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IE7 Bug Reports Flooding In
the JoshMeister writes "According to ZDNet, bug reports are already flooding in for Microsoft's new Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview. Specific issues include the possibility of arbitrary code execution as well as incompatibilities with McAfee Security Center, anti-spyware programs, and online banking sites." From the article: "... browser testers may already be at risk, according to security researcher Tom Ferris. Late Tuesday, Ferris released details of a potential security flaw in IE 7. An attacker could exploit the flaw by crafting a special Web page that could be used to crash the browser or gain complete control of a vulnerable system, Ferris said in an advisory on his Web site. Microsoft had no immediate comment on Ferris' alert."
Of course it's got bugs -- it's a beta!
A beta of a Microsoft product has bugs? Color me surprised!
It's beta software. Of course there will be bugs. The public B2 is much better than the leaked B2 which was still better than B1.
Taken with grain of salt... it's still beta.
sounds like a productive beta test. end users finding lots of bugs.
(anyone who would use it - or anything else beta - in a production environment is insane)
You just ignore the three posts above you and then imagine it all in your head.
How can this be? How can BETA software have bugs? This must be a conspiracy. Call CNN. Get Faux News on the phone. this is a STORY!!!!
Of course it has bugs. Grow up already.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Do I get mod points now?
... you don't get the mod points until you explain what exactly it is that Microsoft is sucking on?
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
This just goes to prove that Microsoft's newfound 'dedication to security' and focus on writing code with less bugs in it is just a pure crock of doodie. Obviously, if they opened their source and let us all look at it, we'd be glad to help them find and iron out all the bugs by releasing several dozen exploits into the wild at the same time. My god, if the beta's this bad, how bad will the finished product be when they've finished adding features? ... um, my sarcasm tag is on, right?
Why is this front page, unless it's just the usual knee-jerk, let's-find-something-bad-to-say-about-Microsoft thing that makes Slashdot less than useful for info about anything about Microsoft.
Yeesh.
Calling Tom Ferris a "Security Researcher" is like calling Bill Gates a programmer... He is more a 'Robert Scoble' character. And his discovery of arbitrary code execution is incorrect as per the link: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2006/02/01/522682 .aspx
The guy is not a professional anything, I mean he lists workarounds as 'Firefox'; which just shows how little he understands the security field which he claims to work in (A workaround should be a way to fix or bypass the bug, not a blind pointer at some random other product, even the Linux Security guys know that).
Look at the bright side, now we know what Ferris does on his days off.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
...but I downloaded and installed and uninstalled this thing last night. Still seems there are loads of CSS problems in it (couldn't get a navigation menu to work but using :hover pseudo-class). It'll be interesting to see what MS comes up with on this one. It'll be nice to actually have a capable version of IE to test pages against.
I can't spell ripburger
Upon installing IE 7 Beta 2, my W3SVC service stopped working. Removing the beta fixed nothing. Re-installing IIS had no effect. Finally, I had to uninstall my wireless cell card software to get things working again.
How is this news? Betas are there for finding bugs. If you don't want to risk more than the usual, how about just not using it?
The past builds were also riddled with bugs, and the IE developers are very involved with testers to fix them. It's not like they're just sitting with their hands over their ears yelling "LA LA LA LA I can't hear you!"
Is there some kind of quota of IE7 stories that you guys have to meet? Because otherwise I'm not sure why anyone would consider this news.
..are the way it: a) Requires you to validate windows to install, b) Requires a reboot, and c) Actually attempts to pass off things like tabbed browsing and a search bar as innovative (really, take a look at the "demo" they bring you to when you first install it).
I'm not asking them to spend money advertising the fact that they're way behind the curve on browsers, just to stop lying to me.
people are claiming that a Preview Release ,not even a full beta yet, has bugs? Just wondering what these industry leading geniuses thought they were getting with a preview release? I have been using IE7 for a couple months now, my work provides me with a Technet Plus subscription, and I have had some issues. In most, if not all cases, I have been able to work around them and still rely heavily on Firefox. I will say that Microsoft has finally added some much needed functionality to their browser such as tabbed browsing and keyboard shortcuts which are exactly the same as Firefox's (coincidence, I think not). I guess my point is it's a preview release, it's not perfect and it has bugs, by using beta software you are agreeing to help solve some of the problems before final release, and there will be problems.
Just my two cents worth.
