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IE7 to be Pushed to Users Via Windows Update
dfrick writes "CNET is reporting that IE7 will be pushed to users via Windows Update. This has serious implications for e-commerce websites whose functionality might be affected by any bugs in the software. Also to have end users suddenly using a new browser right before the holiday shopping season could magnify the cost any bugs that might create a bad user experience on sites."
I have installed IE7 on my machine at work, since i figured that most sites work best when veiwed with IE, and many of my work-related sites will only work with IE (and i'm trying to quit smoking....). I despise IE7 (beta). Many neccesarry active-x plug-ins aren't trusted so i have to refresh sites after clicking the stupid "Information bar" that was introduced in IE6 to allow it to run!!! .....
to summarize, i'm not denying that the UPDATE to firefox was pushed to me, but it was welcomed. I can't imagine how many MySpace yuppies will get pissed at the disfunctionality of IE7...
I agree. It's not strict force feeding, it's devious one. Any browser upgrade process window that doesn't also warn you with big red letters: "Warning, this upgrade might break your favourite website including online banking, shopping, and especially pr0n" is misleading. IE7, the "browser sooo good that microsoft has to push it to his audience".
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
The part I couldn't stand was that there is no way to get the menu on the top. I stopped using Opera for the same reason. I like having my menu bar above my address bar!
First, I'd like to thank Microsoft for forcing this update. I'm not being sarcastic in the least. They acknowledge that IE6 is full of security holes and the best thing for the end-user is IE7. IE7 beta runs better than IE6 (at least for me).
The three biggest generalized statements I've read so far involve functionality, it's an abuse of a monopoly, and get firefox.
[Functionality]
IE7 runs better than IE6. The only sites that would be affected would be those sites that resort to explicitly stating that they only run in IE6 and those sites can fix that problem very, very easily. This leads directly into firefox.
["Get Firefox"]
How many sites have you used that don't work in firefox? Let's call those number of sites, X. It's a pretty logical assumption that internet explorer's replacement would have a higher probability of working with IE6 sites than firefox. It would be logical to say that ie's X value is less than firefox's X.
[Abuse of a monopoly]
Come on! Why is it that when Microsoft tries to fix a problem with an upgrade that they the monopoly arguement comes along? Someone else brought up the example of how tightly integrated Safari is in OSX. But if Microsoft wants to reduce the number of unsecured machines; it's a monopolistic move. Sometimes it seems that if MS ever released a free "Office lite" to compete with a product like iLife that we would have people screaming bloody murder. Wordpad is not acceptable. And for those saying that they went through a lot of trouble of uninstalling IE6 and being forced to upgrade to IE7. IE6 was uninstalled, how would it upgrade an uninstalled component? And then install itself, activate itself, and make it the default? All without any input.
The only thing I see wrong with this is the burden it would put on dial-up users. But this is microsoft so I would expect them to at least offer to purchase a cd containing the update. Or having the CD option with SP3 and making it mandatory then.
"Tread softly because you tread on my dreams"
Obviously they fear that people wouldn't want to download it themselves.
The W3Schools stats suggest otherwise:
July IE 7 1.9% Opera 1.4% Browser Statistics
The only movement I see is from IE6 to IE7. The "alternative" browsers stand pretty much where they did last November.
Despite Macs gaining in popularity, I would still say that MS has a monopoly. Their monopoly is in the PC operating system market. OSX cannot run on a PC (without hacks, that is).
Regarding your Safari comment, are you referring to Apple not releasing Safari 2.x as a separate download for pre-10.4 folks? I'm certain the reason for that has nothing to do with it being "[bolted] into OSX so bad that in order to update Safari you need to update your entire OS." They simply decided to have version 2 of Safari, with all its new features, be one of the selling features of Tiger. Yes, it probably makes use of new APIs and features only available in Tiger, but how is that any different than Firefox for Linux stating that you need gtk+2.0 or higher? That doesn't mean it's "bolted" to Gnome 2.x. (Yes, I realize it's not a perfect example but hopefully you can see my point)
And the people "screaming antitrust" over IE7 are doing so out of belief that IE7 is going to be forced onto people rather than being an option.
Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
I think it goes like this:
MS makes an OS for a generic range of x86 PCs. Many different operating systems can run on these PCs, though the courts found that MS had a monopoly on the PC OS market. That in itself is not a bad thing. However, MS tried to use the monopoly it had in the OS market to force a competitor out of the browser market. That is where MS went wrong: trying to use the monopoly they had in one sphere to influence choice in another (manufacturers weren't preinstalling Netscape on PCs). MS tried to argue that the browser was an integral part of the OS and couldn't be removed, but the courts said that was bullshit. If MS made all the PCs they wouldn't have had this problem.
Apple makes the Mac. They make the hardware, for which they also create the OS. It's not a monopoly because it's their box from beginning to end. Anyone can make Mac software that can be installed later, but the hardware manufacturer (Apple) is under no obligation to preinstall anything. Mind you if Apple started breaking competitor's software, it would be an interesting legal battle.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
This is standard MS practice of mixing in the poison with the medicine. You weren't "required" to install SP2 either, but was pretty much impossible to avoid.
Now I appreciate security improvements more than most, even in MS software. However, no one ever remembers the things that SP2 broke. Trust me--in order to use any software six months from now, IE7 will be required, so this whole "it's an option" thing is specious in the extreme.
That said, if it can usher in a new world of working CSS and consistent Javascript, I'm all for it. Maybe Firefox 2.0 and IE 7.5 will both pass Acid2 and work alike with scripting. I have no love for MS but I won't deny the world the benefit of a working web. Now we just need consistent alpha handling in PNGs and SVG...
I think Mauve has the most RAM. --PHB (Dilbert Comic)
So? I could quite happily surf the web in 1996 with 40 megs of RAM and a 100 MHz pentium. And believe it or not, the web hasn't changed too much since then. Just because Firefox isn't consuming all of your memory doesn't mean it's not using a lot more than it should be.
Maybe not
If you set Automatic Update to download automatically, then yes, it'll download everything... automatically. And it asks you whether you want to do this when you install Windows. So you have no excuse at all be downloading automatic updates if you don't want to.
And, surprisingly, there is a choice of automatic download and install, automatic download and manual install, manual download and install and, you guessed it, no automatic updates.
What the blocker does is block IE7 even if you have automatic on, and the Install/Don't Install/Ask Me Later option further clarifies after you've downloaded it and the installation runs if you don't want it.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
When you design a page that works OK in Firefox/Opera/Konqueror/Safari etc etc and then insert the MSIE CSS hacks via "[if lt IE 7]" conditional comments, you would expect the site to work OK in MSIE 7.
However, it does not work out that way. Apparently Microsoft still have some way to go to become standards compliant.
Try my employer's website http://www.uw.nl/ in some different browsers (including MSIE 7) and you'll see the differences (in the CSS-based menu system).
From the Linux world, we all know that automatic/semi-automatic updates are a good thing and make life easier. MS are catching on with their automatic updates. But you're right, using the OS updater to automatically update IE is monopolistic. The solution is obvious - MS should also offer auto updates for Firefox and Opera, for anyone using those. Shall I phone the EU and suggest it?
Again we see a kid working for spare cash, and businesses relying on him for their (no doubt) 'mission critical' web infrastructure instead of going to a proper business that supports the work they do. Such a business would cost more, but now is the time that you find out why that is.
If it takes 60 hours, then it takes 60 hours. This is what happens when you take on responsibility for something. If you agree to do it and got paid to do it, then you can't complain. Nobody forced you after all. Your inexperience with business shows that you didn't require them to pay for 'support' either on an as-needed basis, or with a regular payment to.
You get what you pay for. If the poster doesn't know how to manage his clients expectations properly, then he deserves to find out the hard way that working for someone requires more effort than just knocking up some website practically for fun.
