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Interview with Microsoft Exec on IE7 and RSS
AvianFlugelhorn writes "BetaNews has posted an interview with Gary Schare, Director of IE Product Management, which touches on the changes coming in IE7, Firefox's growth, and how Microsoft will bring RSS to the mainstream. It's interesting to see Schare become more humble since a November 2004 interview, when he questioned whether Firefox could attract more than just early adopters. Now, Microsoft says: 'we respect the work that the Firefox guys have done.' Schare also admits problems with ActiveX and explains why Microsoft will revolutionize RSS." Couple of days old, but still interesting.
'Early adopters' are what marketers call the first people to use your product. Now, let's say that there's some tiny percentage of people who initially use Firefox just because they had something to do with it or they need to run a web app that works best in Firefox. This 5% of the population is known as the 'early adopters' as it doesn't really matter what your product is; they're going to use it regardless.
Now, imagine a normal curve of the population of users. The early adopters are the ones on the far left who use it right away and the ones on the right are the crusty old-there's-nothing-better-than-IE-change-is-bad people who will refuse until the bitter end. If you make it past the early adopters and into the 35%-45% of the population range on the curve, then suddenly this product can stand on its own. To hell with the competition, it can now fend for itself in the market with that kind of user base backing it.
What he meant in that quote was that it had yet to be seen if Firefox would even make it past the initial 5% that would use it regardless and into a phenomenon that could potentially be a competitor with Internet Explorer.
In most of the applications a programmer undertakes, she or he must strive to encompass more than just early adopters if it is hoped for the product to last. This usually involves clever marketing gimmicks or commercials but, thank the lord, in Firefox's case it's just been sheer security and ingenuity of the product helping it over this curve.
Not only do I think it's well on its way past the early adopter phase, but I myself have moved to be an early adopter for most open source solutions I can find out there.
My work here is dung.
Flash is an ActiveX
browser extensions
Unsigned Firefox browser extensions will merrily run native code without asking the user, should you be foolish enough to install them. The only reason people think Firefox extensions are more secure than ActiveX is because there's a default whitelist in place.
A Firefox extension is just as capable of being destructive as an ActiveX control. However, ActiveX is limited to one platform. A malicious Firefox extension would be cross-platform in its destruction.
When it comes to writing cross-platform viruses, Firefox is quite a nice platform to target.
Well no, seeing as they've already fixed everything you mention: PNG, position: fixed, native XMLHttpRequest. Have you tried the latest beta?
Nonsense. Those lines are there to not break for any browsers that don't support native XMLHttpRequest objects. That includes quite a few versions of quite a few browsers.
Internet Explorer 7 includes a native XMLHttpRequest object so it acts exactly like all the other browsers and you don't need the extra code that Internet Explorer 6 and below does.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Seeming as XMLHttpRequest is a nonestandard control first provided by Microsoft in IE and then 'tucked' into somewhere vaguely appropriate by other browser vendors when it became obvious it would be a useful control, you really dont have a leg to stand on in that regard.
I am forced to use sharpoint at work. It sucks balls. I have no idea why anybody would choose it above plone or a dozen other open source CMS systems.
Besides being slower then molasses the search functionality is pretty close to useless. Unless you know where something is give up all hope of ever finding it.
evil is as evil does