You must learn to be still in the midst of activity and to be vibrantly alive in repose. -Indira Gandhi
The problem for Microsoft is that many web applications use the following logic:
:-)
if (browser is Internet Explorer) then
emit HTML code that works around the numerous rendering bugs of IE
else (Mozilla, Netscape, Opera)
emit standards-compliant HTML code
With this kind of (flawed) logic, IE 7 will often be identified as IE, and hence be provided with IE 6-specific HTML code, whereas it should have been sent "correct" HTML code. The result may be, well, interesting
I really don't see what Microsoft can do against this. They can't expect millions of web sites to be updated overnight just to support IE 7.
OK, yeah, I got the point. It's a beta and betas will have bugs. But this isn't IE 1.0 Beta. This is freaking IE 7, and while it's a beta, you'd figure they'd have gotten at least some of these things straightened out in the past 6 versions. I'm not so much frustrated that a beta has bugs, but that even into version 7 they're still having huge problems and potential exploits.
What is the point of this post? You should be sending this to Microsoft not whining about it on a Slashdot thread.
pat o.
I was about to post something about bugs being natrual in almost all beta software, then I read the article...
An attacker could exploit the flaw by crafting a special Web page that could be used to crash the browser or gain complete control of a vulnerable system
So, this is actually a relevant article, despite its initial appearance.
We've got some new additions and enhancements to IE, and here we have a flaw that can give an attacker complete control over the user's computer!
I guess this is a taste of things to come in Vista? Evidence that Microsoft's secure code development practices are mostly just verbal pacification?
Linux/Open Source/Anti Microsoft News
"Specific issues include the possibility of arbitrary code execution"
This coming form the "new seruirty driven" microsoft.
My my my, how's that possible, that the preview release of a beta version could be less stable as a software released 5 years ago is unheard of, i'd suggest you to sue Microsoft.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
Anyone who puts a beta product into a production environment should be fired.
pat o.
Microsoft had no immediate comment on Ferris' alert.
Not so - they tried to post a reply on his site but their browser kept crashing.
AT&ROFLMAO
Oh come on. Its Google. Don't expect it not to have bugs. All its products are BETA.
There you go, I corrected it for you. (no karma bonus checked for all those Gzealots)
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Ideally, they should be showing off how great their new version is. Not showing off how many bugs it still has.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
What kind of dumb-ass uses a beta browser for their banking anyway? It's not going to kill them to flick back to whatever their regular (non-beta) browser is.
I don't just mean IE either. Firefox in it's pre 1.0 days had a bug where tabs could read form data from other tabs. Like credit card numbers. All the way up to 1.0.
Why aren't beta's being released with some sort of self-setting desktop wallpaper that says "Look dipshit this is a beta product, and not like Google Beta TM, like buggy beta, so spare a seconds thought before you go doing your finances".
In next weeks news: some stupid fuck loses his identity and $20000 minutes after using IE7 Beta to pay his bills, therefore IE7 is bad.
Full of bugs due to only Beta stage, but it seems a really nice browser - far better than IE6. (Even if it borrows from some of Firefox's plus points).
What is the point of this post?
Well maybe it's so that those of us who don't regularly try out "bleeding-edge" products can learn what is good and what is bad.
While I take eveything I read on /. with a pinch of salt, I would expect the posters to be among the more technically literate. So a post like this is a great heads up to me as a Web Developer who also has input into supported platforms that neither Vista or IE7 are ready for consideration let alone usage.
And as for the various people saying that a beta product is supposed to have bugs, I'm guessing they are firm believers in the "release early, release often, patch always" school of programming. For MS, having stated that security is their main focus, this amounts to them saying: "Our systems and bug tracking is so bad we need you to tell us what's wrong". Releasing a beta version is an opportunity to display new features that may or may not work completely, not to display the inherent vulnerability of a product.
Just looked at my logs for the last two days and MSIE 7 has already caused more requests than Opera/8, making it the #4 after MSIE 6, Mozilla and MSIE 5 (yes, grouping could be better for the Mozilla/Firefox family). It's a tech site, so the early adopters can be expected to show up here. Still, that was fast.
I swear they weren't there when I submitted over my dialup connection! If I hadn't reloaded the page a few times just to see if it could possibly be true there were zero posts yet I would have made it... No doubt it was my chance of a lifetime.
I should have just released the beta instead of trying to debug a little before submitting. I guess MS wouldn't want me on the payroll, hahaha!
What else is new?