Suggestion: contact clients, tell them IE7 is coming out and will be automatically updated. Suggest that some changes will be required to their websites to support the new browser and that these changes will be charged at £xx a hour, with estimated times for the sites. All the clients will be thankful you informed them before the changes occurred, all will pay for the changes. All will assume that upgrades are necessary because that's the way of the computer industry - we all upgrade to the latest version all the time, its ingrained as normal.
You then start work on upgrading the sites to support IE7 today, keep the changes stored away so that, in a few months time when the browser does come out, upgrading your client's sites is a simple matter of uploading the changes the day before. No stress, no weeny complaints about how 'fucking microsoft' ruined your life, no problems. This is how professionals do it. Learn.
Would it not be possible to simply embed Gecko in an ActiveX control, and have an IE conditional at the top of your page that loaded the ActiveX control and then viewed the page with that? Since IE caches ActiveX controls, there will only be a downloading delay the first time it's used...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Internet Explorer 7 hasn't got any support for XHTML whatsoever. You are still stuck having to pretend that your XHTML is actually HTML for Internet Explorer to do anything with it.
The CSS improvements are marginal. They've fixed a lot of bugs, but the new functionality is very sparse, it's just selectors I think. The rest of CSS 2 remains unimplemented.
That isn't why it won't pass the Acid2 test. It won't pass the Acid2 test because that is far too much work for a single major revision. It would require implementing a lot of the CSS that is currently unsupported.
In the next year!? I wish!
Most sites can only start using them once there aren't many Internet Explorer < 7 users left. Bear in mind that work I'm doing today needs Internet Explorer 5.5 compatibility because lots of people still use it, and that a lot of people aren't going to even have the opportunity to upgrade to version 7 because it doesn't run on Windows 2000 or earlier.
I fully expect there to be enough Internet Explorer 6 users hanging around to make life difficult in the year 2010.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Why on earth should they switch it off as a default? The ability to go back and forth in your history without rerendering the entire page again is a great feature.
I've never understood why people with 1-2GB of RAM freak out when applications actually use some of that available memory. What good is a ton of memory if it's not being used? Firefox is a memory pig, yes, but it's giving it back to Windows should other programs actually need it.
The same can be said about the aggresive memory trimming. Why are people willing to put up with a frozen UI whenever Firefox trims its memory is beyond me.
I have plenty of free memory and don't really care either way, so I value usability higher than low memory use. People should probably get their learn on about Windows memory usage before posting any more wrong statements about Firefox.
That's not to say that Firefox (and some of the more well-known) extensions don't leak memory like a proverbial sieve. I'm just saying that the above instances aren't memory leaks and anyone claiming that they are should be modded down.
As do I - so I'll provide some more.
I'm at work and currently have 12 FF tabs loaded across two windows (one for work, one for...well, slashdot). With that number of tabs open Firefox is currently using 136 MB of ram (started it within the past few hours). After reading some of the delightful comments on this story, I decided to load the exact same pages in IE 7 beta 2 (haven't gotten around to installing beta 3 yet). After loading all of the exact same pages into IE7 it was using (boggle) 60 MB of ram...and strangely enough, 1 minute later, it was down to 40 MB. Please keep in mind that this isn't even the latest build.
All that being said, I'm still sticking with Firefox for now, but that may change depending on how IE7 final looks.
I don't know about the final release, but many many many people went back and forth ie7 and ie6 during the beta, myself included. It has a cute little uninstaller that brings your configuration straight back like it used to be, so you don't even have to repatch or anything like that. Works like a charm. Don't know why they wouldn't have that functionality in release, so yes, there should be an easy way.
Not really. In this case, its Microsoft fixing a mistake (the mistake being IE6).
IE6 is holding the internet back. This -has- to be done. The faster the pool of IE user upgrade their browser, the faster we can push our web sites forward. IE7 isn't enough, mind you, but it is a start.
