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Will Internet Explorer 7 Have Any Impact?
John Seyton asks: "A recent posting regarding Internet Explorer 7 has me pondering what impact this next release will have on the web market. Firefox has fought hard to make a small dent in Internet Explorer's armor, to the point that we can browse most of the web with no loss of functionality, yet if Internet Explorer 7 recaptures a sizable chunk of that market share, web authors might once again create offensive 'please upgrade to Internet Explorer' web pages. Based upon the known features, what does the Slashdot community think the impact of Internet Explorer 7 will be on the web in general? Will we be forced to live a two-browser life once again?"
I think by definition since IE7 comes from Microsoft IE7 must have an impact. But I think it will have less impact than Microsoft's original reaction to get back into the internet race.
"Last" time Microsoft managed two things at one time by bringing their browser to the internet: they managed to cut off the air supply (never liked that group anyway) to Netscape long enough to make Netscape irrelevant competition, and they actually created a less buggy browser (Netscape 4, anybody?). I hated them for it, but it was the perfect storm that killed Netscape and made IE king.
The net scape today is too different for Microsoft to pull this off again. Like before they're mostly playing catch up... seemingly lulled by their victory, virtually ALL other browsers surpassed IE in features, and even in reliability when you factor in the security issues.
And, ahh yes, the security issues -- features Microsoft included in IE combined with their Windows platform to enhance the web and browsing experience were also their undoing. While Microsoft always had and will have their cadre of softies following and coding to all of the Microsoft whistles and bells, I think this time many middle-roaders feel stung by the crap that was IE and are more inclined to steer clear of gee-whiz stuff and cater more to globally accepted standards.
I can hardly wait to see what IE7 brings in enhanced functionality, but I can hardly believe there's anything they can do to convince the world they're for real this time. (Though, I never cease to marvel at Lucy's ability to convince Charlie Brown to kick the football one more time.)
So, yes there'll be impact, but I don't see IE7 as the bombshell that was IE classic (or am I just whistling past the CSS yard?).
IE didn't capture massive market share because it was way better than Netscape (although it was better for quite some time), it captured the market share because it was the default browser of Windows. The kind of people who actually download and upgrade browsers are the kind of people who run Firefox for the most part. I don't think IE7 is going to put a major dent in the usage patterns of your typical website, and most of its gains will be from the IE6/5 crowd as they buy new computers that have IE7 preinstalled instead of IE5.
I read the internet for the articles.
Botnets will experience a large growth rate and virus manufacturers will recieve record growth.
Will it have an impact? I can hear the impact of it hitting the fan as we speak... but it's not the impact that I'm worried about as much as the splatter.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Unlike the features of Mozilla Firefox 2.0 (currently in development under the codename Bon Echo), the features of Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 do not include compatibility with obsolete operating systems such as Microsoft Windows 2000.
Only if dropped from a really tall building.
Seriously, IE7 will only have an impact if they can fix the security issues. Otherwise, Firefox, Opera and others will continue to gain share in the market.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
Two browser life? I've been to a site that didn't work in Mozilla once in the past year. No 2 browser life for me, I just didn't buy the product at that one site.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
"what does the Slashdot community think the impact of Internet Explorer 7 will be on the web in general? Will we be forced to live a two-browser life once again?"
I think we never left the 'two-browser life' stage. As a developer, I obviously have both browsers installed and regularly use both to test designs, despite favouring Firefox for personal browsing. I think the competition is healthy, better to have people divided amongst 5 or 6 'core' browsers (IE, Opera, Firefox, Safari, Lynx maybe and Konqueror) is better than having everyone locked into one single program. It does make continuity and consistency an issue for web developers, but I'd still rather it was that way than have everyone using the same badly-written software.