News implies that the subject matter is NEW, hence, NEWS. We already know IE7 is flawed, as has been every single microsoft product despite their propagandized advertising.
Or maybe they're just using their beta program how a beta program is supposed to be used beta test e.g. to test and debug over an extra wide user base?
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
The bugs, I can live with (after all it's a pre-release for a beta... so essentially it's an alpha release). The UI needs a lot of tweaking, however. Right now it is just plain ugly. The main complaint is the fact that there's no way to move the navigation buttons below the menu, an option for the "classic" look would be nice. Also, the fact that tabs are always visible is just annoying. I finally removed it because Windows Update locked my entire system up and Java just didn't work (essential for my job).
Still, it has potential at least. IE will never be my primary browser (you'll pull Firefox from my cold, dead hands) but it is essential for certain apps I use at work so, unfortunately, I can't ignore it.
During the installation, it does recommend that you "backup your important files and close all programs." I'm asuming that is in case you need to revert back to IE6 at a later point, but it could just mean that they don't want whiners at their door if people lose all of their data and try to blame it on the beta.
Prep yourself for your flamebait mod-down sir ;)
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
The famed acid2 test renders truly badly: http://www.webstandards.org/act/acid2/test.html#to p
Um, maybe your problems are due to the fact that Vista is beta? And maybe that you don't have Vista drivers for you CF card? Perhaps you should wait until the RTM versions.
> There's a "In Soviet Russia" joke in there, but I can't put my finger on it.
In Soviet Russia, joke puts finger on YOU!
Carry on.
Virg
Who was excited when IE7 came out??? WHo in their right mind would download, install, and use a piece of MS software that wasn't 'finished'? It's bad enough when the full release product comes out, but a beta? C'mon, let's face it, IE6 still has quite a few problems with it and anyone expecting 7 to work well is crackers.
I'm sorry, but at this point I would rather install Sony's rootkit simply because *I (now) know* what junk is being loaded on my machine. With IE7 I'm loading the hacker's pandora box on my poor innocent rig.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I installed it the other day, and it was the safest browser I ever used, seriously. I couldn't get it to work with our proxy, so I could only browse the corp intranet. Amazingly, I didn't get infected by any malware.
Yea, it's a beta from MS and it crashes. It still wouldn't be news if it was a released product. Just more of the same old, same old.
Frankly, there is no news from MS. Just a lot of "Me too!" or DRM product announcements.
The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer. - Edward R. Murrow
IE 7 also breaks your local MSDN helper documentation, rendering all documentation in giant Times Roman 12 point with all layout broken.
Of course if you're a Java (doc) user this will probably make you feel at home.
Nothing costs nothing
Can we get a class action lawsuit against Microsoft much like the assclown who's suing Apple by claiming there's no large warning on the IE7 install that our computers can be comprimised by a damm beta?
Why do overlook and oversee mean opposite things?
Microsoft once again found itself playing catchup, this time in the browser market [again]. And with virtually all firms, that means a product often gets pushed out the door too quickly. That is clearly the case with I.E.7 (a.k.a. Deep-Six 7).
This release qualifies as no more than an alpha. Anyone who feels otherwise has either done little beta testing, or refuses to open their eyes. (And no, I am not a MS basher. In fact, I still use IE6.) Think about it. It's been over a year since Firefox began stealing market share. Microsoft saw (and clearly thought) it could wait no longer, even if the release was far from ready. They simply had to get "a new browser" on the market.
It may backfire, however. I tried Deep-Six 7, saw it was only an alpha, attempted to uninstall it, and then found it left my system in tatters! A beta should not do that; an alpha well may, however.
Microsoft sees its customers as guinea pigs, at least in this case. There is no way that junk should have been released on an unsuspecting public. Many here clearly forget that only 1% of computer users are geeks. The rest are "normal people." The latter will see a download available and simply get it, with no thought [knowledge?] of what they're actually doing. Microsoft should remember that itself.
I'm certain there were heated discussion about releasing it now (for marketing purposes) or holding off (for better quality before any public release). And now, the quality assurance folks are saying, "I told you so." This release has only further tarnished Microsoft's image as an innovative and quality-focused company. Instead, it now appear to be a behemoth that can barely move its own weight around, and certainly not nimbly keep up with its major competitors.
/.'s Psychic-in-Residence: Psychic to the Geeks
Finally, I'd like to reiterate the importance of the responsible disclosure of security issues. We firmly believe that privately disclosing security issues to software vendors is the best way to keep the users of the world secure.
