Slashdot Mirror
Quiz Microsoft's IE Team Leader
About as timely an interview as you can get: Microsoft released Internet Explorer 7 last week, and today we're gathering questions for IE team general manager Dean Hachamovitch. As usual, please follow Slashdot interview rules when posting or moderating questions. We'll publish Dean's answers verbatim as soon as he replies.
Do you prefer Internet Explorer or Firefox?
liqbase
Would you like to make available IE on other operating systems?
Think of the Children; Sleep with your Sister
Why did you go half way implementing CSS instead of fully supporting standards all other browsers have for some time now.
As someone who has developed for multiple browsers, it really seems like there is a secret ploy at Microsoft to keep IE relatively incompatible with other browsers.
Is this purposeful? If not, what is the reason?
More
1) What is your most used browser you noticed [both you and your team] and why?
-and-
2) Why is there still a huge lacking of CSS on internet explorer? is there any plans on fixing this problem?
visitor from www.slashdot.jp
Is it your goal to render a standards compliant website correctly in all cases, or are you just aiming to implement those parts of the spec that are used by the majority of your customers? Naturally, I can understand prioritizing the things that are hitting your customers above those that are rarely used in the real world, but part of the reason the some of them aren't used in the real world is down to lack of browser support. I find it incredibly frustrating that some of my site layouts have to be butchered just to get them to work in the commonly used browsers. If IE fails to render a compliant page according to the spec, can you commit to actively tracking it as a bug with a view to fixing it in a future release of IE, even if it only affects a handful of people?
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Why are you so gay? And why do you allow IE to destroy the fucking internet?
It has been widly know that IE, Firefox, and others all behave differently when it comes to CSS compliance/compatibility. Since new incompatabilities are found every day, how will microsoft respond to these incompatibilities? Will it be possible to get updates weekly to address these issues for us developers that like to play by the rules of CSS and HTML and prefer strict mode vs quirky?
Would you like to see a universal architecture so that all rendering engines* worked in all web browsers, and all plugins** worked with all rendering engines? *Gecko, mshtml etc **Free and non-free - flash, mplayer and the like
Think of the Children; Sleep with your Sister
90% of the questions posted by slashdot will fall into one of two categories (or maybe both): 1) Why is Microsoft the Evil Empire and what are you doing to stop this (like using Firefox) and 2) What the fuck is up with your CSS support, dude?
"It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -Peak Performance
The new version of IE makes it much harder to work with certain critical aspects of the browser. While I like some aspects of the new browser, some of the interface changes make it much more difficult to work with, and this will keep me firmly in the Firefox camp for now. For example, bookmarks now require many more clicks to access, especially if you use links nested in folders. Also, most interface elements can not be moved around as was previously possible (and is currently possible in Firefox.) The menu bar itself is hidden, and when exposed, appears in the middle of the browser controls! Why go to so much trouble to make essential elements of the program difficult for users to access?
How important is it to Microsoft to ensure that IE passes acknowledged tests of compliane (i.e. Acid2) at the cost of sacrificing newer and possibly more exciting/efficient proprietary technologies?
I left my wallet in El Sigundo!
What are the best features of IE7 that sets it above the competition, what features are perhaps lacking and are you currently working on adding these?
Well, I can't think of a real Slashdot-headed question to ask, so I'll go for the entertaining rather than socially relevant:
Presumably, throughout this development process for IE7, your team has had their nose to the grind-wheel, so to speak. What sort of things did you do to chill out and relax? Were there any in-office perks, like pool tables or whatnot? And were you actually all in the same office, or did some members of the team have to telecommute from far-off lands, like Oregon?
If you adopt FireFox 2.0 as IE8, your boss would be impressed with how much you improved the product in a very short time. My question is: would you take the extra time to remove CSS features from IE8? Thank you and God Bless.
Why did IE7 take such a long time to release after IE6?
One of the stated purposes of IE7 was to better support the W3C standards, and (presumably) to increase compatibility among W3C-compliant browsers. Yet despite multiple requests for DOM 2 Events support, the IE team decided to overlook this support. Currently, IE is the only major browser lacking DOM Events support. Which is a major issue, as IE's attachEvent() design means that special code must be written for IE compatibility.
As someone who's been forced into using runtime patches (example) to increase IE's compatibility with DHTML code, I feel compelled to ask: Why has the IE team ignored this critical standard?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Doing some WebSite development I found that with IE 6 (I havent been able to test IE 7 Yet) I always had to wander away from the standards and the only reason I have gotten is that MS just doesn't like them. Is IE 7 going to make sure that they follow the stands much more closely so when I make HTML and I test it in IE, Firefox, Safari and Opera they all look the same, I normally get the Last 3 to work without much fighting but IE always decided to do it differently. Giving us New Windows Only features is not useful for the developers, but following the standards is. As well our custerms weither they know it or not like it better when we follow the standards (Less junk and warning messages, Or misaligned stuff).
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
IE has a dominating command of the market, although Firefox is slowly making inroads, due to innovations such as tabbed browsing that IE has had to incorporate to maintain that command. But where are the IE innovations? Why can't the IE team get ahead of the curve on Firefox? Is there anything you consider an innovation that is unique to IE that would plausibly be something the browser market would have to incorporate to stay competitive?
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
There is a workaround that involves editing the registry to get the menu bar in the correct place but why is this not implemented as part of toolbar customisation?
Insist on making IE7 not being standards compliant?
"Why did you go half way implementing CSS instead of fully supporting standards all other browsers have for some time now."
I believe that NO browser fully supports CSS. Am I wrong in this assumption? Even if you're asking them to support the standards to the same level as all other browsers the implementation would still be incomplete.
There's a built-in derogatory slant to your question. I believe that IE supports more than 50% of CSS standards, which would mean they went further than half-way. Your choice of words is subtly antagonistic.
It's not a "Have you quit beating your wife" question, but neither is it a suitable one for a serious discussion.
What do you make of all this pro-Firefox, anti-IE digital jihadism?
Why haven't you guys hacked IE7 to run on Win2k minus the WinXP SP2-dependant security features?
It's not like it'd be any less secure than IE6 on Win2k.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Have you got anything without spam?
As I recall, Microsoft licensed SpyGlass browser code as the basis for Internet Explorer. Is there any of it left, or have you finally rewritten all the IE code?
How come I cannot open a new tab with the address of my current page in the new tab? Why are my only two choices "My homepage" and "blank page"??
I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them. Isaac Asimov (1920 - 1992)
The base of Open Source software is constantly rising.
A software company can either decide to add value to that base of software,
or fight the tide and compete directly with it.
Will Microsoft, at some point decide to open source a few things, like IE, that have been equalled or surpased by open source?
Or will Microsoft instead try to "compete" with such software via other means: legislative, marketing, proprietary lock in?
"Why are you so gay? And why do you allow IE to destroy the fucking internet?"
This is an important question. We don't want people to view the average slashdotter as able to participate in a calm, reasonable discussion. We need to be viewed as zealots, collectively frothing at the mouth.
I'd even like to see this question include just for humour.
...when will you come to SVG?
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
What do you consider the greatest weakness of Firefox?
