Slashdot Mirror
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!"
It's somewhat ironic that the competitor Microsoft thought they had killed, Netscape, is now again, in the form of the now open source Mozilla and it's variants, the biggest threat to IE.
And, also, the re-rise of that competitor is bringing out the first major feature additions to IE in years...
My problem is that there is not IE stanard. There is no such thing as making a site MSIE compatible. You can make it work with the exact version on your desktop and test on others but if you are outside the w3c specs and a FEW very limited things that ms says it supports then you are dealing with quirks and the quirks tend to be very specific in too many circumstances.
So far I have found the best way to actually get a page to render acoss a large various of MSIE 5.x and 6.x systems is to write the pages to xhtml 1.0 strict and css 1 and just use the subset of css that IE actually supports. The reason for the xhtml 1.0 strict is that then you can run a simple checker on the document and make sure every tag is properly closed. I know with html soup that IE renders a document as that it should not matter but it does in practice. Well formed html just renders more consistently across the range of IE browsers.
It is stuff like this that web designers want everyone to follow the standards. It is a pain in the neck to program for each browser quirk especially when it changes so much between even minor bug fix versions. At least for opera, konqueror, mozilla, safarri, firefox etc I can write xhtml 1.0 strict and CSS2 and have it render nearly identically in all of them with only a few things that can't be used due to bugs. MS not adhering to standards makes sites cost more to write, more to maintain, more to test etc.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
If 90%+ of the market is using Internet Explorer, developers will design websites with IE in mind.
Then microsoft decides to incorporate some non-RFC "features" into IE. Developers know that 90% of the people coming to their websites will have support for this feature, and will use it on the sites they design.
Unfortunately, the particular feature that IE supports is directly tied into Windows, and has no counterpart in Firefox/Opera/etc. Users with browsers different to IE will be unable to view sites using this non-RFC feature, or will have a less than optimal browsing experience on those sites. In order to view these sites correctly, you will need to use IE, which in turn locks you into Windows.
I'm using a hypothetical scenario here, but I believe in some instances this has occured in the past - today I have problems viewing websites designed for IE when I use Firefox, and for quite some time internet banking for unusable except for IE.
Because the browser locks you into the operating system, that is the point of this.
Man watching 6 MSCE's around a sun box, looks alot like the opening scene's of 2001:space odyssey...
So there's a mass migration away from IE.
From the stats gathering we do on our site, I have yet to see that. Oh sure there's a slight rise but that's not enough to convince marketing etc. Mind you, the 3rd party we use is crap for browser analysis but we're stuck using it because everyone in the industry does.
Are there some reliable browser metrics out there? Your own site stats don't count...
Otherwise, as another poster stated, people will simply wait for MS to level the field with the rest of the browsers and keep using what they have.
Interesting questions, interesting challenges... Are there enough resources? Is there enough people/creativity/motivation/discipline (no bickering, forking and what not) to keep MS at bay? Can the F/OSS community focus on the users and develop widely accepted, non-controversial(*) extensions?
Exciting times - I can hardly wait to see what happens!!
(*) The reason I mention this is because FireFox has this ad blocker... Which is good and all, but at some point someone will point that out as something bad. Even if it still hits the advertiser's servers... Joe Consumer will be under the impression that this is not a "good" browser, developed by "good" people. Remember, chances are Joe Consumer does not care about adverts. And companies may find an excuse to indulge in more yummy FUD :( Fear the media, people...
The revolution will not be televised.
To say that "Firefox is compliant" is a joke. Firefox aka Gecko is more compliant, but don't be fooled into thinking that it renders everything right all the time. It certainly doesn't. Not to say IE is better.. it's not.
Unluckily, the W3C has made a complete mess of web standards. To the point that there are so many barely used, misunderstood, unclear, ambigious, and depreciated standards that figuring anything out at all is an accomplishment of some scale.
As a web developer / designer, I've been using Mozilla and the like for a long time. But what interests me is what the majority of people use - I need to design stuff that works for everything. Since Explorer has ALWAYS been a pain when it comes to CSS compliance, myself and every designer out there have had to bend over backward to write code that has all these little IE fixes built in. I'm sick of having to play with code and then check both Netscape and Explorer for consistency. Please, oh please, give IE 7 some decent fricken CSS compliance!! That way, I will KNOW that it will all look the bloody same, just like it should for pete's sakes.
I'm not sure why some enterprising mozilla/firefox nut hasn't made an activex plug-in for IE that causes the browser to render all pages using a "gecko plug-in". For example, if I came to slashdot (using IE like I normally do) and the page prompted me to install the "Gecko HTML rendering engine", I'd do it. Just like all those the masses that install spyware because they don't know any better.
As a side note, the only reason that I don't use Firefox is that it locks up when I access slashdot (on both home and work PCs, unfortunately). I'd use Mozilla but it just doesn't look/feel like a Windows app. I guess that I'll keep waiting.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
There's an analogy here to do with Xerox and the photocopier, which I think is quite relevant:
When the photocopier was first developed and Xerox began marketing it to businesses, it took a lot of effort because the bosses couldn't see the point. From a PHB's perspective, there's not a lot of point in having a machine to duplicate documents. After all, whenever a boss wanted a copy of a document they would hand it to the secretary who would re-type it, perhaps with a few sheets of carbon paper.
Xerox eventually sold it to businesses by proposing to simply install the photocopier for free, and only charge for the copies that were made using it. Many more PHB's then accepted it, and it immediately became a fantastic tool for the secretaries who no longer had to struggle through typing and re-typing entire documents just to make identical copies. It was only at this point that its usefulness really became apparent to a lot of bosses, who realised that the availability of a photocopier was letting their staff spend time on other things. Really the end customer (PHB) wasn't interested in the photocopier, but by providing it they made someone else's job much easier which resulted in a better service.
I guess if Microsoft wants to market standards compliant CSS and PNG support, they should be marketing it at the people to whom it'll mean the most. ie. The developers. Those are the people whom it's going to benefit most immediately, after all: not the end customer. If there are enough websites and web applications out there that require IE7 and assuming Microsoft makes it easy to get, it really shouldn't be much of a problem.
The Zeitgeist is from June, before the major effect of the advisories was felt. On my site, IE has slipped a couple percentage points in the past couple months (and it's not a tech site).
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.
*sigh*
Do you know the relevant history behind the development of the WWW? Do you know why web browsers show a little hand with a finger pointing out when you hover over a link even today? It's because of the software the web was modelled after. Hugely influential and revolutionary software by Bill Atkison. Software for creating little 'page' (card) based 'applications'. That was where the initial inspiration came from.
Like many others I'm sure I was creating networked, linkable and editable wiki style 'sites' with it before the WWW, the only major difference was it was with proprietary software. TBL saw HC and was inspired by it. I think it entirely possible he wouldn't have bothered with creating HTML had HC not been proprietary.
Today, web applications are all around us. They are revolutionising the way we live. They are a big deal. The only reason TBL's implementation is not is good at allowing people to create web applications as Bill Atkison's inspirational software is that TBL didn't know how (or have the resources/inclination) to implement many of the relevant features, and they missed the boat on having a half decent scripting language so Netscape assumed dominance with the god awful JavaScript to fill a niche, by then it was too late, we were stuck with a Turkey.
People are spending vast amounts of time and money building web apps. Huge financial resources are put into it each year by corporations building web apps for customers, online stores, B2B and users build web apps just for fun. So much futile effort and man power could be better spent if we just had a decent implementation of a standard for that, but we don't so expensive investment in working around this gaping whole in the current technology is the norm. It's really quite insane, especially when you've experienced a highly equivalent way of doing the same thing that's so much better.
The WWW is not about simply 'sharing documents' (do not listen to your inner hobgoblin who tells you otherwise), it's about sharing information - the exchange of information - and that's a two way process, and for that, you need an interface that facilitates that.
Oh and don't worry - I know how Internet standards bodies like the W3C typically work and I think it's surely painfully obvious to those who still don't get it that its a poor way to make standards. I know many will disagree, but to them I point out the result of the current system - we live in a world of half baked web and network standards the implementations of which are rarely actually compatible.
The sad testiment is that today, proprietary reverse engineered solutions are usually better at providing interoperability that competing platforms are at implementing identically functioning standards based systems!
It's a shameful mess for a technically competent society to be in.
As the bunny icon used to say '"Subvert the dominant paradigm!"
The WWW has alas been crippled by a lack of vision since the W3C's inception. It's too bad there are not more Bill Atkinson's to go round.