I'm sorry, but I take issue with this, particularly with a product being beta-tested, but really, with any product. Users need to know what exploits are known. If there are serious, known, security flaws in IE, that may very well affect my decision of whether or not I want to install it on my system. THe idea of keeping it hush-hush doesn't really help anyone.
Just putting it on your network is enough. This looks like the typical Microsoft experience. Everyone has been warned.
I would love to be a blackhat, but I just can't stand running Windows. I'm quite torn: I want to do my part to cause Billy some pain for what he's done to me and others, yet I just can't bring myself to run his software in order to make that happen.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
I know many people will just jump down Microsoft's throat for anything they do, they aren't my favourite company either. But I can't be sympathetic to people that complain about beta software.
1) NOBODY is forcing you to install a beta product. If you are curious or impulsive, and feel compelled to install beta software, your doing so at great risk to your security and data. Whether it's Microsoft beta's, Google beta's, or Linux Beta's, you are accepting that risk by the nature of installing beta software (its in the disclaimer)
2) THE REASON for beta software is to open it up to wider testing to CATCH AND FIX Bugs. This is a good thing, that bugs are flowing back to Microsoft. It will force them to fix the bugs and strengthen the product.
3) No, you CAN'T Sue, see 1)
4) Get a life. I mean, if IE 7 was in full release and these bugs were being reported, I would jump on the bandwagon myself and fire a few shots at MS, but this is still beta software, it isn't even a release candidate yet. Its intended for people with a brain to install it at their own risk and test the product, to REPORT bugs is the definition of what Beta software is. Obviously lots of stupid people are installing IE 7!
This is NOT NEWS, this is sad. To report and complain that Microsoft's beta software is full of bugs suggest a complete bias, prejudice, and ignorance towards them without merit or provocation. This is not microsoft screwing up, this is microsoft doing what countless other software companies do, release a beta in order to get feedback and bug reporting in order to fix and strengthen the product.
When FireFox 1.5 beta was released, it was full of bugs, but people praised Mozilla for their innovation and success. I can't stand double standards.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
The way I understand it Beta means that it somewhat works but still has problems. Someone releases a beta to get help with fixing it and/or to shut people up on when it'll be out. I don't hate MS like some here do and I love Macs but come on... this is MS and bugs should be expected. The real question is if they will fix all the problems that people find before sending IE7 to retail. I am just glad that they are bringing their browser up to date a bit since most of the world, like it or not, is going to design their sites for the current version of IE primarily and then cater to those of us who love Firefox and Safari later (or never).
Yes, specially since Firefox never had any bugs!
Right?
IE still lacks XHTML support of any kind - I don't want to seem picky here, but it has been 6 years. Sure, I can have applications I work on spit out XHTML that's mostly like HTML 4, and send the appropriate MIME type based on the Accept header, but I'd really quite like to see IE support vaguely recent standards, y'know...
Sometimes the sheer hipocracy of some posters here amazes me beyond rational response.
You mean the oath of Hipocrates, to save lives no matter what and to follow the code of conduct in the job of physician? In this (IT) context that would mean that some posters fight for the good of software, for security and stability against all the odds, against corporate, governmental and law pressure, to make code better. Yes, amazing phenomenon, beyond rational response.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
Nobody ever got fired over installing Microsoft products.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
All I have to say is READ THE EULA. This software is not stable and no one at MS ever claimed to be. You should also keep in mind that while some companies ( Google for one ) use the term beta very loosely MS does not. Beta usually means that the features are finalized but the software is till not stable. Plus if you chose to use beta software you are pretty much signing up to be a tester so stop complaining.
Is IE7 NOT using .NET?? I thought this was exactly the type of program that should be written using .NET - to prevent the type of exploits that are being reported. Did I miss something in the MS .NET hype??
I hope they don't "fix" IE to handle that banking site correctly. The banking site is probably very broken. Most banking sites are broken it seems. The banking site probably only supports IE 6.
That is all.
I can't find any proof inthis vulnerability that suggests it allows remote code execution or does anything but crash the browser.
It does an even worse job on the Acid2 (CSS) test than IE6 did. Bah!
They would if they worked here.
