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MSIE 7 May Beat Longhorn Out The Gate
Quantum Jim writes "InternetNews.com reports that a major upgrade for Microsoft Internet Explorer may be imminent. Apparently in response to the recent mass migration away from MSIE, top Microsoft developers have been soliciting for improvements in the old browser at a web log and at Channel 9, an aggregate journal previously discussed by /.. InternetNews.com speculates that improvements could possibly include support for tabbed browsing, better security, more PNG and CSS compliance, and RSS integration (which Firefox and Opera Mail already support). Go competition!"
Well, firefox was able to grab my interest before IE. Even with the new features, I will stick with firefox because of the community that maintains it.
On the other hand it's depressing that MIcrosoft is a big enough monopolist to let the status and security of what they maintain is an integral part of the operating system, namely the browser, to go almost completely to shit before they bestir themselves to even think about fixing it.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
Now this is what I call truely clueless. Typical MS thinking that is the cause of IE's sercurity vulnerabilities and lack of established standards.
AC comments get piped to
If microsoft do manage to get standard complience into this new IE browser, then at least the rest of the internet that was still catering to shity IE 5.5 type design will be practically forced away. It might be good news for people who don't even USE IE. *continues living in a fantasy*
This is the attitude throughout Microsoft. It's the same reason why the Windows API still sucks after 20 years. The vast majority of customers don't give a damn about any of this stuff because they don't care: no sites will use alpha-transparent PNG unless IE does, so why bother implementing it?
This is the problem with relying on commercial entities for "innovation": they'll only bother when it actually benefits them. Mozilla, on the other hand, implement things purely for the sake of completeness and interest.
no popup-blockers? no flash-click-to-view? Other than the fact I'm on XP, is there any compelling reason to switch over?
As more and more application start to use HTML browser as their "interface", the war is for the future of computing. Event SAP created web interface to its popular Enterprise System. So, as the time go, more and more applications (specially business applications) will use HTML as a way to create remotely-accessible interface. So, the OS could become less and less important and the browser would become more and more important. So, if people lose interest in IE, they won't be tied to Windows anymore and then Microsoft will lose revenues.
Montreal - Best city to live in!
Having the biggest browser marketshare means you can get more sales of Windowz, and you can spit on standards. The more users of it, the more developers write for it, the more users need Windowz to run it.
So while it doesn't directly translate to direct revenue, it does translate into indirect revenue.
AC comments get piped to
Anyone who uses Internet Explorer is using Windows. If Internet Explorer has the highest market share, they control the de facto standards and can keep customers locked into Internet Explorer and by extension Windows.
By creating non standard html/other extensions, and Windows-only features (like ActiveX), they are able to continue to make it difficult to move from the Windows platform.
So picture this: you run a cross platform browser that works with *all* websites. You use a cross platform office suite that works with *all* document formats 100% perfectly. All other applications you use are also available on different OS's.
Why then choose windows?
It's all part of a well known strategy called customer lock-in. Make it difficult to change so people won't bother to try.
The purpose of IE was to simply to stop Java or some other non-MS technology from becoming a standardized computer interface. By integrating IE into the operating system (and into Money, Encarta, etc.) MS makes sure that the average consumer must continue to use the Windows cashcow for the "best" home computing experience. If everybody switches to Firefox which is platform-agnostic, then people will feel comfortable switching to Linux for their daily computing tasks. (Hence the second-tier defenses, Office and DirectX/Xbox, but that's a different story.)
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
That, until now, each major IE upgrade has a new, non standard and non-supported-by-other feature, that was immediately and widely adopted by web designers (perhaps because it gets immediately added to Dreamweaver et al).
:(
So, here we go again, new pages that look like crap in non-IE...
The advantages of monopolys are endless.
--krahd
mod me up scottie!
If everyone stops using IE and moves to Mozilla/Opera/whatever, Microsoft's loss in revenue is exactly zero.
Not true. A lot of companies are using the Microsoft server tools (like IIS, SQL Server, Windows Media Server) because they're designed to work with Internet Explorer (and vice-versa). If all of a sudden Mozilla/Opera/whatever had 97% of the browser market, then companies would have to stop serving up web pages that don't render properly in Mozilla/Opera/whatever. And if you're not serving up those pages, when it's time to upgrade your Windows server software, why upgrade? Why not just switch to other open source tools, like Apache?
