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Windows Longhorn and Internet Explorer 7
An anonymous reader writes "At Gnomedex this year, Microsoft is excited about the new RSS integration into Windows Longhorn and Internet Explorer 7. Screenshots of Internet Explorer 7 reveal how Microsoft has added a search tool to the top right of the browsing window similar to the one found in Safari/Firefox. Also, Microsoft revealed that RSS will be integrated into the heart of Longhorn."
Stop the machine.
"Simplify, simplify, simplify!" Thoreau
This is a good move by MSFT, but their lack of respect for web developers is ridiculous.
:hover for all elements? Or any semblance of support for floating elements? And they simply seem incapable of giving a straight answer!
Markus Mielke, quite possibly the most braindead member of humanity ever to use a computer, seems to think that separating content from presentation is wrong. See here for details. Even worse, the article he links says the reason is that CSS3 is not ready. This is despite the fact that the IE team won't even support CSS 2.1 fully in IE7! Yes, they might have fixed Peekaboo and Guillotine, but how about
Dave Massy, senior program manager and all round idiot, in comments to this article, says that support for MathML and SVG should be left to 'experts', never answering the very pertinent query about why Microsoft isn't an expert in web technologies.
Why not go over to the IEBlog and let them have a piece of your mind?
It's sad.
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
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I'm fairly certain that search bar uses msn search :). Do you think IE users will start using that instead of going to google first?
Seriously. It sounds like they are saying that this is a FIRST or something. Isn't Internet Explorer the LAST browser to support RSS feeds?
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
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Has anyone suggested that Microsoft create 2 parallel operating systems: slimware version and bloatware version? I want a slimmed down version of Windows that includes just a little more than a true pre-emptively multi-tasked kernel I also want a slimmed down web client that lacks support for ActiveX and anything else that is not strictly necessary for accessing the secure website run by my bank.
I need little more. I suspect that this barebones configuration meets the need of most Americans, who are not tech savy.
That is all I need
if your pants fit well, it's not only because of the pants
The beauty of tabbed browsing becomes apparent when you have a bookmarks folder full of your favorite sites in firefox and you right click and select 'open in tabs' and 20+ of your favorite sites open in a single window for you to peruse while you drink your morning coffee.
And "us" keeps shamelessly copying them. GAIM, OpenOffice, XMMS, and even Linux itself.
Don't hold Microsoft to a double-standard.
Free of Flash! Free of Flash!
When IE 7 comes out and all the Joe Average people start using it (via auto updating, or the new computer they bought, or whatever), they're gonna see the finally-added features and think, "Wow, look at these new things Microsoft created! They're amazing!" because they've never used anything but IE. Microsoft thus gains mindshare for nothing.
Microsoft really needs to hire some real UI artists one of these days.
Personally, i dont need the windows title bar, address bar, etc taking of a chunk of the screen like that. It must be a low res shot but still...
MS likes to make these big screen eating UI's with things that most people never use.
A new standard is not necesarrily worth supporting just because it is an approved standard.
Otherwise, all of those C programmers would never have continued to use C once C++ was an ansi/iso standard.
WWW standards are notoriously transitory and need to have a 7 year or longer cycle between new adopted standards. A 3 or 4 year cycle means that most software vendors/open source teams will be one or more old standards back.
Seeing this news item really awakened me to the lack of innovation with Internet software these days. Embedding RSS into IE is mundane to the extreme. This pales in comparison to the rate at which ideas were pouring out 5-7 years ago. I suppose the browser is a mature market, but is it really? Perhaps we need to go back and look at some of the older ideas that were ahead of their time now that the Internet infrastructure is more mature. It just feels like we are still staring at the embers of a long-dead bonfire.
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
Gotta admit, they have some smart people there. Yes, firefox is a superior browser, technologically. Yes, it's open source. Yes, it supports CSS2 a little better and yes, it supports alpha channel in PNGs. Does any of this matter as far as Joe Sixpack is concerned? Not a bit!
What does matter then? The stuff they're emphasizing - tabbed browsing, design, and integration. You can spend hours explaining what's better to a layman, and in the end they'll use the browser that looks better and is more comfortable. Plus, if they approach security of IE7 with the same rigor we've seen in IIS6 (which I doubt highly, considering such a short product cycle), security will not be a problem.
It is time for Firefox/Mozilla devs to pile on the goodies. Get us some SVG and CSS3, get web devs (at least some of them) to use these cool technologies, and make Microsoft play catch-up again.
Ain't competition grand?
They have the menu bar below the tablist.
It's not just below - it means that the menu bar is part of the tab and can change when you switch tabs. It's actually a pretty clever design. I think they will use it for plugins and web pages that add items to the menus (PDF, Office, etc.)
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Your explanation is simple and explains a lot -it's almost certainly right.
What better way to sabotage the web as OS and web-apps, than to control the browser? Make it *just* good enough for enough people to accept; but not good enough to make web-apps great - which they definitely could be.