..... he asked us what measures we had in place to prevent users from copying software off company PCs. We told him none at all; in fact, we actively encouraged that sort of thing. The poor sod didn't know whether to spunk his pants with glee or explode with rage. He asked us if we were serious and if we knew what the penalties were for violating an End User Licence Agreement? Then we shew him the neat rows of machines running Mandrake 9.2 {so that'll tell you how long ago it was} and asked him which bit of the GPL he thought we were violating.
We actually had someone come round from the Licencing Gestapo {maybe he got tipped off that we had ordered a few dozen PCs with no operating system}, so we thought we'd have a bit of fun with him
As the advert says, for everything else, there's Mastercard.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Spare the dog; blame the bug
Procrastination Man strikes again!
what concerns me is M$'s track record of not exactly fixing things in a timely manner. Firefox has come leaps and bounds in half a version, and by 2.1 I expect that almost all significant issues will be gone (I'm not saying it's perfect, just improving faster and more noticeably). I just don't see IE7 becoming any more bug-free than IE6, or most other M$ product.
The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it. - William Gibson
Whomever modded this flamebait is abusing the mod system. The previous post I made contains three on-topic answers to the previous poster's question, none of which are any any way inflammatory. I hope the meta-moderators properly deal with this.
Bugs found in Beta software: No news, standard procedure. Last bugs being found and patched before release.
Tons of bugs found in Beta 2: Important news. MS QA screwed up by allowing it to leave alpha stage. Programmers did the usual thing, wrote the program, but the QA screwed up a big time by passing it as beta. It's not beta, it's alpha, released prematurely.
Complaining that bugs were reported in IE7 Beta is silly. Bashing the fact that a FLOOD of bugreports appeared is good slashdot frontpage news, meaning Microsoft screwed up a big time again. It's about the magnitude, and about a serious failure on the QA side during the alpha stage.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
An attacker could exploit the flaw by crafting a special Web page ... Ferris said in an advisory on his Web site.
<akbar>It's a trap!</akbar>
You know where you are? You're in the $PATH, baby. You're gonna get executed!
There is no incentive for any piece of closed-source software ever to be perfect.
/bin/cat? That is a perfect program. It does exactly what it is supposed to do, no more and no less.
..... once you've got it, you've effectively got it forever.
I suppose you have heard of
Once a piece of software works perfectly in all conceivable circumstances, it is finished. It is dead. There is nowhere else for it to go. And when everyone else has a copy of it, there is no more reason for them ever to upgrade. It's not as though software ever wears out
IE will never be perfect, and for that matter Windows will never be perfect; because if they were, then Microsoft would not be able to sell you new versions.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
blakespot
-- Heisenberg may have slept here.
iPod Hacks.com
Ctrl-L goes to the address bar in Firefox. It also works in a few file browsers, making it a standard key combination that i use a lot.
I find it more than a little funny that people are making their machines even less secure by volunteering to install what is basically a reverse-patch to internet explorer. Now the internet is being flooded with machines that are even more likely to be infected by a virus from viewing a jpg or some other mundane task.
Not satisfied with the non-security of IE6? Download IE7 for free!
...the bottom news story of the day. C'mon, Slashdot.
"Me fail English? That's unpossible." - Ralph
OMG... It's beta... I thought it was the final release :P
Is "no" the answer to this question?
In firefox it's ctrl-l; it does something similar in IE, but not quite the same...
Install windows on my workstation? You crazy? Got any idea how much I paid for the damn thing?
Does everything need to be officially announced to qualify as an "immediate comment" Blogging seems to be good enough for many other companies. A reply was posted in the IE blog (which IE 7 b2 Preview even adds links to when installed): http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2006/02/01/522682 .aspx.
Listen, bug discoverers!! Don't let Microsoft know about bugs in their new IE7 - until it's released! Unless of course, that is, you actually want to help them out....
Get your own free personal location tracker
Nota Bene: I tested Beta 2 in "local mode" -- that is, instead of running the installer I unpacked it as a RAR archive and waved the usual dead chickens to make the executable run without believing it was the installed version. Google "ie7 local mode" for instructions.
That said, this is what I found.
1. The most awful CSS mistakes frequently pointed out on sites like positioniseverything are fixed.
2. The missing implementations like min/max-height are still missing.
3. The HTML mistakes like OBJECT and BUTTON are still screwed up: you can't use OBJECT in place of IMG despite it being the W3C spec for half a decade now.
As far as the renderer is concerned, all they seem to have done was fix a selected handful of CSS2 mistakes rather than build a full CSS2 spec.
