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IE7 Announced for Longhorn and WinXP
sriram_2001 writes "There is now an official announcement from Bill Gates on Internet Explorer 7. It will be available in beta form this summer for Longhorn and XP SP2. The IEBlog has commentary about the decision making process that went into the new browser version." Coming on the heels of the June Beta announcement for Longhorn, if things go as planned it will likely be here in early summer. The new browser's early arrival was first discussed last year.
Who wants to bet we'll see 'tabs' in IE7
time is a perception of a being's consciousness
time is your 6th sense, the wierd ones are 7+
Firefox could use a little competition.
Hasn't IE been in beta since, well, it was released?
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
A friend's computer is virtually unusable because something corrupted IE, and that in turn broke Windows Explorer.
How soon will the first vulnerability be found in the "new and improved" IE7?
**FREE** Track and view your phone's via CellID and/or WIFI and/or GPS
Rumour has it it's built on Firefox.
All IE needs to be good is: tabbed browsing, popup blocker, standards compliance, and fewer security issues. Sounds simple, doesn't it? Firefox was able to do it, let see if, given enough time Microsoft can do the same. Although I will still use Firefox, it will be nice to have a competent browser when I use, for example, a computer at school.
So they've admitted that IE is weak and Firefox et. al. is a compelling product. Knocks aside, I am very interested in seeing how this plays out.
if Firefox becomes the dominant browser by the time IEnexgen is out, it might well be named IE 1.1 add your favourite (C) and Microsoft tags there....
~~bada bing, bada bang, bada bong and voila~~
Now if only they'd let you middle click to open a new one, I might consider occasional use. Well, and if they had adblock.
This is disappointing because we all know microsoft won't fill the giant security hole that is active x. Sure they have a "popup blocker" and this beta will have "tabs." But will it actually follow the W3C standards or is it going to be as hard to work with as IE6? I mean we KNOW they won't clean the issues up because they're releasing their own Anti-Spyware application. So really, what's the point?
Kyle
http://www.unlogikal.net/
Why am I not surprised ?
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/feb0 5/02-15RSA05KeynotePR.asp
What? Microsoft suddenly decided to release a new version of IE now that FireFox is taking nearly 12% of its previously undesputed market-share? Shocking!
IE7 will most likely not contain a single rendering improvement.
Now that there is competiton, Microsoft is suddenly interested again. But, losing brand loyalty is key, and I see lots of unsophisticated users using Firefox. Take IE7 and shove it Microsoft.
"In yet another example of innovation, Microsoft has invented a feature called Tabbed Web Surfing (tm) (r). Tabbed Web Surfing is a revolutionary user interface for web browsing that Microsoft as its inventor has received over 7,000 patents on."
I'm a big tall mofo.
Will all you Firefox users now be quiet? Oh, they are talking about me, as well?
...reading this article where it seems that they were their partners who asked for it
Microsoft's people have said in public several times that IE is the best browser out there. Why are their customers asking for new versions then? Heh.
This is a way of saying "IE 6 sucks, even the one in SP2". A new excuse to "sell" firefox - "are you going to expect until summer to have a decent browser?"
4 critical security flaws have already been found in the yet to be released Internet Explorer 7.
1. Opera has stollen tabs from Netcaptor (a shell for IE),
2. Mozilla stole tabs from Opera
Indeed, how much is copied from other browsers.
If Microsoft has any common sense left, they'll leave Internet Explorer as "beta" for the duration of its product life. That would serve to blunt some of the more obvious criticisms of security, interface, and data loss that are sure to crop up.
Then again, if they were to truly mimic Google, Mozilla, and the rest of the "do good" gang, they'd release a Microsoft-equivalent finished product as their beta.
THE CYBORGS ARE... what's that Bill? Oh.
:P
Never mind, I thought you said "SkyNet".
What with Firefox slowly munching it's way into the browser market, it makes you think what do Microsoft have to add to IE to get these users back? Or are they all gone for sure?
I would hope the rise of the "alternate" browser again means that MS finally realises that plugging the holes really does help them (Yes, I do know that other browsers have never gone away, and there has always been a minority, once a majority of users making use of them).
I think the most interesting question about IE7 is: will it be written with .Net? Microsoft seems to think that developers should all jump on the .Net bandwagon, but they seem rather reluctanct to do it with any of their big products.
.Net brings.
.Net? If it is, no wonder it's so much slower than VS6.)
IE.Net (or rather, mshtml.Net) would be a great way to show off the supposed security enhancements that
(Aside: Is Visual Studio now written in
Vote for global prefs bug
My first thought at the announcement was 'who cares'? It's too little, too late. Microsoft discounted firefox when it appeared, let it get to 1.0, then they realized they might have a problem.
From my perspective, they have given Firefox a huge head start, and, since they can't outcompete them on a cost standpoint (hey, Firefox is free too!), they will have to rely on superior coding (maybe), or hope that most new computer users will simply use whatever comes installed as long as it doesn't suck too hard.
Consider, though, that almost everyone I know either uses Firefox now or avoids windows altogether. Heck, Firefox is even the default browser on the public computers on the UC Berkeley campus these days. I work there - I know how notoriously slow the PC techs are to change anything.
IE7, great. Microsoft will probably integrate it more tightly into the OS. In the meantime, the Mozilla foundation has at least 4 more months to get even better. Lets hope they build an even stronger lead.
I was a long time IE user- I remember downloading all of the IE4 betas and admiring the technology. But, I know who i'll be rooting for in this one.
-Ryan
AUWYHSTOT (Acronyms are Useless When You Have to Spell Them Out Too)
Oh man, a new IE... this is exciting! I'm sure many things will change. We'll, many things except one, IE's blaringly evident security flaws and the level of user frustration during use of that ridiculously terrible browser that needs to be retired, rather than keep incrementing to higher numbers to show how "Cutting Edge" it is. No thanks Billy, I'll stick with my firefox.
so microsoft is building IE7 from the mozilla/firefox rendering engine? nah... that would be too easy.
poop
Bill Gates: "We've got new and improved security loopholes. We have made things so simple for hackers, even the dumbest 12 year old can now create and deploy viruses, worms, trojans...you name it!"
Announcing IE7 allows Bill to spend some "capital" to get the unwashed computing masses to try IE one more time.
They just better get it right this time.
Otherwise the pendulum swings over to the browser with the Netscape Pedigree.
Now... how ironic would *that* be...
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
If there is ANY security enhancement for IE7 at all, it will be automatic downloading of M$ AntiSpyware, which means any future 'fix' to the browser hole is nothing but a money making scheme that will NOT make the browser less prone to attacks.
Thats what i want to know!
HTTP/1.1 400
Why has everyone gone 'oh i bet it has tabs'? Perhaps it'll have an even better metaphor for multiple web pages, and firefox will then copy that!
Hmm, is that bacon overhead?
if we got just these two things, and nothing else, i might actually stop slitting my wrists as a web designer. PLEASE MICROSOFT. PLEASE. that's all i want god damnit.
- tristan
I'm thinking he should probably get together a bunch of future IE7 users, ask for donations, and put a big ol' ad in the New York Times or something. Just to see if he can.
IE developer/lead says "I think of today's announcement as a clear statement back to our customers: "Hey, Microsoft heard you. We're committing (to ie7)."
What he means : "Damm firefox took a lot of market share. Even with our monopoly people are downloading this better and free product"
Mircosoft intended to use its domenence in browsers to control the desktop. IE distribute apps with IE/Longhorn and proprietary extentions (.net) that only worked on windows.
Firefox's success caught them off guard and now there running to catch up. I think MS was hoping to bundle ie7 with longhorn, causing massive corporate forced upgrades, but delay after delay nixed that idea.
To recover all the taxpayer money wasted by MS when it was claiming that the browser was "part of the operating system."
Maybe we'll finally have CSS3 support. Being able to referencing parent nodes would really nice.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
You would have noticed the poster was asking the forefox users to be quiet. So, us Firefox users can keep on ranting. :)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
"Hey, Microsoft heard you. We're committing."
... "and comparing that to the engineering and logistical complexity of that work. "
...
Translation: Oh shit. Here comes Firefox.
"questions about support for Windows 2000."
Translation: Hey, we're a bunch of assholes who put arbitrary limits into our software. As such, since we tie our shit-ass browser into the OS so tightly, it won't work on Win2k without some act of God.
I use Win2k still, and it works beautifully. The advantages of Win2k3 or WinXP could have easily been bundled onto Win2k, just as this could be, but instead they try and continue to force the upgrade.
Microsoft should start sending out jars of vasoline to their loyal customers
I'll be shocked if it includes updated (and proper) CCS2/3 support. As a web designer its one of the things I am screaming to see. I somehow doubt they will do it. Updating thier code to do proper support will break most of the sites currently coded for it.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
In other news, Longhorn has officialy been renamed "Gazelle"
let others innovate, incorporate their innovations, destroy them
firefox, google currently in the crosshairs
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
So Longhorn comes with IE7.
Remember people, it's not a bug, it's a feature.
Maybe this will push Google to further incorporate more Firefox talent and have their browser ready by the time MS has IE7 out.
I think how improved IE is will largely depend on how serious they feel the competition from alternate browsers like firefox are. A few years back when they set their sites on netscape IE did show some innovative qualities at the time. I'll admit that their business practices worked to crush netscape too, but for a period of time IE was a top of the line browser. Hopefully firefox will be seen as enough of a threat and bring about some real innovation from IE's browser team again. Competition is usually a good think and hopefully a browser war between IE and firefox will improve the internet experience of everyone.
Why just Windows XP and Longhorn? So that pretty much means we'll have to wait even longer for all the 98 / ME people to play catchup so we can start doing things entirely with CSS.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
I, for one, welcome our new...er...old borg-like overlords.
Does anyone really believe for one minute that this new version of IE will actually be an improvement specific to exploitations?
If anything, I think it'll reset the clock on the patchwork, so to speak. MS'll have to re-release all the patches that they've release for IE 6.
This would arguably be opening themselves up to some huge legal problems. Sites that rely on advertising revenue would get rather cranky if the default browser on the monopoly desktop operating systems was blocking the ads.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
alpha transparency
And its even better than other tabbed solutions in that each tab appears in its own window as God intends.
I fail to see how they admitted that IE is weak.
It is quite rare that a company releases a product that is so perfect that they do not need to create a new version. Such is the case here, IE can always better... and so can Firefox. Down the line when the next version of Firefox is released... is it their way of saying that their own product is weak?
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
All software continues to evolve. New versions, more features. I can't think of any software that hasn't been discontinued (or maybe the project just died) that doesn't continue to release new versions. Show me some software where the company just decided it's perfect and quit making releases. Just because a developer releases a new version doesn't mean it isn't the best out there. The fact that it isn't the best is covered extensively elsewhere.
IANAExpert
This is a funny debate. There are obviously some shared elements between Windows Explorer and Internet Explod^Hrer.
Now the file manager for KDE is Konqurer -- which also happens to be a web browser. Will KDE break if you pull out Konqurer? What functionality would you lose?
Although in KDE's case, the desktop manager is independent of the underlying OS.
--- Dan
Please, please, implement alpha transparency for PNGs. That's all I ask. CSS2 would be nice, but it's ok if you don't have time or whatever. But just get proper transparency working. Please.
I am trolling
I wake up to 'your machine failed to boot into normal mode...try again?' Spend 20 minutes looking at the 6 updates, remove two to no affect, remove AVG and have the system come back, only to have microsoft YELL "YOU MAY NOT BE SAFE! I CAN'T FIND A VIRUS SCANNER!"
Uh, no shit?
I don't know _who_ you're helping Microsoft, but you're sure not helping me.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
they didn't admitted anything. if this were a mozilla announcement, you wouldn't say that firefox 1.0 is "weak" just because they announced 2.0, would you?
Kudos to Berkeley, but they are the exception in most cases, and this is no exception to that rule. :)
As long as IE is even almost as secure and almost as feature rich as Firefox, it will probably win the browser war. That is, unless and until Linux wins the OS war (or at least makes a bigger showing).
About that word "lead". I don't think it means what you think it means. :) (Ob. quote.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
This page is mentioned in an interview transcript at Microsoft and also on "Windows XP Central" and I quote:
RE: Firefox Users IE 7 is coming
In: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general Other link
IE 7 Code!!!!!!!
http://dean.edwards.name/
i think these are real developers on early stages the work has begun i'm sure of that!
Not really sure what's going on here...but don't have time to dig in further right now.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
proprietary technology lock-in. I saw a demonstration of Longhorn about 6 months ago at school. In Longhorn, Microsoft has made clear their intention to pioneer thick-client web interfaces. Basically, browsing to Amazon.com will upload a whole client application to your computer that will be much richer than a typical website. Do you think MS is going to let an FOSS browser have the ability to interact with these applications? Helllll no. It's been a sweet run with Firefox, but unless MS really screws this one up, we'll all be upgrading to Longhorn to use these enhanced webpages.
Cause face it, ff made it really on two things: blocking pop ups and tabbed browsing. With security being a third thing but really people don't immediately see that.
If microsoft patched ie to stop popups and hacked in tabbed browsing I don't think as many would have switched to ff. It's not like we would get many converts with 'Look! It open source and standards compliant!!'
Thanks microsoft for dropping the ball on this, and whatever your smoking up there in redmond, keep smoking it.
http://gemal.dk/blog/2003/02/19/internet_explorer_ 70_will_be_based_on_gecko/
going to make you accept to install this piece of wonderment than M$ has decided to grace us with?
Enjoy Every Sandwich
If IE is Windows and Windows is IE, why do they not only have seperate release cycles, but why is each subsequent version of IE available for different Windows versions?
Even Notepad, which is different for each Windows version, is not able to run on different Windows versions than the one it shipped with.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I'm guessing IE7 will be half integrating FireFox functionality and half aesthetics.
Nothing new or seedy here, sorry pal. O are you prepared to deride every automobile manufacturer other than Ford for the same reasons?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Well, I can hazzard a guess to what this enailed. "Download FireFox, look at it, patent everything about it, put the features in IE7, then threaten EU members.
If you haven't read the comments yet, do it. They are hilarious. Here are some samples.
Security isn't a feature, it's expected. To steal someone else's example, you wouldn't buy a toaster that says "Now blows up less often!" We don't need IE7 to fix security holes. It should offer real new features. I doubt they will, but they should come up with browsing enhancements that aren't in Firefox, beyond just copying it. Let's not forget supporting standards as well. IE is stale now, and so far it doesn't sound like IE7 will offer any improvements.
Tell MS to call me when they have something new to offer. I'll be over here with Firefox that already works better and keeps it's security holes patched.
...
Right, because web browsers were the first applications to use tabs.
- HTML 2.0
- HTML 3.2
- HTML 4.0
- HTML 4.01
- XHTML Basic
- XHTML 1.0
- XHTML 1.1
- XHTML 2.0
- CSS 1.0
- CSS 2.0
- CSS 2.1
- CSS 3.0
- ECMA-262 (a.k.a. JavaScript)
If not, I quite simply (like most WWW users) don't want to know.Also, does it still execute arbitrary code from WWW sites without the user's permission? Or is this considered a feature by Microsoft?
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
lets see how long it take for someone to find a 'critical flaw' in this. hopefully it'll be more than just a graphical interface-lift.
they didn't admitted anything. if this were a mozilla announcement, you wouldn't say that firefox 1.0 is "weak" just because they announced 2.0, would you?
The difference is that Microsoft had previously announced that IE 7.0 would be tied to Longhorn and not available for Microsoft Windows XP. Firefox, on the other hand, still works on my Windows 98se laptop.
I have long beleived MSFT has lost all their innovation.
Uh, you can't lose what you never had.
Here's my prediction:
1. IE7 Ends up being pretty decent with tabbed browsing, increased security, and some sort of nifty integration with other MS stuff.
2. Firefox 'market share' continues to increase, but begins to lose footing as MS begins to focus on IE once again.
3. Browser battle ensues for all of a year and a half.
4. The 600 lb gorilla continues to pour part of its billions into marketing, automatically including with its OS, etc., etc.
5. Firefox hangs up its towel after a long hard battle. The general populous wins for a time, however, because IE and the last version of Firefox are what everyone needs.
6. MS neatly places all of their IE developers back in cryogen, to wait until the browser monoply is again challenged.
7. IE rots like a dead dog until another browser project starts up and begins to gain ground. The general populous loses.
8. Goto Step 1.
Haven't we all seen this story before? I *really* hope that someone else takes a strong enough hold to keep everyone in competition, but the way the Netscape dynasty played out, things aren't looking good.
You can do it Firefox!
It will be available for Longhorn and XP SP2. Since Longhorn has not arrived, that means only for XP SP2.
Do you hear that, Win2000 users? Uncle Bill says you're not worth the effort unless you fork over that money for XP. Of course, you could get Firefox.
And stay with it.
MS said that IE would only be updated when it is released for 'Longhorn'. They denied that this would change. They changed those plans...why? Seems like they admited something.
Most users will not understand the tabbed browsing concept. Nor do the care about standards compliance. They just care that the websites they like look good. Which means
IE7 can't puke on IE6 'only' sites or people won't use IE7 and may actually drive more people to Firefox cause they will blame the browser and not the website. This means it's in MS interest to keep IE6-rendering.
they'll leave Internet Explorer as "beta" for the duration of its product life
That would mean Microsoft would have to leave Longhorn itself as beta, as Longhorn will ship with IE 7.0, and the default shell (explorer.exe) links to the DLLs that make up the IE engine.
So if Longhorn is beta, is Linspire the new VHS?
Bah.....Another monumental piece of ever telling bullshit for Gates to shove onto his pile of failures. Whod have though that Word Macros could be used as a vulnerability? LOL. Well, if he actually got Tabbed browsing in there without actually pissing off Mozilla community it MIGHT be ok. But that status is holding on how many vulnerabilities are released for it the day it comes out. More than 10 means I wont touch it. Any why should I , firefox is fine.
"God of Rock, thank you for this chance to kick ass. "
MS really depends on blazing performance to keep its users happy. Shipping IE separately means an upgrade to those internal components, not delivery of a separate product. I doubt you'll be able to use it alongside the existing IE, for example.
.NET gives you more control, but I'm betting not for this upgrade. Most users will always equate "faster" with "better", and "more secure" will come in a distant third.
It's terrible for security, but MS's approach to security has never been to contain threats. Their approach heen been much more all-or-nothing; ActiveX signed certificates means that the program is either trusted or it's not.
Security is always a double-edged sword. Users hate it when security interferes with them, and if it gets in their way before they see the benefits of whatever you're selling them, they'll pick something less safe but whose benefits are more clearly visible.
It's vaguely possible that in Longhorn they might alter some of those balances between security and performance, since
It's no secret that not many people are fond of Microsoft, but it would be fairly impossible to steal from Firefox, considering it's GPL'ed. They could just change the window title to Internet Explorer 7 and put a blue "e" in the corner and it would be perfectly legal. Just because you don't like MS doesn't mean they can't use oss just like everyone else.
how can Microsoft claim it's not possible to ship Windows without IE when IE can ship without Windows? or is the IE7 coming out as a part of Longhorn beta?
Mozilla's CVS archive for Firefox 1.0 has been hit several times from the domain microsoft.com .
Better integration of MSN and MSN Search. Like the Firefox/Google search function
Better interoperability of MS Office formats between MS Office and IE.
MS Money formats will be supported.
The line between Media Player and IE7 start to blur. Eventually, it will be one massive product.
That's my prediction
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Looking deeper into this and other MS actions, I start to wonder if this is the beginning of decline for the MS gorilla. No more IE for the Mac (this has been known for a while). Why? Too much competition from Safari and others. I guess they realized they can't really compete in a non-monopolistic environment.
Back in the day when EVERYTHING had to be Microsoft, they were getting loads of money from software sales and licenses...the OS, server software, Office, etc. But now, slowly but surely, they're losing out the "it has to be MS" in the server space. They'll undoubtedly be losing money there. Will they get pissy at Apple with their incremental attacks at Office and stop producting their too? What happens when Linux actually DOES gain mainstream popularity on the desktop and MS doesn't have the stranglehold their either to sell their software?
Is this the beginning of the end? Or am I thinking too deeply?
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
Now that they have the FireFox source to look out to finally figure out how to write code that's standards compliant, about a year later they can ship their "new" browser :-)
Or they are using the same logic they have been for Avalon, WinFX and the other technologies that were intended solely for Longhorn, but decided that it would be good add them to previous systems as well.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
I'm sure that Bill Gates' interoperability concerns will ensure that this new version of IE will support open standards, and that using the new IE's full feature set will not compel people to use proprietary Microsoft-only technologies.
Thanks Bill!
If they were serious, I have lost all hope in humanity.
tabs, popup blocking, and RSS subscriptions?
Too bad. The single best thing they could've done security-wise would be to kill Active X dead once and for all.
Yeah, right.
I fail to see how they admitted that IE is weak.
Microsoft terminates work on IE, they own the browser market, spyware runs rampant, all is good in the universe.
Firefox appears and chomps into their dominance, offering features and spyware noncompliance that makes IE6 look like a Microsoft product.
Microsoft internally goes,
shit, our browser marketshare is weak, people are acting like IE is a Microsoft product for once! We need to make it look better, pull the browser team back together, do something, and up the version number!
Actually, I dunno why they give a damn about browser marketshare, ignoring that having a dominant browser that only really works on their platform keeps people using their cash-cow OS so they can view MS-HTML websites without difficulty and reap the latest in spyware technology.
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
Inside Firefox by the lead engineer for Mozilla Firefox.
Microsoft invented something, didn't they?
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
I have to buy an entire OS AND a new system just to get the benefits of a 'secure' browsing environment?
No thanks, I'll stick with my 2K system which happily runs Firefox.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
MS isn't usually known for innovation in that direction. They're most famous for taking existing ideas and driving them closer to their logical limits. My hunch is that it has to do with the fact that they can throw many developers at the concept, which means that they can flesh out an idea that gets only a bit of support in an academic environment (where a lot of innovation starts).
I don't know what they'd have to throw at the problem that's truly innovative. Variations on the "zooming" metaphor would be nice (e.g. OS X's Expose), but those would be a lot easier to support when Longhorn comes out, with its fancy video-card based transformations. I'm thinking of something where a click is "zooming in"; back is "zooming out", and opening a tab is "setting up another branch to go down".
But of course "innovative" kind of implies "not the sort of thing I'm likely to come up with off the top of my head", so I wouldn't know. If they've got something brillant and clever I'd love to see it. If all they're doing is playing catch-up to Firefox, well, I guess it'll make it suck less when I have to use a computer without FF installed.
Cite your "nearly 12%" statistic. Are you referring to the techie site logs that Slashdot linked to and claimed as global web statistics?
.NET stuff. It'll require the .NET framework.
Firefox is hardly taking over the market. A simple glance at my company's site actually shows IE gaining since last November. Google's Zeitgeist also confirmed this before the numbers were taken down.
IE7 is getting updated to go along with the rest of the
Damn it, /. needs to stop allowing these 10 year-olds to post. If you're not old enough to write correctly, then just don't post.
...at least from TFA Anti-Spyware will be "at no additional charge". It has to be with the stuff floating around.
IE has standards-compliance issues, sure, but IE6 already seems pretty easy to work with to me, so I pray^H^H^H^Hthink it'll be even easier in IE numero siete. Not that I write many pages to test said compliance.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Popups, maybe. Adblock? I seriously doubt it. That is the single most valuable extension for firefox, IMHO. I utterly despise the screaming eyeball noise and sudden ear-splitting audio that accompanies so many flashy web ads these days. I know, I know, the argument is that "without advertising, there would be no web," but that argument is specious, at best.
Who is going to have Longhorn this summer to try out IE7 on?
What about Linux? It is installed as the default browser on some distributions, and probably has the plurality of Linux browser usage. Just because IE is king on Windows, does not mean Firefox has to die.
Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
Everyone knew IE7 would be shipping with Longhorn (they've been saying that since the beginning). This isn't really news. However, it's not surprising the way Slashdotters are reacting to the news. Is it really that personal for some of you people? They're just web browsers, and Firefox is hardly flawless. I'm interested in seeing what they put out. It will probably be fully hooked into .NET.
from the Wikipedia article on NetCaptor:
It has been in development since 1997, and features have gradually been added over the years. Some of its features are original, while others were copied from browsers like Opera.
Opera has been around since 94. Tabbed browsing is their thing. From the Wikipedia article on Opera:
Opera also has several other original features, including multiple document browsing (as well as the more limited tabbed browsing), background loading of pages, batch opening of bookmark folders, fast forward and rewind functions which predict where you would surf next, notes, skins, and session management (save groups of pages to be opened later).
It is quite rare that a company releases a product that is so perfect that they do not need to create a new version.
Worse than that: It is quite common that a company will make an insignificant change to a product just so they can call it "new and improved".
We should keep that in mind.
You can't take the sky from me...
Because it comes with 18 holes.
Doubtful. Unlike Netscape Navigator, Mozilla Firefox is not a commercial product and as such it doesn't need to keep getting new users at a high rate (to sustain it's influx of cash) - as long as there are people using at and developers refining it then it will live. Furthermore I feel strongly that the momentum behind Firefox now is such that Microsoft/IE won't ever be able to crush it and regain almost total market dominance... this can only be a good thing for Joe Public and for web developers everywhere because Microsoft will be forced to start improving IE & the lack of market dominance means that MS-only (x)html tags should start appearing again.
There's mischief and malarkies but no queers or yids or darkies within this bastard's carnival, this vicious cabaret.
Correction: Opera has technically been around since 93, not 94.
Why would the Firefox team "hang up the towel?"
Boredom? Demoralized development team tired of duking it out w/ MS?
Seriously, I can't think of any reason why step #5 would occur.
...will it be digitally signed?
Seriously, that's what sucks about teh IE. I think they got much (if not all) of the security issues out of the way with SP2, but I can't wait for them to actually blend PNGs with the page instead of a gray background. It's like they wanted to shortcut it and they never got around to doing things the "right" way...although I've never seen a W3C test suite saying how translucent PNGs should mix with pages (I've seen the pages at libpng.org). If the W3C makes one MS might actually notice.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Damn. That's right. Blocking those wonderful banner spamverts that our beloved US companies make that talk and guzzle CPU resources with enormous animations and pop ups and pop unders that only clueless newbies click is un American.
If you support blocking adverts you support international terrorism.
Now FOAD
From TFA:
:(
Building on those advancements, Gates announced Internet Explorer 7.0, designed to add new levels of security to Windows XP SP2 while maintaining the level of extensibility and compatibility that customers have come to expect. Internet Explorer 7.0 will also provide even stronger defenses against phishing, malicious software and spyware. The beta release is scheduled to be available this summer.
Extensibility and compatibility... by extensibility you could interpret "New more secure form of activex controls" and by compatibility "not breaking existing sites". Gates didn't say _A THING_ about standards support.
The reasoning: IE6 lost market not because of its poor standards support, but for its poor security. Ergo, they'll focus more on security reather than standards support. Bummer
Of course, I could dream and imagine cotton clouds and interpret those as "Yes, we WILL have CSS level2.1 and level 3 compatibility, and yes, PNG support". Believe me, I REALLY WISH it could happen, but Microsoft has turned me down so many times that I find it hard to believe.
Replace step 5 with Microsoft will fund a bill in congress to make open source GPL illegal.
The Firefox team announced Firefox 1.1 due within a few months. Thus, Firefox is a weak product.
Mandrakesoft is preparing Mandrakelinux 10.2, admitting Mandrakelinux 10.1 is weak.
Honda released a new Odyssey minivan this year, admitting the previous Odyssey was weak.
Is your argument beginning to sound silly now?
Big difference between then and now. Netscape sucked. Firefox doesnt.
Firefox hangs up its towel after a long hard battle.
This happened to Netscape because it was closed source. why would the same thing happen to Firefox? It's not like there aren't loads of people who simply don't have the option of switching to future-IE because it is tied to Windows.
"Hey you assholes we're like 2+ years late with this crap and some of the features in it were promised in 1998. We have security problems coming out our ass. Whole countries are abandoning us. WTF are you going to do???"
"Smithers, release the Browser!!!"
That will keep them quiet for at least a year while they figure out how much of it is yet more crappy buggy code *with shiny glittery rotating 3 dimensional things hanging off it*
"Brilliant"
I hear that's the new name for Firefox in Debian...
Its is good for consumers to have competetion.
We can all hope for good standard support. Mac IE had pretty good support so MS is capable of it.
Galeon had it before opera.
feh. stuff.
Duh... What about Microsoft Bob?
I run a site for mods for Jedi Outcast--agruably a non-techie site--and month after month my server logs show that IE use is going *down* while Firefox and Mozilla based browser use is going *up*. (Yeah, there's a smattering of Konqueror and Safari, but everyone knows they don't count ;)
And while my one site doesn't represent the entire web, I firmly believe that I'm not the only one seeing these kinds of trends.
The comments sounded like the ones at China Daily's "opinion" boards. There's something cute about people who are fanatic.
I'm so sick and tired of the words "Innovation" and "Technology" used in the same sentence coming from the mouths of Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer (Story from earlier)
Netscape pretty much goes under for 4 years, has limited resources, and out comes Mozilla from scratch.
IE sits for 4 years and festers. A company with unlimited resources is going to just stick a label on it and call it #7 with no innovation.
From www.m-w.com
Main Entry: innovation
Pronunciation: "i-n&-'vA-sh&n
Function: noun
1 : the introduction of something new
2 : a new idea, method, or device
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
I really feel that IE only has a few more security issues than FireFox. Maybe even no more. It's just the fact that why would someone waste their time exploiting FireFox when they will only affect 5% of all Web Browsers? If you want to make a big impact on anything, you go for the biggest source you can find. If you are serious about acting, where would you go? HollyWood, right? IE is just a much better and bigger target.
The surprise (which is prominently featured in the body of this story, BTW--RTFS) is that they're releasing it for XP. That most certainly is news.
Seriously--why do you care so much about Microsoft that you have to attack people who criticise them and apologize for everything they do?
"I've gotten questions about the ship date. We know that feedback from customers and partners is crucial. We're going to release a beta and listen, then refresh the beta and listen some more. We'll ship when the product is right."
So does the last sentence mean that there will be no IE 7?
until they REQUIRE IE7 on your computer to retrieve Windows Updates? They're already planning on requiring SP2 for XP updates.
AC comments get piped to
Given their stated security mantra it will be interesting to see just how much MS can resist the temptation to add bleeding-edge new features, since any new component increases the chances that a critical update gets released later on.
Since the IE6 codebase is patch upon patch might it not be wiser to start over - by refactoring from scratch.
just my 2 centessimi
Artificial intelligence is the study of how to make real computers act like the ones in the movies.
Is there any possiblity IE7 will support XHTML 1.0 properly, or XHTML 1.1 at all?
Not that we'd want to rush things - given MS's struggles with XML, actual support for XHTML may be an unfair demand. After all, the XHTML 1.1 standard isn't quite four years old yet. Still, maybe the new IE should at least be able to communicate its ineptitude with XML to the world's webservers. Maybe MS could resource a project team to edit the string that will give the next-generation IE a sane Accept header. (Maybe Steve Jobs would strike back by forming an Apple project team to find out what an Accept header is.)
Youre mostly correct. But I doubt the mozilla project will ever give up. We didnt see Apache give up when the new IIS was released.
I see two advantages FF will have over the assumed kick-ass IE:
1. Extensions. Users may not want to go back to IE if they are in love with some extension that is Moz only. If people really want to help FF then they need to dream up some clever extensions to keep people hooked.
2. Momentum. Current and future FF users might not want to go and try Redmond's latest. They have all their bookmarks, etc on the browser they just switched to. On top of it, users without XP SP2 cannot get the new IE, but can run FF just fine. The win2k base is still a good size.
Not to mention general apathy. Long after I quit using outlook express at home, I never bothered to read up or even try the new versions. FF, Opera, and Safari converts may be much harder to convert back after a seriously negative user experience.
MS is making a smart move, but I think the 98% browser dominance and "We make the standards here now" monopolism are pretty much dead. I expect the new IE to get closer to standards, fix PNGs, fix CSS, and catch up with everyone else. MS cannot just release IE 6.0 with tabs. They need to get on the ball with getting their engire to act like a modern rendering engine. That will be good for everyone. Of course, ActiveX is never going away and that will be a liability for MS.
Wow.. That the first time I've heard "proper software" and Windows in the same sentance. I agree, I dont see how other slashdot users are not understanding this. Since Linux, and MacOS both have software in similar sitiuations. They just dont happen to be able to display web content.
mnewberg.com
Get real. 90% of people get they browsing done without tabs just fine.
I, for one, find tabs in a browser annoying. Mostly for fact that I got used to closing whole window which is faster with a mouse then closing a tab. (I browse with mouse and don't go to keyboard most of the time)
I get my 'tabs' in taskbar if I opened multiple windows. Same thing, different location.
Is this the accountants decision or have you _finally_ started listening to developers.
IE 6 is a discrace in its current form and I have a feeling IE7 is going to be another awful product simply being used to try and grapple back the small proportion of your monopoly you have lost to FF.
Screw FireFox and IE. Both will lose out in the end to Google's Browser. Everyone trusts google more than ms and when there is a link for a google browser on google's home page it will take over the market. A little to late bill.
In all seriousness, IE7 had really better be god damn amazing if it's to be seriously considered at all.
Now that Microsoft is porting Avalon to XP, perhaps they need to modify IE so it can host Avalon applications.
Opera added tabs. That was neat because it can let the user group similar tasks (web browsing pages) together hierarchially under the task of web browsing (and unlike grouping in Microsoft's/KDE's taskbar, remain one click away when in the browser).
Mozilla added tabs, that was also neat.
Konqueror added tabs, this was not neat! KDE's people, unlike Opera's or Mozilla's are in the exact right position to have a bit more of a vision, and encorporate tabs into KDE's general facilities, and not just a specific program (web browser).
Instead, KDE's people choose to incorporate tabs separately in Konqeruror, Konsole, and other programs, such that non-KDE applications cannot benefit from it.
Now it seems as though Microsoft is just as short-sighted and added tabs to Internet Explorer instead of adding tabs to the core window-switching facilities (by drawing a tab under title bars of a new concept of "window-group" that contains multiple windows of same applications or such).
What I believe should have been done, is something more along the lines of what was done with Mouse Gestures in KDE. Mouse Gestures in KDE are handled by a general facility (KHotKeys) such that not only Konqueror can benefit from it, but any KDE/non-KDE application.
This is what should be done with tabs!
I'm sure the irony of the acronym is not lost on them!
any one who has programmed on windows know you can put anything in tabs, dialog boxes or propertysheets, hell there was even a tab common control long before tabbed browsing became even popular. No one invented it, tabs were there and were used that is all. This would fit into another one of those stupid software patents the patent office keeps giving out like candy.
did you forget to take your meds?
Microsoft must be worried about FireFox if they feel the need to fire up the old Vaporware machine again. The fact of the matter is that Microsoft will do everything in it's power to avoid actually responding to customer requirements which I would characterize as roughly the following:
1) They would like not to have a new browser exploit every week, block popups, and refuse spyware.
2) They would like the browser to be standard conformant.
3) They would like the browser to be cross-platform.
Well, one out of three (maybe) ain't bad, I guess. The wonderful thing about being Microsoft is that it doesn't matter how good or bad IE7 is whenever it actually ships since it will have a 90% market share regardless of merit. Of course, the media will wet themselves over every 'technology preview' release from now until it actually ships extolling the virtues of whatever crap Microsoft dishes up. It's a lousy job, but somebody has to do it.
I wonder what the chances are that it will support transparent PNG's. This is one of the most annoying left out features of IE, IMO. There is an ugly CSS tag hack that lets them be used currently, but it's _really_ nasty. It would be nice if the 256 gif colormap could finally be put to rest.
RFC2119
The changelog of galeon reads:NetCaptor was the first browser according to the Wikipedia article.
I've heard it a million times. What's Windows Longhorn going to be like.
.NET CLR 2.0. So was Avalon. So was DEP.
.NET 2.0 will all be available for Windows XP.
Well, actually, it won't be too different from the Windows you're probably be using now.
That's because Windows XP is becoming Longhorn. No other major operating system has gone four years without a new release. Windows XP has been the longest lasting, most successful version of Windows ever.
It's amazing how much it has changed, though. Look at the wireless interface (two major revisions), the media player (two major revisions), the firewall, the web browser, the security center - even the kernel has had massive upgrades and changes.
The Security Center was a Longhorn feature. So were the changes in Internet Explorer. So was the
Literally dozens, if not hundreds of fetaures and enhancements that are part of XP were originally planned for Longhorn. Now we learn that Internet Explorer 7, Avalon, and
If what we're seeing now is what Longhorn will be like, then I'm definately going to want Longhorn. XP SP2 is a dramatically smarter, more secure, better version of XP. Hopefully Longhorn will continue with that legacy and become the best Windows yet.
Of all the operating systems out there, Windows is the product I like the most. I've used OS X, many Linux distributions, and even quite a few "novelty" operating systems like QNX and BeOS. No OS, however, can truly compare with the compatibility and versatility of the world's most popular OS.
Yeah, that's right. I like Windows XP.
Could be. In the war between the lynx browser and the some say superior links browser, lynx hasn't had a new release since Feb 4 2004, over a year now. Perhaps they've thrown in the towel.
But then, links hasn't released anything new since July 24 2004. Perhaps it's just not a very hot war.
Anyone have any news on the text browser war? It doesn't seem to be very well covered.
Loose lips lose spit.
IE7 will be worth it just for the amount of piss taking slashdotters can do once its finished! I can see it now... "Study Discovers 20 new security holes in IE7".
IE7 won't run on Linux. The Linux user base continues to grow and Microsoft has no browser product for that platform.
http://shit.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/15/1 756240
You know, swiss?
It already stinks and it's full of holes.
Rise and shine, Mr Ballmer...rise and shine. Not that I wish to imply that you have been sleeping on the job... no one is more deserving of a rest. And all the effort in the world would have gone to waste but until...well let's just say your hour has come again. So wake up Mr Freeman... err Ballmer, wake up and smell the ashes.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
As long as I can remove IE7 with http://litepc.com/, then Longhorn might be useable. By the time it comes out, however, I think I will have long abandoned Windows. Eye candy doesn't mean anything to me. Efficiency, stability, and security do.
"
Try Internet Explorer 7 Today!
"
"It doesn't suck quite as much as it used to. [No Really!]"
I think it would behoove MS to consider a Mac OS X version of IE7. IE for Mac is laughably out of date. I don't know a single mac user who even keeps it on her computer.
If macs keep gaining market share (as I think they will), MS better get their foot in the door while they still can.
Of course, unless they came up with something really surprising, I don't forsee myself using it in any event, so maybe what's the point...
Nothing in the press release or IE blog post mentions improved standards support. Mixed in with the "Yay, IE7!" bandwagon blog comments are those from actual web developers still asking for better CSS and PNG support.
Which we won't get. IE7 will be (spurious) security fixes, and the large version increase (6.0 to 7.0) would imply more sweeping changes than SP2 to the Windows security model. That may be, and considering the track record of SP2, also implies more software breaking.
IE7 might include some candy that the average user can comprehend (like tabbed browsing or RSS feeds), but I'd give even odds on that. What we definitely won't see is a fixed CSS box model (or any standards improvements), and native alpha support for PNG. They've made such a mess for themselves out of the rendering engine that they can't fix it without a ground-up rewrite.
MS has no reason to allow people to stay on XP or 2k instead of upgrading to Longhorn in now() + 2 years. IE7 has two purposes:
By not addressing standards at all with this release, the press has no reason to make an issue of it. Mainstream press isn't capable of making the link between standards support and interoperability anyway.
