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Auto Install of IE 7 Delayed In Japan
filenavigator writes "Microsoft has delayed the automatic install of IE 7 in Japan. There's an an interesting response in one of the MSDN blogs. IT pros are saying that they have done this because business users asked it to be delayed. It seems to me many business users here in North America wanted it to be delayed as well, but were forced to scramble and deploy IE 7 blocking software. This looks like more proof that the IE 7 automatic push was more for marketing reasons, than security. If it were a security issue, than why wait on the Japanese push?" Does anyone know the 'technical' reason that the autoinstall was delayed?
Oh come on, it isn't always black or white.
It is very possible that Microsoft wants IE7 to be installed for security reasons, and that there are no reasons that are important enough to outweigh that in the U.S. But lets say for example, that the language support in IE7 is broken for Japanese in some weird and newly discovered way, and that a large portion of Japanese web sites don't function properly.
So, see? While the security situation is the same in all countries, other issues may not.
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
Wait a minute, is ie7 100% backwards compatible with ie6? I seem to recall it isn't. Then, how can Microsoft push it in updates? what about people relaying on the browser for intranet web apps that can break?
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
Yes, marketting is one of the reasons. Security is however, another one (is the browser perfect? HELL NO! Is it better than IE6? HELL YEAH). The main one, in my opinion, is to get rid of IE6 as quickly as humanly possible. And this, the slashdot crowd, especialy the ones who do commercial web design, should appreciate it. Freagin FUD. Yes, Microsoft is evil blah blah blah: Doesn't change anything. The internet will benifit from being rid of IE6, even if it means another IE replacing it.
Answer: No I don't!
Disclaimer: I do not know what I am talking about.
Microsoft has been pushing IE7, even while it was in beta. It's not like these IT managers just heard about it a couple of weeks ago. They've had months to ensure and prepare for its release.
You could all join the people who don't care about IE and install Firefox.
Not sure why but last time I checked (which was some time last week), the Japanese version was only available as an RC. Just checked again now and noticed that the final version's available. So anyway it looks to me like the release schedule for the Japanese version is a couple of weeks behind that of the English version.
Am I going to hell now?
Dude, pay attention, you've been there for years already. Didn't you get the memo? Now, about those TPS reports. . .
KFG
From what I understand, IE7 is being removed from corporate systems just as quickly as it's being installed. IE7 is breaking applications left and right. Macromedia's Dreamweaver won't operate properly if IE7 is installed on the same computer. There are other applications as well. Payroll software, punch clock software, etc.. It's apparently breaking all sorts of things.
At my friend's company, there was a corporate wide memo stating that no one was to install IE7 except the "new media" departments, because they do all the website work and need to be able to test how IE7 slaughters their HTML and CSS. Even the new media departments were told to install "At your own risk".
I don't think it's too far fetched to believe that the Japanese market caught word of how IE7 is breaking all sorts of other software and asked Microsoft not to push it. I think the response in the IE blog is bullshit. The Japanese don't want IE7. Not if it's going to break everything.
Aero
Please stop hurting America -- Jon Stewart
besides business ? In japan the government and the mega-corps speak as one generally. For good or bad, this lends weight to their demands.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I don't see the point. I don't do web development, but I have heard the new IE is just about as bad as the old IE when it comes to standards compliance. It's just bad in different ways. So won't web developers have to throw away tons of information on IE6 incompatibility, just to figure it out all over again for IE7? Sounds like a lot of wasted time.
If security is really the issue, shouldn't they remove IE altogether?
Maybe not
Businesses should be using WSUS, so why do they need a tool to block it?
IE7 is M$ and Winblows-only, so it is not newsworthy at all. It only runs on crap spamstations.
