Microsoft Drops Hints on IE8

benuski writes "Lost in the hype about Microsoft's new Siverlight platform, there has been some information surfacing about IE8. It will include improvements in RSS, CSS, and AJAX support, and will follow Firefox 3 in supporting microformats. Also, the developers are going to try and improve UI customization, which is one of the main criticisms of IE7."

Comments

Enough of comparing it to Firefox

[r_jensen11]

I understand why they wish to compare it to Firefox, but there are other browsers out there. Now, I'm not saying that they should go and compare it to Links, Lynx, or Netscape, but how about another browser like Opera?

Re:Enough of comparing it to Firefox

[Endo13]

Because Firefox is currently the only other browser for Windows that represents real competition? Opera is nice and all, but it's not used by nearly enough people to be a real threat... yet.

Also, Firefox has a look and feel a lot more like IE than Opera does. I'm not exactly sure in how many ways this fits in, but I know it makes it easier for people familiar with IE to switch to Firefox, and perhaps it also makes Firefox and IE easier to compare than say IE and Opera.

Re:Enough of comparing it to Firefox

[jonadab]

> Opera is nice and all, but it's not used by nearly enough people to be a real threat... yet.

I don't know that it ever will be, but I also don't know that it needs to be. Opera has never been aimed at the "everybody and their mother" market segment. I don't think that was even a goal for them.

Opera has consistently been, since the mid nineties, on the dividing line between the major browsers and the minor browsers -- always having a smaller market share than second place, but always rather larger than any of the obscure players. Every webmaster who can name more than three browsers knows about Opera, and everyone who's at all serious about supporting "all the major browsers" tests in Opera at least a little. I don't see any reason to expect any of that to change.

Is it going to take over the world and force IE and Gecko into second and third place? No. But it's not going away, either. It's an _alternative_ browser for a minority of users. It occupies that role by design, and always has.

The reason they're not comparing rumors about upcoming IE features to information about upcoming Opera features is because IE8 isn't aiming to compete with Opera. Microsoft is not bothered by Opera. Opera is a very benign competitor for them, and fairly predictable. They understand its place in things, and it doesn't scare them.

Firefox is another thing. It came, from Microsoft's perspective, out of nowhere. Mozilla was doing what it had always done, occupying the role it had occupied for several years, and then whammo, over the course of a few months there was this Firefox thing, and ordinary users, not just web geeks, had heard about it, tried it out, and were using it. In droves. Its market share broke (by some measures anyway) into double digits and threatened to continue climbing. The release of IE7 was a direct response to that threat.

Further, the really scary thing about Firefox, from Microsoft's perspective, is not just that it breaks up their monopoly on the web, but more importantly that it's open source, and if too many users -- ordinary end users, not IT geeks -- start using and liking open source software, that could have implications beyond just the web browser market. I mean, if an open source web browser became the cool thing everyone had to use, then another open source application (an office suite, for example) could potentially do the same, and *that* outcome could directly cost Microsoft a lot of money. This isn't so much of an issue with Opera.

That is why IE8 rumors get compared to Firefox development information, and not Opera. It isn't because Firefox is better than Opera (though I do personally prefer it), but rather because Firefox is, in Microsoft's view, the primary competition IE must beat.

Re:Enough of comparing it to Firefox

[CannonballHead]

It IS the primary competition for IE...

Interestingly, while it seems that a lot of people think this is bad (well, it seems to me that Microsoft responding to its competitors is often talked about in a bad light), it's actually good. It's competition in the market. It makes for better programs when there are two competing programs. I'm glad to see Microsoft is pushing forward with IE8 so soon after IE7, personally.

And yes, I run Linux on my laptop and run Firefox on both my laptop and my desktop. I also don't hate Microsoft.

