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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+
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.
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.
Separate it? haha... that'd be stupid. they make more money on leaving it in than they would by taking it out. Even with the lawsuits, it isn't going to make a difference, they'll still make more money by leaving it in. They really have no reason to take it out
Kyle
http://www.unlogikal.net/
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
I rememeber reading once that IE loads into memory at boot. That is, IE is substantially tied in as a portion of the operating system itself. This makes for superb integration with the UI for all system tasks, it also results in blazing fast speed as a browser. It ALSO means any threat to the browser becomes by nature a threat to the entire computer, its system its data, its hardware, and its user. If IE 7 has been decoupled from Windows that would be the one greatest security improvement Microsoft could perform.
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
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
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.
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
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
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
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?
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.
...
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!
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.
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
There are all sorts of tie ins in Windows.
My optical mouse started going wonky on me awhile ago. The system would lose it. In Windows this meant a hard lockup and pushing the big red button to get out of it.
In Linux, (assuming I was in a GUI) it simply meant dropping to the command line and possibly reinitiallizing the mouse. No hard boot, no lost work.
There are good reasons for building things in a layered, modular manner (and see the infamous Torvalds-Tannenbaum debate for the arguement that even Linux does not go far enough with this approach), and, at its core, despite some of the claims by MS to the contrary, Windows NT/XP was designed just as layered as Linux. All the tie ins where tacked on at a later date for marketing and "user friendliness" reasons. Thus they're not only tie ins, they're kludgy, workaround tie ins that go against the design philosophy and core architecture of the OS itself.
But then MS is also a company that will apply a workaround patch to the OS to fix a problem with a bug in a commercial application, so what do you expect?
To a certain extent they are constrained to do this by the commercial nature of their enterprise. The developers of Oracle or Starcraft are just as much, or more, the customers of MS as the end user and they need to be kept happy.
With OSes and applications distributed as free source, there is, of course, no need to take this kludgy approach.
KFG
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
Plain truth: people will just naturally gravitate for what's convenient. Dealing with all the BS with IE, it was just so inconvenient that it was less convenient for the average noncomputer-using-joe-user to search, download and install a secondary browser. And these are the same idiots that have trouble 'downloading pictures from their digital cameras to their computers.'
If longhorn launches with a browser that is comparitive to firefox or anything similar, then there would be no real good enough reason why people should switch, and the only people using firefox will be the hardcore firefox zealots, or linux users.
IE is tied to the OS in the sense of the widget toolkit and the user experience. It is used in a variety of places to provide rich formatted content. It does not run in kernel-space and it is not required for the kernel to function. It is impossible to separate IE from windows since the widget is much too commonly used both by Microsoft and third party applications.
So lets do this again: The OS is not the kernel, the OS includes a huge amount of user-interacting code. This UI code makes use of IE in many ways. Removing IE would require tons of software being rewritten, not because it is directly a "core" feature of Windows, but rather because of proper software reuse going on in a lot of Windows software.
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.
Mod parent as insightful.
The early releases of IE were rushed to allow microsoft to bundle their own browser with their OS. Let's ignore the whole DOJ thing though...
The first versions of IE sucked. There's absolutely no way around saying that. They were horribly written, barely standards-compliant, and buggy as hell. Unfortunately, once Microsoft realized that the web browser would become an integral and vital part of the OS, it was already too late.
You see, Microsoft prides itself upon backward compatibility. And they're damn good at it too. I can still run programs compiled for Win95/3.1 on my XP box. 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.
Same thing goes for their web browser. They have customers using ActiveX that they ARE OBLIGED TO SUPPORT. The absolute worse move a company can make is to alienate its customers (SCO and the RIAA have learned this the hard way). And, to be frank, Microsoft is pretty nice to its users compared to other software vendors. Let's not forget that a lot of corporations are using ActiveX for much of their in-house development. They can't just rip it out; IE would lose most of its features that way. Netscape Plugins / Firefox Extentions are not necessarily any more secure.
Now that Microsoft has their woefully buggy ActiveX implementation, it has certain quirks that programmers have grown used to. If microsoft squashes a bug, they risk breaking compatibility. Same thing goes for standards compliance -- back when HTML4 and CSS were in their infancy, Microsoft chose to support them, but did a crappy job at it. This set the precedent that now since developers had designed sites around these quirks, THEY COULDN'T FIX THEM. Some legitimate programs may inadvertently use security holes in the browser. Closing them up will break compatibility.
That's one reason why this beta concerns me. If it has its own quirks, developers will start coding around them, and microsoft will once again have dug itself into a hole.
that's what was easy for apple when it made OS X and Mozilla when they rewrote their browser. They were starting fresh and had virtually no expectations and were able to COMPLETELY break compatibility with older versions for the sake of standards compliance. NT could have been just as fast and secure as OS X or Linux had Microsoft chosen to dump compatibility for Win9x apps. NT started out as a lean, fast, secure operating system. It has the capability to do Unix-style file-permissions which would close up 99% of the security holes present. Implementing a system like that would, however, break compatibility for older programs which expect the operating system to allow them to write to any portion of the drive. Instead, microsoft had to maintain backward compatibility and painstakingly close up every tiny security hole.