Additionally, once everything standardizes on a platform-independant browser, like Mozilla, who needs Windows anymore? Okay, granted, a lot of software is still available for Windows, etc., etc., but perhaps for a company that doesn't need Windows-specific applications, they might switch. This scares Microsoft more than anything else.
If everyone abandons other browsers and uses IE exclusively, Microsoft's increase in revenue is exactly zero.
Again, not true (in fact the opposite of what I state above). Since IE has a dominant portion of the browser market, companies are more willing to buy the Microsoft server tools, which brings in money for Microsoft. Also, this leads to client lock-in, since in order to view the Microsoft content, you need a Microsoft client.
-- Joe
I would have to imagine that microsoft benefits in mindshare and monetarily by having IE as your default browser. Being that millions of users are still unaware that you can change your homepage (or just dont care to) MS gets to advertise their sites and services by default to many windows users. Also the search function (and the fact that if you incorrectly type and address you are presented with a 'search') links directly to the MS portal and advertisers on their engine.
Now I admit that it is not much, but to by default have a user in your sphere can be directly profitable or at elast usefull in a number of ways.
---- The real Slashdot is still here. You just have to browse at -1 to read the comments.
About his concerns for people who are still using IE 5.5 (mostly all Windows 95 users, since they can't upgrade to IE 6, nor does MS support them anymore), they can be convinced to use IE 7.0 through convincing them to buy a new computer. There are still a lot of Windows 9x boxes out there, so Microsoft could use security as a incentive (among others) for people with older versions of Windows to switch to Windows XP with the new and improved Internet Explorer. (Likewise, Linux/BSD supporters could convince Windows 9x users to switch for the same reasons, too, and there is always Mozilla/Firefox, which runs on Windows 95, so there are other options)
Still, though, the developer's comment was stupid; everyone benefits from full CSS and PNG support; it would save developers a lot of time trying to get their pages to render properly under IE, and it would make IE more standards compliant.
See the responses (above) to this post.
The future direction of the web is at stake... if Microsoft maintains their massive IE market share, then they can continue to dictate standards, rather than follow standards created by impartial third parties.
Why would they pass this up? They have 50+ billion dollars in the bank... I'm sure tossing a couple of million into IE development is no big deal. And if it allows them to maintain their stranglehold on the Internet, I'm sure they'd find it to be worthwhile.
Visit the Game Programming Wiki!
it strikes me that we, as the slashdot crowd, tend to be the types where our jobs are highly dependant upon computers and thus as we progress in our careers, we care more and more about security of our blessed boxes. The health of these boxes are as important as the specific tasks whos sucess pay our bills. We care about our computers and the health of our friend's, family's and even stranger's computers.
In the mean time, the rest of the population care about learning, communication and entertainment.
I guess what I am getting at is most of us bash Microsoft because they choose usability (not the disability flavor, just that it works) over security. Slashdotters generally have a distaste for Flash even if it is because it is used gratuitously for entertainment. We choose to block ads and popups and some of us IMAGES because we feel it is useless and fluffy even though it is the main source of revenue for many businesses' web endevours. But the thing is, most folks ont he internet care that when their kid goes to PBS Kids, it works. When they go to their favorite mainstream band's website, it just works. When they go to their bank's website, it just works. When they want to play Yahoo games or take part in fantasy sports, it all just works.
Where Microsoft suceeds is giving the consumer what they WANT. For stuff to work, even if it means that their computer is riddled with spyware and viruses. As long as their credit card number doesn't get swiped or find kiddee pr0n on their computer and everything else works, they are satisfied.
I saw that someone wrote that Opera is a superior browser. While they are correct when using their guidelines, most end users would feel quite the opposite. Opera, at least with older incarnations, has not been a mainstream friendly browser. As an advanced user, I think its great. My mom, my kid and most folks int he public school system I work in think otherwise.
We all know that a lot of user's problems with a computer gone "bad" would disappear without IE 5.5. But of course, many folks wouldn't want to use the web as much without the end user usability IE 5.5 has provided. Quite the double edged sword and frankly, we here at Slashdot are the minority in the internet using world.
And no, IE7 won't be a Transformer.
Microsoft does not sell IE. They gain no direct profit from people's use of it, so you have to wonder what their motive is here. Let's assume that "good" and "evil" are subjective and emotive words that have no relevance to this discussion, ok?
If you read Joel Spolsky's API war article, some perspective may be gained. Microsoft wishes only to discourage Web developers from moving away from the IE platform. If developers move away, Microsoft no longer has control over web development, and can no longer keep new technologies on the fringe.
This is bad news for a company with plans to move to network applications. If a platform for network applications exists outside of Microsoft's control, it will be much harder to profit from. Thus, Microsoft's interest is served here by retaining that 90%+ browser market share, to prevent the adoption of new technologies not under MS control.
"Apparently in response to the recent mass migration away from MSIE..."
o se sshare_1.html
Like it or not, IE has only lost 1% of market share. See:
http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/07/12/HNiel
Hardly a mass migration!!!
... is now again, in the form of the now open source Mozilla and it's variants, the biggest threat to IE.
Unfortunately, its biggest threat is not that big at all. It's not like everybody is going to switch to Firefox in the short term.
IE is going to be the most used browser as long as it is bundled in Windows. Period.
In a C|Net article from May 31, 2003, a Microsoft rep said, "Legacy OSes have reached their zenith with the addition of IE 6 SP1. Further improvements to IE will require enhancements to the underlying OS."
Cut to a year and change later, Longhorn is taking too long to arrive and people are getting sick/scared enough of all the security deficiencies in IE to actually look for a better browser. Because informed consumers are their worst enemy, Microsoft gets a little nervous that their lock on the browser market might be in jeopardy, and POW! Miracle of miracles, it is suddenly possible to further improve standalone versions of IE on non-Longhorn versions of Windows! Whoda thunk it?
Technically such an improved beast should be called IE 6.5. If they actually do call it 7, it's purely for marketing reasons-- they'll launch some flashy commercials to try to snow people into thinking this is some totally reworked wonder that fixes everything they didn't like about IE 6, when in reality it will just be IE 6 with some bugs fixed and some extra shit grafted on. Too bad their campaign will probably work on the uninformed.
Don't roll over and take this, people! Keep informing your friends/family/clients that there are better browsers out there, and install your alternative browser of choice wherever possible. Don't let them listen to whatever sunshine Microsoft will be blowing up their asses about the "new, improved" IE.
~Philly
In this world, the same thing will happen to M$ that happened to Netscape. Once you get used to a browser there is no compelling reason to change back. If people shift to Mozilla or Firefox now they probably won't want IE in the future due to the bad reputation, no matter if they really fix it or not.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Notice there's not even a date mentioned in this article. It barely even suggests that ie7 will be released before longhorn (2008 last I heard).
Is it any wonder that people are switching away from a browser (and operating system) that can't even release system patches (XPSP2?) on time.
Hell, with XP SP2 you're forced to buy an encryption certificate if you want to distribute software...
Verisign are making a *hell* of a lot of money of MS' back.
They can safely disable activex as it was dying anyway... they've found a better money spinner now.
It's about damn time. But even if they finally manage to fix their box model rendering and implement native, non-filter:DirectWhatever(foo) PNG alpha support, how long until that's actually widespread? Given that so many people still use IE 5 or 5.5 (last I checked, anyway) long after IE 6's release and subsequent patches, it might be quite a while before IE-specific quirks don't need to be worried about. That is, unless MS forces everyone using Windows to upgrade, or Firefox becomes the dominant browser. /continues using the box model hack and that freakish DirectX alpha filter
Heck, maybe I could use one of IE's security holes to install a PNG fix when users visit my site.
So if we wait until Microsoft develops and releases these features in Internet Explorer, then we get to do everything that we .. uh .. already can do today in browsers like Firefox. Thanks, but no thanks, we can get now what they're offering next year.
Microsoft are truly amazing: Can any other IT company consistently generate excitement and buzz amongst their customer base by announcing that they are going to add features that everyone else has had for years already???
Lets not just turn everyone who isn't a techie into mindless consumers.
My brother sure as hell cares if some virus wipes out his drive full of baby pictures. My technophobe friend sure as hell cares that she has to be careful with every single attachment she gets because of spam, spyware, and viruses. Or every site she visits. "Give us security" isn't just geeks anymore, its everyone, thus MS's actions. Spyware, spam, and viruses have hit such an all time high that the dinosaur that is MS is forced to do something about it. Especially, when its their browser which enables some pretty silly things like ActiveX, vbs scripting, etc.
I don't know much are safety engineering, but as a car owner I expect my airbag and anti-lock brakes to kick in when needed. Or the locks of the doors to work. If these things don't work then I'm pissed. You don't need to be a mechanic to understand why. Sure, a gear head is better informed than me, but that doesn't mean I don't care about such issues and when these issues become a real problem I demand something be done about them. The gearhead may have thought of it first, but he's really no superior to me as we're both consumers of a product from a company neither of us controls. Be it autos or software.
...somebody patent tabbed browsing, mouse gestures and standards compliant browsing...
Deprecated, not depreciated.
---
Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
It's a flagship product. There of course is the idea that if there is a lot of people using IE, there may be more webservers using IIS, which might mean more computers running Windows XP.
But I think the idea might come down to trying to keep a brandname product in public view. And remember that even after there recent returning of cash to investors, M$ still has enough money that they can spend a billion dollars on keeping IE up to date purely for marketting reasons.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
I should buy some cement.
That's funny, seeing as it could very well be argued that the primary reason Mozilla has been gaining marketshare is because of it's increased security, while IE has clearly needed such security measures for some years and yet has not even had an established team to work on it for that duration of time.
Imagine you are a webdesigner... and you really NEED to use transparent PNGs. So you have this options:r (src='filename.png')"> where spacer.gif is 1x1 blank gif file.
Mozilla: <img src="filname.png">
IE: <img src="files/spacer.gif" border="0" style="filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoade
Make your choice...
Fucking a fat girl is like riding a scooter... it's fun 'til someone sees you.
OS X no longer ships with IE. Windows is the only platform to now ship with IE.
As a web developer, it is annoying beyond belief to have to test all of your design code in a growing number of different browsers and versions.
Hey, I think improvements are great, as long as Microsoft focuses on becoming more compliant with CSS standards, etc. rather than trying to reinvent the wheel for a competitive edge.
Because "new and different" doesn't always mean "better".
Computers are useless. They can only give answers. --Pablo Picasso
So in IE7 slashdot will be screwed up and displaying over to the right hand side inside a black background with black text?
back in reality, your absolutely right.
I think the public will accept a few minor tweaks to how they operate, and for whats allowed, but the problem at the moment is how well will sites render in the new version?
should Microsoft maintain that backwards compatibility, or bite the bullet now to clean up their act?
I personally feel that microsofts fumbling on this IE issue is actually them trying to listen to us.
For years and years, we the annoyed techies have been screaming about yearly releases and unfinished software, now they try and buckle down to sort that out, were screaming that we want new features?
It kinda makes me smile in a go linux way, but its also sad, because as a developer myself, I certainly wouldn't be happy with my software if some of my customers were unhappy using it.
Windows does what it does, in its inperfect way, but it works, most people can operate it, its simple to pick up, and as much as we moan about it, gettin paid to clean off spyware isn't all that bad.
liqbase
The cited article itself says that it's based on speculation. Channel 9 attracts developers, not "consumers"; so, the "consumers" the article mentions who "are demanding that IE be fitted with tabbed browsing", etc., are actually just developers. Indeed, the majority of IE's consumers couldn't give a damn about tabbed browsing, or CSS, or PNG.
Sadly, this whole article (i.e., Slashdot's article) has become a collection of threads promoting FireFox, Opera, etc., and generally IE-bashing instead of actually discussing the issue at hand. Sure, perhaps the majority of geeks don't use IE, but we're also the people who would use OpenOffice instead of MS Office, Linux instead of Windows, etc. I.e., we're not Microsoft's intended audience.
So, take a moment and think about the article's premise. Will there be a new version of IE before Longhorn? I'd venture to say no. Why? Mainly, a better IE would be a major selling point for Windows (as Safari has become for Mac OS X, e.g., Tiger's Safari RSS). Also, it's probably moved all new development of IE to Longhorn APIs, and doing double-development of new features is a nuisance (as it was for Apple).
In general, developing new features for IE 6 just doesn't make sense from a business, marketing, or technical perspective. Saying a new release of IE "may be imminent" just adds more vapor to the breeze, seemingly endorsing speculation, and creates even more opportunities for MS-bashing. Whereas MS-bashing can be justified, ripping apart products that exist only in your mind is ludicrous.