'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
IE7, while still crap, is lighyears better than IE6 when it comes to standards. I have done a few things on IE7, which I tend opened in Firefox, and often it worked on first try. Sometimes I had 1-2 things to fix. Its not -perfect-, but it can literally slash in half the time it takes to make things cross-browser, if you work in a world without IE6. Also while IE7 isn't perfectly secure, it is still a lot more, and on Vista, it is sandboxed (so again, not perfect, but easily an order of magnitude more secure than IE6, or IE7 on XP). So it is a required upgrade, unless you figure out a way to move everyone to Firefox tomorrow
All the issues people are having are bad. But if an application is made IE6 only, what do you think is harder? Fixing it to work in IE7, or fixing it to work in Firefox? If these people are freaking out over IE7, its gonna take them decades to fix their apps for a true compliant browser... This was needed.
I've got my copy of it right here and I already fixed the one that got sent out, so it's not even really a problem anymore.
If all my base are belong to you and I attempt to retrieve my base, does that mean I'm freebasing?
I would bet that there were things in Japanese sites (CSS?) that would've been broken, perhaps?
The fact of the matter is, when IE7 came out here in the US (still haven't seen an AUTO INSTALL on WinXP SP2 on my home machine?!), the newspaper company I work for scrambled to fix all of its sites to handle some odd CSS issues in IE7 that had been resolved in IE6. Web-based admin tools that our newspapers use, as well as the newspaper websites themselves, had to be examined from front to back to make sure that IE7 didn't break anything.
I know that the easiest fix for some of our tools was switching over the method for AJAX. I think IE7 became MORE standards compliant in that regard? However, lots of CSS nav had to be re-worked on websites for things like pulldown menus and such. Advertising as well.
This is just my company's single experience with the release of IE7. I can imagine that, in Japan or any other country faced with an auto-install of IE7 that could affect a large percentage of the browsing public, there would be some concerns about the impact of the web browser coming out automatically.
I want to say, too, that my company was well prepared for IE7 -- we learned of the MSDN blog entries that announced the mid-October release and set up 2-3 task forces to manage issues. So far, it's been smooth. But that preparation time was important. I'd suspect the situation would be the same in Japan.
My 2 cents...
IronChefMorimoto
I don't know the specific technical reasons why IE7 has been delayed in Japan, but I have worked in Japan and with Japanese clients in the IT industry for 12 years and I can tell you that while American and western users might like to think that they hold high standards for software quality, that is NOTHING compared to what Japanese companies and users expect. There is a tradition of service (at ridiculuos cost to the provider). If I was running a software company, I'd outsource all the QA work to Japan. That's how thorough and picky they are about small issues. I wouldn't be surprised if some IE7 issues which US and other users complained about but were basically willing to let go weren't raised as a red-flag-production-down-critical in the Japan and that was the reason for the delay.
I've been using PC Relocator 6 (which use to be by Aloha Bob) for almost 2 years now. It's a great program that has allowed my clients to move from one old PC to another new faster PC when the time comes. PC Relocator allows me to transfer their files, settings and programs almost flawlessly. It's been a life and business savior for many of my people. I was at a customer this week that needed to get a new PC. I went to the Aloha Bob website to see if there was some information on how to tansfer a certain type of program. Upon going there, the site was.... useless. MICROSOFT BOUGHT THEM! Here's what Microsoft said, "Microsoft's acquisition of Apptimum, Inc. will not result in significant changes for current customers of Alohabob products. Customers will continue to receive the product support they were entitled to, and there have been no changes to the support policy. Customers should continue to contact support in the same ways they are accustomed to, by following the links provided on this website. Microsoft does not plan to continue selling the existing Apptimum products." NO CHANGES MY ASS! I knew they were up to something right then and there the moment I read that. Microsoft doesn't by a company like that for no reason.... After installing all the latest Windows updates, I tried to move only a few programs from the users computer to the new system. GUESS WHAT. PC Relocator was USELESS. It could not function because it did not recognize the latest version of IE (Internet Explorer 7) and guess what, Microsoft has killed the product. There are no new updates ever coming out and no new versions. Au Revoir Bob. :-(
Jon-Paul R
Inventor: www.wintiles.com
Musician: www.smoothjazzfusion.com
The best thing Slashdot could do is tell the rest of the world about their plight.
