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IE8 May Be End of the Line For Internet Explorer
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Randall Kennedy reports on rumors that IE8 may be Internet Explorer's swan song: 'IE8 is the last version of the Internet Explorer Web browser,' Kennedy writes. 'It seems that Microsoft is preparing to throw in the towel on its Internet Explorer engine once and for all.' And what will replace it? Some are still claiming that Microsoft will go with WebKit, which is used by Safari and Chrome. The WebKit story, Kennedy contends, could be a feint and that Microsoft will instead adopt Gazelle, Microsoft Research's brand-new engine that thinks like an OS. 'This new engine will supposedly be more secure than Firefox or even Chrome, making copious use of sandboxing to keep its myriad plug-ins isolated and the overall browser process model protected.'" The sticking point will be what Microsoft does about compatibility for ActiveX apps.
I seriously doubt IE will have the majority of the market share by the time IE9 comes out. Many of the web usage reports out there are showing that Firefox is at 20% or higher and that Safari is around 5% or so.
I would also argue that a lot more 'dumb consumers' (people like my parents) are buying Macs now to be trendy which will help IEs market share drop.
Also has anyone used IE8 yet and tested sites out on it? I've used it and it rendering engine is pretty terrible, even when set in emulate IE7 mode which then introduces a complete new set of rendering bugs.
"During My Service In The United States Congress, I Took The Initiative In Creating The Internet." -Al Gore
I worked through thick and thin with Microsoft for over twenty years and find this to be a classic example of pure insanity. My primary work load is n-tier web application development using Asp.net, VS and C#. The .Net framework is very closely tied to the IE engine and I don't even want to think of the headaches in trying to migrate all existing applications to whatever they release.
This is obviously a dream, but it would be nice to have some sort of standard system for Internet Cloud and Browser software and hardware not unlike the telco and cellular market. There would still be billions to make for all of the Tech companies.
Well, because they are COM objects they don't just interact with the browser but with the entire system, you can't just sandbox them. A good example are all of the plugins my company uses, they tie functionality between our various enterprise systems ECM, ERP, CRM, etc and Office. This makes the life much easier for the user and provides all sorts of advanced functionality without needing to code up some new interface for the user to learn. Personally I think it would be fine to provide two browsers or two personalities for IE, one that loads when you access sites in the trusted sites zone that allows ActiveX and another that's used everywhere else that doesn't. Microsoft could either provide two executables or they could provide one and use sandboxing and virtualization behind the scenes.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Have a stupid blogger who could say things like ''This new engine will supposedly be more secure than Firefox or even Chrome''
That is 30% of entire Web browser market, you have guaranteed that they will do everything to joke about your code without being even released to public.
Also very advanced coders who are talented enough to work on Mozilla or Google will come up with real information debunking your allegations. They may ask a very basic question: ''How can people review your code?''. Mozilla, Google and even Apple has answer, you don't.
There is no alternative namespace, there are merely alternate streams in a file - named locations for storing meta data. The file is right there in the filesystem, obvious to all. The file data may be a bit hidden, requiring normal Windows system calls to read (just like one uses normal Windows system calls to create alernate data streams), instead of Notepad. Oh, wait, you can read them with Notepad too. What a bunch of FUD.
This... is actually not the whole story.
NTFS is actually a case-sensitive file system. You can illustrate this by installing Services for Unix. This is an alternative subsystem that doesn't go through the normal Windows API (or the DLLs implementing it) and collection of Unix programs that have been "ported" to it. Once you install this, programs that are part of SFU are able to create files with the same case-sensitive name but different case.
Instead, the reason you normally can't do this is because the DLLs that are part of the Windows subsystem (the one providing the normal Windows API) hides this case-sensitivity in concert with the file system driver. (IIRC, open commands in the driver get a flag saying whether to be case-sensitive or not.) Instead of making calls through the Windows API, you can either use another subsystem like SFU or make native system calls directly (though that interface isn't supported).
Finally, the implementation of the Windows API is such that if you create two files with different case but the same name, only one will be visible through the Windows API, at least with NTFS's implementation of all of this.
This means that if you want to write security software for Windows, to catch malware written by people who know about this hole, you need to make API calls to an undocumented interface if you don't want to require people to install SFU. (Of course, security software does so much other stuff that's even worse that's hardly a drop in the bucket.)
Even the decade before it existed it was known how stupid an idea it was. Remember this was the time when one of the main talking points about java was it running in a sandbox.
Even a librarian warned me about the danger of ActiveX just proir to it's release (training session on using search engines for academics). I have never understood why it was released. Just when everyone had learned how to disable it they had to turn it back on to get OS updates.
Or even better: let's write code for yesterday's hardware. Not everyone has a computer of today, and the more computers that can use your software, the better.
When did OS started to think? A browser that thinks like an OS? Sounds like day after day the fallout recognized by Andressen and Gates were right. But we all know MSFT puts its IE engine in every piece of its software, so whether a separate browser client exists doesn't matter. Even if the new engine is called Gazelle it doesn't mean the browser cannot be called IE still (Gecko/Firefox, WebKit/Safari).
I always kept saying that every developer should be forced to use a slow machine, at least where compilation and automated tests are not involved. If you sit your butt at a fast box, you simply never notice anything is unacceptable slow.
I've personally caught myself ignoring complaints that a piece of my code is slow and noticing it only after seeing it crawl on a slow machine myself.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.