Evil. Brilliant. Very Microsoft.
I don't want to sell you death sticks.
I'm not sure how multiple menu bars can be called "clever." Inconsistency is the last thing you want to add in a user interface. I was using a video player and I couldn't stand the fact that the controller and the view had separate menus and keyboard shortcuts. E.g. "space" would be for play/pause when the focus was on the controller, but not when the focus was on the view window, and other idiosyncracies.
Multiple menus just hides more things from being immediately accessible to the user, and it prevents the user from being able to predict what the menus will contain.
Also I've noticed that they've combined the toolbar with the menubar in the IE7 screenshot. I recall that extra configurability of menus and toolbars didn't really catch on among users since it was a frivolous feature. Oooh, whoop-dee-doo! I can drag the paste button between the forward and back button! Whee! my context menu gradually fades away with alpha blending! Sharing the menubar with anything else in the same row causes undesireable crowding when the window is resized smaller.
Menus that change isn't good design.
Longhorn loses its next generation shell and filesystems, both of which are pretty core OS functionality.
Now they make up for it by adding RSS to their browser? At this rate Longhorn isn't going to be much more than Windows XP plus IE 7 (and yet still delivered late?). And IE hardly counts as OS functionality.
Maybe if they spent their time building an operating system, and let application developers build the applications for it, they'd be able to build an OS that has some really innovative technologies in it. Instead they spend all this time trying to "own the web", as well as compete with 3rd party software vendors like Adobe.
From a technology perspective, I think this strategy sucks. Time will tell whether this is a good business strategy or not.
It is staggering to see how much more efficient loosely-knit community is than mammoth-like corporation.
I think you missed my point. Products like Mozilla Firefox and OpenOffice exist because of big one-time-only investments from large coporations. They were not developed by a loose-knit community. The question is whether Firefox can remain competitive without that backing.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
Those screenshots looks increasingly like Gnome and Firefox. So, I guess it's called "Gnomedex" because Microsoft is cloning the Gnome desktop for their next release of Windows?
So IE7's RSS support looks virtually identical to Safari's RSS support
Why am I not surprised?
"Don't hold Microsoft to a double-standard."
I find it funny that everybody talks about switching to Mozilla/Firefox because of things IE doesn't support, but when MS finally gets around to updating IE it's bitch bitch bitch.
The Slashdot group-think has a grudge against Microsoft. That, in and of itself, I don't have a problem with. We're all human. We all have our opinions. (I certainly shouldn't be casting any stones.) But what really irks me is that nobody is willing to admit it. All these "It's stupid because it comes from Microsoft" rants are paraded around with a flag of 'Insightful', 'Informative', and 'Intesting'. Microsoft's proud of its work, that's twisted into false hype citing other browsers that have that functionality. (Never mind that only about 10 million or so people on the net are using browsers with that functionality and that MS is introducing it into a much broader market.) Microsoft adds new features with a few additions of their own, that's twisted into predictions of insecurity and buggery. (Possible, but I'm talking elaborate works of fiction here.) Microsoft doesn't announce a particular feature or adherence to a standard (not to be confused announcing that it WON'T do either), it's twisted into more Microsoft arrogance and some Dr. Evil'ish plot to monopolize the internet.
It's very difficult to take any story about Microsoft here seriously. They're not 'news for nerds', they're pitchfork-waving parties. Hardly more respectable than an epic Babylon 5 vs. Star Trek debate.
I expect this comment to be modded down. Fine, no prob. Please, at least do me the courtesy of reflecting on some of the behaviour around here and attempt to see where I'm coming from. I'm not pro-Microsoft, I'm anti-hypocrite.
"Derp de derp."
Please elaborate. I don't believe I've ever come across a Mac app in 10+ years where the menu items change depending on which window you have selected. Sure, some items are greyed out depending on context, but the actual menus don't change...As I said, please elaborate on your statement.
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
How do you integrate RSS into the heart of your OS?
Or more importantly, why?
'For we walk by faith, not by sight.' II Corinthians 5:7
Microsoft didn't get it: the reason Firefox is so damn good is that it's a better browser than IE. I think MS marketing looked at the eyecandy (search box, tabs, Live Bookmarks) and thought that this FireFox was more like some of the customized versions of IE that are out there. They totally missed out the power that Gecko, XUL and the amazingly simple extension system bring.
Firefox renders correctly, it's simple to use and extensions are just plain fun and useful. The user has more control and is literally safer than with IE. Sure there are exploits found, but they are generally fixed quickly and users are alerted to upgrade.
Then there's that whole extensible user interface...
-- $G
Tons of Firefox extensions exist only to add features that take up double the memory and are half the quickness of things that Opera has built in.
;)
Double the memory, half the speed, and an infinitely lower price.
People don't use Firefox instead of Opera because it's better. They use it because it's free. And no, as far as most people are concerned, adware != free.
Hey, if Opera wants to waste their money acting as a professional browser research wing for Mozilla, well, I'm not complaining...