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New IE7 Information Announced
Brandon writes "Looks like the IE team is trying to catch up to some of the major OS browsers. They have finally added proper PNG support and have fixed numerous CSS bugs. The full post is on The Official IEBlog." From the post: "We're doing a lot more than this in IE7, of course, and we're really excited that the beta release is almost here - we're looking forward to the feedback when we release the first beta of IE7 this summer. Stay tuned for more details as we get closer to beta."
My pet peeves with IE that make my life harder when I write web pages:
Sounds like they are fixing the .pngs for sure. I hope the two css tweaks that I want make it in.
Welcome to the twenty-first century Microsoft. I guess someone will have to update this page. Will IE7 have a central repository for extentions/plugins?
The only reason I use Firefox and not IE is due to middle-clicking for tabbed browsing. Once MS adds that into IE, I'm going back. All of my video plug-ins work instantly with IE, but not without some tweaking for Firefox. I already switched from Thunderbird to Outlook 2003, so I'm excited to see what bells & whistles MS can put in IE7.
Fixing those bugs will not show customers that their product is good. People now have the name Microsoft associated with insecurity. It took them only 8 years to update their browser and since then people have been screaming for support, better features, etc.
No... Microsoft burned quite a few bridges with alot of people and unless they can turn that PR machine around 180 degrees, people will continue to see them as bullies who are looking out for nobody but themselves.
Even if IE7 turns out to be the best product ever created by mortal man, people will immediately assume it sux (minus MS zealots of course).
They need to reinvent themselves in the eyes of the consumer, the business and world.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
So shall weall complain active X is still included when they ask for feed back? We could slashdot them with "feedback".
I like muppets.
IIRC, the *original* release of IE was based heavily on Mosaic. This always struck me as kind of funny, since even Netscape 0.9 was faster and had more features than any version of Mosaic 2.x.
At any rate, Microsoft should put their resources into making one killer browser. Make it as lightweight as Netscape 2.0 was, yet support the latest CSS kung-fu. Implement all of the latest widgets and hoohaws as plugins so I can remove ActiveX support if I want. And above all, make it cross platform. Use a library like FLTK so it can be used just about anywhere.
Doesn't Microsoft realize they could easily make the end-all browser that'll end up running on almost every palmtop, cell phone, set-top-box, automobile, and personal computer?
Seeing as how i develope on a Mac all my sites seem to render perfectly in Safari - Firefox - Mozilla - and Opera. It usually takes me about a day to crank out a page. Then i have to leave myself 2 days to make that page compatable with IE 5 - 5.5 - and 6 with assorted javascript hacks and what not - even though IE 7 sounds like it might be a nice fix to many of my CSS issues, it's still gonna take years before everyone is running IE 7. I've actually opted into giving my clients a price cut if they just let me throw in a sniffer that excludes IE. + i can sell them on the fact that they are actually helping their clients by making them drop support for an awful product :)
No... Microsoft burned quite a few bridges with alot of people and unless they can turn that PR machine around 180 degrees, people will continue to see them as bullies who are looking out for nobody but themselves.
They got caught with their pants down in 1993-4 with the internet and TCPIP revolution, too. "It's good enough" certainly does sound framiliar. This was a multibillion dollar company that somehow MISSED THE WHOLE INTERNET THING. They pulled that one off and came out of it smelling like roses.
They got caught with their pants down AGAIN in 1997 with the widespread acceptance of Java and the beginnings of true cross-platform computing. They pulled turning that event into a stillbirth and came out of it smelling like roses.
So, here we are in 2005, and they've been caught again with a stagnant product in IE. Not just caught, but being actively made to look stupid by comparison by the third party browsers, and on top of all this, they have OSX and Apple breathing down their necks. I think the wake-up call has been heard.
I'm not a betting man, but I know where I'd be putting my dollars.
..don't panic
IE will catch up to Firefox 2 years after Firefox already had all these features. By the time IE7 is done, FireFox will have many more features, not to mention tons of extensions, that are the real key to it's power. By the time IE gets to where FF is today, FF will have advanced way beyond what IE can hope to achieve from typical corporate development.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Gecko polls servers for changed content when moving through history. As far as I know, Opera is the only major browser that gets that part of HTTP/1.1 right.
http/1.1 specificationthere's more than one way to do me.