Errrm. There is nothing preventing them from getting IE7. It just won't be automatic. Any Japanese person can download IE 7 right now.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
I installed IE7 on it's day of release on a Japanese PC in our office. The Laptop was out of the box & only a few days old - not even in use by anyone.
Anyway, the result was that IE7 froze & lockedup the PC into 100% CPU useage.
Over the past few weeks I was surprised not to hear others with this issue, so I began to assume it must be a incompatibility with the Japanese language version of Windows. From the topic of this item, looks like that could be right.
* Game Over * High Score: 264,846,927 -- Your Score: 14
Our business relys on our page. It worked fine for many functions on Firefox (and Camino), Opera, IE 6, Safari, and others. It breaks in two important aspects on IE 7. I am no html expert to know why, I just know the bill pament function ain't workin and that DOES effect business. Thanks Redmond!
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
... it was delayed to let the rest of the world test it before it was released in Japan, so as to avoid any issues occuring in the first major release version of IE7?
Makes sense if the Japanese market is so sensitive to them that they'd risk losing business customers.
How do you literally slash time in half? Quantum physicists would like to know.
But if people hadn't coded their web sites so closely to IE5/6 then they probably wouldn't have a problem with IE7. I mean, it would probably take a little longer to make it work with Firefox and IE, but the result is they aren't tied to a single vendor's implementation.
But that's the past. Will the people who got so burned by this learn their lesson and make their sites cross browser compatible? Or will they repeat the same mistake except with IE7?
Something to think about, anyway.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Its an feature in Windows Vista. All programs => Accessories => Accessibility => Time Manipulation
If you are going to be offensive, at least be funny too.
I wonder if this is MS digging the grave of IE.
Look, IE7 is largely incompatible with IE6. So lots of websites will have to be redesigned now. If they have to be reworked anyways, you can do it with proper HTML and CSS support, getting rid of the proprietary IE crap. Which means Firefox, Opera, etc. will work just as well.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Congratulations, you've made one of the most intelligent and relevant posts in the debate so far.
Microsoft made available tools to control the deployment of IE7 (of course, up to a certain date, then you will be forced AFAIR), which should have been used by the server admins in businesses (schools count as a business here) where such a change could negatively affect productivity.
Good sysadmins test and test and test. Also, as you mention, the users are used to the old software; the new software is very different and they should be prepared for it.
I remember my IT teachers in high school teaching extremely basic computer stuff by reading aloud from presentations prepared or purchased for them.
It's not because these people are stupid, it is because this is not their field. To them, computers are a tool.
Bleh. This became a bit ranting, sorry for that.
Stuff that comes from Nintendo just works.
Granted, some of the games are a bit weird, but they are very good at what they do.
They must be insanely hard on the programmers every time they get an bug report from the QA team (No sleep for a month to you!) because there are so few glitches.
I was moderately surprised to find out that the Wii was going to be firmware upgradable because I did not expect it to be necessary at any point.
Just to be clear, Microsoft is NOT automatically installing IE 7 on people's machines.
The "critical" Windows update is simply an installer shim which first prompts the user and asks if they want to install IE 7. They can say yes, no, or not now (remind me later.)
The best feature of IE7 is that it makes it easier to use Firefox. No, really. With IE7 installed, when you enter a URL into a Windows Explorer windows (as I frequently did as a mattter of habit when I was using IE6), it launches the default browser (Firefox in my case). With IE6, it just turns the Explorer window into an IE window - convenient, but a pain in the neck when you realize that you've been using IE.
Why don't people just use this as an opportunity to switch to Firefox or Opera? If a whole bunch of sites are already breaking with IE7, why not just go all the way for full standards compliance? Don't most people make sites that work in Firefox/Opera and validate, then hack them for IE?
If I had to guess, I would say going from IE6 to IE7 would be harder than IE6 to something standards compliant. The web standards are fairly well documented by w3c. The bugs and incompatibilites in IE7 are not.
