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Users and Web Developers Vent Over IE7
Spinlock_1977 writes "ComputerWorld is running a story about developers frustration with IE 7, and Microsoft's upcoming plans (or lack thereof) for it. From the article, "But the most pointed comment came from someone labeled only as dk. You all continue to underestimate the dramatic spillover effect this poor developer experience has had and will continue to have on your other products and services. Let me drive this point home. I am a front-end programmer and a co-founder of a start-up. I can tell you categorically that my team won't download and play with Silverlight ... won't build a Live widget ... won't consider any Microsoft search or ad products in the future.""
Finally IE7 supports transparent PNGs, but CSS support is still poor at best. Here's a table that lists support of various CSS styles on a per-browser basis. IE doesn't look good.
Phoenix, Boston, Little Rock, see a pattern?
I have yet to develop for IE7 (indeed, most of the time I just try and make sure my websites look alright in the various Linux based browsers I have around, including Lynx fo course). But I've had to use it a lot in the last couple of weeks.
I hate it. There are little things, such as having to tab twice to get from the address bar to the search bar (in Firefox it is only once...), re-arranging all of the buttons (the back and forward buttons are too far away now, the refresh and stop buttons are too small and in an inconvinient place etc.), lack of spell checker (as you can probably tell from my nasty spelling in this post) and other simple UI issuse like those.
As well, often I've noticed that it will freeze the rendering of a page for no apparent reason, or blur the page, so that you can't actually see anything at all... for a time.
This is not to mention the inability to save a page by right clicking it (useful when Javascript hides the menu bar), the persistent attempt at getting me to save pages in "WebArchive" format (MHT), no matter how many times I select something else, and various other things.
Another thing! It refuses to let me go directly to a secure website that has been signed by itself (and not be a 'signing authority')! Again, no matter how many times I go to the website it throws up the same stupid page, we reccomend that you don't go to this website... BUT I HAVE TO TO DO X (check email, whatever).
In short, I've noticed few good things about IE7 as a user (the addition of tabs and the search bar are the only two things), and many bad things.
As a developer, I shall continue to ignore IE unless I happen across a copy of the browser while I'm actually thinking about developing.
Having spent several hours today tracking down a CSS interaction between style="vertical-align: middle" and dir="rtl", (works in Mozilla, fails in IE7, fails miserably in IE6), I am in total agreement with your sentiments.
I don't think that the mods who marked this as flamebait have done web development. The parent is right, all of the browsers have issues of one sort or another, some more, some less. If you don't believe me, try working with JavaScript access to nested object and embed tags in a way that's both standards compliant and works with modern browsers. This is just one example, there are many more.
But dk made that statement because he/she was fed up with the wasted time and effort they have to go through to develop for Internet Explorer. Believe me, I understand dk's fustration. IE can add tens of hours to front-end website development. I've implemented *very* complex designs (basically, the designer gave me a big Photoshop image and said "code this!") which required almost no tweaking for Firefox, Safari and Opera (in fact I didn't even target Opera, but it worked flawlessly) but required tens of hours of extra work to get working correctly in IE (often a change which fixed IE would break the others, so conditional CSS was needed. etc). Actualy "tens of hours" is a bit of an understatement, it was more like a full-time week for a site that took a month. Someone has to pay for this - either you absorb the cost, or the client pays for it. Either way, Microsoft's incompetence (or unwillingness) to develop a standards compliant browser probably costs the industry MILLIONS per year.
If you haven't expereinced deveoping for IE count yourself lucky. Designers will often complain loudly if some element is a few pixels too far to the left, or if there is a one-pixel gap between a border and image etc. etc. etc. If we only had to develop for standards compliant browsers, this wouldn't be such a problem. But with IE, it's sometimes almost impossible to fix those layout problems in such a way that it works on both standard compiant browsers, the current version of IE AND the previous version of IE. And if you think that these problems are not important, designers see this very differently! And of course they should - just as a good programmer strives for bug free software that performs well and is easy to maintain, designers strive for designs which are attractive, usable and meet the communication goals of the client.
*This* is why dk doesn't want to go near any of Microsoft's other products or services. If you've had a similar experience with Google, then you would he justified in s/Microsoft/Google. Otherwise, your post makes absolutely no sense.
This is absolutely not true. IE has had debugger hooks since forever (at least IE4, which is the earliest IE that mattered). You simply need an external debugger in order to use them. Visual Studio works great, but you can use one of the free Express versions like Visual Web Developer Express, or you can use the archaic Microsoft Script Debugger. Enabling debugging does require poking around in the Tools -> Options Advanced tab to flip the counter-intuitively named "Disable script debugging (Internet Explorer)" to off (yes, the checkbox is a negative, so when it's checked debugging is disabled and when it's unchecked debugging is enabled). Once you've done that, you can attach your debugger to the iexplore.exe process or you can use the new debugger-related options in the "View" menu to attach, break, etc (may have to restart IE for those menu options to show up), or you can just wait for something to break and present with you a "do you want to debug?" prompt.
While hooking a debugger to IE is not quite as simple as it is in Firefox (install Firebug, you're done), it does allow you to work in a familiar interface (assuming you're familiar with Visual Studio, of course) and is sufficiently powerful. Couple that with the IE Developer Toolbar for DOM inspection and Fiddler for session inspection and you have all of the tools you need to debug even the largest of web applications. When you're done, don't forget to Drip for memory leaks.
Not directly to HTML, but Microsoft was responsible for creating XMLHTTP, the precursor to XMLHttpRequest, without which the whole "web2.0" "AJAXy" stuff wouldn't exist. I believe XMLHttpRequest is now a w3c standard, which never would've happened if not for XMLHTTP (and yes, IE7 finally does support a native XMLHttpRequest object so you don't have to have branches for XHR vs. XMLHTTP if you don't care about supporting IE6). Similarly, there would be no SVG if it weren't for VML (not to be confused with VRML). Saying that marquee is the best Microsoft's ever been able to contribute to the web is very, very shortsighted.
No matter what the do with IE7, the problem is many people still use IE6. I'm seeing about half of IE users on 6, and half on 7. This means that no matter what Microsoft does to IE7, we still have to develop for multiple platforms because people are still using 6.
The other problem is this. I'm a web developer. In order to make my job easier I use many software tools. Most of those tools, like the web developer toolbar and Firebug, are Firefox extensions. No version of IE really has any tool that can equal Firebug. I was considering moving away from Firefox because of its instability and poor memory usage, but I am so dependent on the extensions that I can not leave.
The result of this is that I will always develop for Firefox where the handy developer tools are. Then after I am done, I will tweak and hack until it works under IE. Really, Microsoft created this horrible situation, and now there's almost no way out. Honestly, they should just get rid of IE and have Firefox be the default browser for everybody. That's about all they can do at this point.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Make no mistake: Microsoft have a deliberate strategy of disrupting the standardisation process, and everything they do that requires any amount of interoperability is designed with this strategy in mind.
Maybe you're too young to remember, but incompatibility was Microsoft's explicit strategy from the early days of Internet Explorer. Oh, they dressed it up in pretty language, but never forget that 'Embrace and Extend' was a phrase invented by Microsoft in the late 1990s in order to justify their subversion of Web standards. I remember attending the 1999 World Wide Web conference in Toronto where the MS kiosk was happily emblazoned with that very phrase in two foot tall letters.
'Embrace and Extend' has been Microsoft's strategy with regards to any standard they couldn't coopt or dominate from the start. They've done it with HTML, with DHCP, with Kerberos and no doubt with numerous other standards as well.
It's also true that Microsoft produces poor to mediocre software almost all the time, but that's a separate issue. Let me put it this way, I wouldn't attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence, but in this case we are seeing malice and incompetence.
Heh, you just got yourself a new .sig. 8^)
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
PLEASE NOTE: The statistics provided should NOT be used to compare the overall security of products against one another. It is IMPORTANT to understand what the below comments mean when using the statistics, especially when using the statistics to compare the vulnerability aspects of different products.
Secunia advisories often cover multiple vulnerabilities. Consequently, the number of advisories issued for a product does not always reflect the number of security issues that have been disclosed. For instance, in 2006 Secunia issued more than 5,000 advisories covering more than 9,000 vulnerabilities. This is counted AFTER removing duplicates generated by Linux distributions, issues in beta software, and what Secunia considers non-issues and fake issues that our competitors and other security vendors often write about.
It should also be noted that some operating systems (e.g. certain Linux distributions) bundle together a large number of software packages, and are therefore affected by vulnerabilities, which do not affect other operating systems (e.g. Microsoft Windows) that don't bundle together a similar amount of software packages.
Additionally, the number of Unpatched vulnerabilities for a product may be affected by the fact that certain products (product bundles) consist mostly or solely of third party software (such as Linux distributions). Secunia tracks the number of issues fixed by the product vendor and not the issues reported in the third party software; this affects the statistics looking at Unpatched issues A direct and fair comparison of Unpatched issues for e.g. Microsoft Windows and Linux distributions is therefore NOT possible using the aggregated Secunia statistics. Such a comparison can only be made by tracking the upstream third party software included in Linux distributions and combining this with Linux distributions' own patches before comparing this with the aggregated statistics for Microsoft Windows operating systems. Translation: You can't compare Secunia's Linux vulnerability counts with Secunia's Windows vulnerability counts. Secunia itself says so.
FYI, they removed one version of the star hack. The more useful property version still exists. #thing { width: 20px; *width: 30px; _width: 40px; } /* * for ie 6&7, _ for ie 6 only */
> customer: "We standardise on the MS platform, what can you offer us?"
If somebody has some great web-based application, that is just what I need, I'm not going to turn it down just because I would have to download a free browser.
You can still standardize on the MS platform if you use firefox. Ever hear of adobe, intuit, symantec, macafe, or autodesk? Those companies have products that are used by thousands (millions?) of shops that standardize on the MS platform. Just because you use windows doesn't mean you have to use microsoft exclusively.
I have worked in several shops that have windows on every desktop, but lots of people put firefox on their desktop also. It is very common.
To expand on this (for those reading at this deep of a level), the whole monetization of browsers is what helped push IE to be the most popular browser (given, Netscape really messed up with 4.x).
Back in the old days, browsers were pretty much non-free. There was NCSA Mosaic for a while until it was discontinued, but progress moved very fast. Netscape was the most popular replacement, and often had cool innovations that Mosaic didn't. After all, Netscape had full-time developers working on the product. As a result, it cost to use if you weren't an educational institution.
Now, Netscape was making decent money from both their browser and their web server (Netscape Enterprise Server, now Sun Java System Web Server). Companies were buying licenses for their employees, and things were going well. Microsoft rightfully saw this as a threat to their desktop monopoly, and acted.
Microsoft didn't have much time to get a competitor browser out because of the lead Netscape had on them. Microsoft thus turned to Spyglass, a company that had licensed Mosaic for commercial purposes. Under an agreement, Microsoft would pay a certain percentage of sales of their new browser to Spyglass in return for having a commercial license for the code behind Spyglass Mosaic. Thus, Internet Explorer was born. Go look at the about screen in any version of IE, even 7.0. You'll still see the Spyglass reference.
Microsoft had some tricks up its sleeve, however. The first was that Spyglass wouldn't ever see much in the way of payment. As they had agreed to a percentage of sales, their license revenue depended on Microsoft selling the browser. I guess since Netscape was selling their product, Spyglass didn't have reason to doubt Microsoft wouldn't sell their product. However, Microsoft didn't sell IE. Instead, they gave it for free to anyone who wanted it (at least with 2.0, I think 1.0 shipped only with NT 4.0). Thus, Spyglass basically gave away a huge codebase for free. Also, with Microsoft giving away IE, Netscape couldn't really sell their browser anymore. To enhance the hurt, Microsoft made sure that all the popular platforms were covered. There was even an IE for UNIX (released in 1998). Once Netscape was dying, that port was discontinued (around 2001 with the 5.0 line).
Of course, price wasn't the only reason Netscape failed. As I mentioned above, Netscape 4 was awfully buggy with some really strange bugs, where IE was more polished and worked better overall. Part of that was likely the browser wars extending extensions to HTML (embed vs object as an example) at the very least. Also, Netscape did lose a lot of their lead because of the mess of code. It really wasn't until IE 4 where you could say that Internet Explorer was honestly a better browser.
Still, had Microsoft actually charged for their browser, things could be quite different today.
They haven't really removed it; just put a bandaid over it. The exact same flaw in their parser still exists, but now they treat this mysterious parent element as a previous sibling, which means that the IE7 only selector which shouldn't match anything in any decent browser ever released becomes *+html {}
It doesn't need Genuine Advantage any more. The common installer doesn't check for it. In addition there are badged versions such as Google's that don't either.
I usually keep a separate CSS file that I include only for IE6 (with a conditional comment). That file is usually filled with about 10 one-liners that look something like this:
div.layout { zoom: 1; }
div.sidebar { zoom: 1; }
Just giving elements that property can make the behave in IE. An alternative is to use height: 1%
Reduce, reuse, cycle
> but as far as I can see IE7 is reasonably standards compliant, probably around the Firefox 1 mark for most things
Actually IE 7 is better only in CSS 3 basic properties when compared to Firefox 1 (Firefox 2 outbeats IE 7 on that too). For everything else, including the total score for CSS 3, Firefox 1 beats IE 7:
http://www.webdevout.net/browser-support-summary?IE7=on&FX1=on&FX2=on&uas=CUSTOM
Here are some highlights:
Tech IE 7 Firefox 1
HTML / XHTML 73% 90%
CSS 2.1 56% 88%
CSS 3 changes 13% 14%
DOM 51% 79%
ECMAScript 99% 100%
I could have added Firefox 2 there too, but that would have made IE 7 look ever more bad. And just wait when IE 3 comes out. The version whichs rendering engine they have been working on since Firefox 1.5 was released. IE 7 is marginally better than IE 6, but even very old browsers still beat it.
http://ajaxian.com/archives/firefox-30-passes-acid-2-css-test
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
You can install multiple versions of IE and also install IE7 in standalone mode alongside your IE6.
As a Slashdot discussion grows longer, the probability of an analogy involving cars approaches one.
It isn't because of marketing-- it's because of exclusionary deals with PC manufacturers back in the day when MS-DOS was the dominant "OS", and DR-DOS was its only competitor.
Microsoft has used exclusionary licensing deals with the distribution channel companies to ensure they are the only OS sold on PCs. That stranglehold has worked effectively, to the point where, when competition has arisen and MS is legally barred from such tactics, OEMs are still hesitant about crossing Microsoft. This is slowly changing (SEE Dell & HP for examples), but it's still dangerous for OEMs to cross Microsoft.
MS has known from the beginning that controlling the distribution chain is the key to maintaining a monopoly, not marketing. It's all about leaving the customer no choice whatsoever, which suits the customer fine-- choices mean they might make the wrong one. That's why there are so many fanbois out there, whether XBox vs. PS3 (they both suck), GNU/Linux vs MS-Windows vs Mac (they all three suck), etc.
Really, the computing world right now is a shit buffet. Every choice is a bad one.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.