A simple question: What are you planning to implement for the next IE version, be it IE 8 or IE 7.5 or whatever?
A question for Dean Hachamovitch: What feetures did the Firefox developers borrow from IE7.
davecb5620@gmail.com
What do you make of all this anti Open Source pro-Microsoft digital jihadism?
was Re:Microsoft jisallim aklak
davecb5620@gmail.com
I realize, of course, that any answer you give to this question may not be valid a couple years down the road, but as of now:
Does the release of IE7 mark the beginning of a more aggressive development/release cycle for Internet Explorer? That is, we are all aware of various aspects of CSS, for example, that are not currently supported in IE (though kudos on all the progress in this direction you've made): can we expect updates to IE, either as service packs, point releases, or new versions, that will provide better standards support in the relatively near future? Or will we be limited to security fixes for the foreseeable future, as with IE6?
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
Did any new Windows Vista technologies influence the development of IE7?
Besides matching some of the features in Firefox (ie. tabbed browsing), what are some others to look forward to in IE7 that an avid Firefox user such as myself would find useful?
Do you expect to raise the bar with innovative ideas for browsers?
Is "Hachamovitch" your real name, or a nickname for how IE is put together?
Have you read my journal today?
Do you or does anyone else on the IE team run multiple versions of IE on the same machine for testing purposes? Do you use the DLL hack that's been published here or some other method?
If you had more time, is there a new feature you would have liked to include in IE7?
One of IE7's revolutionary features was supposed to be security, although it took less than 24 hours for Secunia to post an advisory about a security hole. Moreover, the bug seemed to be carried over from as early as IE5.5. What approach did you take to improve browser's security, and how come the vulnerabilities have been carried over?
There are two kinds of people - those who are radioactive and those who have already decayed..
Can I see your implementation of a bubble sort?
Do you want to continue running scripts on this page?
What are the main reasons to change the current (and probably really familiar) look, that to my opinion offers a better acces to some of the advanced option that we use in computerlab excercises?
1) Why did you make the IE protected mode only for Vista? Is it for technical reasons, or marketing reasons?
2) Will IE ever have a way to permanantly set the window size on open from within IE? I've always been irritated by IE (and Windows) only occasionally remembering what size I want it when not maximized, and more frequently deciding to store the smallest size possible.
3) How do you feel about the new interface. I mean, obviously you like it, or it wouldn't be there, but what is your opinion? Personally, after a few days, the lack of top menus and the new placement of buttons seems really logical. IE is really simplified. I really appreciate the close buttons ON the tabs. That has always annoyed me about Firefox's tabbing support.
4) Have you considered implementing a "certified" toolbar system? Or even drop toolbars altogether?
5) You folks aren't going to name the next version of IE something stupid, like vista or anything, right.
"A better question: Are you aware that no matter what answers you give here, they will never satisfy the anti-Microsoft Slashdot crowd?"
Why do you assume that pro Open Source equates with anti-Microsoft
was Re:CSS
davecb5620@gmail.com
Are you viewing Slashdot on IE7? If so, why is the site suddenly broken?
Let's pretend for a moment that Internet Explorer isn't the default web-browser built into Windows and instead, users are presented with a choice on first login (e.g. a message asking 'How would you like to browse the internet? MSIE, Firefox, Opera').
Would you expect IE to become as dominant as it is now if users had to specifically choose it over another?
Ignoring the slight impracticalities, if so (I'm guessing you do), on what basis would this be?
throw new NoSignatureException();
Why is Windows 2000 not supported? I paid more for Windows 2000 then XP costs, and 2000 is barely 18 montsh older then XP. Can you imagine I and many others feel cheated?
How does microsoft choose which bits of the CSS and DOM standard to implement?
While upgrading to IE7, I noticed that IE6 had to be removed before Windows could install IE7. Does this mean that Internet Explorer is not so tightly bundled into Microsoft/OS that it can not be removed in the name of competition? Also, is the complete IE7 API available for license and fee-free?
Knowing the IE is pushed onto ever so many desktops, are decisions ever made based on what most people already do? Easing an erstwhile difficulty is a major thrust of Windows the OS, and i'm sure some of that exists in IE. But Windows looks forward, and it just keeps backwards compatibility in mind. Is IE the same, or is contemporary usage the main point, with innovations taking second seat?
Have you read my journal today?
Was any thought given about not being able to move/reposition/undock the forward/backward/address bar/refresh/close buttons? All the while burying the history function in the dropdown history menu, as opposed to having a stand-alone history button?
I say this about the forward and backward buttons being unmovable because there are a lot of us with big monitors and if I can't move those buttons it makes it hard to use them. That's a lot of real-estate to cover every time (upper left on a 21 inch monitor) Also with a bigger monitor it would be great to be able to undock any toolbar and have it hover always on top.
I've always moved the address bar to the lowest possible toolbar position on the left and the standard toolbar to the right of the address bar.
God: When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.
Would you like to install SearchBar Helper? Select Yes to Close this Window.
Will IE ever support event capturing?
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
We've been told in the past that the reason that IE was so deeply embedded (to the point that it could not be removed, as we were told) in to the operating system was to improve the online experience of a Windows PC. With Web 2.0 firmly in place, the desire for a web browser integrated in to the operating system is, some would say, greater than ever.
Where do you stand on this issue? How central to the XP and Vista experience will IE7 become?
Who decides what features make it in? I'm sure the team comes with a mandate, but a whole slew of "little things" are integral to a browser. Does a meeting define those, or do people code what they think is useful, and have it decided later if it should make it in or not?
Have you read my journal today?
What about the client-side session and persistent storage (like in Firefox 2) ? See http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/ #scs-client-side
Why didn't you guys change the logic of handling ActiveX control for years until the WIndows XP SP2? Do you think you are responsible of the wide spread of spywares in the last several years?
Why do they (the Windowsers) need IE? I mean, there are fine browsers out there already.
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
Why waste space with this question? You know what the answer will be.
(no body)
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
First, thank you for the efforts the team has already put in. I'm pretty sure that the two features that will provide the biggest benefit to developers, and by extension the users, namely better CSS (hopefully some CSS3) support and moving to the W3 standard event model, will be addressed in the next version of IE. My two part question: Do you have any ETA on the next version, and is there any possibility of adding pieces to IE7 via Windows Update? I recognize changing the event model is not really an option here, but adding support for say border-radius or opacity css support seems like it would be a fairly innocuous change.
You have implemented a new GUI and new security features; these have been examined, praised, and lambasted on just about every tech site out there, so those of us "in the know" are aware of all of the changes and their implications. You also have resources like the quick reference sheet available to help new users of IE7. These are all well and good, but they'll be of no use to anyone who does not know about them or how to use them.
What I want to know is this: how will you spread word of the new changes and features to neighbor Joe or Grandma Smith -- will you rely on word-of-mouth from the technocracy, or do you trust that your features are transparent enough that they will easily understand the difference between, say, types of SSL certificates provided by sites?
http://www.tenjou.net/
What type of project management processes and structures did you impliment in order to keep the vast number of people and resources invovled with this project in line? How do you feel about those processes now that it's done, and what would you have done differently?
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
of sorts its called Persistant Storage
http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/persist
but any kind of persistant storage (flash local object, unexpiring cookies) will be abused by advertising and tracking companies, just like cookies where a good idea to begin with , now they are even detected by antirus and spyware apps i bet the original designers never imagined that when they designed them and just like modern day cookies it will be detected as unwanted and removed by apps
until they solve the abuse factor its not something people will want in a hurry
IE7, like IE6, renders a lot of pages significantly differently than the other main HTML rendering engines available (Geko, KHTML, and Opera). At the same time, IE7 requires WGA to run - so that applications like Wine are unable to run it. This means that web developers who are using Linux and Mac OS X will have an extremely difficult time testing their sites with IE7. Was this intentional? If so what was the reason behind it (do you want to force developers to move to Windows for web development, or simply set IE aside as something different that isn't a regular browser and must be specifically developed for), and if not how do you plan to rectify the situation?
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
What was wrong with IE6?
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
There is a painful lack of support for not only the DOM 2 Events, but also for several other significant parts of the DOM specification.
s ByTagName('param') returns EVERY IN THE ENTIRE DOCUMENT, not just ones under the requested object. Yikes!
Some issues I've personally encountered, several of which I hit on a regular basis:
* Namespaces are completely absent from IE's DOM implementation (createElementNS, getAttributeNS, etc. functions simply do not exist).
* Prototyping of DOM elements is impossible without using proprietary HTC behaviours.
* Tables that are created dynamically will not appear unless elements are added to -- in other words, using DOM to write content does not display anything, even though is optional.
* importNode? Nope. Doesn't exist.
* getElementsByTagName('object').item(0).getElement
And one other thing the lovely DOM Level 0...
* navigator.plugins exists but is always empty. What's up with that? Either don't have the attribute at all or populate it properly, for fuck's sake.
The worst thing is that as far as I can tell, there has been NO improvement in the JavaScript engine between IE6 and IE7 (except that the Microsoft Script Debugger doesn't work anymore. Thanks, guys! Not everyone has or wants to buy and install Microsoft Office just to debug in your broken browser.)
[insert witty comment here]
Firefox... obviously...
Oh god, that woman is John Romero!
Why does IE7 no longer work with the runas command? What was the thinking behind "breaking" the runas feature?
/user:domain\username cmd" to launch a command prompt and then run c:\program files\internet explorer\iexplore and then browse to \\servername\sharename as my admin user. Very handy when I need to move a file from one user's area to another's.
Some background for people who aren't familiar with runas:
Sometimes I need to browse the network as an administrator while logged in as a non-admin. With IE6, I can type "runas
But after I installed IE7 final on my test machine, this no longer works. Running ie7 as an admin user, whether by right clicking on the exe and picking run as or running it from a cmd line launched as a admin user, no longer let's me browse network shares or local drives as an admin user. This is really frustrating.
When you go to Steve Ballmer and ask him if, you know, it might be in the best interest of humanity for you to make Internet Explorer more standards-compliant, how many chairs does he throw at your face?
We're willing to believe as few as 10.
Now that your Mac version and its different rendering engine are pretty much abandoned and forgotten by MS and users, why not open source it?
Does microsoft have plans for an IE feedback form similar to what they have now for Visual Studio?
Having such a feedback form would mean that people could post things like "Support " or "Fix issue where adds an extra pixel to the border" or whatever and then the IE team could investigate them (just like the Visual Studio team does with the Visual Studio feedback) and provide feedback such as "no, we cant fix this at this time" or "we will consider this for the next release" or "we have investigated this and have a fix already" or "here is a workaround" or whatever else it is. If there was a vote system so people can vote for what they think is important, microsoft could use that information to see how many people want which features (and therefore which features it makes the most sense to implement).
Are you planning to do more regular updates (IE8/9/10/...)? maybe 1 year for between releases?
Will you release those versions for all Windows versions that have mainstream support or just the latest Windows?
How is it that a program that is meant to just read and display text and images can actually cause virusses and other binaries provided as data to be executed with admin privileges?
Will it be possible to disable ActiveX on a per site basis (that is, only allow ActiveX on sites I trust). Even better would be to allow ActiveX or javascript only on verified sites that are maybe SSL.
Right now, I can only set ActiveX to "disable", "enable", or "prompt". This gets annoying because I have to click the pop up every time I go to my favorite (trusted) sites (and vice versa).
Are you ging to fix the zoom in IE7. It currently hasmany bugs, some of them are a hindrence to accessible screen readers (usually used by visually impaired users). I personal reported the problem with getElementfromPoint not getting the correct element went zoomed (javascript) and actually got a reply from the Manager in charge of the unit dealing with the zoom, sayng he was on the case. That was Beta1. Since then the issue has morphed slightly, but never gone away. PLEASE fix, as it can/is causeing real problems for screen reader users, and producers. e.g. : this
Because you can - or because you should?
Given the highly negative feedback provided for the User Interface of the IE7 BETA releases why did you decide to stick with the same format for the final release?
Why should I use IE over, say, Firefox or Opera?
What did we ever do to you?
Now that IE7 is out, every web developer on the planet suddenly has to test (at bare minimum) three browsers:
1) Firefox (the version doesn't really matter since they haven't made major changes to their CSS parsing)
2) IE 6
3) IE 7
However, the IE development team has deliberately made it impossible to have both IE 6 and IE 7 installed on the same machine. When some clever people figured out a way around this, the IE team introduced a patch that broke this functionality.
My question is: Why don't you want developers to test both of your browsers? Or if you do, why make it so difficult?
Why do you assume that I was equating anti-Microsoft with pro Open Source? I like open source, and I am not anti-Microsoft. Do you deny that there are some people on Slashdot who will never accept Microsoft products even if they turn out to be good? I am not intending a flame war on whether products are good or bad, just that it wouldn't matter if they were good to some people here.
Why haven't you fixed the infuriating PNG colour bug - the one that has plagued mankind (and web developers) since the dawn of time where PNG colours never match web colours and thereby reducing the format's usefulness and uptake by a huge amount?
I'm curious about your design of the "find" window. What considerations did you have for the ease of use? How do you think it compares to having the "find" window built into the browser window (like Firefox). Did you find that users were not be able to locate the "find" text box? Adding an option for having the "find" window as part of the browser window (internet only, as opposed to the Windows explorer) might be a nice feature. This enables multiple windows or tabs to have their own search, and users can have many searches going on at the same time.
I've already seen a hack (not verified whether it really works) to let you install IE7 without WGA verification. (Sorry, no link; I saw it go by a day or two ago on either Digg or Reddit, I think.)
FYI.
Do (or would) any MS IE people help hack on the Firefox codebase? If not, why not? If so, what do you think of the quality of their code/ease of jumping in?
Dude, *WTF*?!?!
Myself and many other web developers have no intention of ever running Windows. We have even less intention of working around flaky standards support in the Windows default web browser. Is there an end-user support address or bug tracking system where we can send users that wrongly blame us for problems with your software?
I cringe when someone uses words "leader" or "leadership" for these folks. Let us make an important distinction here. They are _managers_. Being a _leader_ is a totally orthogonal thing to being a _manager_. Leadership is earned through the respect of subordinates. Management position is obtained through brown nosing with higher ups.
how many unresolved bugs in your bug database?
Given that you are not planning on selling IE 7 and the fact that there are already other browsers on the market which can allow Windows users to experience the web fully why is Microsoft investing so much time and effort in continuing the development of IE ?
I'm under the impression that IE7's quirks mode renders exactly like IE6's quirks mode (which is not a bad thing, IMHO), except I have a question about how far this compatibility extends - is the * hack still available in quirks mode?
Hey Robert Scoble loves new ie, he called a friend of mine a religous freak on his blog, and told them to post here.
/.'ers
Robert Scoble loves
Oh, and what was the reason behind this particular release date? Was it to beat FF2, to make it in time for some Vista requirement?
And will there be minor feature enhancements/bug fixes before the next major release? The PNG color space problem comes to mind - fixing this in a minor release shouldn't break anything else.
Is there any IE7 feature that would make it be better than Firefox?
Is it true that the release version of IE 7 still suffers from the old bug that causes gaps between list items in some cases? I thought it had been fixed in the betas/RCs. Even if it's not a major bug, it is an annoyance for those of us using CSS-based navigation menus. Are there any plans for a bugfix release soon?
1. Couldn't you save a lot of money on anti-trust suits by just following standards? (Including W3C and CSS)
.NET developpers with something like Google's cute browser-quirk avoiding JAVA -> HTML + JavaScript compiler so that they don't miss out on FireFox and Opera (mobile phone) users.
It really looks like it's in your best interest to at least provide
2. Why not fork over a C# -> HTML + JavaScript compiler that provides similar quirk-avoiding code?
Dean Hachamovitch, As you probably know: MathML, for mathematics, and SVG, for charts and graphs, represent two major enabling technologies for scientific publishing on the web. Presently, most scientific and scholarly papers are presented in Adobe's PDF format, possibly because Acrobat Reader is the most widely installed application that can display typeset mathematics and vector graphics. What is Microsoft's position on supporting these two technologies natively in Internet Explorer? This question is important, because few people can be expected to download the extensions that support MathML and SVG, namely Design Science's MathPlayer and Adobe's SVG viewer. Supporting these technologies would help you better compete against Adobe and, should you include authoring support for MathML in Word, add value to your word processor offering. Thank you for your time.
You may not have any idea about this one, but I figure I'll ask anyways. In IE6, a tag was required in the html to enable standards-compliant mode (which still wasn't, but that's beside the point). Why was this not enabled by default?
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
Given the horrible CSS support in IE6, not to mention the fact that it is a big security hole, do you plan to "force" the upgrade to IE7 via Windows Update, or do you plan to let the users choose ? Wouldn't this be a sensible way to push web developers towards standards (CSS) ?
Why is ClearType on by default, and not respect the user's system setting for it? Many of us still use CRTs and don't like how it looks on CRTs.
Do you think IE7 will ever be available for Win 2k ? Given the huge users base (especially in offices), wouldn't the unavailability of IE7 under Win2k mean a way slower adoption and a slower push toward standards coding (CSS) ?
Originally, Microsoft claimed that IE7 would only be available with Vista, and would not be made available for older versions of Windows.
As it turns out, the release of IE7 separately is an about-face on this matter.
While it might take away one advantage of Vista over sticking with XP, I think the choice of a free upgrade is a good thing for the user.
Can you speak to the pro and con arguments that came out in deciding to release IE7 separate from Vista?
Thanks.
Opera?
Can your software fully handle PNGs yet, or is 11 years still too short of a time to adopt a very-well-documented standard that has been fully published along with a reference implementation?
If 11 years is too short, I understand and you have my sympathy. I imagine the development portion of your company is quite understaffed, and more importantly: underfunded.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Isn't there an inherent conflict between the stated purpose of better W3 standards conformance for IE7 and the benefit to MS from IE not conforming to standards, to maintain an applications barrier to entry for other web browsers?
How do you feel about your hard work winning because of being installed with the operating system? Do you believe that your product wins through merit, and if so isn't this similar to religion in that, how do you know? How do you validate your pride in your work without a level playing field?
In the months to come, do you expect to see a large amount of vulnerabilities for IE7 compared to, lets say the first few months of IE6s and Firefox's 1.5(to stick to one version) existance? If so then why(or why not)?
Why is Microsoft even bothering to stay in the browser market? It's creating international legal issues and generally irritates web developers (which would be relatively easy to change). Surely the default MSN search isn't that profitable for Microsoft, and not to the point where it offsets the development and PR costs when the IE team could be working on a great number of other projects.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
There's a segment of the population that loves to show off its photos edited in ICC aware programs. On the Mac, Internet Explorer 5 supports ColorSync. When will Internet Explorer for Windows support embedded ICC profiles (and Microsoft's WCS features in Vista)?
Also would it fully support embedded profiles? - In Windows Vista RC2, the Photo Gallery software is ICC aware, but it seems to ignore profiles that are not in the profiles directory of Windows Vista. That's a weird implementation if you ask me. The same behavior occurs in Windows XP. The Windows Image and Fax Viewer doesn't read profiles not in its database, but Windows Explorer correctly uses the profile.
Dean,
Which browser have you been using?
Honestly.
I can imagine you have switched to IE7 now (dogfooding), but I can't imagine anyone with more than a basic knowledge of IT using IE6. So, which browser have you been using in the last 4-5 years?
(Post your interview answer as AC, so Bill won't know. Thanks.)
Why is it that to download and install IE7 you need to have WGA on your computer? If IE7 is the big security improvement that everyone is saying it should be then why do businesses in particular need to handle the daunting task of installing and maintaining a fairly controversial by anyones standards, piece of software?
How much time did it take for you to reinvent tabs?..
.... throw Chairs ? _____ Question 2: Is IE7 an iPod killer ? oh, wait.
I don't want a signature.
Are there any features that you wanted to include in Internet Explorer 7 but had to cut due to time constraints or other conflicts? If so, will we see these in a Service Pack or maybe IE8?
"It's a reverse vampire...they....they crave the sun!"
I'd like to see you try to justify your steadfast refusal to fully support the PNG image file format--specifically, alpha blending--long after every other browser on the face of the earth supported it and long after it was recognized as a necessary component for good web design. Why are you so behind the curve?
First, why did you remove the ability for users to move buttons where they saw fit? What great threat do you see in allowing me to have my home and print buttons next to my back and forward buttons? Second, roughly what percentage of your user base will actually end up using any of IE's new features beyond those who by default will passively benefit from the print engine which finally no longer cuts off pages? Do you think it will fall along age lines? I can see a year from now the vast majority of IE users still not knowing about or using tab browsing.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
MS does not make money from IE. Aside from hiding obvious security holes, why isn't IE open source? Clearly you could retain your job(s) were it so (see MySQL).
I'm sure there are many people on the IE development team who have their own hobbies or preferences that involve certain browser setups or certain types of compatibilities -- how much, if at all, do personal preferences figure into the development of IE versus Microsoft-mandated standards from higher-up?
http://www.tenjou.net/
Firefox 2.0 is to be released soon. How is IE7 better (or lag behind) Firefox 2.0?