I also experienced a series of incredible weirdnesses which may have been the result of running in local mode: SELECT menus refused to open when clicked, some triggered popup blocker warnings, and many pages without popups triggered popup blocker warnings as well. The "hovercraft" JS/behavior: trick which retrains IE6 to apply hover: to all HTML elements appears to cause problems with IE7 which already knows to do this.
"Made up/misattributed quote that makes me look smart. I am on
They're mutually exclusive in the sense that you can't run 6 while 7beta is installed, but if you uninstall 7 you're left with 6. No big deal.
Even if something should go wrong, you could always reinstall 6 assuming you have an XP CD. Maybe that's one reason to require the Windows validation during installation?
"Bother," said Pooh, as lightning knocked out hi%#&(F*@NO CARRIER
All of the websites I maintain are XHTML 1.0 Trans and CSS2 compliant, and render great in non-IE browsers, okay in IE 6, and look very broken in IE 7. I'm using a few "* html" type hacks, and only one IE specific hack to control the page size, and no specialized css for specific browsers.
It appears to me that MS intends to break all the hacks developers have used to create standard-compliant code that still works in IE, but without fixing the lack of CSS support that made those hacks necessary. Oh how I hate them!
I'm really serious about this... I'm not kidding...
The web community should start flooding the bug reporting for the IE beta with reports about CSS and XHTML/HTML standards non-compliance. Anything IE 7 does that isn't in line with web standards should be reported as a bug, by as many people as possible. And we should keep reporting these, daily, until the IE team wakes up to web standards and decides to support them.
Then, webmasters can make one version of the website that works in all modern browsers. Oh happy day. The IE team won't have to worry about supporting the weird IE quirks... people who haven't upgraded and are still using IE 6 will continue getting the same hacks that fix IE 6 and are ignored by Firefox et al, and IE 7 can ignore them just the same.
Seriously... it's best for everybody.
What's really going to piss me off is when they "fix" the hacks but not the non-compliance... AND on top of it they support some CSS 3 stuff in a non-standard way so we can go through this all over again when IE 8 comes out.
http://www.mozilla.com/
Nuff said... move along.
A few months ago, the IE team asked web developers to switch from using CSS hacks (which depend on additional bugs which may not get fixed at the same time as the ones you're working around) to using Conditional Comments, which let you target specific versions of IE using intended functionality rather than bug side effects.
This still requires effort on the part of web developers, but they at least tried to get the ball rolling back in October.
It can also be mitigated by checking for capabilities rather than browsers. For example, look for a DOM function, and if you don't find it, look for the IE function, instead of the other way around. It's the way they recommended handling AJAX when they announced the native (i.e. non-ActiveX) implementation of XMLHTTPRequest.
if (has standard function) {
do standards-based stuff for Firefox, Opera, Safari, IE7, etc.
}
else if (has IE function) {
do IE-specific stuff
}
else {
do fallback stuff for primitive browsers
}
From looking at my own sites, half the bugs have been the result of CSS hacks I'd forgotten about, and the other half have been attributed to a particular bug in the new beta/preview/whatever: Horizontal padding is applied incorrectly on absolutely positioned elements, causing the text to overflow the right edge of the box. I put together a testcase and reproted it on the IE blog, where I found that at least 2 other people had reported the same bug.
If I had mod points today... ...well, I would've disqualified myself already by posting in the thread, but if I had mod points *and* hadn't posted, you'd be getting modded up.
A BASIC interpreter, and a poor one[*] at that, counts as "hardcore programming" these days?
I hacked around a bit in his BASIC interpreter back in those days, and I was less than impressed. GOTO in MS BASIC was O(n). Anyone who has ever programmer BASIC should know that GOTO is the key command to run fast in that language. Just about anyone else, working under similar constraints got that right.
MS BASIC is really a testament to Bill Gates marketing skills, not his programming skills, since he actually managed to sell that piece of junk
I invite you to find this many bugs in Firefox 1.5 beta 2
But that's not really a fair comparison. Firefox has a huge advantage, just because of the way open source software works. People were downloading Firefox 1.5 source and nightly builds long before it hit release candidate or beta status, so a fair number of bugs never survived to be shown in the beta. Microsoft doesn't get the same opportunity to find this stuff ahead of time, so they have to deal with a bug report zerg rush when they actually release a beta. Or a beta preview.
Legalize recreational marijuana. Seriously.
http://www.jcxp.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=449 9 ;)
That page helped me fix the only "bug" I had with this release