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IE7 Details Emerge
Varg Vikernes writes "Microsoft Watch has a story about new features we can expect in IE7 (code named 'Rincon') which they gathered through Microsoft's key partners. Apparently we can expect 32 bit PNG support, native IDN support, new functionality that will simplify printing from inside IE and, of course, tabbed browsing. The new browser also will likely include a built-in news aggregator. Apparently an important factor is security."
It will be interesting to see what else (other than tabbed browsing & RSS aggregation) will be "inspired" by Firefox and other browers, say perhaps, easy plugins and themes?
From the Article:
"English reiterated that features such as tabbed browsing are not important to IE users."
I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say they'll innovate. Innovate means they will break new ground and offer something you haven't seen before. They'll offer what all the other browsers have had for 2 years and that's it. No innovation, just keeping up with the Jonses. Now maybe they'll have some innovative marketing plan or some innovative predatory practices that will allow them to rincon the browser market again. That's where Microsoft really innovates.
That's where my dad was born! Sweet (bitterly of course with IE's reputation).
What one should be scared of is the "IE 7.0 will feature international domain name (IDN) support" part -- can an IE user disable it like Firefox has (should he desire to use IE of course) before someone *ahem*rincóns them with a bad IDN?
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
It seems the threat from Firefox is forcing them to innovate and improve in a market they once took for granted.
Have you RTFA? Tabbed browsing, IDN support, RSS news aggregator all available in Firefox in some form. So, where exactly is the innovation? Possibly anti-spyware integration??? That's like a mouse setting a mouse trap for itself.
Additionally, Microsoft's "improvement" is really their way of saying that they are now in "catch up" mode.
I don't mean to flame you, but customers should not look forward to the next version of IE in six months or so, when they can get virtually the same features today with Firefox.
All I need to say is "Why Even Bother".
Coderz 4 Life
Actually, a fairly reasonable visual tradeoff could be to display all extended characters in a different color.
For instance, if the extended characters were displayed in purple, but the normal characters remained black, then you could continue using it, and KNOW that its a mixed domain.
Infact, just typing that gives another solution, have mixed domains (std and extended) come up in a totally different size/style.
That way, all normal domains look normal, and all extended domains also look normal, but those using a combination are glagged as such.
just a thought.
liqbase
Brilliant isn't it?
Firefox becomes a research and development team for Microsoft. And since the open source community won't patent their stuff, MS is free to steal the ideas that worked.
When it arrives, IE7 will be praised by the press as a step into the future.
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
blocked ActiveX & Java by default was a good move
For the sake of accuracy, its ActiveX and Javascript, not Java, that were blocked by default. Any removal of Java from IE is going to come years in the future and is due to a court decision and a very relaxed attitude to the timescale by Sun. Getting back on topic, i don't think a simple browser should even have to worry about a thing like permissions. This should be done at a higher level closer to the OS. If security is an issue with IE they need to strip any security handling from IE and put it where its most effective.
that's a very reasonable way of doing it, but i wonder if maybe making the location bar a different colour as FireFox does for secure sites might be a better - in the sense of more obvious - solution.
it's kind of funny, though, how it is essentially our (as in the mostly-north-american-and-western-european readership of slashdot)'s lack of familiarity with the writing systems of the rest of the world that are getting us into this particular pickle.
add that to bad eyes from gazing into a CRT for too many hours, and designers with predelictions for ever-smaller fonts, and you have quite the character set predicament.
Improving the security of Windows will require a lot more than an IE update. Microsoft starts with basically insecure processes and then trys to plug all of the unintended uses (aka security holes) that they can think of.
For example, look at the standard Windows update procedure for Windows XP. First, you have to go to a website to download software that you then allow to run on your system looking for updates. Then, you have to let the software download a sometimes long list of self-installing 'updates' from some location that the Microsoft software selects for you. The download procedure gives the user very little supervisory control over the process and doesn't even do very simple things such as display checksum data to let the user verify the integrity of the downloads. There is also little, if any, indication of what the downloads will do or replace. Yet Microsoft considers this inherently insecure process to be their standard procedure for updating their flagship operating system.
Microsoft needs to change their entire philosophy wherein they think that they should be able to anything they want with your computer at any time while the bad guys are not supposed to use the same mechanisms to steal your data and your cycles.
Actually, IE's box model will *currently* - in IE6 - change when put into standards mode, meaning you have one of a few (hardcoded?) doctypes at the top of your page (omitting any xml prologues). It doesn't even have to validate, just carry the correct doctype. Sadly, I agree with the rest of your comment, including the * html bug, which I hope they leave in. That or invent conditional comments for CSS.
Like it'll make a difference...
Why not fill out the Microsoft Suggestion Box Form at http://register.microsoft.com/mswish/suggestion.as p?from=cu&fu=/isapi/gomscom.asp?target=/mswish/tha nks.htm
What do ya have to lose? Ask for everything.
right on topic: bruce shneier, my favourite security wonk, just wrote a great piece about the failure of two-factor identification, especially when it comes to fishing. a very worthwhile read, as is all his stuff that i've read :-)
Actually no. The problem is really just that UTF-8 is too powerful. There are half a dozen ways to encode something that looks like an 'a'. It can actually get worse for people who are multilingual -- A Frenchman who expects a site encoded with an accented A (ä) might then be sent a URL where a similar looking character (ä) is encoded out of some other page. In this case, both ä's will be marked as extended UTF characters, so there may be no easy way for a user to distinguish between the 'legitimate' site and the phish monger. You tell me which one is legitimate! (and, yes, they are different encodings in this posting).
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
The solution is pretty obvious IMO: when looking up the domain name get some other records such as the company name, contact address, etc and display them in the URL bar, window title, status, or some other place. Perhaps a firefox-style extra panel that appears and gives that info.
Who cares if the site says it is www.bank.com if you can easily see it is registered to Boris at his mom's basement in Russia?
For example, in a .Net web app, you can add validators. So if you have a text input, you can validate that it is not empty when a form is submitted. This is _very_ simple JavaScript. However, with .Net, if you are using an IE browser, you will get an error message without going to the server. If it is a non-IE browser, it requires a round-trip to the server. How crappy is that? Like the people at MS could not write some simple standards compliant JavaScript to check if a freaking field is empty or not before a form post.
That is just one example. There are tons of others with the "built-in" web controls with the .Net framework that have all been made to work well in IE and have limited functionality in non-IE browser.
Because of crap like MS does with .Net, it has made me use Java/JSP for web apps. At least then I can control how well my applications can work with different clients and not be subjected to MS trying to make the world MS-only.
I really don't know what is wrong with MS. I mean, not all of their products are bad, and I really like some of MS's products. If they would just _compete_ and stop listening to their marketing/business @ssholes MS probably would not be too bad. All MS needs to do is compete and allow others to try to compete. MS needs to stop _all_ of their lock-in crap.
Seriously, look at the amount of dedication that OSS programmers show. MS could have that same loyalty if they just gave a _little_ back to the community. I am not talking about their crap "shared" source license or the wimpy XML setup wizard they released. I am talking a few major contributions of their code that they let a _community_ improve could make a world of difference to MS and their reputation.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison