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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 uses the Mozilla source code to create an IE7. No more worries about anti-trust concerns since they're working on an open, free project. Users get a stable, secure browser that's standards compliant. Users get a browser with a rendering engine that's supported across platforms. Heck, it might even be easy enough to release IE for Mac and Unix again!
If Mozilla Firefox hasn't achieved anything else (besides being the first web browser to be rated above IE by just about everybody), the fact that it would spur Microsoft to resume work on Internet Explorer is an interesting achievement. It, at least, will make the world a better place for WIndows users who are forced to use IE due to ignorance or because everybody uses it (that includes me).
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Isn't this exactly what we wanted to happen? Microsoft realized that a competing product (mozilla, opera, etc.) is advancing at a rate that might cause MS to lose market share on the browser front.
.NET framework becomes mainstream, why care so much about IE? Maybe this is a PR move?
The positive of this is that the world gets an improved Internet Exploder^H^H^Hrer and Microsoft is adding new jobs. I think that's a win for everyone.
However, my question is why is Microsoft going to great lengths to improve Internet Explorer? Though they could lose browser market share, they haven't yet. The vast majority of desktops running Windows use Internet Explorer, flaws and all. Also, Microsoft doesn't really have much to gain by revamping IE. There's not much money to be made in the browser business anymore. It's not about the browser that is used online, so much as it is the content people are viewing. As long as Microsoft's patented
From using Internet Explorer on a recent Longhorn build, my prediction is that Microsoft plans to add more features rather than support web standards. Thus far they've added Firefox/Opera-esque features like a download manager, pop-up blocking, and a "Clear Browsing Records" menu option. Perhaps tabbed browsing is next? It looks like they will keep adding options until IE is comparable to its competitors, but with regards to web standards I doubt Microsoft will have interest.
Well now that they have decided to sell their own anti-virus software, what better than to create demand for it by developing a new browser platform in order to extort AV software sales. ...
Here's the kicker microsofts AV software will patent the removal of certain M$ originating viruses in such a way that the only way you can remove them without breaching the eula and various patent laws is to use Microsoft AV 2005 Personal Edition (tm).
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And themes. And software plug-ins that block images. And a plug-in that keeps Flash/Shockwave animations from playing unless I *want* them too. And making it possible to use the address bar to search from Google, *not* MSN. Making it so that if I click on the back button while posting to Slashdot my post is still there. Making ActiveX a way to make browsing more enjoyable, not a way to make my computer install spyware.
These are all features that Firefox has and that I like, and until most of them have been implemented I see no reason to switch back.
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
I am two people removed from the team working on this (a friend of a friend); so it's possible I might be a victim of disinformation or misinterpretation. But as I understand it, this "new and improved IE" isn't necessarilly for general consumption. It is supposed to be part of a new, all-encompassing version of MSN that's maybe 3 years down the road. Basically you get the new version of Windows at that time, and MSN comes along for the ride. This new IE will only be available as part of the new MSN, which will only be available if you get the new Windows.
:-D
On a completely different subject - I can tell you that these folks (working on this new MSN) are not very happy with gmail.
#DeleteChrome
Way too much to ask. MSIE does NOT even handle CSS1 properly yet. Every time I design a page (validated xhtml1.0 and minimal CSS1 for layout) I have to do a special layout page just for MSIE, wrapped in conditional comments, to make it render the page properly. I don't think that I'm getting my CSS wrong; I work directly from the w3c documentation, and EVERY other browser manages a fairly close approximation of what I had in mind.
'fixed background' is a particularly glaring example, but I've also had MSIE render a simple '5px' border as 15px along the bottom edge. No reason given, it just decided to do it that way..
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Yes. It is crucial to Microsoft's strategy that they not do that. See here for example.
They can make extensions to enable stuff like ActiveX components. And ActiveX components pretty much require windows to run.
Or better "integration" with Office products (for example, determining filetype based on magic numbers/file extensions instead of filetype).. Things like that.
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"I call bullshit. Nobody "loves" OpenOffice. People tolerate it..."
I love it because a 300 page document that MSWord one day refused to open having been editing it fine for months, opened in OO, and when I saved it out again it opened fine in MSWord with no difference from the original. I use OO 90% of the time now.
I 8> OO!
SURELY NOT!!!!!
Our faculty of the university at which I work has decided on a new layout for their web pages. This was done and delivered to us by a PR agency. I feared that it might be bad, but that fear didn't even come close to what I had to witness.
Imagine having to tell our users (many of which are using GNU/Linux or Macintosh) that our web site only works reliably in Windows with Internet Explorer 6.0 and above. Just because a PR agency can't develop web pages. It's impossible. I had to do something about it.
So when I implemented the layout for our department (scheduled to go live later this month), I scrapped everything they had done. I took a printout of their page (as it looked in Internet Explorer) and marked up what colors and fonts they had used.
