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Redmondmag on Dumping IE
nSignIfikaNt writes "Here is yet another article discussing options to using IE. This one is from redmondmag.com who claims to be the independent voice of the microsoft IT community."
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Options to using IE? Should be "Alternatives To..."
And besides, IE is not even an option for anyone serious about, well, serious about anything.
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
Every time some guy I've never heard of working for some online e-zine I've never heard of writes an article bashing a Microsoft product, is it really worthy of attention?
What does Roland Pikapuile think of all this? Please include a link to his blog in the submission.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
It's nice to see an article about this. All we're witnessing here is the natural evolution of the internet browser system... A monoculture gets decimated by pathogens, and that opens up niches for newer species. This is what any monopoly leads to when it's not protected by some level of government.
"Wow. Now THAT'S a lot of angry Indians." - Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer
The article points out that Microsoft may add popup blocking to IE... is it just me, or did that already happen with WinXP SP2?
With a required OS upgrade to get the latest features and security, can one consider IE "free" ?
-Randy
The darned thing still does not have tabbed browsing for god's sake. How long does it take MSFT to copy that one.
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
So your saying the Mozilla foundation should be run by a bunch of assholes instead of people just trying to do a good job?
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
MS just give up on the browser, and add some "ie like features/extesions" or some other specific windows features/native gui like Camino for OS X to mozilla and/or geko that are optional to make some broken websites work until the websites get standards compliant and be done with it?
To my knowledge, MS only makes money off of IE by licensing it to people like AOL (and that is a wierd thing, and another discussion), but they make nothing off of having it bundled with the OS, and would loose nothing by bundling some other browser.
It seems evident that there are issues with having a webbrowser tied so closely to the OS. Most of people's issues with switching from IE is that 1) ie is just there, so what else is there to use, and what else is better? 2) There are a few too many broken websites that end users blame the browser for if the website does not work properly.
And if someone feels like adding a completely off topic tangent here. What is up with the IIS websites and those damn "go to # on this page" links or whatever? They are annoying because I don't know what they are doing, and they sometimes break (even in ie) if I open them up in a new window or tab. Grrrrr....
ha, how about pattening the integrasted popup blocker too?
It isn't wise to tit for tat here. Pattens would eventualy come back and byte someone. It is best to leave then alone in my opinion.
Netscape also offers 7.1 of its venerable browser...It'll be the last Netscape-branded browser AOL produces.
What about Netscape 7.2? Technically, it is Mozilla 1.7, but it does have AOL-produced add-ons.
For example, Mozilla issued a patch that stops the browser from allowing an attacker to execute applications on a Windows system--something we're used to dealing with in IE.
For those of us that remember, the shell: vulnerability was because Mozilla passed it on to Windows to handle, and Windows failed at handling it. That's why Mozilla "patched" it.
Anything ActiveX-based won't work
There is an ActiveX addon for Mozilla.
Interesting too that he brings up the issue that non-IE browsers would be harder to manage using Microsoft products (ISA Server, etc.). I wonder why that is so.
I have been using AdSense for well over a year, starting a month or two after it was released. I have never seen any IE specific features. I first started using AdSense with Mozilla, more recently with FireFix. Seems like he may be having other problems, and jumped on the blame Mozilla scapegoat. Maybe he disabled JavaScript.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
"See? We don't have a monopoly! See! See! Now, go ahead and make your little browsers while we lockdown digital media. And seriously, Fuck Apple. No really, fuck'em."
Very interesting.
Opera had tabs ages before mozilla, and that is very recent history. That in the context of browsing, of course, tabs are a ubiquitous interface.
Anyhow, you should remember that software patents are really evil, more evil than Microsoft, and they need to be destroyed much more than IE. IE only hurts their users, but software patents hurt everyone!
Outlook Express? No trace of it, even IE is at 5.0 or so... We do use Outlook 98, but as I said.. properly firewalled.
I don't think that corporate setting is somehow exceptional.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
My title above is a disclaimer. I am a Mac user, and only use a PC via VNC to view webpages in IE. That said, I found this article pretty straightforward about the pros and cons of IE and alternative browsers from a Windows point of view. The guy make valid points about centralised management of IE vs. the standalone path of Firefox et al that would be a question in mainly Windows environments.
That said, all of these problems can be overcome by a good admin who thinks creatively, and I seriously doubt that much active development is going into ActiveX using sites these days.
Really, IE is just so out of date I can't imagine anyone using it unless they have to. I'm still showing off Firefox at my work, but only have 2 others using it. Now that it's about to go 1.0 it should be easier, I love the RSS feature, the Https 'yellow' highlighting and the find-as-you-type new features of 1.0.
All in all I think the only thing that IE is good for is to cause my Mom's Dell to download viruses and trojans so I get the Support call!
CB@#$%^&
free ipod and free gmail!
They will try it out, get turned off by the minor differences (such as tabs), and then switch back to IE
how does one get turned off by a feature that is totally non-intrusive if you want it to be? it's not like firefox forces you to use tabs. but for the people out there (like myself) who never knew what they were missing, it may be a very welcomed change and a reason to leave IE for good.
"users with good taste in software" is the phrase you're looking for. There's nothing bizarre about prefering better tools, especially for those of us who use computers 60+ hrs/week.
There _is_ a fair bit of fanaticism around here... but that's not what's spreading firefox... the fact that it is flat out BETTER is.
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
With the constant bashing and FUD related to anything that is even remotely MS, slashdot loses credibility...