Maybe not
IE 7 IS better than IE 6. That alone makes it a security update. If it were named ie 6.x with tabs, better security and standards, you wouldnt see this article at all. this is the same as XP SP2 being delayed in some environments for testing.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Actualy, Microsoft is fairly decent at documenting that stuff. My point though, is if you have a 600+ individual pages made for IE, or you are using the MSHTML rendering engine (a LOT of applications do that you wouldn't expect to use anything like that), fixing a few things for IE7 (which is probably just switching a doctype, and a couple of fixes... over 600 pages its significant, but its still better than nothing) is a lot easier than moving everything to standard compliance. I expected the hit, so as much as I could, I kept my code (even in IE-only apps) relatively close to standard, so fixing things for Firefox was a matter of changing a few shared javascript functions, and a bit of CSS in specific sections. Same with IE7, so I was ok. Some companies have millions of lines of old HTML/CSS to fix... moving it to IE7 is a lot easier, trust me. Time and ressource restrictions (and in some cases, lack of knowledge)
If that were true, wouldn't they make it available for some of the other flavors of Windows besides XP?
The claim seems to be that IE7 is being delayed for issues of compatibility. Okay, that may be reasonable. Your argument is that the benefits trump the loss of compatibility everywhere, other than in Japan.
Disclaimer: I installed the last beta versions of IE7 on my office computer, even used it a bit. I still haven't accepted the auto-update to put the full version on my home computers, partly because it was a pain upgrading the beta. [Reboot twice when the software's already on the box???] (Besides, I use Opera, the wife uses Seamonkey, neither of us use IE to any great extent, and IE has to ask permission to use the internet on all my machines. Why bother upgrading it?)
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
Sorry, my argument was only related to the pseudo-conspiracy theories people have been pushing around. I don't have an answer as to why its not being pushed in Japan. Japanese have fairly different business process than most of the rest of the world, work in environments 10x more stressful than most of the rest of us, have a weirdo 4-mode written language, and are very involved in the tech world. So maybe their problems were bigger, and their voice louder.
Normally from my experience, Microsoft tends to listen a lot to their certified developers and partners, so this seems to just show that the Japanese were raising hell for one reason or another, while the rest didn't have -too- much problem (relatively speaking) than they did. Either that, or there were large issues with the japanese localisation (thats my guess actualy).
IT Teachers in High School, now that's something I never knew. When I was in High School, we had a bendix g15 with tubes. I was in charge of the computer club, and what we knew about computers was how to write a program by arranging prepunched cards in a certain order. Learning about computers in school would have been nice. You should appreciate it.
Never ceases to amaze me how many IT people like to do nothing then act like it's someone else's fault when shit comes out. I'm seeing that with Vista. A number of IT people in other departments are not testing it hardly at all. They say "Well it's not even out yet and when it does come out I'm not deploying it for a long time." Right except that ignores that professors will be buying systems and those systems will come with Vista. Guaranteed these guys get caught with their pants down on at least one issue.
It's just life, I'm afraid. Many people dislike change so they just kinda drag their feet on things.
The beta versions of IE7 did not work with Cisco Clean Access 3.5/3.6, but the IE7 RC1+ does work with CCA 3.5/3.6. All versions of IE7 work with CCA 4.0.
Actually, Microsoft has never stated that IE7 will be forced to the users after a grace period. In fact, the block will hold as long as the blocker is in place.
blocker details.
Disclaimer : I am a product manager for IE =)
I work for a state government agency, and we have blocked the automatic deployment of IE7 because we've found TONS of our applications that break under it. It isn't just bullshit - IE7 breaks stuff. We haven't determined why yet, but we can't have mass deployment until we completely understand the dynamics of it.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Well, according to the release notes you apparently must install an optional addon before installing IE7 on a Japanese system (for it to even work? This is unclear...), and you can't install it after. That sounds like a good enough reason to me to not force it out: what percentage of folks will have that prereq? (I know I don't, and hadn't even heard of it.) I am not even sure what that has to do with Japanese systems especially, but if it's in the release notes, it must be pretty serious.
Seems logical enough for me.
I recognize people by their sigs. Is that a bad thing?