Microsoft's not stupid. I would be VERY surprised if IE 7 wasn't a huge improvement over 6. They've been working a long time on this release, and they're well aware of the competition from firefox. If it's secure and standards compliant, the reasons to use firefox become far less compelling.
In short, IE sucks today because the first betas sucked, and that's what the developers based their apps off of.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
No, I don't think it's a surrender, it's more of a call to arms.
Why did IE become the dominant browser? because Netscape stopped at 4.5 while IE kept updating and improving. Once IE got far enough ahead (about 5.0), it stopped still in the water, only releasing versions because of security bugs. So why is Firefox gaining popularity? Because IE hasn't done anything new since 2000, and doesn't have the kick-ass features Firefox has.
Surrendering would involve using something other than IE as the default Windows browser.
Improving it significatnly (which MS has been working on for about a year now, with not much to show for it besides popup blocking) is a step to stem the tide of defections to Firefox and win back the 5% Firefox has taken from it.
Of course VS isn't written in .Net. .Net isn't a programming language, it's a platform. It's like asking if a music program is written in LAME.
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.
Um, Max OS X runs applications from prior versions of the OS just fine. And they've done this at least twice that I know of (the first was when they switched processors). One of Apple's greatest achievments was maintaining backwards compatibility while moving forward cleanly.
Microsoft broke all kinds of things when the introduced Win32. And they broke a lot more when they introduced NT.
My experiences with "progress" from Apple and Microsoft definitely don't echo yours.
I do agree, however, that they have largely coded themselves into a corner with their half-assed design approach. They always seem to produce just enough to claim they have some capability X without really thinking it through and making it tight and elegant.
I think mostly because IE came pre-installed with the OS on new computers. Most idiots out there came to associate Internet = IE. They don't know the concept of different parts and protocols of the internet...they don't know about other 'browsers' or how to download and install them. This was a few years ago when the 'Web' was new in the public mind. And most people weren't too internet savvy.
Problem is....still lots of idiots like that out there today, probably more so....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
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!
If this was truly about Firefox competition, they'd improve IE across all the platforms and not just for users of XP SP2 and the long-rumored Longhorn.
IMHO, this is going to be used to try and convince Win98/2000/NT users that an intolerable (and never to be fixed) security situation will be tolerable with firewalls, upgrades, AND the new operating system WITH the new and improved browser.
Now let's think about backward compatibility. The reason it was so important was that otherwise their customer base would only upgrade at purchase of new equipment, and may balk at that, if the legacy application was too critical. Microsoft's biggest competition is itself and the fact that its established base is happy, well satisfied, well devoting as much mindfulness to Windows as it prefers.
I say if you want to roll-out IE7, do it, do it right, support the old platforms (and reward those customers' inexplicable loyalty), then tell us all when it's here, and God bless you for the effort.
If I'm right and this is only about moving the herd to the north pasture, then the fact that Firefox is available and can run on these legacy Windows platforms will put Microsoft in an awkward position as they trumpet the message with text (or subtext) that IE6 and legacy platforms are inadequate, maybe dangerous, even as they dance around when someone points out that the alternative is here, now, and won't cost a dime.
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
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.
Funny? Why's that.
;-)
It's true. I think it was rated funny for MS "never doing anything good ever in computer software history", but even if IE 7 won't be better than Firefox (and let's hope it is on par! competition is good), it might still get a few new features that the Mozilla team can copy. If it weren't for IE, Firefox wouldn't have had identical yellow "info bars" instead of annoying popup boxes for example. Or maybe the functionality down to the color choice and identical look was a pure coincidence.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
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
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?
Don't expect exhaustive feature lists soon. The purpose of this post was to communicate to large clients that they shouldn't switch to firefox because IE7 will be here "soon". It's classic tried and true delaying strategy from MS. Anyone who has been around long enough has seen them do this tons of times. They probably don't even know exactly what features IE7 will have. All they know is firefox is getting good enough clients are considering switching away from MS products, and they need to stop those clients from doing that.
"Idiots"? People are idiots because they lack knowledge and experience in computers? A little less arrogance might be a good idea...
As for why IE became the dominant browser, you're only telling half the story. IE up to and including version 3 sucked big time; Netscape Navigator wiped the floor with it. Then IE 4 was released, and suddenly Navigator was the one looking a bit sick. Netscape then compounded its problems by throwing away the codebase and starting again from scracth; by the time they finally managed to get NN 6 out, it was far too late. Everyone but a small hardcore group of us had switched to IE, and with good reason. IE 4 was at least as good as NN4, but IE 5 trounced it (and I speak as someone who went NN->Mozilla->Firefox; I have *never* used IE as my primary browser). NN4 crashed frequently, had to reload the page to resize it, choked on moderately complex table structures, and the rendering engine was dog slow for all but trivial pages.
In short, IE became dominant for two reasons:
1) it's bundled with Windows, so every Windows user already has it
2) it was just plain better than the alternatives for a long time
Sorry to burst your superiority complex, but people being idiots had nothing to do with it.
It's official. Most of you are morons.