OK, how do you reinstall it then?
If they were actually going to support the proposed standard, surely anything other than naming it in the standard way is embrace-and-extend (or, in this case, embrace-and-rename)!
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Putting an ad-blocker (pop-ups are fair game) on something as popular as IE would cause very serious disruptions to many, many websites (ie their revenue stream gets completely cut). Not to mention the inevitable lawsuit if doubleclick.net was in by default.
Well, that's sorta the whole point though. MS is working under the pretense of being a service to their customers, not a service to industry honchos. If that's what they really want, then fine lets force them to be honest about it.
I think the request for it being GPL'd is wishful thinking too. Maybe you need to calm down
I know they will never do that too. But once again, there the ones freaking out about how the proprietary coercive model gives more value to the customers than the open free one. Well, I call bullshit, show me how making IE closed adds more value to the customers ... especially for linux users, mac users, and others. I'd really just love to hear it.
Erm. If you're using any modern OS, all you should need to do is to recreate your user profile to fix any trashed application weather or not it's part of the OS.
The guts of the browser should never be touched by the operating system just like the system files. User preferences are stored in the user folder.
Of course, IE just like the rest of windows is vulnerable to various permission-related bugs in which the core guts CAN get screwed up by an errant program -- of course, this is true of any part of the operating system. I for one actually LIKE the concept of the HTML rendering engine being a core part of the operating system.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Microsoft have proven - repeatedly - that they're going to ignore open standards and are unable to approach a technology without their classic "embrace and extend" asshole tactics. There's a reason for this - if they fully support open standards, competitors will be able to perfectly replace their products. And they will lose.
Their only hope is to keep making deliberately flawed products - and keep their consumers hooked. The consumer knows their products are bad, but nobody else (at least, nobody with a sense of self-worth and pride) is willing to produce a broken product.
For example, if IE 7 and Firefox supported the exact same standards, people would use Firefox because it does the things that Microsoft dare not do - free source code, cross platform (they're still stuck on IE 5 for the Mac), platform neutral plugin support and far faster turnaround for bugfixes since the community has so many eyes on the code. Small wins for Firefox, but they are wins nevertheless.
The only good version of IE was version 3. It was going up against the well-established Netscape. They manged by making it leaner, faster and better. They had no legacy customers hooked on their product - and had to prove that they were worthy. Today they are lazy and their main goal is to maintain their supremacy and suppress the peons - not to wow them back into the fold.
The worst example of this would be, as far as I'm concerned: ActiveX. The tech might have sounded cool on paper - but in practice it was a disaster. It introduced a new type of executable to uninformed and uneducated users who were simply unable to comprehend how dangerous it was, and a raft of thieves and liars who were trying to take advantage of it. As far as security goes: Worst. Feature. Ever.
Putting ActiveX in a browser capable of accessing the internet is like storing apples in a bucket of medical waste: you'll be infected with something nasty and be completely fucked within a very short space of time. But Microsoft didn't care, so long as they had more corporate buzzwords to achieve platform lock-in with clueless customers.
And this corporate character oozes out their products. If Microsoft was a person, he would be a compusive liar, thief, bully and control freak. He would be unable to hold a conversation without trying to take something, and would be instantly hatable.
I use Microsoft Windows XP because I am forced to and am held hostage by the platform - but I am a bitter, angry hostage with brutal vengeance on my mind. Unless Microsoft makes a radical change to it's corporate attitudes, I will never willingly use IE again.
I wonder...perhaps it's better for use to keep IE as dominant browser. After all crackers and advertisers come with popularity...currently I'm using Firefox (well, right now on Opera because of lack of ram on this machine), and I'd hate to abandon it because the browsing experience changed to worse (and I'd miss few extensions...)
One that hath name thou can not otter
"most of the reason I junked IE was security issues"
What did you switch to? Mozilla?
I don't think that Mozilla is exactly a model for security. At my company, we've had to deploy three complete updates since the release of Firefox 1.0.
It's clearly not "perfect".
Of course, IE is far from a model citizen, but IE6-SP2 is much better, and *security* is the focus of IE7 according to the developers.
I think that Microsoft can build a competitive browser. They just need an incentive to do so.
Now they have that incentive. Firefox has given it to them.
I, for one, welcome the new browser wars.
The short answer is that no browser currently passes the Acid2 test. I'm pretty sure the Firefox team is working on it. I know the Safari team is working on it as their progress is being talked about on David Hyatt's blog: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/hyatt/
Truer words have never been spoken in regards to IE. Version 2 was a pathetic joke, lacking anything useful. In comparison, Netscape 2.0 introduced the world with frames, Java, and Javascript. IE 3 was the only browser ever made by M$ that even attempted to have anything useful. After the Active Desktop chaos introduced in IE 4 (which rendered other browsers inoperative once installed and rendered Win 95 and NT unusable once IE 4 was uninstalled) I never looked back at IE. I thought for sure they shot themselves in the foot when that happened, but bundling it in Windows 98 only made consumers ignorant of the existence of competition.
Satan works the same way, thriving on ignorance.
I think Microsoft is worried about the way Firefox is being extended and turning into a true thin client. Just look at what Google has done with maps, GMail, etc. With AJAX (or whatever they are calling it), FireFox becomes a serious long-term threat to Microsoft. And the folks there aren't stupid. As Bill Gates said in The Simpsons, "Homer, I didn't get to be the richest man in the world writing checks" (or words to that effect). Microsoft has a bunch of nerds on the payroll too, toiling away. They see the looming threat and are responding now instead of waiting (like IBM did when it failed to recognize a similar looming threat from Redmond ;-) ).
I would like to hear points/counterpoints, if any.
It's the only thing in the whole world I want. Why IE doesn't support it, I don't understand. IE generally does pretty well with a lot of things.
I guess there are two things in the whole world I want. The second is for IE to show me a big nasty error instead of my web page if it is not compliant with the DTD. If browsers worked that way the whole web would be in better shape.
that they'll make IE7 nice and standards compliant but break all the hacks we use to accomodate IE6 like the Holly Hack et al.
This would make it impossible to support IE6, IE7 and other standards-compliant browsers while still allowing them to (rightly) claim that they're compliant. Would they do this ? Hopefully not.
A vaporware announcement is not an improved product. It's not beta and what's announced is not as good as freely available alternatives. If if were a fifth, I'd be drunk all the time.
During the browser wars I used Explorer instead of Netscape because I really did like it better. Certainly they have the hackers and the resources to make the best browser if they want to.
Some people sleep on nails, go figure. They have the money for a mattress but prefer the pain of broken CSS, PNG, no tabs, with all the ease of 0wnership Winblows brings.
With stuff like Mepis which installs on any hardware in twenty minutes, is there any reason to run Winblows?
If Microsoft really does release a product better than Firefox, it will be sad to see the underdog lose, but really the consumers will win.
Microsoft has never released anything better than anyone else and that's not about to be changed by another silly promise. Their stated business plan is to buy into, "mature" to avoid development costs and being a "loss leader." Do you really think M$ will deliver next year what you can enjoy right now in free software? The developers left long ago so there are no more "loss leaders" for M$ to fuck over. They may have hired a few extra people last year to try and make up for it, but that's like pissing into the free software tsunami. If Sun and AOL were to pull the plug on OO and Mozilla, Microsoft would still be wiped out by the thousands of developers working on KDE, Gnome and dozens of other alternatives.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Plus, say goodbye to slashdot. And a whole lot of websites would either start charging or leave town. I like things better the way they are now--where I don't see any ads and no one notices.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
Good lord, when has *that* ever stopped them from embracing and extending - heck, they're doing it RIGHT NOW when it comes to implementing protocols on .NET.
Now, don't get me wrong, some cases, the standards are *VERY* thin on detail and could lack features that could be deemed important - hypothetically, a wireless protocol that doesn't have a secure enough encryption algorith as one example of this.
With that being said, the lack of improvements, and a sudden surge of interest in developing IE further has NOTHING to do with all altruistic stance by Microsoft, but more of a reply to the threat from Firefox.
