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!"
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.
I thought IE and the Window OS were so tightly integrated that they were virtually the same thing? Do you mean IE was actually a separate program all along?
That's why they wanted to call it Phoenix....
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!
And so at last the beast fell and the unbelievers rejoiced. But all was not lost, for from the ash rose a great bird. The bird gazed down upon the unbelievers and cast fire and thunder upon them. For the beast had been reborn with its strength renewed, and the followers of Mammon cowered in horror.
from The Book of Mozilla, 7:15
My prediction: lynx will make a comeback and overtake them all!
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.
I think what Iliad is saying here is that consumers really don't care if their browser supports de facto fringe standards. I wish CSS and PNG support (as well as some stable ECMAScript, etc.) were supported, but that's not the name of the game. As long as MSN and Google and ESPN and Craigslist and Slashdot (insert longer list of highly traffiked web sites here) work in IE as-is, there is no reason for IE to change. And there is no reason for those sites to change unless IE changes. (Here I open myself up to charges that increased usage of other browsers like FireFox and Safari could force those sites to change... that's another discussion)
Until recently, security really wasn't an issue for typical web users. I've had people send me credit card information and passwords over standard email. I've pointed out to other people that the web form with which they're submitting their personal or financial information is not secure. I've always tried to get my friends and family to use other browsers because using IE just isn't safe. In all these cases, I generally get a vacant stare, because unless their credit card number is stolen, or somebody assumes their identity, they don't care. Those millions of users Iliad mentions are part of that vacant-stare category. Sure, if Microsoft had a corporate culture more like Google's, they would have internal pressure to fix these problems and be standards-compliant. But MS only feels the pressure when there are financial reasons for doing so.
Web developers would prefer to code web pages in one cross-platform, cross-browser syntax, but thanks to Microsoft's indifference in the matter, web developers have to endlessly tweak things so it looks OK in IE as well as whatever browsers their target audience may be using. Given that the target audience for most web sites are IE users, and given that proprietors of those commercial web sites are more interested in making money than some philosophical desire to be standards compliant, whatever MSIE supports becomes the standard.
Slashdotters know that universal support for CSS would be good. We also know that PNG is a legally pure image format. But in the world of PHB-controlled e-commerce sites and the typical demographic that visit their sites, PNG and universal CSS come second (or third, or forth,
In any event, it seems that the reason Microsoft is going to release 7.0 before Longhorn is because of security concerns. CSS and PNG aren't necessarily related to that.
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.
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
Well, MSDN front page has an article with code to build your own custom web browser with tabs and an integrated link to a search engine.
You don't need to buy anything for this. Visual C# express is a free download
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???
And if people with browsers that didn't support the standards would realize the problem and upgrade, this might work.
What will actually happen is either
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
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.
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.
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."
> (a) why this happens
It's an error in some min-width computation code in Gecko.
> (b) why it only happens occasionally
Because it's only an error in the incremental reflow code; if the initial layout happens early enough, the problem is not hit.
> (c) whether anyone is working on fixing it?
It's been fixed in trunk Gecko since April. It's not fixed on the stable Firefox branch yet, and probably won't be because the fix leads to problems of its own on some sites.
Do you mean something like the Mozilla ActiveX control?
And it works in IE like any other ActiveX (the webpage is not that clear as you can use the control in any Windows application), we did some tests for a project some months ago.
Additionally, even in June, it should be noted that Mozilla has regained substantial marketshare, nearly reversing the losses that the Netscape codebase had suffered since 2002. Way to go.
Mozilla is doing well in all its forms. The Google figures if you look closely, indicate a general increase of Internet Explorer 6 is mostly at the expense of other versions of IE. Mozilla and "Other" are actually slowly gaining.
AND this was before the latest security advisories hit.
AND Netcraft has issued an advisory indicating that banner ads could be used to spread malware.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP