Internet Explorer Not Dead Yet

turnitover writes "The future's not all Firefox, Deer Park and Camino, insists Microsoft. At its Mix '06 conference in Las Vegas, reports Microsoft Watch, company execs insisted that there's a bright future for IE. They not only distributed a 'layout-complete' build of IE 7.0, but offered hints about what the new version of the browser geeks love to disdain (yes, it will include ActiveX) will include. Also shown: tools to test IE compatibility. But with what? Standards or IE 6?"

Comments

Re:ACID 2.0 Test

[kimvette]

While I am also a Firefox fan and use it despite Konqueror's being very nice and passing the Acid2 test, it should be pointed out that Firefox does NOT pass the Acid2 test. At least, Firefox/1.5.0.1 does not. The dev tree might, but who counts that? One may as well claim that Looking Glass is the best operating environment ever - but since it's vaporware/unreleased it would be a false statement.

Sure, Firefox breaks less than IE does when loading the Acid2 test, however by a strict measurement, only one (two) browsers to date pass Acid2:

KHTML (Safari/Konqueror)

If you want to count dev trees/beta releases, then you've got:

Opera
Firefox

Also, I think it's great that the Opera folks are almost mocking Microsoft, and challenging them to pass Acid2. Aside from KHTML which is there, and MSIE which TOTALLY pukes on it, Every other browser is almost rendering Acid2 to be recognizable as a smiley face. At least everyone else is attempting to handle proper CSS and bad CSS correctly, e.g, render compliant CSS, and downgrade gracefully on broken CSS.

What MSIE renders could just as well be accomplished by splashing paint on a sheet of canvas. With the way Microsoft is handling things, I wonder why they don't just ignore CSS altogether and turn their browser into a random pixel renderer?

Get with the program, Microsoft. You have the greatest market share so it is in your best interest for maintaining your share to act responsibly. I hope the mass reaction to MSIE 7.0 is for major sites to either block the browser, or to use CSS which causes MSIE to totally break, and for those sites to recommend all browsers which are not MSIE as alternatives.

Microsoft has held the web back long enough with their refusal to implement proper PNG rendering - their holding back the web has to stop now.

Re:Standards and Bueller, both missing.

[bmalia]

Firefox IMHO is a much better user expierence with tabs (once you get use to the idea) and having a little search box.

I just wanted to comment on tabs and the little search box. I was helping a not-so-computer-literate friend out the other day. When I suggested he google something, he clicked on the icon to open up a new browser. I then suggested he close that new window and open a new tab. Which I had to teach him how. Then he started to goto google.com, and I stopped him suggesting he type it in the search box. Which he did, but instead of pressing enter to submit it, he pressed the go button just to the left of it. That go button only works for the URL, not for the search. So i had him put the cursor back in the search box and press enter.

A simple task turned into a crash course on web surfing. Is he the only idiot out there or are there thousands of other firefox users out there not using firefox's ease of browsing features simply because they don't know how?

Re:In other news..

[Firehed]

Especially when their products have upwards of 80% market share... Don't get me wrong, I love Firefox, but it hasn't come anywhere near killing off IE. Honestly I still can't see why MS cares - if nobody uses their browser, less coding for them and less potential tech support. MSN Search, maybe; but the browswer itself, being freely available and all, is hardly a money-spinner.