So let me get this straight...the IT staff at said companies:
Windows has no shortage of faults, but don't blame Microsoft when the computers are controlled by an inept system administrator.
It seems to me that the fact that IE7 breaks things is good, and the fact that IE7 is automatically pushed is also good. Here's why --and, no, I'm not trying to be sarcastic.
We've long known that the dominant browser on people's desktops is a broken IE that is a nightmare for Web designers trying to be standards-compliant. IE7 is a lot more standards-compliant than IE6, to the point that it readily breaks web sites that were designed for IE6. Presumably it brings it much more in line with "real" browsers like, Safari, Opera, Konqueror, etc. [1]. I actually think it's a good thing that millions of web developers cried out in terror at the incompatible web sites, and were suddenly silenced by this realization: it was because they had been following the WRONG standard of IE6, and now they could finally start following some web standards.
Moreover, it's easy to lapse into a procrastinative denial, saying, "Yeah, I know this is incorrect web design, but --hey, everyone's using IE6." Well, now they're not. Thanks to the update, a substantial number of people will be using IE7, like it or not, so if you thought you could get away with cruddy web design because the market share of Firefox is only 0.01% --well, go have another think.
You know how certain web sites would say, "Best viewed with Internet Explorer 4 or above --go download yours here"? Well, now you can say, "Best viewed with IE7 --and if you don't have it, go download this."
Even though I hate Microsoft with a passion (been Linux user for over 3 years now), I think that following the WWW standard at the expense of compatibility is the first truly good thing that Microsoft has done in a long, long time. (Of course, since I don't actually use Microsoft, my info might be all wrong, so please disillusion me as appropriate.)
-----
[1] listed in order of passing the ACID2 test, but I might have gotten the order wrong
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
Awwww. OK. I'll be sure to check out the link... Well, now you know where they got it from... ;-)
If Japanese need to be updated on all the latest, there's a Japanese version of Slashdot just for that purpose. http://www.slashdot.jp/
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
Since they would be using WSUS (free) with which they can decline/delay the update of IE7 throughout the organisation.
--
Chances are your web team coded in a couple of IE6-specific hacks to make it work. Now that IE7 is a lot closer to spec, the site is still feeding it the hacked code and IE7 is going "WTF is this shit?".
You just need to get the team to take out the IE hacks for an IE7 user-agent string.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
If security is really the issue, shouldn't they remove IE altogether?
That's hardly possible; lots of programs rely on MSHTML.
But how about geting rid of Trident and building an entirely new, clean HTML engine? Or maybe port Tasman to Windows; IE/Mac was always superior to IE/Win.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
I stand corrected, then. I also find it a bit entertaining that the IE7 blocker requires WGA authentication - because Microsoft really don't want them software pirate vermins to not install IE7! (or something)
Am I wrong if I remember there not being this restriction to begin with? It's been months, and it never strikes me as very important so I don't go around noting stuff up like this.
I do wonder why your homepage is a LUG* if you're a product manager at MS. Not that I disbelieve you though.
I had to do an OS reinstall last week and decided, what the heck. Well, IMHO, it sucks. That's perhaps the most horrible GUI interface for a program that I've ever seen. Fortunately all I use it for is doing system updates and managing my web site through Cpanel (which for some reason just doesn't like my Firefox installations).
Not that I expected it to make my a die-hard IE user, I've never cared much for IE and have been quite happy with FF and NS before it.
I also installed the latest of Firefox, Windows Media Player, and iTunes. Firefox does one thing that bothers me: putting the stupid close button on the tabs. I much prefer the method used in FF 1.5 and earlier, so I guess it's back to Ctrl-F4 for now. If I had the time, I'd consider writing an add-in that did that, but I imagine someone will. WMP is certainly a lot more attractive, but not enough to really wow me. iTunes is the least radically changed and I have no probs with it (I prefer WMP for ripping MP3s and iTunes for playing them).
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
MS is snubbing Japan because Japan snubbed the XBox. Just that simple: Billy's jealous, so he's going to make Japan wait. ;)
Rawr
Because IE7 is closed source and we can't fix it.