When i saw this headline, I was like "WOOHOO!", because I can expect my customers (which all use Windows XP or Linux), to -all- have IE7 or Firefox. So, I can ditch IE6 support in a matter of weeks. Thats a blessing.
ActiveX allows arbitrary code from an arbitrary web page to run on your machine with full administrative priviliges, and the only defence against it is the computer-savviness of the user.
.305 Magnum that automatically points at your foot, or a cruise missile that automatically targets friendly units. Sure, it requires user-intervention to cause a disaster, and if something happens it's technically the user's fault, but it's clearly also the bloody stupid design of the system that contributed to the disaster.
Uh-oh.
Now, you can argue that technology shouldn't be castigated because of user-error, but that's like saying there's nothing wrong with a
And in case you've missed it, it's no longer considered professional as any kind of IT engineer to go "Oh, ID10T error" and wash your hands of the problem. Users will ever be clueless, but well-designed technology has a learning curve that allows for this.
ActiveX offers a simple Yes/No dialogue choice, and to fully comprehend the implications of each that answer could take the average user weeks of study.
Microsoft (as ever) badly dropped the ball on security, and rather than fix the problem they just slapped a dialog box in front of it and claimed any disasters caused were now officially the fault of the user.
Indeed. However, when you've got an interesting idea with some nice applications than also just happens to cause the apocalypse, don't be surprised if the people huddling in craters across the broken, sulphur-spewing landscape happen to, y'know, not fixate on the few things it did pretty well.
Erm, not really. The first thing any sensible user wants any technology like that to do is to not open his machine to infection from every scumbag on the net... and make the browser do something more than render (D)HTML. See, the thing is, that first part is so freaking obvious that most people forget it's even a consideration.
An analogy:
People want tasty cakes, but they also don't want to be poisoned.
Microsoft produces a range of tasty cakes, some of which (at random) are chock-full of arsenic.
When people complain, they "solve" the problem by printing in big letters on the front: "WARNING: cake may conceivably not be perfectly free of element number 33".
Sensible people who can afford to thus avoid the cakes altogether, but people who can't read and people who don't know element number 33 is arsenic all risk ending up dead with every bite. As do people who work in Microsoft-only offices, who save with Microsoft-cake-mandating banks and a whole range of other people.
So whenever bakers gather to talk about Microsoft Cakes, unaccountably they ignore its fluffy texture and pleasing aroma, and bizarrely fixate on the fact that it regularly kills anyone uneducated enough to ingest it.
See the point now?
Because Java applets run in a sandbox, plugins weren't generally produced by anyone but large, trustworthy companies, and have massively dropped out of favour (because of lack of security) even so, and FF extensions and Opera widgets are both (i) somewhat insulated from the operating system, and (ii) selected, once, by the user due to their utility, and not pushed at the user by any weirdo third-party
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
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First of all, the update is OPTIONAL. The only thing that is "pushed" to the client via Windows Update is an installer shim. When it runs it prompts the user and asks them if they would like to install an update for IE. They can say Yes, No, or Ask Me Later.
Second, guess what I was greeted with this morning when I came in to work? It was a Firefox dialog saying that I was already updated to the new version and would I like to restart firefox so the changes could take effect. How is this really any different? Does anybody have knowledge that version 2.0 of Firefox won't be pushed this way, just like version 1.5.0.5 was today?
Could IE7 have bugs? It almost certainly does... but the fact of the matter is that it has some very important security related design changes and fixes that will make Windows users safer. If large e-commerce sites are worried about how their pages will display in IE7, why don't they download a copy of the freely available beta and test it?
Microsoft's decision to push IE7 out via Windows Update is a good one not just because of the security reasons, but because it will move a huge percentage of the people on the web to a browser with far better standards support. The lag time between standards adoption will be dramatically reduced. Let's face it, a big reason that many sites aren't standards compliant today is because of IE. If Microsoft simply offered it as a download on their web site it would take years for adoption to reach high enough levels to stop coding for IE6.