Help a man when he is in trouble and he will remember you when he is in trouble again.
I'm sure you're aware that despite being one of the most-used browsers, Internet Explorer often seems to be one of the most-disliked browsers due to an extremely vocal number of people (as I'm sure you're aware, if you read Slashdot!). Some people seem to dislike Internet Explorer as a Microsoft product, some seem to dislike it because of its stances on standards compliance, and still more seem to dislike it because it's the "geek thing to do". It has to be a bit of a hit on morale to be playing on a pitch where all the vocal groups seem to be rooting against you.
If this figures much (or at all, even) in the lives and stress levels of the IE development team, what are some ways you have dealt with it in the past?
http://www.tenjou.net/
Why doesn't IE (pick any version including 7) come close to passing the acid2 test? Is it concentration on other areas? Disregard for W3C standards?
As a developer these are the most important updates that could have been included in IE 7. But from the standards point of view, not much has changed from IE 6 to IE 7. Sure, there have been many bug fixes, but the acid2 test says everything for standards compliance. Please, please please please, make IE 7.x or IE 8 completely standards compliant. It would make many people happy and give IE some validity as a browser again. Right now, it's seen as a necessary evil.
We've finally reached the point, at long last, where most browsers have at least minimal support for letting the user choose between alternate stylesheets supplied by a website. However, Internet Explorer, including version 7, still completely fails to understand alternate stylesheets. In the absense of any UI for choosing, a reasonable behavior is to just select the first choice and use it, but IE instead chooses to try to apply *all* of the choices at once. This gets really weird with several alternate stylesheets and results in the need for hacks like adding a special last choice stylesheet that systematically undoes most of the styling done in the other choices.
Can we expect a future version of IE to correct this? How soon?
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Why am I modded "Interesting"? This was supposed to be funny! CSS and transparency, are far from fully implemented!
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
How are you able to sleep at night re: css support?
Why have you decided to hide the menu bar by default?
What is your reasoning for facing the Flamewar / Rampant Hostility of the Slashdot crowd to talk about IE7?
todo - The developer's equivalent of confession: "Forgive me Father, for I have sinned..."
This past summer Håkon Wium Lie was interviewed on /. and my question was selected concerning IE7's glaring lack of full CSS support. Why is it that MS has avoided meeting at least the ACID2 spec for CSS in order to bring some semblance of comformity for developers?
Håkon Wium Lie's response to these questions is boiled down to the fact that you do have the talent and resources to fix these issues and he says that "the fundamental reason, I believe, is that standards don't benefit monopolists" like MS.
How do you respond to his comments (the author of the CSS spec) and does MS have any near future plans to adhere to the existing CSS standard? If not, what would it take for MS to take a more proactive role in supporting it?
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
I've read somewhere that IE7 will offer incremental updates addressing developer issues, in contrast to IE6's security-only patches. Is this true, and if yes, how will this affect developers regarding CSS and DOM support?
I would highly welcome it, but it seems to me this has many implications on how developers keep up with the various versions of IE7, such as a stronger forking of code than that already taking place.
parasight.de
1) Will your team be addressing the problems with the DOM elements where IE uses the id and name attributes interchangably?
This problem causes the javascript function getElementsByName to cease to function is an ID and Name are both defined but not identical.
A workaround is to use the childNodes array of the containing DOM element - however, this too has its problems, since IE (again, ONLY IE, including version 7) adds "phantom" nodes containing only line breaks when there are none defined, requiring a further hack to remove empty elements.
These particular bugs have personally cost me tens of man hours on various recent projects - extrapolate that out to the rest of the world, and this nastiness is worth quite a bit of actual coin, since local (US) coders do not yet earn minimum wage (a topic for another day...)
---
2) Since IE is distributed for free anyway, why not open it up as Open Source and enlist the programming prowess of the same group of developers that have managed to make Firefox a leading competitor without the benefit of an existing installation monopoly?
These problems would have been fixed LONG ago, along with the laundry list of CSS bugs destroying the sanity of designers, as well as developers.
Tim
Why is your "view source" feature so much worse than Firefox's?
Have you succeeded in coming up with an easy way to run multiple versions of IE simultainiously? I'm running out of Windows boxes here.
BTW, thanks for finally supporting more CSS... as a web developer I'm glad that IE users will finally be able to get the full presentational expirience from my sites and I can get rid of that jscript png transparency hack.
Wat drugs do you guys use over there at Microsoft?
Would Microsoft consider a more open source oriented approach to a web browser application on Windows?
Internet Explorer does not deliver any particular advantage to Microsoft. Browsers are largely interchangable because of the standard nature of web page markup languages (HTML, CSS, etc..) Few people make the decision of which operating system to buy on the basis of the web browser. Nor do they decide to purchase other software (web page design software or web server software) on this basis.
If IE is delivering at most a modest competitive edge to Microsoft, why not consider a more open source oriented approach to the IE project? This could involve using components from the Firefox release (like some of the rendering software) or making Microsoft components open source. By turning any special interfaces between the IE and the operating system into a public API, Microsoft would also be one step closer to addressing some of the objections raised by the European Union. Making IE open source could make some IE components a standard in the same way that Eclipse has become a widely adopted standard.
rfc2782 allows for DNS servers to return a list of ips to clients with info on priorities and weights. This would allow browsers to seamlessly switch to a backup server if the primary server went down, which would greatly improve website availability. Unfortunately, from what I can tell, there are no browsers out there that support this.
Is there any possibility that IE will support this?
Any plans to support JavaScript so we can stop writing browser dependent code?
e.g. addEventListener vs attachEvent, XMLHttpRequest vs ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP"), et al. ad nauseum.
Which standard is most worth supporting, Themes or CSS?
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.
Do you suck at the internet?
In a recent trial of Vista and IE 7, I was presented with a window telling me how Microsoft and IE7 can protect me against phishing sites. In order to do so I had to "periodically" send the URLs I was looking at to MS to determine if they were phishing sites or not. My own experience suggests the "periodically" part is the first time you visit a website you have not been too before. So in essence it seems that while protecting me against phishing sites, MS is also building a database of what sites I am visiting.
How do you justify this in terms of privacy when a very very small percent of sites out there are phishing sites. Not to mention the more technically savvy users tend to avoid phishing sites anyways.
Needless to say I have disabled this feature, though I am constantly nagged about it.
Why is it that Microsoft does not uphold to web compliant standards? Why can it not pass the ACID2 test, and more importantly, when will it do both of these things?
Never monkey with another monkey's monkey.
Woah, back up. I still have over 200 Windows 2000 computers waiting in line for IE 7. Your OSX and i686/Linux versions are going to be waiting for a while!
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
1) Since Gecko and KHTML are open source, have you looked at the source for those engines?
2) Have you ever lifted or considered lifting code from either Gecko or KHTML for Trident?
3) Would you ever port Trident to other platforms (Linux and OSX) to allow for web developers to test without needing Windows?
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
Does IE7 intend to fix how document.fileSize checks a file (it breaks because of how it checks the cache), or will you continue to force people to use ActiveX instead of javascript?
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.
Are you planning on implementing such an "idea" as IE7 has tab browsing and a side search bar already? If so what potential problems / security issues do you see happening? Regards cyph
When are you going to add support for table, inline-table, table-row-group, table-column, table-column-group, table-header-group, table-footer-group, table-row, table-cell, and table-caption? These will make a lot of standards-compliant fluid-width site designs practical as they already work reasonably well everywhere else.
Microsoft is a large company with considerable development resources. Right now, MS is shipping IE7 which, among other things implements most of the CSS2 standards (provided the site sets DOCTYPE properly specifically for IE) pretty much correctly (with a few notable exceptions). However, the implementation comes 8 years after the standards were settled and IE7 still doesn't have the richer feature set and plugins that other popular browsers do.
Do programmers at Microsoft find it demoralizing to work on a product that's a loss-leader and a continuing disappointment to both users and developers when their fewer and less-well-funded open-source counterparts consistently exceed them in quality, features, and reliability?
Best question so far.
"... FireFox get's most of the time the 3 columns right, but the footer always right. IE7 it's sometime wrong for both."
I can't speak for safari, but on Firefox and IE7 your page loads just fine. Granted I am using a vista rc1 for both. But Firefox and IE7 do load your page just fine. Did you actually check or did you use IE6.
How did Microsoft go about developing requirements for IE7? (i.e. internal, external developers, focus groups, industry panels, W3C, etc). How did Microsoft go about prioritizing IE7 requirements?
[Insert pithy quote here]
I think they figure developers are smart enough to use search
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
What are the chances that future versions of IE will include a fully functional download manager that will allow queuing of downloads and a pause/resume function that will work across browser sessions or system reboots? Firefox has the ability to pause a download but does not have the ability to resume in a new browser session or after a system reboot, nor does it allow queuing downloads. I would love to see a browser with a fully functional download manager as I am stuck on 28.8 Kbps dialup. There are seperate download manager programs available but none of them are satisfactory to me (either they want money, bundle spyware or just don't have the features and do not integrate well with browsers).
A browser's download manager should do the following:
- allow queuing of downloads (with ability to reorder the queue and specify a "serial" or "parallel" mode per download)
- allow pausing a download with the ability to resume after a browser or system restart
- handle scripted indirect download links and ftp connections (perhaps bittorrents as well?)
- perhaps allow bandwidth allocation per concurrent download
That's about it, so far no one has been able to do it within a web browser. Only the first two capabilites are a must in my view. It does not seem like a lot to expect from a modern web browser.
Is there any chance it will happen?
I know that each browser house wants do differentiate themselves from the other with their proprietary features, but really, why is the W3C standard so hard to achieve. I'm not a web developer so I may be asking a naive question, but I think it's a valid one seeing all the cries of injustice from the real webdevs on this topic.
That's the funniest comment made so far!
Please send it to Hachamovitch. Please!!
In the IE Blog, it mentions how a lot of bugs were fixed. Things like the guilotine bug have been annoying people for years. However, in the 5 or so years it took to fix these, almost no new CSS2 was implemented. pseudoclasses are a little better, but basic things like display:table; are still lacking. In my mind, IE7 is purely a bugfix release, so why not call it IE6.5?
I find it totally absurd that people would complain that IE is bundled with windows. Following that logic I would expect these same people to complain about calculator, notepad, remote desktop, hyperterminal, backup or outlook express (etc. etc...) being included with windows, yet they do not. It seems like people want less for the same price, inconsistently. They also rant about "market" share where I fail to see how a free product can have a "market". When KDE is available for windows I expect that people will irrationally want windows to ship completely bare and boot to a command line only. Do you feel similarly on this issue?
Why the hell can't you useless bastards program something to real, external standards? Why does every damn thing have to be proprietary? Every time I land on a site where some lazy-ass developer programmed to IE's so-called standards without bothering to check any real browsers I curse Redmond and all who dwell there.
Your browser doesn't do *anything* better than Opera or Firefox - if it did, a very *few* proprietaries *might* be excusable. I know the original intent of the product was to try to change the Internet into the MSNet by proprietarizing it, but haven't you caught on that it won't work yet?
in summary:
Why do you continue to include proprietary bullcrap in your browser?
Can you put on pants for your next interview, or do you enjoy making people uncomfortable?
9 8
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=174
Why am I modded "Interesting"? This was supposed to be funny! CSS and transparency, are far from fully implemented!
Nonetheless, the SVG bit is important. Allow me to restate the question in a less sarcastic/funny way:
I am currently one of the developers on an existing online application that uses a combination of SVG and javascript for an important piece of functionality. Currently, our users using Internet Explorer can use this functionality thanks to the Adobe SVG plugin for IE that comes bundled with Acrobat Reader. However, Adobe has recently announced the end of life of this product and has also announced that not all of its features will work on Vista. Will Microsoft take steps to ensure that SVG remain usable for users of IE? If so, can you provide us with concrete data on what these steps will be?
In Firefox, a live bookmark can be expanded to show all the headings.
Not so in IE7.
What is the intended use/purpose of the IE7 RSS Feed?
How is it any different than a regular bookmark other than the fact that it is bold if there are new items?
I don't get it.
Are there any plans to make IE javascript more compatable with what's standard/available on other browsers.
Probably the biggest issue I'd like to see fixed is support for the standard event model. It's more powerful and virtually everything needs to use events, so it makes writing a web app that works with both IE and everything else a pain.
Also, has there been any discussion of supporting the canvas tag at some point in the future? All the other browsers that I know of have adopted this, and if there were uniform adoption it would make the need to resort to flash less prevalent. At some point in the future it would be nice if I weren't *just* using my browser to launch the flash plugin.
I am curious as to why the SVG 1.1 is not a straight forward solution by the IE team? I know that the developement team has had their hands full just coming out with the IE7; But it is not like no one else has done it.
A second question comes to mind, if the IE product is so hard maintain; Why not open source it?
"Slowly, one by one, the Peguins steal my sanity" - Unknown
What kind of user testing was done with respect to the interface changes throughout the development process? For example how early were users involved in providing feedback on the interface changes and potential work flow changes? What kind of methodology was used to collect this feedback? What methods weren't used that you wished you could have employed and which ones were used with less than satisfactory results?
Do you think IE will regain the market share from Firefox and other browsers or do you think Microsoft will accept the trend and be more satisfied with lesser percentage?
Are you guys planning IE8 in the immediate future or do you think IE7 is enough to win the browser war?
Past IE releases have not been too secure, nor too reliable. As a professional software developer I am interested in your take on What was, in your opinion, the cause.
"We Heard You, you wanted it easier and more secure." Security is too broad and general, more closely associated to Microsoft as a whole than any one product you have. And, I dare Microsoft to give evidence ANYONE wanted IE to be "easier". What about the real cries from Webmasters and Webdesigners screaming about the lack of compliance to standards, lack of support for CSS? They have been screaming at Microsoft to conform to standards since the early 90s and still... Internet Explorer is off doing it's own thing.
The primary value IE6 offers over the competition is familiarity, compatibility and convenience. A typical user doesn't have to do anything to install it (installed with windows) and it will work on almost every web site (because developers slave away to make sure it does). For many users it is also familiar, they are comfortable with it. Yet the default IE7 is a substantial departure from past web browser interface designs. It seems IE7 is ignoring one of IE's primary assets. Which traditionally seems out of character for Microsoft but reflects a more recent trend. Traditionally MS products have very few changes (but many additions) from previous versions. MS Office has many aspects that haven't changed for a decade, and in my opinion many of these aspect are exceptionally convoluted e.g. styles in Word, graphing in Excel. But now we are seeing MS change old habits and start to change existing interfaces, look at IE7, Vista or Office 12.
Do you expect these changes could cost market share considering an IE6 user will feel more at home with Firefox than IE7.
I've noticed that on build 5744 of Windows Vista for x86_64, that there are actually two copies of IE7 installed, a 32-bit version and 64-bit version. This is great in that a 32-bit version is conveniently available so that legacy proprietary plugins can still be used without problems. However, it appears that the 32-bit build is the default.
Is Microsoft pushing for plugin vendors such as Sun and Adobe to release 64-bit builds of their plugins so you can switch the default IE build to the x86_64 version? These vendors really appear to be dragging their feet on x86_64 support for all platforms.
Good work on the new release.
You people on this site are so fucking lame.
What compromises had to be made when coding IE 7, both on the technical side and the compatibility side? By technical, I mean the actual implementation of the engine. By compatibility, I mean not breaking the multitude of web sites that are poorly designed or have been hacked together to work with IE 6 bugs.
"it's not about aptitude, it's the way you're viewed" - Galinda
Question: Do you plan to implement a functional ad blocker (not just a pop-up blocker), or implement a plugin architecture that would enable third parties to implement such a blocker?
Background: Ads are so annoying, and once you get used to firefox with the Adblock extension, it is *painful* to go back to seeing all those flashy animated annoying ads. So if your answer is no, I'm afraid I will never use IE7.
Ian Ameline
We use an embedded IE (6 currently) browser control in our application and we print via that control giving it a custom print template.
One thing lacking (we couldn't find anyway) was a way to tell the control which printer to print to. It just prints to the default printer.
We reverted to saving the current default printer, changing the default printer to the printer we wanted, print, then change it back (hopefully without crashing in between).
Is there such functionality exposed from IE7 so we can tell it to print to a particular printer without resorting to such a kludge? Again, we looked but couldn't find anything.
Thanks
1. CSS 2 was finalized in May 1998. When are you planning to finish implementing it?
2. JavaScript DOM level 1 core was finalized in October 1998. When are you planning to finish implementing it?
3. SVG 1.1 was finalized in September 2001. When are you planning to start implementing it?
4. When the battle was IE vs Netscape 4, I used IE (on Mac) as it was more standards compliant. During that time period you had enormous growth in market share by shipping a more standards-compliant browser. So, why did you abandon that strategy?
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
this has been partly covered by other questions, but i figured a direct one just on this was important:
i'm a web developer, and need to test web sites for both IE7 and IE6. Buying another PC isn't an option, and running virtualization software is a lot of effort (in many different ways) just to have two browsers installed. With that in mind, how would you recommend I go about testing sites in both browsers? Most solutions I've seen involve hacks which aren't guaranteed not to break certain things.
Because of this issue, many sites are going to (visually) break in IE7 as soon as people update their browser. This isn't going to look good to most users, and could potentially send many of them running for an alternative which doesn't break the sites they like.
If this dual setup is not easily possible now, will it be in the (near) future? And was this something that you considered when developing, and planning the release of, IE7?
As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, Adobe is discontinuing SVG plugin support in 2008 on the grounds that SVG support, like PNG, should be innate to the browser. Of course, the fact that SVG is a competitor to SWF has absolutely nothing to do with this and should be construed as strictly coincidental.
"Made up/misattributed quote that makes me look smart. I am on
One reason I love firefox is the plugins https://addons.mozilla.org/search.php?app=firefox& appfilter=firefox&sort=downloads
;-), try putting up api's so that we can add the features we want
with these add-ons, You have the ability to allow javascript per site, block flash, block scripts, right-click and create a tinyurl, a swtch to TOR button and even an IE tab: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1419/
If you want to compete with firefox (stop laughing
-JP
As stated, there's really only one answer to this question: "We didn't. We achieved greater than 50% CSS standards compliance." I think a better question (with the same intent) would place the question in the context of why IE7 failed to meet the web community's expectation of compliance and what may change in the future. Something like...
Web standards are open goals cooperatively established by competing interests (including Microsoft). Because partial implementation of web standards was a tactic in the "browser wars", many view lack of compliance with common standards as uncooperative and anti-competitive. What was eagerly expected to be a unified call for users and developers to "upgrade the web" based on the excellent support of web standards in IE7 has been muted by improvements which only offer limited support of commonly used portions of CSS, JavaScript, .xhtml, and the Document Object Model. Considering the financial resources of Microsoft, the incredible coding talent of the IE7 team, and Microsoft's participation in the web standards bodies, the unmet expectations in IE7's standards compliance are perplexing. But whatever the conflicting corporate interests were, the initial release of IE7 is now in the past. What can the portion of the web community which was disappointed by the current release of IE7's standards compliance expect of the new goals now under development?
Forgetabout CSS and standards, forgetabout interface design, bloatware, and other techno-BS...
I wanna know what IE7 has done to improve the internet pr0n experience.
-- QED
On behalf of my own web development company, and in turn, our clients, I would like to pose these three questions to you.
- As the authors of the most abundant internet focused rendering software, how have you made yourselves accountable to the consumers of the underlying technology? (developers/business)
- In an ideal world, the specifications produced by the W3C would be 100% implemented, and additional features would dictate the success of any browser. Do you feel that Microsoft has not provided the financial/executive support to achieve this?
- What can we as a community do to aid the adoption of WC3 specifications in Internet Explorer?
Kind Regards, HenryI remember back when I started web development, Netscape (3|4) was the browser everyone loved to hate. It was the one you had to bend everything to fit for (resize fix, anyone?). IE4, on the other hand, was fantastic. You could make it do all sorts of cool things really easily. I thought it was the best toy in the shop.
Today, IE is the browser that has people swearing blue murder because of the amount of effort it takes to make a page that works properly in the other browsers look correct in IE. As someone pretty high up in the dev team, does this bother you/niggle your professional pride? And perhaps more importantly, are there any plans to try to win back the affection of the web dev community?
Personally, I think IE7 is a step in the right direction, but I think Netscape had to get to 7 or 8 before I started thinking it was a decent browser again - old hatreds die hard...
Warning: May contain nuts
I know IE 7 has only been released like, what, not more than a few days ago, but can you drop us software geeks a few pointers on what to expect down the roadmap to IE7.x/8?
And seriously, no Vapor-Vista empty promises please.
Or a follow up, now that Adobe has decided not to maintain their SVG viewer is there a chance of getting that code into IE mainline? I'm betting Adobe would sell it for cheap.
I do consider the lack of SVG support a critical failing of IE7. SVG is a huge step towards making the web a more beautiful place. The compeating standard is Flash, which doesn't help Microsoft. It would seem that adopting SVG would help Microsoft's design suite.
Thanks. Ted.
Hi,
I understand that the argument (based on the IE7Blog) for IE7 not supporting CSS and ACID2 to the same level as modern browsers like Opera, Mozilla, and Konqueror/Safari is that doing so would break to many existing websites which were developed to support IE6's non-standard quirks rather than W3C standards. I understand the business requirement to protect this existing user base which is dependent on the flaws in IE6 being propogated to IE7, but there is one thing I don't understand:
Few if any of the web sites which depend on IE6 specific features state an explicit doctype - if they do, they're doing so pointlessly, as they almost never adhere to it. On the other hand, web pages which do assert adherence to a W3C document specification, e.g.
, clearly don't intend to use IE6-specific features - if they do, they should be penalised by getting incorrect rendering.
Why, given the depth of developer talent at Microsoft, wasn't IE7 given the smarts to apply appropriate rendering to pages asserting a valid W3C doctype, and fall back to the non-compliant rendering consistent with IE6's non-standard rendering practices for pages that don't state a doctype?
Also, to whom should I send my invoices for the approximately 50% extra development time, per design, required to get perfectly functional W3C standards compliant sites (that render flawlessly in modern standards compliant browsers) to work in IE6 and now IE7? The cost that Microsoft's callous attitude towards open standards compliance has imposed on the diligent web developers for the past 6 or so years is unacceptable.
People who respond to such a system would have to actually care about the quality of the software, and be willing to help improve it. This probably applies to most VS users (developers), but the average IE user will probably be too apathetic/ignorant/lazy to care about providing feedback. Such a system would be invaluable to web developers though.
I'm probably too late to have my question modded enough to be included, but here goes anyway...
1) Why were you not able to get your CSS and JavaScript compatability to come close to Firefox, Safari, and Opera?
2) Will there be updates released to address CSS and JavaScript issues, hopefully in some sort of reasonably timely manner, or will we have to agonizingly wait for IE8?
3) Where would you like to see IE compatability in a year's time and where do you realistically imagine it will be? Relatedly, has any CSS3 implementation been discussed yet?
John C. Dvorak had some fairly pointed comments regarding Internet Explorer in his article: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1952995,00.as p
I think he makes a great argument. For what little revenue IE brings to Microsoft, it costs a fortune in reputation, much less support costs. What is the business driver behind continued development of IE?
Why was the canvas tag skipped in IE7? And will it be included in a future release of the browser?
Throw the bums out!
Why does IE 7 sit there loading HUNDREDS of items when it goes to sites created in Exponent CMS? Firefox doesn't do that. Opera doesn't do that. Koqueror doesn't do that. Safari doesn't do that. Help?
If you want to compete with firefox (stop laughing ;-), try putting up api's so that we can add the features we want
You know those API's are available? For free? As are the development tools needed to do the work. You might want to, you know, do some research.
--> Fight tyranny and repression.... read
Or perhaps if I'm going to get it past the editors:
Hypothetically, if Firefox actually succeeded in surpassing IE's market share and Microsoft no longer 'owned' the browser of choice on the Windows desktop, how do you think this would impact Microsoft as an organization. Do you think it would actually make a difference if someone else's browser was more common on your company's OS?
While we're at it, how about RFC 2817 support? It allows an HTTP/1.1 connection to be upgraded to a TLS (SSL/HTTPS) connection AFTER the initial connection. This would allow web servers to use a single IP address for secure virtual hosts, which cannot be done currently via HTTPS. (Because the certificate is required in the HTTPS handshake, before the Host: field is provided, so the server cannot choose which certificate to present based on the hostname requested.) Adding this feature to browsers would release a lot of pressure on the IP address space utilization.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
You know what you're getting into, right? How does it feel giving an interview here in slashdot? Which among the following would you compare it most to?
/. community's questions.
a. Swimming with sharks with a small wound (really dangerous)
b. Entering a lion's den (not really dangerous if you know what you're doing)
c. Having to remove your own eyeball to save yourself from a deranged serial killer (just outright no way you can win)
d. Getting honey from a honeycomb (with the right preparation, no harm at all)
e. Putting a toy car up your ass and having it x-rayed (painful, messy, but will generate a whole lot of laughs)
And yes, I'm really curious. Grill him all you want for the IE problems. I wanna know how he feels while answering the
. o O ( TwO hEaDs ArE mOrE tHaN oNe... )
The vast majority of issues writing web pages that work with IE and its competitors stem from Microsoft's decision to implement the proprietary hasLayout property, which determines how elements draw and bound their content, interact with and relate to other elements, and react on and transmit application/user events.
1. Why did Microsoft decide to implement this property originally?
2. Why did you extend its use to include overflow in IE7?
I have several websites that look fine in IE 6, Firefox and Safari. They are 100% vaild XHTML and CSS. How come they appear broken in IE 7?
Do you intend to support for rendering HTML correctly in the near future? Specifically, when will IE render the Acid2-test correctly (or my own Homepage for that part)?
... of IE be written as an AJAX app?
When will IE have complete and standard compliant XHTML support?
When will SVG support, including inline SVG support be implemented?
Are there plans to add native XAML support to IE7 ? (Perhaps via a future IE7 update?)
I'm curious why it was decided not to add CSS "display: table/table-row/table-cell" support to IE7 since this would do so much to make it easier to create web pages whose layout looks consistent across all browsers? Was there some technical reason why this was not done, or is there a more machievellan reason? ;-)
I'm a web developer too, have been since the NS4 days, etc.
My question: How do you manage to keep yourself (and you team) motivated when you know you are working on the worse web browser on the market? When you sit down and reflect on your work, put things in perspective, and see how insanely more advanced the Opera, Gecko, WebKit rendering engines are, how do you feel exactly? These question interest me, on a human level. It baffles me that people would want to get out of bed in the morning and go to work on such a poor product.
For us web developers, things are simple: spend 40% of the time building a page from scratch so it works in "A list" browsers, and then spend the resting 60% of the time debugging it for IE6. For us, your product is not only a source of emotional frustration, it's the source of a direct, unavoidable loss of money. This is not an exagerated statement (if anything, the 40/60% division is conservative).
What kinds of new Internet technologies do you think will become popular in the next ten years. Do you think that the foundations for a virtual world like that described in Snowcrash is likely? How far do you think that modern internet technologies such as SVG/Flash could be utilized to this end?
Especially anonymous cowards.
If Windows came without a browser already installed and users had a choice to download one, do you think IE would still have as large a market share?
Why did tabbed browsing take Microsoft so long to implement? (Opera had it several years ago.)
Will Active-X ever be deprecated and removed entirely from IE?
It would be a different world if automatic download & installation of executable code was never promoted for use in a web browser.
in firefox the shortcut to the search box is ctrl+k. ie7 uses ctrl+e. Was this intentional? this made me give using ie after a couple of tries.
I am looking for a new and challenging development position...do you know anyone at Google?
How come developing pages for Firefox/Konqueror/Opera/Safari and comply with W3C standards be an easy job? And developing pages for Internet Explorer be a complete task? Are you planing to do anything about this in future releases of Internet Explorer? And I always wondered what's up with the HTML, DOM, DHTML and JScript documentation you can find on MSDN? Isn't the W3C standards good enough for you?