Regarding the topic at hand, I think the release of IE7 won't change too much. Probably everyone running XP now, unaware of the alternate options, will just get the XP "upgrade now!" bubble and download the newer version without really being aware of the differences. From my attempts to educate my spyware-ridden family regarding OSS, it seems that often, computer laymen aren't aware that there are other browsers, and just see IE as the abritrary, sole browser in existence. The biggest thing is educating them to their options then allowing them to freely choose. IE7 won't convert many Firefox users back, it'll just upgrade the IE6 and Vista-buying public who never really know the difference to start with.
One: everyone who buys a PC from a vendor locked into shipping a Microsoft OS, will have this preinstalled.
Two: All the rest of us will have to cope with any mistakes they make, no matter how much Firefox penetration there is.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
As a web developer I'm interested to know if IE7 has broken all the IE6/5 hacks that I worked hard to put into my code. That's my major concern.
Let's face it, 7.0 is a hurried release to get the Internet Explorer brand going again. It doesn't even close the gap between it and last year's browsers, let alone this year's. Yes, it has a couple of interesting features, but nothing that really stands out. Furthermore, everybody still using Windows 2000 won't be able to use it.
However Microsoft have indicated that they aren't going to let Internet Explorer rot for another four years after this release - there's likely to be a 7.5 and 8.0 in quick succession. These versions are likely to have an impact.
They are likely to get the rendering engine into the kind of shape where they can make proper changes to it (think display: table, XHTML and the DOM event model) without massive regressions. If they do implement XHTML, they won't be limited by their requirement to keep bug-for-bug compatibility with earlier quirks because they can implement a new strict mode for application/xhtml+xml. They won't be fooling around with tabs for the interface, they'll be doing something new. Everybody using Windows 2000 will skip Internet Explorer 7.0 and get 7.5 or 8.0 when they upgrade.
Apart from the year 2010 or so, when web developers will be able to use things like 1998's CSS 2 selectors and expect it to work for the majority of their visitors, 7.0 will have virtually no impact compared with the subsequent versions.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
The average consumer market doesn't know what a CSS is, and wouldn't care if they did. All they care about is whether the site looks ok, and if it does, they'll keep using whatever they're using right now. (Be it FF, IE5, lynx.. )
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
Will IE 7 keep Microsofts brain damaged event model?
Will IE 7 implement standard HTML dom methods?
Will IE 7 implement standard HTML dom methods to the spec?
The answer to this is a loud no from the IE team. They have already said that they know their scripting engine is woefully out of date and have no intention of fixing it in this release cycle. Something to look foward to in IE 9 then (since IE 8 will probably be a fix release like 2 was for 1 and 5 was for 4).
There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
IE doesn't run on my systems.
Linux or OS X.
Exactly how do I run a two browser life? And while Linux's desktop marketshare may be limited (this is arguable), it's indisputable that OS X has a small, but economically and socially significant portion of the desktop market.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
I use Firefox because it renders things slightly faster than Safari, and Safari for those weird websites that don't like Firefox for some reason. I haven't used IE for quite some time, even on my Windows machines.
Danke tres mucho, tovarishch.
Microsoft could play both sides of the fence by releasing a buggy browser and then insist that developers upgrade to the newest development tools to compensate for the problems in the browser. Oh, wait a minute... they are already doing that.
Heh.. Asking Slashdot users what they think of IE is like asking the Chinese
government what they think of free speech.
I'm working on the most advanced pornsite ever contemplated, and it's only going to work in browsers other than IE. Firefox 1.5, Opera 9 both work fine, even Konqueror 4 looks to be in the picture, as well as Safari as soon as it gets SVG. But IE? Not a chance.
Too many interactive diagrams both for the cataloging webapp and for the search webapp rely on SVG. If I have to convince people to install an Adobe plugin, I might as well do right by them, and convince them to use a real browser.
You do know that IE doesn't run on linux, right?
Well, not natively. I've managed to install it in CrossOver Office (i.e. WINE), but it's not worth using for more than site testing.
The funniest part is the dialog box you get after installing that says, "Simulating Reboot."
