, and if SP2 is any indication than there won't be another major update to WinXP in reasonable time. But still, the giant woke up. And Microsoft is though competition to say the least...
Look at the broader picture. The proof would be in that when Netscape died and birthed Mozilla, MSIE development came to a total screeching halt, and didn't start again until the Mozilla project, after years of dicking around, finally managed to create a product (FireFox) that anyone in their right minds would want to use.
This is still just a single example, so maybe I should have used the word "evidence" instead of "proof". But when you look at the repeated examples over the years, it becomes proof.
I can't wait for OpenOffice to become a viable product so that we'll finally see the end to the total lack of improvement that has marked MS-Office development since WordPerfect died.
So one person write in his weblog that he's changing roles from Longhorn to IE, and that means the team is being reconstituted? People at Microsoft change teams all the time. Some people will jump from project to project every year or two, others will stick with it for 4 or 5 years.
This is not any news of anything special. Each version, there's something new planned. Whether or not that sees the light of day is another thing.
The IE team has lived for a long time and will continue to live. The IE team is probably always changing as people move to it and other people move off it.
If someone said "I'm changing roles from Office to Longhorn" does that mean that Office is now dead and Longhorn just now got re-constituted? No. What if it's a big guy on the totem pole? No.
It's pretty obvious why a web standards compliant IE would improve things (google: web standards). Oh, but it wouldn't allow Microsoft to extend the web anymore with stupid proprietry shit. I guess they're right out the window then.
I seriously doubt IE7 will be compliant. It would be nice, for sure, but given Microsoft's history it's extremely unlikely.
"The number of Unix installations has grown to ten, with more expected." (Unix Programmer's Manual, 2nd ed.; june 1972)
I have no great love for MS, but there is way too much hypocritical criticism of them.
People constantly complain that MS forces artificial upgrades on their users to increase revenue. More upgrades, with new "must-have" and not backwards compatible features, means more money in their greedy little pockets.
However, recently MS has been delaying products to allow for more time to make sure the software is solid. Meanwhile they are releasing free service packs to help fix security problems.
I'm not saying that MS deserves a humanitarian award. I'm just saying that we shouldn't be criticizing MS because they have pushed back LongHorn. Allowing sufficient time for good development is a GOOD thing.
And on a self-interested note, it gives Linux solutions more time to get a foothold.
The reason is because Bill Gates is not stupid. He isn't going to wait until MS has lost their market share before doing something about, he will make sure it never happens.
BTW IE is losing market share to Mozilla, though at the moment, the numbers are pretty small.
Afriguru:
:)
I am a happy Windows XP user (heresy!!!) I used to use Internet Explorer and Outlook Express, and even though I occassionally boot my Fedora Core 2 install, there are many things that I don't know or don't care to fix (in addition to many others I've fixed already) to be a Linux user.
However... My IE takes around 6 seconds (proxy resolution) to render the home page. If I open the browser and want to type an URL to go somewhere else than the home page, I'd better do it before the 6 seconds elapse, or... Pfft!!! It erases all I've written and displays the home page URL!
This simple thing motivated me to install FireFox on my computer. I've been long using OpenOffice.org, The GIMP and many other tools under Windows but didn't want to relinquish IE. This was two months ago, tell you what? I forgot when I last fired Internet Explorer.
I downloaded Thunderbird 0.7 last week...
Bottom line, don't use something because everyone else uses it, and conversely, don't use FOSS just because. Just give the software a try and see for yourself, I guarantee you'll be pleased and nothing wrong will happen
The revolution will not be televised.
I'm returning to work on the Internet Explorer team. A team that I used to work on a few years ago andI'm very excited to be returning to the team where we clearly have much work to do.
Yes, you do have a lot of work to do, Dave. Maybe you guys should have done the job right years ago rather than be in catch-up as well as damage-control mode.
G-Force music visualization
However, XP came out in 2001, as did MSIE 6.0. I believe the current timetable is for Longhorn to come out in 2006. 5 years between releases is a long time in with regard to software. One of the richest software companies in the world should have no problem in putting out new releases earlier than that. What the hell were they doing during those five years? I'm not saying MS should sacrifice quality to get their products out faster, I'm just saying they should get their products out faster. As a consequence of their laziness, they have lost a lot of Windows users to Mac and Linux and a lot of IE users to Mozilla/Firefox and Opera.
Maybe if Longhorn is void of any problems at all it will be worth the wait. But I wouldn't count on it.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
"I'm not saying that MS deserves a humanitarian award. I'm just saying that we shouldn't be criticizing MS because they have pushed back LongHorn. Allowing sufficient time for good development is a GOOD thing."
Interesting theory but IMHO Longhorn being pushed back is just a sign that MS bit off more than they could chew and mismanaged the project. That's frankly way more probable then the idea that MS is being a good citizen. If MS could have gotten away with shipping Longhorn this year, XP Sp2 would not have gotten nearly as much attention by them. They are in reality just covering their asses while they develop a secure alternative.
I agree that criticizing them for a late Longhorn over and over is dumb as well but I guess I just disagree as to the why MS is doing it part. All IMHO and such.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Normally, I would agree with you and with the sentiments posed in "Things you should never do". However, we are talking two entirely different kettles of fish here:
1. IE has become a tangled mess of security-hole laden crap that I am not convinced it can be just fixed. Netscape had HTML problems, but that represents a smaller portion of the overall browser.
2. Many of the problems in IE are ones of design, not of implementation. In order to be secure, major portions of it need to be redesigned from the ground up with security in mind. At the same time (and this has evrything to do with security, also) the user model could be designed rather than just being grafted onto what is essentially a single-user program. Again, I don't think Netscape was in quite this bad of shape when they made the decision to rewrite.
3. Not too many months ago, Microsoft made the decision to abandon this product altogether. If they felt confident enough in their position to do that then, what makes today any different? Two words; Longhorn delays. If Microsoft thought they had a chance in hell of getting Longhorn out on time (even if that time is 2007), they would not even be worried about IE development right now. They would be developing for whatever they are going to call the browser that ships with Longhorn. After all, it is to their selfish interest to lock people into the new OS rather than creating something else that will let them coast on their older OS even longer. Netscape's only desktop product at the time they did a rewrite was the browser. The long delay incurred by the rewrite was deadly, since they were effectively a one-product company.
But Microsoft can't get Longhorn out on time, so they must give the users something to stem the switch to other browsers. IE 6.0 is unusable right now (don't flame me, if you think it is, my rates for cleaning spyware are outrageous, but reasonable compared to losing all your data by reinstalling). If they rush another POS like WinME out the door (WinME was another "patch 'em up quick" filler product caused by delays in win2k), they risk alienating people even more! So that's maybe a 4th reason: history. Microsoft has done this once with WinME; how credible will they be for Longhorn if they pull another WinME?