Then I set down and wrote the same thing using XHTML/1.0 Strict and CSS1. This was about two days work, but the finished result now validates using w3c's validate tools, and it works reliably in all browsers I've managed to try, all the way back to Mosaic and Netscape 3, with or without images (yes, Lynx, Links, w3 and other text browsers work very well indeed too).
Not only did I get the pages to validate. By using CSS, I was able to get rid of several images they had been using with their design. The overall size of a page, including graphics and CSS, now weighs in at about 35 kbytes. This is compared to around 120 kbytes with the proposed code.
And even better, most things can be cached by the browser (CSS code and images). The only thing that needs reloading when you hit subsequent pages is the dynamic XHTML code, which weighs in at around 5 kbytes, compares to 40 kbytes in the proposed code.
Now, I think our students will like us. This result is even better than the pages that we have today. They render quickly and effortlessly even on old equipment or on extremely slow links.
I havn't been able to convince the faculty to make my code the "default" yet, but they might get the idea once people start noticing that our pages load much more quickly than the rest of the faculty pages.
So, using standards isn't always about making things render nicely in all browsers. It gives you a while heap of nice side effects that isn't worth sneezing at.
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As most of the comments pointed out, there would be little interest in making IE more standards compliant.
.Net sandbox with as much security as a webpage or the once-upon-a-time java applets.
.Net 1.1 binaries off the internet, and they do not have permissions to access your local harddrive. If they do try, a security exception is triggered.
What I see is a focus on bringing a MUCH more richer, Windows-only user experience on the internet. We will see applications being delivered on the internet. Not web pages. They would run on a
In fact, it is possible to run
With Whidbey's click-once application deployment model, this will become more mainstream. With Longhorn's Avalon and XAML, the shift to a Windows only, multimedia and 3D rich user experience will be complete. Perhaps, since all of this would be integrated into the OS itself, it would seem much less a part of Internet Explorer.
Yes, that might be what they have in mind. As for the users, most of them would like the ultra-kewl interface compared to HTML documents.
Yeah, XUL can compete with this. But as Miguel Icaza pointed out, it will be hard competing against the tremendous distribution and deployment power of Microsoft.
Life is just a conviction.
I have just tried it in OOo 1.1.0 on my Windoze XP box, which is not up to date, seems OK to me, but it might depend on a lot of factors. I can't try the Linux box right now, as I am in the middle of upgrading to SuSE 9.1. I just made up 3 columns, the first filled with numbers, which became X values, the second and third had formulae applied to give me two diverging curves. Your situation may of course have been more complex.
I was using OOo at work a year ago (I had a very enlightened boss who did not care what I used, and an IT department who did not care what I loaded as long as I did not break the network), and the anomalies were few and far between. I used to do all the spreadsheet editing in OOo and then convert the final work to Excel. It did involve graphs with more than one series.
You could submit a bug report, it might get fixed fairly quickly, or at least in the next major release.
Some Excel bugs are still there from the first version! Some even cause serious data loss.
I currently work on a "secure", or rather, independent, network, detatched from everything else, so that our work cannot be corrupted. (BTW it is very pleasant working that way, no spam on the main work PC! Every company should have one for their real work.) We have to independently verify all calculations (safety-critical), if done by hand they will be checked manually by another engineer. Those done by spreadsheet also have to be checked, the calculations performed by the spreadsheet cannot be trusted as it is an unvalidated tool. It is probable that we will be using OOo to do the checking, it will read the same input data, and hopefully produce the same answers as Excel, but as Excel is closed-source there can be no commonality of code, so no common errors. (We do have to check what maths libraries OOo uses, if complied with Visual C++ we may instead have to use the Linux version, or recompile with a different compiler, to get true independence).
I took a try at OOo after a particularly hair-rending night spent with Office. I never looked back. Anything I had trouble with in Office is fixed or greatly improved in OOo-to say nothing of the new features it brings. There have been plenty of times when other students have been unable to open files in Office-I pull a LiveCD out of my pocket, and it simply works. OOo is not simply Good Enough-it is Better.
The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say. -Anais Nin
IMO the reason mozilla and firefox are successful right now is because they have a tendency towards speed, usability and easy of use. they cater towards standards compliance which relieves content developers to work on their content. if everyone in the web browser business did this, we would see an even greater content explosion than we did during the first few years of the web.