Which seems to be Microsoft's company motto these days...
There is no IE7 for Windows 98, ME, 2000, NT or anything but Windows XP.
There is no IE7 for Linux or UNIX.
And perhaps most significantly, there is no IE7 for Mac. Microsoft has totally abandoned the platform. Apple having the balls the ship their OS with a non-MS browser, at the risk of damaging their sacred user experience, is responsible for the impossibility of another Microsoft lock on the web in the medium-term. (Though Apple owes a debt of gratitude to the groundbreaking Mozilla evangelism work which began the conversion of the web away from IE-only).
Every Mac that moves off the shelves of your local, brightly colored Apple store is not just a blow to Windows, but it's a win for the accessible web, the open, standardized office suite file format, etc.
In fact, I encourage nerds of all colors to switch, even _away from_ Linux. Massing around Apple is, in my opinion, the best way to continue to chip away at Microsoft's broad monopoly over the next few years. Linux can't do it on its own... KDE, GNOME, and 3rd party apps are still (perpetually, seemingly) not ready yet for the masses. OS X is.
Switch! And more importantly, keep OS X in mind during your UNIX development. (Props to the Firefox team; anti-props to the OpenOffice team).
Microsoft's refusal to come closer to a reasonable attempt at compliance with the latest accepted CSS standard will always create issues. What's astonishing to me is that they don't seem to realize that if they did, they could walk all over FF in the average consumer market (more than they are already, that is...).
Oh, you're so, so wrong. I used to work for a major provider of online training courses. We made everything from accountancy to basic literacy courses, all delivered online through a web based interface. With such a huge varity of courses, I think it's safe to say that the users of our stuff made up a decent cross section of the "average consumer market".
Now, our main web page was not, in any way, standards compliant, and rendered like an absolute dog in firefox. (I left 18 months ago, since when the site has been redesigned, but I just checked it still renders wrong in FF) All of our stuff was only tested, and only ran, in IE. And do you know how often someone complained to us that they couldn't access their course using firefox? Never. Not once. You know why? none of them used it. Firefox is used by only the more advanced and tech savy web surfers, and maybe a few Average Joes who have a techy friend that installed it for them. (My dad and my brother fall into the second group)
So whats the moral of that story? Am I saying standards compliance is irrelevant? Not exactly. What I'm saying, and this will be a vastly unpopular notion on Slashdot, is that IE IS the standard. It's what 80+ / 90+ (depending who you ask) of web surfers use. Our site looked awful in FF. No one cared. Of our clientel, most had never even heard of FF. If we had rebuilt it from the ground up, made it fully standards complient, and IE had been unable to render it, we would have been swamped with tech support calls telling us our site was broken.
IE7 will be the defacto standard in 2 or 3 years time, and we had all best learn to live with it.
"I realise this is not a very popular opinion but it's the truth, and there for needs to be said" -Bill Hicks
IE7 will only be installable on Vista and XP+SP2. IE7 will also not be integrated into the underlying OS, so Joe Sixpack running XP likely won't just automagically get it as part of his bi-millenial visit to Windows Update.
It appears that MS doesn't know how to sell Vista, and will probably have to rely on OEMs to just "make it available". The $500M marketing campaign might directly generate some retail sales, but I think it's likely that big business is starting to catch on to the FUD.
IE7 is capable in 2006 of what most other modern browsers were capable of in 2002 (or earlier). Granted, that only means something to developers, but there are high profile ways that IE is behind the curve (tabs, anyone?).
The fate of IE7 is directly tied to Vista, which more than likely will have a very slow uptake (slower than the 2k to XP conversion), and be based almost completely on new PC sales. I doubt is IE7 will have much more than 25% usage share 3 years after Vista is released sometime (not January... maybe June/July, in time for the back-to-school PC sales rush) next year.