Re:Enough of comparing it to Firefox

[Kaukomieli]

Funny thing though, Opera had stuff liked tabbed browsing and a lean, standard-conform (well, almost...) engine years ago. Sure, it is always easier to compare two things that are not that much different, but it won't take you anywhere. To get some insight you have to look for stuff that is in the same category, but different - and then you can evaluate if the aspects where it differs are desirable.

"it also makes Firefox and IE easier to compare than say IE and Opera"

this is a bit like "let's compare race cars by taking a look at vw-golf and opel-astra and not compare them to the porsche, because the porsche is so different".

bad example, but without another coffee I can't get up with a better one...

UI customization?

[GIL_Dude]

UI Customization is one of the main criticisms of IE? Darn, I guess I read /. too much. For some reason I was under the impression that the criticisms were:

1) Security (or lack thereof)
2) ActiveX
3) The fact that it came from Microsoft
4-50 other things
51) UI Customization or skinning or whatever useless thing that is

Seriously, if that is one of the main criticism, then no wonder IE is the dominant browser on the planet (which I say tongue-in-cheek as I type this in Firefox so I have spell checking).

Re:UI customization?

[anaesthetica]

I believe numbers 4 through 50 in your list are occupied by: non-broken support for XHTML, CSS 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, DOM, and the other relevant W3C standards.

Information?

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Surely at this stage it is just hype. With MS you can only consider something to be information when it has been shipping for a few versions. Most announcements from MS have a lot of hype about fancy features that don't make the cut.

Extensions

[The Bungi]

Seriously, the only reason I dropped IE and went to Firefox is the extensions (nee add-ins). I live with the almost glacial speed of Firefox and it annoying quirks just because of that one thing. And specifically, AdBlock. Nothing else. The others are nice, but AdBlock is the reason I started enjoying the internet more.

Until Microsoft figures out a way for people to create extensions easily, without having to know C++ and COM/ActiveX, they're not going to get people like me back. I don't care about tabs. I don't care about skins. I don't care about aggregators or fancy micro-whatevers. I don't care about security (in the sense that I was secure enough with IE since my IQ is above that of a jellyfish). Without the extensions and the community that needs to build behind them, it's a no-go for me at least. Holy shit, it's 2007 and I still don't have an easy way to turn off Flash on demand. Really, WTF?

Re:Extensions

[anaesthetica]

Agreed, giving the end user the ability to control what content they are subjected to is really the deal-maker/breaker for me. I just can't use a browser riddled with ads anymore. Unless I can find an extension or plugin allowing me to block ad content (PithHelmet for Safari, CamiTools for Camino, AdBlock Plus for Firefox, OmniWeb's built-in blocker) I'm just not going to be able to stomach it.

The problem IE faces is the level to which it is beholden to other companies that rely on it to not allow end users to block their content. If IE were to introduce an AdBlock-type ability into IE they would get their pants sued off by every one of their competitors. Just look at Google--it's completely ad-dependent, and yet, with AdBlock the end user will never have to see "ads by google" ever again. In one fell swoop, leveraging their 85%+ marketshare Microsoft could destroy Google's revenue source. As a monopolist, they can never fix their inability to offer an AdBlocking solution.

Re:Extensions

[The Bungi]

They could ship one disabled by default. I mean, I really don't care a rat's ass about all the special rules people dream up that supposedly apply to Microsoft because they are a monopoly. Ship it and let the user decide. I like my monopolies better when they give me choices.

Seriously, Firefox is nice and all but 700MB for three tabs is just a little extreme. I'd jump back to IE in a heartbeat if they gave me AdBlock or an equivalent thereof. Hell, I'll settle for FlashBlock or something like that to begin with.

Re:Extensions

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft is a marketing company. The last thing they want is for users to block Microsoft ads or ads on Microsoft sites (I saw some third-party ads on MSDN recently!).

Re:Extensions

[ozmanjusri]

After a simple search, I found plenty of ad blocking extensions for IE:

Now your only remaining problem is to work out which one of those is actually spyware which will hijack your browser, install half a dozen trojans and send every password you use to a crime syndicate in Miami.