How about some real upgrades/ hakon_on_m s_interroperability/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/11
For a standalone browser that fits on a floppy, OffByOne already does tabbed browsing. Welcome to the 21st century Microsoft!
.. a massively international software company like Microsoft would have long ago figured already that making global software release date announcements based on seasons is just plain stupid. Or will those of us in the Southern Hemisphere get the software six months earlier? "This summer" this, "this fall" that, don't they teach geography there? Not to mention that "fall" is only used in a subset of the English-speaking world.
because only Longhorn and XP SP2 will be using IE 7.0, and the bulk of Windows users won't be using it.
If Microsoft was smart, they'd release IE 7.0 for Windows 2000, Windows ME, Windows 98, and Windows NT 4.0 and help fix the security issues the older versions of IE has with those platforms.
Yet in doing so, Microsoft is hoping to force upgrades to Longhorn or XP SP2, in order to use IE 7.0, and it may backfire on them. Not to mention more spyware and adware and trojan infections from older versions of IE not patched.
So Microsoft's only option for legacy users is to upgrade to a new OS, possibly buying newer hardware.
Yet Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, etc offer users the chance to use their old OS and switch to a new web browser.
Linux, *BSD, Darwin, etc offers users the chance to keep their hardware and solve security issues as well, but at the cost of running legacy Windows applications.
Apple does have that spiffy $499 Mac Mini, which users of older computer can upgrade to if they have a USB mouse and keyboard. That is yet another option.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
This is exactly what you'll see in IE7's CSS support.
:hover won't work right on floated elements with position:relative, or whatever.)
- It will have "full CSS2" support according to marketing, fixing some of the most obvious and well-known failures in IE's CSS implementation.
- Like IE6, it will actually break some things that used to work, and there will still be a lot of things that don't quite work right, and specific circumstances (such as
- The press and Microsoft marketing will celebrate IE7's standards compliance and declare victory over Firefox.
- Normal users will download Firefox less because they don't care about standards, they just care about tabs and other features.
- The guys over at A List Apart and mezzoblue will cry out in pain at another set of CSS bugs they need to work around to get things to work right.
- Allen Pike
Altering time, one time at a time.
It will be released WITH longhorn, i.e. (pun intended) it will equal the longhorn installations.
If someone is using WinXP, no doubt their auto update will wrestle it on (SP2 installed itself onto my computer despite me trying to keep it off.. my machine suddenly restarted... oh well - it recognised zonealarm and AVGfree)
Is it right for Microsoft to release IE7 as a critical update to winXP? especially when it means they get to force it on (really, because of all the other issues)
windows updates are like eu fishing bills, they look innocent but some fucker has crammed some shit DRM or patent crap in there, fuckers
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Kid, if you want a Pepsi, you're gonna have to pay for it
Marty: Alright, gimme a tab then
If you want a tab, you're gonna have to order something first!
they would buy the rights to Mozilla or Firefox code, and then add in ActiveX and VBScript support and modify it after it was released from the OSS license. This would be cheaper than paying thousands of developers' salaries to develop the new IE 7.0 to compete with Mozilla or Firefox.
Sort of like what WINEX or Crossover Office was based on WINE.
Of course this would only happen if Microsoft stopped being an OSS-Bigot and learned how to use OSS projects to their advantage.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
a new version on InstallShield for virus and malware authors? I bet they are excited...
In related news, script kiddies have already found 27,382 new security flaws *by design* in IE7.
...Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror, and you would not have been informed.
Why? Because we listened to customers, analysts, and business partners. We heard a clear message: "Yes, XP SP2 makes the situation better. We want more, sooner. We want security on top of the compatibility and extensibility IE gives us, and we want it on XP. Microsoft, show us your commitment."
through babelfish's bullshit -> english
Why? Because we listened to customers, analysts, and business partners. OMG!!!1 IE is teh suckx0r!!111 viruses, trojans and worms, oh my!11 my pc is fux0r3d!!111 Wh4t is thi5 coolsearch toolbar doing here? my computer ate my homework! I fancy Ellen Feissssssssss! maaaaaaaaaaaarry meeeeee!!
blame it on valentines day ok... OK... get fuzzy, dilbert... herman and pearls and some PA get my through.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
... I would make ActiveX usable in IE7 only by a whitelist. Only the sites found in the whitelist will have the opportunity to run ActiveX. It means that corporate IT can configure IE7 for their legacy programs. If a site tries start up an ActiveX process, a warning alert should pop up warning them about the dangers and with instructions (and more warnings) of how to add the site to the whitelist. I would not have a link on the alert to the whitelist. That would be too easy. Rather I would make them go through a couple of steps to add it to the whitelist. This will give them time to think about what they are doing.
I'm sorry, I don't want to know that I'm buying ANOTHER MS operating system that works just like the current one. If IE7 works on both, it's a sad commentary on Microsoft's ability to innovate. I don't want junk API's sitting on my computer just so I can run backward compatible software. Could somebody please tell me how Longhorn is supposed to ...
.NET crap, virtual machines are for pussies)
1. Make my computer work more efficently
2. Allow for the creation of MORE efficient end-user applications (and don't give me that
Agreed, but the problem is that if it lives and only takes up less than 5% market, it might as be dead anyway.
What we need is a serious contender to keep all mainstream browsers standards compliant and secure (not to mention keeping up will cool bells-and-whistles features like tabs and RSS).
Here's hopin, though - I think we've got a winner too, but only time will tell.
You have no clue what you are talking about. In Kde tabs are a part of kmdi which is a part of kdelibs. Konqueror and Konsole choose to show tabs differently, (as do most other apps), but the code for both is the same on the bottom level.
So far this announcement only mentions security issues, but I don't see how those would justify a new version number, despite the obvious marketing bump of having one. A rearchitecture of ActiveX and the security zones would more properly be termed XP SP3, and a couple of anti-phishing UI changes do not a new major version make.
Instead what this says to me is that MS has changed course and will be delivering XAML on Windows XP. That's not surprising--it's easily more of a no-brainer for their strategy than porting Avalon and Indigo, which they've already announced--but it is potentially very, very dangerous for the future of the open web.
Remember, MS has very different strategic goals for a web browser than we do. They see the browser as a way to lock developers into Visual Studio and users into Windows. That is the entire purpose of their browser strategy: to spread incompatible proprietary technologies. That they are willing to give up on Longhorn upgrade sales in order to increase uptake of XAML shows that they are worried, but that doesn't mean they won't succeed. Will be interesting if they are willing to sacrifice upgrades from Win2000 users as well. My bet is yes.
"There is now an official announcement from Bill Gates on Internet Explorer 7. It will be available in beta form this summer for Longhorn and XP SP2."
Multiple security holes will be available a few hours later....
rawr.
this is covered in like the first 5 comments.
"Will they still tabs from Firefox!"
"Opera had it first!"
"No, actually Galleon had it before Opera"
"Bars had it before computers existed"
I'm here at the RSA Conference and just watched this announcement (plus most of the rest of the keynote). I honestly can't say I was particularly impressed. Bill and friends seemed to be hyping new security enhancments in IE and Windows as if these were new innovations instead of stuff that's been around in other browsers/OSs for a while now. Although I did think SpyNet had some promise.
*yawn*
I think you're forgetting something ... non Windows and non OSX users. We aren't that many compared to windows users for sure, but I think mozilla has it's role to play in the future of linux (and other nixes).
There are enough people relying on mozilla / khtml to warrant that they will not fade away as quickly as netscape did.
On my gentoo boxes, IE is not an option : firefox and konqueror are.
I, for one, am not going back to netscape 4
MS had no intention of releasinf IE7 for XP. So why have they done it? Because of Firefox. If (and its a slim chance) IE7 is magnificent, they just might get people like me to switch back. but don;t hold your breath...
As I read somewhere recently (wish I remebered the source to cite, doubtless some slashdot reader will do it for me), how did Linux replace Unix? By replacing bit by bit with FOSS software until people said "Hey! Everything I depend on is FOSS, why not use a FOSS kernel too?"
