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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."
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"
Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
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.
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.
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