Re:Extensions

[hkgroove]

Is C++ and COM/ActiveX so hard to use?

Not for those with a clue, but what are you more likely to trust? Some random compiled ActiveX plugin for IE or something that appears on Mozilla.org and has been verified?

Until there's a huge community pushing quality plugins / addons for IE that are easy to install and customize (for those with experience) IE is going to remain way behind.

Those with a lot of experience / know-how can further customize their Firefox extensions since they're mostly written in JavaScript and not compiled.

Re:Extensions

[Just Some Guy]

I don't care about security (in the sense that I was secure enough with IE since my IQ is above that of a jellyfish).

Oh yeah? At what IQ level do people automatically detect and avoid websites that can take over IE with an animated mouse cursor?

Re:Extensions

[Spy Hunter]

Is C++ and COM/ActiveX so hard to use?

Um... yes, if you want to do it properly, i.e. without race conditions or deadlocks (apartment model threading... [shudder]), memory leaks, or buffer overflows. COM/ActiveX is a nightmare that Microsoft invented .NET to get away from. (what's that function to convert from BSTR to CString again? Or to TCHAR* or wait I need LPTSTR or WCHAR* or plain char* or how about std::string or... argh!) Compare to Firefox, where your extension is likely written entirely in Javascript very similar to the kind everyone writes nowadays for web pages. Plus, example code from every extension at addons.mozilla.org is one unzip operation away; it's all open source just due to the nature of Javascript. The barriers to entry are far lower.

It wouldnt be a good comparison

[Kryptonian Jor-El]

Firefox is a widely used browser and is the biggest competition to IE. No offense to opera, but its not as strong or as popular as firefox.

Re:It wouldnt be a good comparison

[Scoth]

I'm not much of an Opera user (tried Opera Mini on my old Nokia phone, wouldn't run well), nor do I have a Wii (yet!), so I mean this question genuinely. Is there any relation between the actual backend rendering engine in the Operas for the Desktop, Wii, and Mobile platforms? Or are they more like the IEs for Mac and Windows where they're roughly similar interfaces with completely different code behind them? If they're completely different, then there really wouldn't be much reason for people to switch based on that. Unless they just like the name.

You know what I want?

[SocialEngineer]

I want a little more attention paid to standards. What is the point of developing standards compliant, accessible websites if the most used browser in the market screws it up without crappy hacks? Oh, wait.. Notgetting sued is a pretty good reason, I guess. Still, the overhead IE creates for web developers (especially ones in areas with a low budget for design work) tends to make things cost much more than they should for the client.

We'll probably just see them get a little above 60% compliance on this round, though. Apathy is great, isn't it?

Re:You know what I want?

[XeRXeS-TCN]

If only I had mod points.. I couldn't agree more. It just seems every time there's information about a new version of IE in the works, they say "We're going to increase CSS compatibility!" and that has the geek crowd starting in with the wishful thinking, talking about how wonderful it would be if they adhered correctly to standards or fully implemented CSS. Then the thing finally comes out and we're all bitterly disappointed as we were foolish enough to hope for a proper standards implementation and all we get is excuses from apologists claiming that it's far better than it used to be... to quote Jack Black in the Pick of Destiny,

"We were so awesome!"
"Yeah, it was awesome... compared to BULLSHIT!"

Re:You know what I want?

[SleepyHappyDoc]

(ok, so it's not a W3C standard; but IE is the only one missing it)

Let me see if I got this...you want Microsoft to pay attention to standards, but only the ones other browsers don't ignore? That's a standard right there...a double standard.

Re:You know what I want?

[Bogtha]

berated Microsoft for not complying with W3C standards and requested that they comply with a non-W3C one.

And what is wrong with that? The W3C aren't responsible for JPEG, that was standardised by ISO. Does that mean that web browsers shouldn't implement JPEG?