HTML apps suck and always will. Maintaining state for complex applications is hard enough without having to add in server post backs were the client has to "remind" the server that the client even existed before this post back. Not to mention that it is impossible to even replicate the simples of retail applications UI with HTML. It is wasted dev time in my opinion and in the opinion of many other developers. Yes there is many places where a web app is the best think to use but it is such a small part of computing and an even smaller part of the reason millions of people buy a PC with Windows on it.
As I see it Microsoft's interest in the browser wars is about standards. If some third party browser is making the standards for application development for browsers then maintaining these application's compatibility with newer versions of the OS becomes increasingly more difficult since the third party browser has a different agenda then MS. They are no longer free to play around with the area to see what they can do to make it more interesting. They have to wait for others to do it. This is already a big problem with the shell in windows were changing even the simplest thing in it can cause a whole category of applications to barf. It really sucks to have a great idea and not be able to implement it because application x thought it would be cool to call an undocument api to manipulate the shell in a way MS was not expecting. The open source world doesn't even have a fraction of the problem of backwards compatibility that comes along with the market share MS has. I personally don't think the open source community would be able to handle it. You would end up with one or two big distros maintaining there own flavors of everything under the sun. We could name on of them M and the other S and just refer to them as MS collectively.
It will happen, but everything that the article implies won't be included.
IE7 will be the same caliber of upgrade as IE6, but with much more user value (who cares about the stupid image toolbar?). Little to no rendering engine improvments will happen, but most if not all of the UI features (tabs, popup blocker, etc) will. Remember that IE is essentially a very hacked up version of Mosaic, a codebase that is nearly a decade old. I've heard rumors of a Windows XP2 full release (in about a year)... likely any IE7 would accompany it.
But I do suspect that any possible IE upgrade will not be solely driven by user migration. MS has finally realized that they made a mistake in letting IE lag behind in the marketplace... the users are forcing them to admit it.
The people who run Channel9 post vehemently that they can't promise any improved support for anything. Remember that IE is still the sam bowl of spaghetti that it was 3 years ago (plus being stale and moldy). Do we really expect MS to make major rendering changes (so they claim) to IE and support it while developing the Longhorn UI (a rehash of Mozilla's display architecture)? I don't think so. I'm not sure how likely IE7 for Win98 will be.
And of course, don't hold your breath for IE including useful developer tools (DOM inspector, etc)... it never was for developers, and it never will be.
All the submitter did was link to a blog entry that listed a couple of public advisories and mentioned Mozilla. Apparently, when put through the Slashbot filter, that becomes "recent mass migration away from MSIE?"
According to Google Zeitgeist, IE 6 hasn't dropped at all and is still massively slaughtering the competition. In fact, Slashdot's own browser statistics show that IE is the majority browser for people accessing this website! Also note that every year is the year of "Linux on the desktop," yet Linux is still at 1% of usage on Zeitgeist.
I don't like IE either, but come on. There is no "recent mass migration."
Microsoft doesn't care all that much about Internet Explorer. They don't want to improve it, because then they can keep back web APIs. Face it, XUL isn't exactly going anywhere.
.NET, which is truly Internet-able. Even OSS has gotten into the trap with Mono. Longhorn will be entirely based on .NET, with mere Win32 compatibility DLLs thrown in for older apps.
Microsoft doesn't really care, as they have their sights set on
I'm talking about things like rendering   as a nonbreakable space, instead of requiring the trailing semi-colon, like in the standard
Yeah, right.
If it isn't separated from the shell, and doesn't have it's own filetype registry, for starters, then Microsoft hasn't learned a damn thing from their mistakes, and there'd be no reason to believe it would be any more secure that version 3, 4, 5, 5.5, or 6... As all of those releases were supposedly more secure than their predecessor. The extra features can wait, let's see some real solid core code in IE first.
If Microsoft can't even do this, then I hope version 8 is an IE uninstaller.
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
Warning: also a long rant.
Um, the only thing that seems correct is that it used to be a lot easier to become a professional web page author (IMHO). In my experience, most (educational) places want to teach 1995 era web development ... things like massively nested frames, tables, and photoshopped images. Design is an afterthought.
