Slashdot Mirror
Look Out, Firefox 3 — IE8 Is Back On Top For Now
CWmike writes "Internet Explorer 8 has shipped in its final version and is ready to take on its rivals. Preston Gralla reviewed it and says the latest version of Microsoft's browser leapfrogs its closest competition, Firefox 3, for basic browsing and productivity features — it has better tab handling, a niftier search bar, a more useful address bar, and new tools that deliver information directly from other Web pages and services. IE8 has also been tweaked for security and includes a so-called 'porn mode,' new anti-malware protection, and better ways to protect your privacy. The most noticeable new features? Accelerators and Web Slices. Think of an Accelerator as a mini-mashup that delivers information from another Web site directly to your current browser page. Web Slices deliver changing information from a Web page you're not actively visiting directly to IE8. There's one big problem for many, though. No add-ins, and there doesn't appear to be such an ecosystem on the horizon. So if you're a fan of add-ins and customizing the browser itself, writes Gralla, Firefox is superior. But for the actual browsing experience, IE8 has the upper hand — for now."
Looks like a bunch of fluff. Not even anything about raw performance or memory footprint or standards compliance.
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
for the same reason it's been in the past: plugins. If you're looking for the best browser out of the box, it looks right now like Firefox may be in last place. It's bloated, has terrible memory management, and has fewer features, but plugins elevate to a level the other browsers wouldn't even want to reach.
What about all those third-party toolbars that proliferated for previous versions of IE? Surely they were built on some kind of extension support. Has it been removed?
My first question with every new release of IE is, "How well does it render valid HTML+CSS?"
Yeah, I don't really care if it's fast and has "Web Accelerators". Will it display properly written pages properly? Are developers going to have to keep putting hacks into their pages to deal with IE quirks? If they aren't adhering to standards, then it's not really worth much.
Agreed.
Besides, I think that whoever is using Firefox will continue to use it regardless of what IEX Browser comes out. The people that will be moving to IE8 will be those people that have used are privy to the previous IE Browser incarnations.
Friends help you move...
REAL Friends help you move dead bodies... ^_^
I have this set up with widgets. It is useful to have certain snippets of web pages at ones fingertips. So I agree that it is a cool feature.
OTOH, implanting this in the browser seems like a serious security risk to me. How many times have we seen something like this used to steal someone's password to their bank account or otherwise make people believe they are on a secure site? How will they keep this feature from being hijacked?
In the end this sounds like feature bloat. It is not part of what MS said IE8 would be, which is a faster, more standards based browser.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Think of an Accelerator as a mini-mashup that delivers information from another Web site directly to your current browser page.
So it's a frame/iframe?
Web Slices deliver changing information from a Web page you're not actively visiting directly to IE8
So it's RSS?
Plus, web accelerators are loathed by all web site managers -- who watch as their bandwidth is leached by browsers whose operators aren't necessarily intending to visit.
The loathing extends to people in parts of the world with metered traffic and/or quotas imposed and extends further to companies with fixed bandwidth pipes who'll now have them flooded with likely unnecessary requests.
Who on earth comes up with these "features" and why do they still have jobs?
Good to see innovation is back in town. I won't be using IE anytime soon, at least not until there is a Linux or OS-X release of the browser. But I'm sure the Firefox, Opera, Chrome, etc. developers are going to take a good hard look at those features, and we'll see the best innovations appear in other browsers really soon. And hopefully even more nifty functions inspired by this.
The last two, three years have seen more innovation in the browser than the ten years before that. FF 1 was nice and up to par - adding tabs but not that much more, FF 2 was a serious improvement, but only in FF 3 I start to see very serious changes and improvements - it starts to feel experimental at times - in an innovative way, something that I don't feel in FF 2. Is it because MS has picked up their pace in UI innovation? Is it because Google has launched Chrome with its super-javascript-engine? Or maybe because alternative Safari has gained mainstream recognition with its Windows version and the iPhone version? Or more likely all of the above?
Interesting times ahead, for sure. Very interesting times. And a lot of hard hard work for anyone involved in browser development to keep their brainchild on top. What a little competition can do! For once I will say: go, Microsoft, go, you're starting to do well in this. Just make sure you stick to the standards as otherwise you won't make it against the competition. The competition is too strong for that kind of tricks already.
Think of an Accelerator as a mini-mashup that delivers information from another Web site directly to your current browser page.
Sounds like a *wonderful* malware delivery system.
Web Slices deliver changing information from a Web page you're not actively visiting directly to IE8.
Yet another malware delivery system.
Why, in 2009, are they slapping on another layer of lard on top of their needlessly complex and largely ineffective OS security?
One thing is for sure, they aren't going to stop releasing dumb things like this so I'll never be out of work babysitting their products.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
"...But for the actual browsing experience..."
Things like "browser experience" are so completely subjective as to have no meaning. The standard counters often include mentions of "general users" and other equally nonsensical strawmen. I don't mind people expressing opinions about their "browser experiences", in fact I think more people should talk about what they like and don't like. What I cringe at is when the difference between a review and opinion piece disappears, or becomes so ambiguous that it might as well be disappeared.
Yes, I know this is a dead horse, but even dead horses deserve a fresh flogging from time to time.
RFC2119
I'd bet that a faster render engine WITH ads still loses against a slightly slower one and adblock.
Sheldon
Yes, it does seem to work-- just so long as the US federal government, several state governments, and the whole EU are battling Microsoft to keep them from engaging in anti-competitive practices.