You are talking like there is a wall between the W3C and the rest of the world, where implementing a non-W3C technology means that you must inevitably throw away W3C stuff. This is nonsensical. You can implement W3C specifications and non-W3C specifications simultaneously just fine,and this has been the norm for as long as the W3C has existed.

I don't think it's fair to hold IE to impossible expectations.

Huh? You are talking about something that the OP already pointed out was already implemented by the other browsers. How is keeping up with everybody else an impossible expectation?

will any win32 FF users actually go back?

[weighn]

preamble: this may sound like some OSS fanboi troll-rant, but it is not (check my other comments).

This is real and (IMHO) the computing experience for many users right-now.

So are MS trying to pull back users who have turned to an alternative browser, or they are desperately trying to plug the drip drip drip of users who still haven't moved?

Either way they will have to make a hyperspace leap to get ahead of the curve.

I began using FF at something like v0.83 and its now mature, secure and stable.

After occasionally dipping the big toe into linux over the past 5-6 years (Redhat 7.3; Fedora 3, 4, 5), just this week I installed ubuntu 7.04 and have fallen in love with it. Restored a ghost backup of XP to a partition and have booted into it just once.

IE's CSS hassles should have been fixed years ago - MS really needs to do more to stop the millions of users like me that are dabbling and finding that OSS is more than just a viable alternative.

Re:I dont care...

[Envy Life]

what Microsoft does to IE, it's still going to be IE. End of Story And I'd expand that thought to all browsers. You ever notice the similarities between a web page and a 3270 terminal? HTML was intended for static content, and has been showing signs of age for over a decade. When web developers have to deal with bloatware like AJAX frameworks and pull hair out over javascript incompatibilities just to make the UI just a little more interactive, it seems times are ripe for a better solution. You can't polish a turd.

Hmm...

[imamac]

"It will include improvements in RSS, CSS, and AJAX support, and will follow Firefox 3 in supporting microformats." So it will simply copy features already in most other browsers. These "improvements" are simply things which should already be in IE7. (Maybe with the exception of microformats.) Still, it's just MS trying to play catchup, but by the time IE8 is released, Firefox, Safari, and Opera will have moved on to bigger and better things.

competition is good -- what's the next big thing?

[boxlight]

Competition is good. Microsoft would never improve IE unless Firefox was trying to out-do them. Similarly, they'd never improve Windows if it wasn't for Mac OS X, and they would never improve their server products if it wasn't for Linux.

If Microsoft had been broken into a variety of little companies like the judge wanted 10 years ago, we'd all have much better products now because of the resulting competition.

Now it's time for Firefox (or Apple) to truly think out of the box and blow us all away with the next big thing. What's the next KILLER APP? We all know Microsoft won't do it first.

boxlight

When will they learn?

[eebra82]

It will include improvements in RSS, CSS, and AJAX support, and will follow Firefox 3 in supporting microformats.

I generally think Microsoft provides solid products and I rarely stumble upon problems with aged products. Look at Office, Windows XP and other operating systems, that are doing just fine.

Internet Explorer is one of the few big mistakes Microsoft has had. IE4 knocked out Netscape and after that, we have seen little and rather futile competition, with Opera being the exception. But even with the release of Firefox, Microsoft has been utterly ignorant. They don't care about perfecting the CSS support and I have little hopes for IE8 after seeing IE7. Sure, it is far better but why is it so damn hard to follow standards?

In my opinion, Microsoft only needs to follow the standards to regain some trust from its lost users and it should have done so with IE7 as it had several years to do what Mozilla did.

UI...? Just give me history!

[urbanriot]

How about the ridiculously unintuitive location of history in IE 7? You wouldn't believe how many customers who have updated to IE7 or use Vista ask me where the history icon went...

They may switch back; Firefox, don't be complacent

[KWTm]

Will people ever go back to IE once they've switched to Firefox? Maybe, but it might be a good thing.