Firefox by itself isn't a threat, but when you take into account Microsofts long term view of their long term view of .NET, XAML, their application server technology, remotely hosted applications, delivered to the webbrowser, using IE specific technologies (as apposed to the current thin client/dumb terminal model) - you can see how Firefox could turn out to be a royal pain in the ass if they don't box it in, and reserve it to the alternative platforms.
How then would you respong to the question of browser elitism and its follow up? Are you willing to deny a select group of users the benefits you give to others simply by their choice of browsers? Aren't the users the reasons for creating content on the web?
On an actual implementation level, OS X differs very little from Windows. (Tiger even introduces the concept of "trusted zones" so you can run javascript that binds with OS objects, just like IE/Windows.) The inabiility to remove the iexplore.exe binary in Windows is purely artificial.
Of course IE7 has potential to disrupt Firefox's share. However I doubt it will affect share much at all.
In order for Microsoft to steal share from FireFox it needs to improve and innovate to a point that surpasses Firefox. Right now, I believe that IE7 is playing catch-up to FireFox and Microsoft will not introduce anything innovative enough to bring share back to IE7. Microsoft will only be able to slow the tide of people leaving IE.
Remember, people are using FireFox fo the following reasons:
In the first two cases, IE will not win back any share. The feature crowd will only return if Microsoft truly innovates(doubtful in my mind.) The last group of people will only return to IE if they can trust Microsoft to fix all of the problems. Considering Microsoft's record since they made "security their number one priority" over a year ago (or has it been 2?) I also doubt this happening.
And remember, the reason IE has the most share is because it was on the computer when the user got it. People resist change. That same fact will keep some user from changing from Firefox back to IE. So, no, Firefox will probably not lose much share unless development stops on it over the next 4 years. (Ooops, who did that before?...)
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DON'T USE TUNAREZ!!!
Now that companies like SAP have started putting out support notes advicing their customers to use Firefox instead of IE, Microsoft may start to take things seriously. For example take a look at the following support not from SAP (note 828595 for those with access to OSS):
Symptom
When you are using the SAP GUI for HTML in the Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0, the "progress bar", which describes the load progress for the page, may in some cases continue to display activities although the page is fully loaded, and it never confirms that a page has been completely loaded.
Other terms
Microsoft Internet Explorer; IE; HTMLGUI; load; webgui; login page; status bar; status bar; loading progress; blue horizontal bar;
Reason and Prerequisites
This is caused by a visual error in the Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Solution
SAP has consulted closely with Microsoft, to eliminate this error. Unfortunately, Microsoft is not prepared to implement a correction and suggests workarounds that can be implemented in SAP software (SAP ITS). All workarounds proposed by Microsoft are not acceptable due to the considerable quality-related risks posed for all SAP customers using the ITS. There is therefore no solution for this error, other than changing Browsers (the problem described above does not occur with Mozilla / Firefox).
There used to be yes. Haven't seen it since way back in 1996/7 though. Used to run it on an Ultra 10 - found it on one of the sun support CD's if memory serves.
No idea if it's still being maintained, though I suspect not.
How then would you respond to the question of user elitism? Do you think that web developers should make sure that their site renders in every single browser, regardless of complacency with standards? Aren't the developers the reasons for their being anything on the web for users to see?
kaens.blogspot.com
The -moz-border-radius does not conform to the W3C standard. If I remember right, the Mozilla version was coded before the W3C had a draft for the radius.
The main difference is that Mozilla corners are circular (one radius), while W3C corners may be elliptical (an x and y radius).
I'm working on correcting that difference. My JavaScript rendition of a solution can be seen here: http://verens.com/demos/borders/borders.html
Kae
Now, tell me, what difference will this actually make? Except for all the website developers being happy to get yet another browser on their compatibility list, who is going to download and use it?
Somehow I can't believe that the 80something percent (yeah, sure, depending on the site we're talking about) are going to miraculously switch to IE7 so that all our problems as webdesigners suddenly go away.
IE7 may be a good product, it may really be a very good product (and with all the competition that MS is facing right now I'd be really surprised if they didn't produce something fairly good) but it won't make up for all the crap MS has thrown at us with the last versions of their browser.
charon