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
Firefox hangs up its towel after a long hard battle.
This is insightful? Firefox is free, open source software. How on earth can it "hang up its towel"? It's not like if the owner stops supporting it that it goes away.
The worst case scenario is that certain big companies stop funding mozilla development, but a few enthusiasts keep at it, and progress slows. And around your step 6 or 7, the mozilla/firefox development very rapidly starts up again from
where it left off.
Once an open-source product like this exists, the cat is out of the bag, the marketspace is comoditised and things will not go back to how they were before. Unless all copies of the source somehow go missing.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
So you're saying Firefox will never die, sorta like BSD.
Explains why it will be available only a few months from now.
IE's two problems (security speed) stem from the fact that its 'more' than what users want. Take out the bloat, part of which is ActiveX and it'll actually help in security.
The third problem is of course compatibility which will take more work.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
...Will they care? IE is irrelevant.
piss off
...thanks to you, ALL users, even those who don't know about or have never heard of Firefox, will benefit from the impact it has made on web browsing. That includes Opera. Have you seen Opera 8? They significantly trimmed down the UI, probably thanks in no small part to a small project started a few years ago over at Mozilla. I'm highly interested to see what Microsoft does with IE7. Right some standards-compliant wrongs? An improved interface, including preferences and tabbed browsing? We'll see this summer.
You are only as much as what you do with what you know.
Yeah, this is real weakness. Firefox hasnt gotten above 10% on the desktop and they're panicking. What firefox has is "developer mindshare". That's what MS are scared of losing. That's the reason for Longhorn. That's the reason for this barely dead-in-the-water browser. The whole longhorn thing is about a "rich client experience", about the browser dieing and about you being *locked* into rich internet apps built with XAML. Not about some half-arsed "standards compliant" browser. Tabs? Nah. Just a side-show.
It's a fucking zombie which they haven't the guts to kill because marketing won't let them.
Nothing to see here, move along.
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
By the time this is out, Firefox will probably have taken at least another 10% of the market share. Oh well, better late than never.
Insert Sig Here
No. Adblocking only gives user ability to block ads. Normally by default nothing would be blocked. In this respect it's the same situation as pop-up blocking. However, adblocking would certainly make some MS customers angry, which is why I expect the won't do it.
I thought that the browser was going to be fully integrated into Longhorn and they were phasing out IE?
so, not one of those links even mentioned improved standards support. that doesn't sound good. if they aren't going to be improving their xhtml and css handling, i really don't see anything to get excited about....
unfortunately i don't see much hope. in ie6, they could break backwards compatibility by adding the strict mode / quirks mode doctype switch. that trick isn't going to work again. so while they may add css selectors and javascript methods that are missing from the current implementation (e.g. the child selector, hover state on objects other than anchors, document.addEventListener())), i don't think they'll do anything that would break existing sites (e.g. hasLayout, the broken float model, boxes espanding to fit their contents)
but i can always hope.
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
I agree? What happens if Microsoft fixes the majority of the problems and complaints that plague IE? What will /.ers' do?
Since IE7 is only for XP/SP2 the vast majority of XP users and those who decided SP2 was flawed will continue with IE6 and the release will have no impact on web development. Unless IE7 is available for Win2000/XP/XPSP1 you can forget improved CSS support for the majority.
who will realy see the next generation exploits?
I have recently returned from the perilous gates of Redmond, and I have seen an alpha build of Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0. Firstly, let me say this: I was quite impressed. IE7 has added the features I know I've been clamoring for: tabbed browsing, improved security management, and enhanced user interface customizability. The one thing missing is a button that enables the user to visit a webpage containing one of my highly philosophical writings at random, but that can be added as an extension later.
IE7 integrates with the Windows operating system to protect the user from malicious hacker software like Mozilla Firefox. If the user inadvertently attempts to run Mozilla Firefox instead of IE7, it will know and launch in the malware's stead, thus securing the user from harmful XPIs and open standards compliance.
As an additional feature, which as a Web designer I appreciate especially, IE7 renders HTML and CSS in ways once unimagined. With this feature, I am kept on my toes and am provided an opportunity to revisit old stylesheets and code, gnawing at the puzzle of keeping my pages rendering as intended in this new version of Internet Explorer as well as in previous versions and in other browsers, such as Hot Dog, too. My fellow Web developers, you're in for some fun!
If all that wasn't enough, Microsoft has added a feature designed for the clueless newbies and enabled by default: Clippie! Yes, your friendly Office Assistant is being integrated into yet another flagship product from Redmond. Enjoy!
On vit, on code et puis on meurt.
Surely, as firefox is FOSS MS can't steal anything from it. The whole idea is to allow reuse, surely.
... ... and don't call me Shirely! :0)>
In fact MS could just rebadge Firefox, couldn't they.
Of course they'd have to break it a little first, where would we be if we could write pages without CSS hacks and with full PNG support and curvy borders
I actually think that XAML is going to sink, because it's not going to be big enough.
How many companies out there are running on Linux hosts right now doing their little shopping cart applications? They aren't going to spend thousands redeveloping for XAML.
Most hosting companies are pretty happy with Linux, so for them, XAML doesn't make sense.
For most giant companies, supporting both old and new won't be that much of a cost, particularly considering that 5% of their customer base could still be worth millions.
The one place I can see it having some ground is intranet applications.
Microsoft announces breakup of IE development team.
A year later Firefox is gaining market share, Microsoft announces IE team reformed, new version of IE to be released in a few months.
---
Its not the new release part.
Indeed. And seeing this new IE is going to be out when Longhorn is ready, we can expect it in May. May 2008, maybe, or possibly May 2012.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Those people now have that feature, and I doubt that IE is going to have that.
Incidentally, I don't think they'll do a thing about standards.
Xbox Live is a .net application.
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1702 0#17020
Someone had better come up with a new name for that IE7 project really fast....
We didnt see Apache give up when the new IIS was released.
Apache had a larger share of the market.
meh
They want to preserve a large presence in the web browser market so that their rich-client-UI-language will automatically have a hundreds of millions of clients deployed. Compare this to the problems they had (and still have) with getting .net deployed.
All your standards are belong to us!
With all the above combined, I'd say that IE will drop below 70% within 3-4 years and never be able to go above 70% again.
And 30% is way too many users to ignore. IE-only websites are already dissappearing and they will never come back (of course intranet-sites excluded where everything is possible)
Xbox live is a .Net application:
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1702 0
Just a lil heads-up... XAML has nothing to do with the web nor Linux hosts... it is a new way of creating rich user interfaces for rich windows clients. Yes, it is HTML like... but just like HTML was built for the web, XAML has been designed for the desktop.
Fear not though, I do expect that within the next year or so we see a XAML setup running under Linux, probably associated with Mono.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Along with CSS 2 compliance I would like to hope that IE7 will properly render PNGs over web pages that modulate the alpha channel. Firefox does this very nicely but IE6 just decides to render the image over the saved background color in the file.
Microsoft says Firefox not a threat to IE
Vamos, who admitted he has never used Firefox, said there is a lot of hype surrounding the open-source movement and that if Microsoft's customers wanted new features, they would have told the company about it.
IEBlog - IE7
Why? Because we listened to customers, analysts, and business partners. We heard a clear message: "Yes, XP SP2 makes the situation better. We want more, sooner. We want security on top of the compatibility and extensibility IE gives us, and we want it on XP. Microsoft, show us your commitment."
I love how Microsoft contradicts itself and BS's their 'customer responses'.
That was my point. - OP
What??? A patent??? You stole my idea of patents...damn i should had patent patents when i had the chance...
Roses are red, violets are blue, most poems rhyme, but this one doesn't...
I have mac os and windows ME at home, and if ME becomes fully de-supported and viciously infested by schytteware, I'll dump that digitizer machine as well for a mac mini. the only reason to use IE is to access windows update for critical patches.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Wonder why Microsoft forked FireFox and renamed it Internet Explorer?
On intranets, I tell you that companies need html coders too and the good ones code non-ie html. Management can say whatever they want, it's a staffing issue: they won't be able to attract good intranet xhtml devs if their code looks like IE5.01 2000 vintage.
That and the fact that firefox will run on Novell Suse Linux. And companies like Novell.
"Piter, too, is dead."
FWIW, Skipstone, another Geck-based Linux browser, offered tabbed browsing before Galeon picked it up. The feature was AFAIR nabbed from Opera. There are a few other browsers which may have had tabs going way back, including the Tcl-based BrowseX (not "brow-sex").
My understanding though is that Galeon really nailed tabbed browsing with sane preferences: opening order & location, moving tabs, detaching tabs, and moving tabs to another window. Incidentally, if you've avoided the 1.3.x branch because of its feature purge and GNOME fuckwittedness, it's getting a lot better. Reclaimed my preferred browser status with few qualms.
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
i would like to know whether it comes with toolbars with blue color. if it does, it sucks. just like the look of office2003 sucks.
but i spend almost all my browsing time with firefox anyway.
I'm so eager to discover how many security holes they have added to IE 7...
I.E.7 !@#!@#!@#!@
Wooooooooooo!!!
And it's still the best browser!
Cheers.
Does anybody have a link to their change log aka new features as compared to the previous version?
(link)
It sends shivers down my spine... it sounds like M$ has successfully created zombie race of half-humans who'll eventually infect the rest of humanity with their incidious robotic semen.
Well, isn't Firefox now at ~7% or so? And Opera at ~2% with that to grow on mobile devices? And Safari about the same? We're talking about 11% there, and currently FF is still growing.
I think it's likely that for Windows/Mac/Linux/Mobile we'll see non-IE at 15-20% of the entire market this year. I doubt that will change much afterwards as none of the companies have been stomped out yet (in many years of MS competition, and FF isn't a company).
I don't care how wiz-bang whatever your product is, I can't figure many big sites are going to write off 20% of the users out of the gate.
Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3
This "rewrite" is simply to tighten - supposedly; we all know how good Microsoft is at this - security holes in IE.
In other words, this piece of shit will STILL be totally incompatible with HTML, CSS and ECMAScript standards - AND five minutes after it is downloaded, there will be five security holes found in it.
Same old Microsoft bullshit. They need to coin an acronym for "Yet Another Microsoft Security Initiative"...
Bottom line: more lies. More bullshit. (Yes, I remember Elwood: "It's not lies. It's just...bullshit.")
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
And you have Opera making a strong play for mobile devices...
Plus it's presto in Adobe GoLive (whether that affects anyone or not IDK).
Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3
What is this going to do ?
As far as i can see all the "alternative browser fanatics" will stay with their favourite browser because they know and trust it and unless Microsoft can add some superduperfantastico feature or level of security the firefox, opera , etc... users will see no reason to change.
Then you have the normal internet user who is already using IE isnt going to notice the difference appart from a new flashy interface.
wooooopty dooo
Someone's gotta find a way to get rid of these dead horses... Maybe then M$ will wake up and grow to accept these "standards" things everyone's talking about.
Your eyes are full of hate. That's good. Hate keeps a man alive. It gives him strength.
Who wants to bet we'll see the new IE support "Microsoft recommended extensions" that will seem great initially, but that will later on be used to invade your desktop?
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
Idiocy and ignorance are two different things. Please learn the difference.
I think alot of people have their browser history and timelines wrong. Remember back shall we? Differences between I.E. 5 with Netscape 4 isn't the reason MS took control of the browser market. Netscape 4 was released several months prior to IE 4. The critical knockout blow came when IE 4 was released with a similar feature set and was bundled as the default browser at no additional cost other than buying Windows. Netscape (a much smaller company) was hit hard financially such that they never could release another paid version. 4.5 was essentially a bunch of security fixes etc for the 4.x line. I beleive Netscape also eventually realized they couldnt charge for their browser so released it for free, with hopes to make money with their server products. Of course we all know who succeeded in that arena. The company was becoming desperate and fishing for ideas (to save themselves) with some far reaching plans such as the "all java" browser. I also heard rumor that Netscape wanted to integrate as a shell into the OS as well but ran into problems with using MS proprietary APIs. All other versions 6.x - 7.x where basically rewrites after Netscape open sourced their code. You might also add that MS put the screws to OEMs in an effort to push IE out there. Check this website for a timeline so we can jar some memory banks. Any thoughts or facts are welcome as life was so good back in the '90s - http://www.blooberry.com/indexdot/history/browsers .htm
They feel like they *are* getting their money's worth.
Don't laugh.
I have this suspicion that Microsoft maybe quietly negotiating with the creators of Maxthon and will incorporate the features of Maxthon into IE 7.0. If that happens it will kill off much of the momentum of Firefox.
I also think that IE 7.0 will not only be available for Windows Longhorn and Windows XP Service Pack 2, but we may just see it available for Windows 2000 Professional when the beta starts. I had guessed that IE 7.0 would only be available for Win2K and newer users, and today's announcement confirms my hunch.
I really appreciate it.
/. where people are labelled spelling Nazis.
It's also quite surprising to see this on
testing out my trending skills
Microsoft Internet Explorer has always been free, but for a long time Netscape Navigator cost $30 (except for educational or non-profit use). I forgot when Netscape finally decided to make Navigator free for everyone, but I'm sure it was too late.
I know many people "illegally" used Navigator without paying their $30 and Netscape didn't really enforce this. But I think that $30 fee on the Navigator download page was a huge deterrent when Internet Explorer emphasized the fact that it was FREE for everybody.
Fanta isnt a cola-drink. It contains juices, dammit!!1 Ewww!!!
Nice to see Microsoft still playing their own, separate, proprietary little game and not supporting modern, open specifications for CSS, DOM, XForms or whatever, just like they've not been doing for the last 4 or 5 years.
Adding anti-popup or other annoying features that request the user to go through some half a dozen confirm dialogs is stupid and inherently flawed a solution when IE security problems are well known: activeX running full throttle in kernel space.
I don't feel like it...
Oh dear.
Watch my lips.
XAML is meant to KILL HTML which is the browser which is the web. At the same time, it's going to kill LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL Perl) as an operation because nothing but MS boxes will be able to serve up XAML. comprenez-vous?
It's your MS-owned fur-lined trunk in which you can scream all you want but no one will listen.
Someone should take a gun to that fellow-traveller miguel and tell him that he shouldn't be leading us down into patent-lined kill-zones.I fear, alright, I fear.
My only hope is that Longhorn will be a pile of whaledreck. DOA.
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
For Microsoft, customers appear to be little more than a necessary evil between MS and it's profits.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Yay!!! They're gonna keep Active X! Now I can still get that purple monkey unintentionally, spyware(boy isn't that stuff cool?!), my computer will run slower(yes! thank you! I always wanted a Pentium I!),and integration!(now I dont have to use it to get the stuff mention above! ^_^) See isn't that what we customers wanted?
Fallout 3 will suck.
"No other OS today will run a program designed for an Operating System 10 years old while still having the features one would expect from a modern operating system."
;-)
Lessee... everybody's been pointing out MacOS X. Let's list a few more:
Ancestral Unix appeared in 1970. It's still pretty much source-compatible with modern Unixes like *BSD. Sure, you need to recompile, but that's as much because there ain't too many working PDP-11's around anymore.
VMS debuted in 1978, and is supposedly retains binary compatability even on completely different hardware, thanks to a VAX emulator for the Alpha platform.
IBM's MVS (which is now called OS/390, I guess) appeared in the early 1970's as well. I've read in many places that there were lots of MVS programs running in the late 1990's for which the source had been long lost. This is an issue when you're trying to fix Y2K limits.
So, bzzzt, wrong, thanks for playing.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
there will NOT be tabs in ANY version of Internet Explorer because they are totally POINTLESS! We already have those buttons that appear on the windows taskbar every time an Explorer window opens up. You can just click those to switch explorer windows, or press ALT-Tab.
Tabs are a pointless feature. Pointless.
Unlike desktops, tabs have visible names dynamically adjusted to the content they display.
Tabs supply another level of hierarchy for the grouping that is visually distinctive.
Tabs are automatically configured to group similar tasks (be it the same application or not) while desktops are manually configured on a per-window basis.