Firefox lit a firecracker under the butts of Microsoft (who actually disbanded the IE team after IE6 --can you believe it?), and made them scramble to build a web browser that was a first in the world of Microsoft: it was standards compliant. Okay, actually, it wasn't, but it was a heck of a lot more so than the old IE, and for the first time MS actually paid attention to Web standards compliance. Whatever happens after that, we can thank Firefox for this historic watershed; even if people switch back to IE, it won't be to IE 6, and web page authors will realize that Microsoft doesn't necessarily dictate the standards.

In the same way, though, Firefox can't afford to be complacent. Microsoft has a long history of coming from behind and overtaking. There are quite a few ways in which Firefox could be improved, and if MS makes this improved browser IE8, then I can very well envision people switching back.

I think the main thing Firefox needs to do is manage its extensions. There was an interview on Slashdot in which one of the developers said that there was no need for the Mozilla Foundation to vet and officially support extensions, which I think flies in the face of common sense. The MozFound needs to pick three or four extensions and make sure they work --which would not be hard to do since they work now-- but officially make it part of Firefox. These extensions are: Adblock [Plus], NoScript, ... well, I'll let you fill in the rest so I don't start any flame wars. Then when testing happens, they have to include these extensions.

Firefox could do with a few other improvements, and I'm sure other posters will happily list them, but the point is: Microsoft is fully capable of overtaking Firefox again. This is a good thing only if it spurs Firefox to greater heights. I don't want IE to actually end up overtaking Firefox, because I want the dominant browser on the Web to be a cross-platform one.

Too much crap

[Quiet_Desperation]

Let's revert back to HTML 1.0 and be done with it. :)

I'm generally rabidly anti-Luddite, but the web seems so broken sometimes.

Let's start over and make content matter. Please?

IE8: Who Cares?

[Dracos]

By the time the first betas are out, MS will have announced that IE8 is Vista only, and given the amount of time they took to produce IE7 (a token effort at best), it'll probably require Vista SP1 to function fully. Another year of development means another 18 to 24 months, probably.

If they want to impress web developers (who are the catalyst for people moving away from IE), they have to stop paying lip service to web standards. Until then, developers will continue to do everything they can to save themselves wasted time and effort dealing with IE, by eroding IE's market share.

As a designer/developer, I don't really give a damn about RSS improvements. This is merely something they can use to bloat a bullet list of improved features. Fixes to CSS, DOM, events, floats, javascript, and making IE into a worthwhile developer's tool would be much more appreciated. And get rid of hasLayout while you're at it.

Re:I dont care...

[GrievousMistake]

You can't polish a turd.

Completely OT, but actually, I'd imagine you could. I'm not too sure about making a silk purse out of a sow's ear, though. I guess you'd need some kind of silk pig? Mythbusters need to step up here, both of these are long overdue.

Ahem. Back to the issue at hand, this particular turd has proven to be highly moldable, and polish is what it is lacking. Yes, incompabilities and poor standard coverage is a bitch, but the technology itself is adequate. If you had to make a web page/web app/whatever you had in mind when you wrote your comment, but with the guarantee that all visitors would use the same recent and 100% standards compliant browser, what would your main complaint be?

Core HTML is designed to represent a static document, yes, but the vast majority of the web is representable as such, animated interactive flash ads and embedded multimedia aside. What's new is mostly ever fancier styling, and loading some of that static content in a dynamic way.

I am not seeing the signs of age, but of immaturity. Browsers have aquired new capabilities that have made them a viable platform for more complex content, but early adopters face the hazzle of incompatible and incomplete implementations.

Going from your post, I don't think you really want a better successor to HTML and the browser. You sound like you want something completely unrelated, maybe a zero-install securely sandboxed app delivery system, but you are being forced to implement it as a web app? (Guessing wildly, sorry in advance.) Did you perchance have anything specific in mind as a successor to the common web page? Maybe one could do it in something portable, extensible and modern like XML... Oh, wait.

