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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.
So will Firefox users have any respect for IE7 as a capable browser (if it proves to be so)?
I didn't realize Slashdot posted things so recent...
From my point of view, the whole ActiveX thing in IE should be taken out. In today's world, ActiveX does have a couple of niche uses, but the Internet by far has left it behind as a old technology. Technologies/Techniques like Flash, Javascript, AJAX, PHP, browser extensions and the rest can do a lot of what ActiveX could do, and much more securely. ActiveX in my view is a weak link that is asking for viruses.
"Quite often when you see an IE patch coming out, it's not actually a patch to IE code. It's a patch to kill the ActiveX control that's no longer needed, which we've determined has a vulnerability in it. ActiveX Opt-in is designed to reduce that surface area of attack by turning off most of those controls by default and letting users only turn them on if they need them. The feature makes it not interesting for the hackers to go after this legacy code that shouldn't be exposed to the Internet in the first place."
So we've enhanced the functionality of IE by ramping up the number of programmers on the project, which is a normal function of software development at Microsoft but I can't give you specifics, to add new features to IE7... new features like... ActiveX Opt-In (tm), with ActiveX Opt-In, we've enhanced the rich browsing experience the users are used to by increasing the security model of the IE7 browser functionality through better security measures.
And these security measures are?
We turned the problematic ActiveX controls off.
But wait how this is new functionali...
Top. Men.
Well, it exploded. I would hope that it was dead. Luckily for us, Internet Explorer is still there to fill the gap created when Exploder went to visit Great Grandpa Mosaic.
"Schare also admits problems with ActiveX"
Heh, that reminds me of a typical parody-movie scene a-la Airplane..
"Well yes, the house has a tiny little problem with pests..."
(stampede of rats runs on the background)
"And a little problem with the electrical installation..."
(Suddenly an electric cable in the wall catches fire)
"But overall, the house is fine"
(the roof falls down)
Perhaps because the French are so insecure in their abilities that they must proclaim themselves at the forefront of technology, when in fact, they are not. Le courier?
Perhaps it is the smugness emoted by French speakers when their language is not used properly. These same French speakers find it all to easy to improperly use others' languages.
Perhaps because the French helped the Germans immensely by surrendering so easily. And then, after the Allies arrived, 'helped' to defeat the Germans.
Perhaps because the French think that they are a single race of people.
Or, maybe it is because Monty Python so successfully ridiculed the French.
Cheers
Hmm... I wonder where they got the idea that IE wasn't secure enough? *cough*Firefox*cough*
I guess competition is good, since now people know what they are missing. Finally someone is, in a small way, asking Microsoft to step up the quality of their products.
Funtime Candy Wow! - my plan for eventually conquering Japan.
MS Guy: We added tabbed browsing and upped our CSS support to what was published in 2000.
Every web dev on earth: Good for you, now how about DOM2?
MS Guy: But... but... tabbed browsing!
There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
Hi fucktard, are you bunch of fucktards ever going to fucking support the goddman fucking standard like bloody PNG and position: fixed and other basic stuff?
Who cares about security, if windows users did they wouldn't use windows. Who cares about hot new features. If people wanted cutting edge they wouldn't use windows. Sadly all those windows users do want websites that work in their browser so you are stuck supporting the crap that is IE.
It is very simple, very basic support for simple standards that IE just isn't capable of it. I can only think of the following reasons, A, they are really just not capable of it. MS can't hire any people who can hack up PNG support or do proper CSS. B, they want to hold the web back so they can launch their own new version. C, they want to wind me up and get me an ulcer.
Not that it matters ifI IE7 becomes a passable browser (yeah I considered the possibility that IE7 might become a good browser but who am I kidding) we will still have to support craptastic IE6 for years to come. Hell IE5 only now is starting to disappear.
If you are not a webdesigner you cannot understand.
You can make a beautifull page that truly shines that the customer finds enchanting and the users drool about and then you test it in IE and it all falls to pieces.
Ajax is the new buzzword so lets us that as an example to show how bad IE is. First the code for a real browser (anything not produced by MS):
Oh and line 1 and 3 are only there to keep IE happy. 2nd line would be all that is needed if you coded only for real browsers. But for IE you need that while IF statement. PLUS:The code is from IBM btw so I figure it is pretty pretty efficient example.
Can you start to understand why IE is hated so much by web developers?
No doubt IE7 will cause this simple code to expand yet more.
For my own personal sites I have long since stopped adding IE support. Get a real browser or fuck off. Sadly that is not acceptable in business sites. Not even the customer service section.
So next time you ask a fucking IE developer questions less sucking up please and more 'are you finally going to do some real work or do I have to get a contract on your kids'.
IE, because Bill Gates hates the net.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Opera is too complicated!
Long live Lynx!
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
"In the early days, we admit, we focused more on the power and stability than on the security."
Might wanna focus a little harder, man. =O
Microsoft is telling us they will "revolutionize RSS" and "bring RSS to the mainstream". We all know what Bill's "embrace and extend" plans have done in the past.
And, I hate to be the one to point it out to you, Bill, but RSS is mainstream. All you'll do is fragment its marketplace.
When telling friends about Firefox, and why to use it, I've always mentioned the tabbed browsing first, and then noted that it's more secure than IE. Sure, there's a ton of other stuff that FF "does", but those were the two things, the selling points if you will, that I wanted to show them. "Tabbed browsing, man! You'll never surf the same way again!"
But after trying IE7, I've realized there's so much more to the experience. Tabs are a given, but FF seems to do them so much better. It's faster, snappier, cleaner. I come to accept the security as a given. Even in IE7, I wouldn't go to half the sites I do in FF. IE still doesn't seem to handle popups as well as FF, I've come to rely on the the Adblock extension which makes the browsing experience so much better. Pages load faster in FF. Little things like Find-As-You-Type (why in the hell does IE still have the ctrl-F dialog box that pops up, and doesn't wrap around the page? Up or Down??). I think I'm realizing that the EXTENSIONS in FF are what makes it great. Just the handful of ones I have installed make my browsing experience that much better, and I take for granted what I can do, and I don't notice this until trying to do the same in IE7. Why can't I rearrange tabs in IE? Ctrl-tab doesn't cycle how I would like it, but what can I do? In FF, I just find an extension. Plus, IE7 is ugly. I can change the theme in FF.
I think the only thing IE7 is really going to do is get an installed base of "secure" IE out there - all the Joe Schmoes that don't care, power up their Dell nekkid to the cable modem, and check their email. Maybe this will help curb some of the stupid things that have resulted from the old IE versions. But in no way is IE7 even remotely close to the browser that Firefox is.
I've only seen two types of sites that consistently give me security warnings about ActiveX (SP2).
So... Exactly why is it I need it again?
RSS is designed to be extended, the base specification is very loose and open to extension by third parties. Lots of companies already use extensions to RSS, so MS wont be the first if they do, and they wont be 'evil' if they do. Get over it.
I guess RSS feeds will soon be able to exploit my win box :(
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
Visual Studio is great. Besides being a fast, optimizing compiler, the fact that it lets you write your own resource files OR use a nifty editor, write native code OR use .NET or Java, compile code written in separate languages together into one executeable, and even whip out machine language in the middle of your higher-level program. Plus, it supports about a bajillion different processor architectures and 2005 has taken some steps to force good programming practices upon bad programmers. Feeding trolls is fun.
DATABASE WOW WOW
Why wasn't the RSS spec designed from the get-go to duplicate the functionality in Usenet? It seems to me that a good RSS reader should have the basic functionality of a Usenet newsreader: threading, sorting (by author, date, etc), read vs unread, catchup, reply (if the feed allows comments), article expiration, etc.
In Mozilla Thunderbird, if you set up an RSS account for a Google group (using the atom 1.0 feed), it looks like a usenet subscription, except it's much more limited. If it's the same paradigm (except where the articles are hosted), why not the same functionality?
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
... we let all the other pioneers get the arrows strategy.
Microsoft sees what "wheat" floats to the top separating it from the chaff and, if it's viable, they make it themselves and starve off the competition.