IE issues are in the real news, along with the alternitives. Serious admins and other IT people DO NOT come to slashddot for help related to any MS issue due to the FUD you generate, this is sad when the knowledge that is on slashdot could help...all this is due to the constant bashing and FUD being encouraged by the ADMINS of slashdot...
-give it a rest CmdrTaco, you feed the trolls far too often-
(the artical and its posted bashing attempt by CmdrTaco are old news BTW, even if it was just published, not worthy of any REAL IT news site that repeats what OTHERS have written...)
now I can expect for CmdrTaco to place this IP on a ban again, guess the truth is too much to deal with, so ban those that don't want to ride the hate-wagon...
"and even DirectX, are all, in my opinion, overly integrated and give hackers too much access to core PC functions."
Wasn't that the point of DirectX? To provide more direct access to hardware for purposes such as graphics? That's why you couldn't play games in windows 3.1 and had to use DOS; you couldn't get at the hardware. The trick is how to do it safely.
It sounds like this guy's taking one idea and applying it to everything here. There are some things that do need kernel integration for performance reasons. As for doing it with your browser, I don't really see the point. Integrate all the browser's IO by way of tcp/ip, win32, directx, etc and leave all the rendering engine out of kernel space. But microsoft is probably doing exactly that for the most part. It's hard to say what's part of the windows operating system (kernel) and what just ships with it. Sure there's a lot of stuff that you can't uninstall but that doesn't mean that stuff isn't bound by the same rules that an application like firefox is bound by. It's pretty hard to say how integrated IE really is or if most of these bugs are just there because MS ships when stuff is just "good enough.
Of course, you could use MSI repackaging tools for easier deployment through SMS, Group Policy or some other tool, but it's a shame that these vendors haven't realized the market potential and made their products more accessible to corporate IT departments.
Now, to be honest I have no idea what an "MSI repackaging tool" is. Like an RPM packager or something? Maybe someone can explain. Anyway, it sounds like it might be relatively easy for someone who has this tool to do, and (if they're feeling in the spirit) make the package available. Or heck, maybe even sell and support it! It sounds like this might have a major appeal to corporate IT departments, who usually have some money to toss around.
While this is impressive, Mozillas XUL also introduces some security hazards. Right now they are not really used, but see this example in the 0.9 Firefox Series shows the spoofing/phishing possibilities. IE got into trouble by integrating too much with the OS, XUL might integrate mozillas to far too...
By switching to IE, then you are jumping through the hoop the website developers have set in front of you. I recommend you just ignore the site and move on. There's plenty of other content on the web that's not obfuscated from visitors with browser requirements. Maybe over time, the developers of said sites will realize they can increase their page hits if they open up their site to W3 standards.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Your current MS IE alternative may become the focus of malicious hacker if enough people move to it. That is the only thing saving grace about the alternative browsers, not enough people use them to be of any interest to hackers.
I have been doing some guest teaching at a local high school and when the kids found at that I ran Firefox and Mozilla my credibility quadrupled. As long as Google, GMAIL, E*Trade, and EBAY work with Mozilla I'm good.
On the other side of the age spectrum, Firefox is the ultimate geriatric browser since old-folks who will click on nearly anything that moves can do the least amount of damage to their PC's.
However, I wouldn't count IE out just yet. People will be flocking back in droves when the new Palladium/DRM IE arrives. It will keep users safe from any copyright infringement while installing even more spyware.
Yeah, so you are counted as one more IE user. May work in the short term, but it will contribute to shift the statistics towards IE, what is we *definitly* don't want.
Unfortunately the key to linux on everyone's desktop is too many factors.
.net off.
Graphics card -> ATI and Nvidia are clearly not ready
Databases -> mySQL is actually pretty damn good
UI -> KDE and GNOME is good but still flawed
Browsers -> Firefox hmmm....
Viruses -> good shape
Spyware -> good shape
Adware -> good shape
Office -> still no good email client
Games -> Argh!
Dev -> Still think it needs a good GUI dev tool like visual basic to knock
IE only hurts their users? No way. Non-IE users get punished for being non-IE users. You'd like a truly spectacular example? Try this anywhere outside of IE:
http://www.odeon.co.uk/Odeon/home.html
But then, luckily, IE users get punished much more severely for being IE users. Non-IE users get inconvenienced sometimes; IE users get whacked with rather large PC repair bills. If that's not justice I don't know what is!
But then the administrator of that page sees these articles about how alternative browsers are gaining momentum in the vacuum left by a lack of IE updates, checks his logs, sees that (amazingly) almost everyone who visits his page is using a version of IE, and decides that there's no reason to spend the time making it render properly in the other browsers or to even remove the browser ID check.
If the site isn't crucial (and personally I've never encountered a crucial site, corporate intranet or otherwise), then it's better to make your impression in the logs as a frustrated Mozilla/Opera user. Additionally, sending a polite email to the webmaster asking them to change their page wouldn't be a bad idea. If enough people do that, perhaps the site will be changed and the internet will be a little better for all of us.
Schlock Mercenary
That's a very good point. I initially put Firefox on my Mac, to use the same browse I use under Windows and Linux, but stopped using it instead of Safari when I found it slower and less reliable on Mac than on other platforms.
Bít, zabít, jen proto, ze su liska!
So those people running these sites will only see IE in their logs, assume that noone uses anything else and continue to make sites that require IE.. This is not what we want atall, we should complain to the website authors and not use the site until it works with standards compliant browsers.
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