Unfortunately, this means that the decline of IE6 will be just as slow. Most developers I know now hate IE6 more than they ever hated Netscape 4. Firefox 2 is coming, Opera 9 is due soon, and Apple will likely update Safari, all before Vista is released. IE7 may get an independant release schedule, but I doubt it.
I believe there used to be a version of IE for Unix when I was at university
A version of IE 5 was available for HP-UX and Solaris. (Not SCO Unix, not AIX, and certainly not Linux or BSD!) I don't know whether it was closer to the Windows or Mac version, but if I were to guess, I'd say Windows.
It was discontinued in 2002.
And perhaps most significantly, there is no IE7 for Mac. Microsoft has totally abandoned the platform. Apple having the balls the ship their OS with a non-MS browser, at the risk of damaging their sacred user experience, is responsible for the impossibility of another Microsoft lock on the web in the medium-term.
... First of all, why do you suggest we "chip away at Microsoft's broad monopoly" only to set up a monopoly around Apple? Apple tries to restrict the user as much as Microsoft; I will point again to their music format. Don't kid yourself; Steve Jobs would love to be in Microsoft's position every bit as much as Bill Gates does. The difference would be that instead of only controlling the software, Apple would also control the hardware, since they build a lot more than just the OS.
Um, sorry, but this is not because Apple has "the balls" to do this; they had no choice. Microsoft stopped IE for Mac, not the other way around, so Apple can't do anything other than push their own browser.
Every Mac that moves off the shelves of your local, brightly colored Apple store is not just a blow to Windows, but it's a win for the accessible web, the open, standardized office suite file format, etc.
Really? Take a look at the office suit that Apple is promoting. Is it open or standardized? Yeah right. It's the same, closed Microsoft Office as Windows users are using (yeah I know there are differences between the Windows and Mac versions, but the point is that neither contribute to "accessibility" or "openness"). Look at the accessibility and openness Apple is pushing with their DRMed music format for iPods and so forth. Every Mac that moves off the shelf is a blow to Microsoft, but it's still a blow to openness (or at least irrelevant if it's a former MS customer).
In fact, I encourage nerds of all colors to switch, even _away from_ Linux. Massing around Apple is, in my opinion, the best way to continue to chip away at Microsoft's broad monopoly over the next few years. Linux can't do it on its own... KDE, GNOME, and 3rd party apps are still (perpetually, seemingly) not ready yet for the masses. OS X is.
Riiiight
You are completely ignoring why nerds like Linux and BSD. They can have complete control of their systems. They can tinker with it all they like without trouble a Mac user would have trying to do the same thing (the Mac user lacks a lot of the source code to a lot of his software (I know about Darwin, but there's a lot more to MacOS than Darwin)). You can say, "Don't tinker with it! It's perfect the way it is." But the reason nerds tinker with computers is that they aren't perfect, they never will be, and nerds enjoy opening the hood and seeing what's inside.
At the same time, you are also ignoring why Linux distros are "not ready yet for the masses." I have helped friends install Linux on their machines. What are the most common problems? They need still want to play Windows games, or need to run some Windows program. A Mac will have exactly the same problem. They want to use proprietary codecs for playing videos and such. Thanks to EasyUbuntu and similar scripts, this is largely solved now, but no free OS will ever be able to ship with these codecs. Apple solves this problem -- by charging you money!
And then there are hardware support issues, especially wireless drivers. Linux has a tough time with this because wifi card manufacturers rarely make Linux drivers. But they also almost never write MacOS drivers. So how does Apple solve this problem? They don't! They just decide what hardware you can and can't run, make drivers for their small amount of hardware, and tada! you have no more hardware support problems, because you can't even *try* to support generic hardware. What's the problem here? You pay a huge amount for Apple's hand-picked hardware. If Apple simply sold OS X and you tried to use it on generic hardware, you'd have exactly the same problems (in fact, they'd probably have worse problems,
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof of this theorem that this sig is too small to contain.