Furthermore, those "buzzwords" aren't really that hard learn at all! XHTML is just a simpler HTML; CSS makes design so much easier; and a little JavaScript is easy as pie (a lot - like any programming language - takes skill). DHTML usually represents methods using JavaScript to change the existing CSS and markup; easy for little cutting-and-pasting. It just seems complicated many developers feel the need to use everything including the kitchen sink. Don't use CSS if you can use templates with PHP or ASP. Don't use JavaScript unless you really need it. HTML 4 still works. Moderation! Moderation! Moderation!
The hard parts about web development are design and consistency. Web browsers in 1995 were not more compliant than now; however, designs were so much simpler that it didn't matter. As I said before, developers nowadays want everything including the kitchen sink. Complex designs take more skill to develop and more testing to work around browser differences. Good design makes it easier to learn to code web sites, but learning to design well is really hard.
You're describing the design goals for Java or the X Window System. However, that's not for what hypertext was meant. The World Wide Web is about transferring documents - not programs. Writing documents with (X)HTML, and CSS is easy. On the other hand, writing complex programs with markup and scrips is hard.
TBL did have that functionality in mind while writing the original web browser: WorldWideWeb. The W3C's proof-of-concept web browser was designed with exactly that feature built-in. WikiWikiWeb is the popular server version of your vision. The W3C's founders envisioned your suggestion; however, most users simply didn't need or want that functionality. That's one reason why Mosaic and Netscape Navigator were successful despite not having automatic editing capabilities.
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.
- Jerome Klapka Jerome
The fact is, Firefox is giving the best features to both consumers and developers before they're asking for them, not after the fact. This, I think, is an important distinction. Microsoft is only picking up the ball because, after they announced they would no longer be playing the game, they've realized that the browser isn't going away after all and, oh by the way, Firefox is kicking ass all over IE on a number of fronts.
This is not only self-serving and a way of marginalizing mainstream consumer demands -- all while convincing them that they don't really want what they want after all, no, what they really want is what Microsoft happens to be pushing -- but it's cynical, pure and simple.
The great thing about Microsoft, though, is that they make it so easy for you to hate them. They don't apologize, and they never deliver without being asked, but they are constantly telling you what you really want, even though you didn't realize you needed it, whatever "it" happens to be, like their new touted shell that passes around .Net objects. I'm sure we'll all be "needing" that, too.
Chr0m0Dr0m!C
Considering that he said "CSS spans", it's unlikely he knew what he was talking about at all.
And IE doesn't support any of that except for block anyway. (It treats inlines like inline-block under special circumstances, but doesn't actually know the property.)
Typos are unacceptable in wire journalism. If they can't get the fucking words spelled right, how can they be scrutinizing facts to an appropriate degree?
Poor spelling is a symptom of bad journalism, not a cause.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Nice of you to provide te link, buyt a drop from 95.48 to 94.42% in market share is nowhere near what I call a "Mass migration" either.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
id Software lost $2.75 million to record-breaking piracy on the weekend before Doom 3's release. Thanks, guys!
...]
this statement is based on two false assumptions:
A) people would have bought it if they hadn't pirated it
B) people won't buy it because they pirated it
please stop spreading BSA-FUD. repetition doesn't beget truth.
[waiting for mac version
It's axiomatic that the browser will be released first. This will be how they essentially force you along the upgrade path.
I am a web developer and we DO tailor our sites for IE. When 95% of your viewers are using IE, the last thing your customer wants hear after his mail box fills with complaints about his "crappy website" is: "Well, it's CSS compliant maybe you should tell them to switch to a REAL browser."
You can spout the mantra that it just supports IE's non-standard ways, but in the real world you don't stay in business as a web developer unless it looks good in IE.
Case in point: Slashdot's side bar looks fine in IE but in some cases screws up in Mozilla/Firefox. I'd bet on that being because they had to make sure it rendered right in IE.....even on slashdot.
The problem with what you're saying is that you seem to assume that the only way that a site can look good in IE is by using IE-only features. This is just not true. I just launched a site using web standards that looks exceedingly good in all major web browsers. I did have to use a proprietary IE feature (If statements) to get around parts of IE's broken ass CSS engine but the design as a whole caters to web standards, not just one browser.
If you read the feedback on those IE pages you'll see that there is a HUGE demand for the features discussed. Couple that with the fact that IE is losing marketshare and you may find that catering to IE really amounts to painting yourself in a corner.
Dissolve... Resolve... Evolve...