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Gartner Says it's a 2-Browser World
prostoalex writes "In its advisory to the IT managers Gartner says that even though the factors that drive the current Firefox growth are not sustainable, IT departments better get used to a two-browser world. "Concerns about security currently favor Mozilla Foundation's Firefox, but the market tide can shift if security breaches result from increased usage of Firefox", says Gartner and ZDNet adds that "Microsoft must deliver an improved version of its browser in Longhorn if it is to "determine the outcome" of the browser war.""
Is that the same Longhorn that was supposed to have such high level requirements for operation that no current system can run it. I would guess that it is going to cost a fortune so it better have a better browser!
News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
The first 10% share of the browser market is easy. To get any more than that will be very difficult. Difficulty further enhanced by actions Microsoft may take.
No need to read article now.
I'm a big tall mofo.
So true. My old clueless IT director used to post Gartner group quotes outside his cube, next to his huge multicolor graphs of disk space usage, CPU time and other stats about our VAXCluster. The graphs were printed on a $14,000 large-format Tektronix printer, bought only for that purpose and used only by him. These are the guys who make decisions like, "From now on everybody in the company will use software X, because Garner Group says maintaining a heterogeneous platform isn't cost effective (85%)."
What was reported as the "minimum requirements" were actually the "expected average new system". It shouldn't be the least surprising that the average new system in 2006 is rather better than a top-end system today.
I don't actually know the minimum requirements for Longhorn. I do know that it will require a lot of horsepower and a high-end video card, because they're playing catchup with OS X (both in terms of eye candy and in terms of useful features such as Expose').
So I expect that Longhorn will run perfectly well on today's mid- to high-end systems, since they're trying to take advantage of video power currently going unused. Today's bottom-range systems may not run it at all, or will do so pokily.
Uh, that's accomplished, and then some, by instead getting used to a one-standard world.
I officially proclaim us at (or beyond) the point where we can say "screw people with Netscape 4.0 or IE 3 or whatever".
The existing differences between the rendering on the current versions of the main browsers (and most minor browsers too) are so trivial that a completely standards-compliant page can be made to look good in any of them, even if they might look slightly different in each.
IE misinterprets the box model? So what? With reasonably chosen values, things look fine in each. That fancy bevelled border that you want shows up as a plain old border in IE? Who cares? There are worse things than a plain border. And so forth.
Having several meetings about which _font_ your home page uses are _not_ unheard of, and the same goes for their use of java, dhtml, javascript, ActiveX, Flash, Shockwave, etc.
To add insult to injury, in some cases when they find that they can't make their page render the way they want it to, they just save it as a gif and make their entire page one image, or at least several images of text and such. Which works on all browsers, as long as you're not blind or using lynx anyways.
Generally they don't care too much about that last 10% as long as they can make it look right for the 90% that use IE.
why is the above insightful?
Gartner receive payments from Microsoft to write articles that make them look better than they really are.
doesn't need MS to survive
Just because they are big enough to survive, doesn't mean that they don't want *more* money.Gartner is a pretty big group *respected*
Of course they are respected. If they weren't respected, why would Microsoft bother to pay them large sums of money to write articles about them?
No, I'm going to have to support the grandparent on this one: .NET is junk. The CLR is horrifically slow, and the control set is woefully incomplete. To do anything in .NET you have to use P/Invoke waaaay too often, and once you do that, you're no longer writing managed code, which is supposedly the whole point of the CLR.
Plus, with the CLR, you don't get any language, you get a subset of the language. (no Multiple Inheritance, templates..) and while I don't use multiple inheritance, I most certainly do use templates.
Actually you can turn off ActiveX in IE6 under the Security tab of Internet Options, but you have to click the "Custom Level" button to see all the options.
"For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert"
From what I've understood, ActiveX is similar to Java - an ActiveX control is placed into a web page, and it is then used to enhance that page in some way. I could be wrong here - I don't use Windows for anything but gaming nowadays.
Mozilla's XPI files, on the other hand, are browser extensions. They give the browser new functionality in a modular way. For example, I have currently installed a Nuke Anything extension, which adds a "Remove this object"-option to the right-button menu, which allows me to remove the object being clicked.
This is one of the basic ideas behind Firefox: make the basic browser have only a few features, and let people extend it as they please.
So, in short: ActiveX controls are web applets, XPI files are browser addons. And since XPI files aren't installed unless the user specifically requests it (and certainly not from any random page), security is not a concern anymore than it would be for installing any other program.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
The dominance of MSIE got Microsoft into hot water in the past. Now, they can sit back and just give a bit of market share away as to have ammunition to defend themselves. But there's a limit to what is reasonable for them to give away: If MSIE drops below 75% of market (or some similar figure), I imagine they'll have some defensive action.
Sure, I'd love it if an open-source browser took over. But I don't think it's going to happen.
Moore's observation is that the capacity seems to double every 18 months.
It's not a law, and it's not about speed.
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
So in short, they're not different. Both run without a sandbox, with full machine access. Both can be installed by the user from any site, just by clicking a link. However (as of XP SP2 and FF 1) neither will be installed automatically.
Java, on the other hand, runs in a sandbox...
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
Under default controls, xpi aren't able to be installed by any site