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IE7 To Support XMLHTTP Requests

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the new-tricks-for-an-old-dog dept.

Ruliz Galaxor writes "IEBlog posts that Internet Explorer 7 will support a native XMLHTTPRequest object as many other browsers currently do. This will mean no more ActiveX MSXML objects to implement AJAX functionality. It looks like Microsoft is seriously trying to make the lives of us web developers easier. Of course you'll still need to use the Microsoft.XMLHTTP ActiveX object if you want to support IE6 and older."

8 of 238 comments (clear)

  1. Backwards Compatability by angst7 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "Of course you'll still need to use the Microsoft.XMLHTTP ActiveX object if you want to support IE6 and older."

    Which means that browser type checking will need to remain pretty much for the forseable future. Inclusion of XMLHTTPRequest now is nice, but in practical terms its perfectly meaningless.

    --
    StrategyTalk.com, PC Game Forums
    1. Re:Backwards Compatability by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yeah, so they shouldn't add it at all, because it's apparently pointless.

      Good call! After all, why in the hell should Microsoft make web developer's lives easier in the future? It's complicated now!

    2. Re:Backwards Compatability by lseltzer · · Score: 4, Insightful

      >>in practical terms its perfectly meaningless

      Not true. The point of it is that a user or company can disable ActiveX completely and still use AJAX.

  2. Looks like Microsoft has a winning strategy . . . by mmell · · Score: 4, Insightful
    They've lost some ground to Firefox et. al.; if they can keep corporate America convinced that IE is "just as good" for what businesses want their browser to do, they'll continue to hold the hammer-lock on browsers in the workplace (remember, M$ doesn't need to convince all of us, just the PHB's among us).

    Begun the browser war has (again).

  3. And...? by wombatmobile · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It looks like Microsoft is seriously trying to make the lives of us web developers easier.

    MS deserves credit for this sensible implementation of XMLHTTPRequest, and indeed for innovating XMLHTTPRequest in the first place.

    Now if MS is "seriously trying to make the lives of us web developers easier" [when] will they implement the rest of the core W3C web standards?

    FF, Opera and Safari and their respective communities are already well advanced with implementations of SVG, DOM, CSS, PNG, JPEG2000 and XForms. These standards are bread and butter for "seriously trying to make the lives of us web developers easier".

    When will MS join the inevitable?

    1. Re:And...? by Bogtha · · Score: 3, Insightful

      SVG: Microsoft implemented vector graphics in Internet Explorer years ago with VML, which they submitted to the W3C in 1998.

      CSS: A partial list of fixes regarding CSS that will be in Internet Explorer 7 can be found on the IEBlog. They've fixed a lot.

      PNG: Internet Explorer 7 will have support for the PNG alpha channel, bringing it up to the level of support that other browsers have.

      JPEG2000: JPEG2000 is patent encumbered. Mozilla/Firefox doesn't support it.

      XForms: XForms support is available through a plugin.

      The only really valid complaint you have there is their lack of support for the DOM. In particular, it would be very nice if they implemented DOM 2 Events, but I don't think that's likely to happen for Internet Explorer 7.

      --
      Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
  4. Re:Except that.... by Stan+Vassilev · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "On a side note, I don't see why this is a big deal. They are likely still going to use a COM object underneath. All this is is a coding shortcut, that no one will be able to use anyway because you're still going to have to support IE6 for the next 3 years at least."

    If you RTFA you'll see the benefit is for those organisations that have ActiveX turned off for security reasons (lots of em).

    On the IEBlog you have a code snippet showing how you create the native XMLHttpRequest object for Opera, FF and IE7, while fall back to ActiveX for IE6 and earlier.

    So there IS benefit. And no, it's not a simple scripting shortcut at all.

  5. Re:A Nice Step by Bogtha · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Why shouldn't Firefox and Safari render more closely to the way that IE does it?

    What makes more sense?

    1. The developers of browsers A, B, C and D get together and write down how something should work.
    2. The developers of browsers A, B, C and D go off and implement what they've agreed upon.

    ...or:

    1. The developers of browser A implement something.
    2. The developers of browsers B, C and D wait for browser A to be released.
    3. The developers of browsers B, C and D try to reverse-engineer what the developers of browser A have done, while the developers of browser A implement version 2.0.
    4. The developers of browsers B, C and D implement what they hope is the correct behaviour while the developers of browser A release version 2.0.

    Which do you think is the healthy, competitive scenario? Which do you think hands control of the future of the web over to a single organisation?

    --
    Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha