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Microsoft to Force IE7 Update on February 12th
Z80xxc! writes "InfoWorld is reporting that on February 12th, Microsoft will roll out Internet Explorer 7 through Windows Server Update Services to all systems - regardless of whether or not the update had been requested previously. The piece also mentions ways to prevent the update from occurring, for sysadmins who do not want to use IE7 on their systems. Microsoft claims that the decision was made due to 'security concerns'."
At least now there is only IE7 to support - IE6 should quickly fall from use.
IE6 is a huge pile of ******. These days, whenever I write a website, the procedure is always like this:
1. Test website in Firefox initially.
2. Verify that it works in Opera.
3. Verify that it works in Konqueror.
4. Verify that it works in Safari.
5. See it totally break down in IE6.
IE6 has too many rendering bugs. It's the sole cause of hours and hours of lost productivity. It's about time that it dies. IE7, although not as standards compliant as... uhm... pretty much every other browser on earth, is orders of magnitude better than IE6. People should be forced to use IE7 (or Firefox, or Opera, or whatever; just not IE6).
What's with web developers that have to test html code on IE6? It's really a shame for MS that you can't have IE6 and IE7 installed side by side (I know it IS somehow possible, but that's way too complicated and not the point here). To bad that you always need a second (virtual) machine, just to test html code. And now they are forcing the upgrade...Stupid.
On second thought, let's not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.
Ah, except that in its current incarnation Firefox is a bit sucky too. It's better than IE on many levels, especially security, but it's no longer the snappy and lightweight browser it once was. Memory usage is terrible, I find the UI sluggish, render times are far from ideal and the whole thing just feels... not what it was.
Hopefully 3.0 will fix that, but for the meantime I'll stick with Safari.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
They must be pretty damn bad applications in the first place if moving from IE6 to IE7 'breaks' them!
1. Get spec: Must work on IE6
2. Design methodology: Hack it around until it looks right
3. Test methodology: Click around in IE6
If you have paid no heed to standards or alternative browsers, it's trivially simple to make a site that breaks on IE7.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
How long do you need? IE7 was released in August 2005 so Web developers could start testing and fixing their apps well ahead of the October 2006 release.
IT still needs to approve the update via WSUS for IE 7 to get deployed. If its not an approved update you don't get it.
Of course this is Slashdot, you are allowed to spout all the innacurate crap you want, as long as its crap slung at Microsoft.
If people had bothered to read they would have noticed this in the "warning" from Microsoft: you have configured WSUS to "auto-approve" Update Rollup packages (this is not the default configuration), Windows Internet Explorer 7 will be automatically approved for installation after February 12, 2008 and consequently, you may want to take the actions below to manage how and when this update is installed
Thanks again Slashdot for proving the Linux camp really are full of a bunch of anti-Microsoft loonies who read only what they want to read.
Active X should be banned across the board in any company that even remotely considers security an issue. Intranet apps of the type you talk about need to be reprogrammed, because they probably won't be maintainable even in the short term.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Does anyone have accurate statistics on IE version usage right now? Unfortunately my own stats really only break down between browser vendors and it's difficult to get per-version stats...
It's probably wise to start planning to stop supporting IE6 when it's usage drops below a certain percentage - the sooner we get rid of IE6 the better. Of course, a lot of users are stuck with it - but when things start breaking, they'll get the hint to either upgrade (if that's even possible) or just switch to a better browser.
Some stats here and a little blurb here
Oookay, kiddo. Now let's start the thinking, shall we?
/. as representative indicators of linux' market penetration or calculating apple's market share from a survey in some Mac Owners Lounge.
1. The stats you quote are taken from w3schools.com
2. w3schools.com is a website containing some tutorials for web-related languages and technologies.
3. People interested in the topics covered by w3schools are a small subset of all web surfers.
4. People reading or using w3schools are another subset of this subset of surfers; according to their stats mostly Firefox users
Conclusion: Looking at those stats as an indicator of browser usage on the www and in various intranets is about as smart as using stats gathered on
I'm betting that's the real reason for this update. After all, they can hardly migrate microsoft.com to silverlight if no one can use the site.
Not only are most of Firefox's "unique" features copied from Opera, but Opera is also a remarkably fast and lightweight browser with most stuff built right in. It also happens to work in most variations of Linux including Sugar and it's used on the Nintendo Wii. Not to sound like a fanboy, but it's a far superior browser to anything else I've found. Other than the source, I'm not sure I see the big deal with Firefox. It's bloated and feature light to start with and as you add on more plugins the bloat just gets bigger. Is seeing the source really worth using an inferior product?
Seriously, the interface is the main reason I can't stand IE 7 (well, that and my copy of Win2k running in Parallels). If I could have the IE 7 rendering with the IE 6 "look and feel" then I would update it.
(Of course, I generally use Seamonkey on Linux and Firefox on Mac, so this is just for the times I find myself stuck on a Windows machine.)
As I've said before, the problem is that we can never seem to recreate the problems users complain about. When we ask for a detailed set of steps to reproduce the problem, we almost always either get none or we cannot reproduce the problem. You can't fault developers for not fixing problems, when hardly anyone can seem to point out any. You need to report the bugs first, and then the developers will fix them.
I do not seem to experience these problems you refer to. Others I talk to in the MozillaZine forums do not, either. When people come into the forums complaining about problems, we point them to the Knowledge Base, and when they follow the instructions there, they seem to quickly fix their problems.
If you are unwilling or unable to report or fix problems in Firefox, you should probably switch to another browser. There's no sense putting up with problems, as there are many good browsers out there. And it's even more pointless to keep complaining about vague problems such as "shoddy coding and bloat in general" when you cannot point out even one specific problem, no matter how trivial.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.