Re:I dont care...

[renegadesx]

I agree to a point. Bottom line is if it still uses ActiveX, its still beyond repair (security wise).

ie6 to ie7 "update"

[Vskye]

When Microsoft pushed this update, it plain and outright broke a lot of our customers ability to even surf on the web. It was random for sure. I just kind of boil it down to MS just not getting it. Like releasing what I would consider a alpha release. They could ping out and get info back, etc. Just a support nightmare for a while, and yep.. we pointed them to MS support to fix their crap software, while recommending Firefox.
 
I can imagine what a ie8 release will bring... more headaches.

Re:Extensions - adblock for any browser

[sulfur]

Although you can do filtering at the proxy level, with this approach you can't reclaim valuable screen real estate. You will have large gaps and websites will generally look ugly. Been there, tried to block ads with squid - AdBlock is just much easier and more effective.

Re:I dont care...

[Skrynesaver]

Sadly as the Month of Active X Bugs blog is illustrating this is true across all MS'Active X applications

Opera is "designed" for the broad mass

[nephridium]

I'm using both browsers and although Opera starts up faster (even faster than both, my old Mozilla Firebird 0.7 or Mozilla 0.9.x I still have installed) and generally is less of a resource hog I still prefer to use Firefox. Even though I need to restart it due to the memory leak problem (which is mitigated by the built in session manager). Why? One word: customization. If I can not get plug-ins or a Greasemonkey script to do what I want I still can try to delve into the code and "fix" stuff myself.

As a normal browser for Joe Shmoe and his grandma though, I don't really see how Opera could not compete. It is very usable, at least as usable as the other browsers. It's got this new Speed Dial function (when opening a new tab instead of a black screen you'll get a cached thumbnail view of your favorite webpages to click on - real slick) and supports mouse gestures from the get go. It's definitely got the potential to become the main player. The only reason why it is not as popular is because Firefox has been propagated as the main alternative by most people anti-IE/MS, maybe in part because both those browsers stand for such different concepts/philosophies (greedy corporation vs. open source).

Also, Firefox didn't come out of nowhere. Actually quite the contrary: while Netscape (which evolved to Mozilla) was "doing their thing" (i.e. carving more and more market share from Mosaic and other browsers in the early days), whammo! - suddenly there was MS IE pre-installed as the default browser on Windows 95. Suddenly every MS box ran IE because there was no real need to run another browser (and it was faster too). The only edge that Mozilla had and what makes it the favorite alternative browser now is that it was and is open source.

Opera's Niche

[olego]

I have to disagree with you slightly. I recently replaced all links to IE with Firefox on my parents' computer, and I chose Firefox for a reason: learning curve.

I'm going to divide all computer users into three categories:

* Power users who know how things work
* Adventurous users who might try changing their setups
* Normal users who go with default settings and never try to customise

The concept of software customisation is fairly new, and everyone from the third category is still adapting to it. Changing your computer's background is one thing, but changing the way your web-browser acts is another thing altogether. It ventures into the realm of programming, with which the third category is unfamiliar. They're simetimes even scared of technology, because they would have no way of recovering from their mistakes.

How does that relate to Opera? Opera has too much customization. The default installation has too many buttons. It has this strange toolbar that appears below the address bar with top 10 and bookmarks. The side panel has notes, transfers, and links. Even though to groups 1 and 2 this seems normal, to group 3 it's too much to learn, when there is a simpler alternative around the corner: Firefox. It's very similar to IE, its features are much more hidden, and it doesn't give off an aura of complexity.

In order to get Opera to the same state, someone needs to spend about 5 minutes customising it. But here's the paradox: group 3 users never bother with customisations, and it just doesn't happen. Opera developers don't care, because they realise that people are slowly migrating to groups 1 and 2. But group 3 is still better off with Firefox.