MS and IE are trying for this ideal, but they have their propietary needs to take care of. while IE is sorta fast and usable it simply doesnt reach the level of opera or firefox. those browsers are simply too good at what they do. and they usually link to other common services such as google who only cares about providing the best searching experience.
the point i am trying to make is that firefox works at being the best web browser. google works at being the best search engine. google could not exist without a good web platform, but bundle the two together and you have a really good "web experience". two very specialized projects combined in the right way is much better than the alternative which is IE with MSN.
there is still a lot of work to do in respect of creating the ideal web platform for example the integration of messenger and hotmail and outlook. its a really nice combination and simplifies a lot of work for the user. here to, desktop developers can cater to standards for contacts, bookmarks, etc. the idea is to standardize common protocols and file formats. we already have this with the protocols, but we dont have as much of this in terms of file formats. even if there is no standard, the ability to convert one format into another becomes just as important. the projects that specialize in these fields especially if they are open source will be able to combine with services provided by firefox and google, to create an even better "computing experience".
somehow tho, i dont believe any of this will happen. less work is done to get towards this ideal, and more work is done dicking around. honestly how long would it take to achieve this kind of integration, or format conversion or file format standards? the open source movement need only pick the best formats for a particular job and work on those. create converters for other formats but work with just those.
the converters could be part of the desktop environment making them invisible. an important by-product here is that a user could migrate their preferences and settings to any desktop environment and be able to work immediately. no more need for worrying about compatibility issues between apps. a web page in firefox should open the same way in IE. email should open either in evolution or outlook or what ever other alternative exists out there. the main differences are in personalization, and other things such as speed, usability, and ease of use. i mean, it makes more sense to use the fastest tool.
more people will use firefox because of this until IE can move towards this ideal. and from a business point of view, you get to focus on the real money maker and that is content whether in the form of online music, or online movies, or online games, or online books or whatever. i mean do corporations like MS really believe that a standards compliant DRM that was maintained by a neutral third party would not become accepted? when users worry less about the desktop environment and their web platforms, they will only care about their access to their content. somepeople will always be loyal to Apple, others to MS and other still to Linux. in an ideal world, if MS was a content publisher they wouldnt have to worry as much where or how the user is accessing the content, and worry more about making sure that the user has the proper access rights for the content.
there has never been much money in the desktop or the web platform unless you cornered the entire market. the only way to make money in the long term would be to lock the computer, the desktop, and the web. MS doesnt have a lock on the computer, a partial lock on the desktop, and a p
I completely disagree. Rewriting an application from scratch is the worst thing you could possibly do. This is how Microsoft beat Netscape in the first place, remember? It's a key concept of software design. If you have something that works, build on it. You can argue all you want that IE isn't all that great. And you're right. But, it's still a whole lot better then starting from scratch.
Joel Joel Spolsky (Joel On Software) has an excellent article on this topic that I'd recommend any coder-types reading. It's from way back in 2000 but I find I just keep pointing this gem out over and over.
Here's a link for you. Things You Should Never Do, Part I
1.a 100% standards-complient implementation of PNG
2.a 100% standards-complient implementation of W3C CSS
3.a 100% standards-complient implementation of W3C XHTML 1.0/HTML 4.01
4.sending of HTML email off by default in Outlook with the way to turn it on difficult to find
5.changes to scripting and ActiveX so that by default, only controls signed by someone trustworthy will download, install and be used (and even then have a clear "are you sure you want to let this control have complete access to your system" warning in language and UI that even the most cluless of users can understand) and so that scripting and ActiveX controls are turned off completly in Outlook with no way (not even a registry hack) to turn it back on.
6.changes to Outlook Express so that it wont run executable attachments dierctly (and so that you have to save them to the disk before you can run them)
7.changes to how Internet Explorer handles MIME types to ignore the extention and content of the file and to treat what the server or email message says the MIME type is as gosepel. If there is none, fallback on file extentions and stuff. Also, enhance windows handling so that mime types can be associated with different handlers. (this eliminates any need to use the file extention to determine what handler to use for it)
8.Clear warnings that even the most cluless user can understand when something has changed the search settings, home page or other IE-related settings out from underneath them (e.g. spyware)
9.completly dropping the broken Microsoft Java VM so that when stuff installs (like a new version of IE or a new windows SP), the MS VM is completly removed for good and the SUN VM is installed instead.
and 10.make these chages as widely available as possible.
Yes I use Mozilla (1.7 in fact) but for those who are forced to used Intercrap Explorer, this would make the world a better place. It would also make the world a better place for those not using IE as a side effect of he changes to Outlook.
It's only 3 weeks since I posted more about this in my journal, so I won't try to do more than reiterate a couple of points here.
A ground up implementation of what is thought to be the Longhorn spec is probably not doable, no matter how many $billions, given the current state of the art of software engineering.
However at some point Microsoft will bring out something that they claim to be their next great operating system, but it will soon be shown to be just another a cobbled together incremental development.
So while I think two earlier respondents to the parent have made valid points, they haven't quite seen past the "just throw money at it" assumption about software development, to which Fred Brooks's Mythical Man Month still has something to say. (Another earlier respondent is just living in fantasy land, so I'm posting this as we don't have mod categories better than "interesting" for "half right" and "plain wrong".)
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.