The free market works, but this is a case where governmental intervention is required to keep a market free.
Because they don't do jack to modify the behavior of the browser?
Find me the toolbar that gives IE support for:
- Selective blocking of advertisements
- Experimental 3D Canvas
- DOM Inspection
- Preview page on link hover
- 3D Bookmark management
- Sidebar preview of tabs
- FTP Manager
- Warning of Site Tracking scripts
These are expansions to *core* browser functionality. Toolbars don't do that. ActiveX plugins do, but there's no real ecosystem around ActiveX these days. (In fact, it seems like everyone's trying to figure out how to get rid of it.)
BTW, when did you become a Microsoft apologist Blakey? I've been noticing you coming out in support of IE at every opportunity. I can't figure out why for the life of me.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Unfortunately, while I loved them at first, add-ons were the killer in my decision to switch away from Firefox to Opera. I found that even using one or two extensions (including using only Adblock, perhaps the most popular Firefox extension), my browser was bloated, slow, and prone to frequent crashing. Switching to FF3, I enjoyed none of the acclaimed new improvements in memory management once I added any extensions to the mix, and in fact, Firefox would crash constantly (every half-hour or so) under any conditions.
I'd already installed Opera so I could bring it up when I was playing memory- and CPU-hungry games and not lag them any while I had a browser idling in the background, so I just switched fulltime. Aside from noticing a few more ads (easily ignored or remedied with Opera's built-in content blocker), my browsing experience has been much improved; Opera responds far better than Firefox, and has many of the functions that Firefox only has from third-party extensions. The others, I find I don't actually miss at all.
Who knew simplicity could be so simple?
98% of America's teens drink alcohol, smoke, and have sex. Put this in your sig if you like bagels.
Windows + Internet only equals Screaming assrape IF YOUR DOING IT WRONG.
Damnit, a little bit of sense, a little bit of trepidation, a little bit of intellect will save you from ALOT of hassle on the internet. Remember, the browsing internet is like running around a main Road at 2am, it looks safe, it seems safe, but you still look both ways before crossing. And to be sure, the one time you cross without looking there WILL be a truck coming.
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
Things are never that black and white. Just because he hates Microsoft doesn't mean he has to hate everything that Microsoft produces. Not everyone is a fanatic in these sorts of things. Most fall into a grey area.
Failing that, perhaps we should just wait and see what he replies to your question.
Except they are not consumers or rather not doing it fairly.
By your argument a resturant shouldn't bitch and moan when a customer takes an entire bowel of free after dinner mints rather than just one.
Also by your logic people who can't buy/afford a large non-limited bandwidth connection shouldn't bother to make things publicly available on the internet.
Effectively, you're saying that only those with enough money to afford the higher cost should be allowed free speech on the Internet.
"Are you on a single-core machine?" If you're suggesting that should matter for web browsing something is very very wrong. As the other poster said, Firefox works and works well. And the weather is nice here in Bizarro World.
Yeah I noticed that too. But is that IE8's fault or Slashdot's fault? i.e. Does Slashdot detect the browser type and emit IE6-specific output for any IE browser? I'm just curious to know the reason for IE8's oddness on Slashdot.
Yes, I'd like to know who the devs are for the /. UI. I like slashdot a lot, but one has to wonder: if slashdot's own code is this bad and the interface is this bad, just how much geek cred does /. have anymore? A geek site should set the standard. Looks like they got some MBAs to redesign this site.
blah blah blah
A lot of hardcore geeks I know dismiss interface issues as unimportant. Perhaps /. believes this enhances their geek cred?
~ I am logged on, therefore I am.
Exactly. When IE is comes close to the standards compliance that FF, Opera, Safari, Konqueror, Chrome, (the list goes on) has, they can claim to be "better". IE6 renders sites better.
Show me the IE equivalents of Adblock, Firebug and Greasemonkey.
you do realize that the -moz-* ARE allowed given the spec and that webkit has similar (i think they do -webkit-* and khtml does -html-*).
Basically part of that standard says that the browser may provide extentions with the format --*.
Really, when Microsoft PR gets posted on slashdot as blatantly as this, I wonder if it wouldn't just be easier to offer Microsoft an editor position/seat at slashdot?
That way we'd know which articles to lend credibility to and which to add to adblocker.
That, my friend, is the 80's talking. We're way past that stage.
There are plenty of people stuck in the eighties still. Just look at the popularity of emacs and vi around these parts.
Standards compliance and a page rendering well are not the same thing. IE6 is far less standards compliance than pretty much any modern browser, but most websites render well in it because they were written to render well in it.
If a page is not standards compliant, you can have the most standards compliant browser in the world and it will still render terribly. What you want is actually a standards *in-compliant* browser that smartly substitutes out its standards compliant mode for an appropriate quirks mode when it sees a site that is standards in-compliant.
I disagree with that entirely. I think that Gecko and Webkit are doing a disservice by using their own namespaces for things like that.
The draft spec for CSS3 contains a property called "border-radius". You can see it here:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-css3-background-20050216/#the-border-radius.
That document is over 4 years old at this point. So if Gecko and Webkit want to implement a border radius, wouldn't it make the most sense to use the already-suggested identifier for it? When Firefox introduces support for CSS3, why make people change all of their stylesheets to use the official name instead of the hack? It would make a lot more sense to tell people to use border-radius, and then watch as more browsers start to support CSS3 and the site starts to look better and better without needing to change any code at all.
If I want borders to be rounded in both Firefox and Safari, why do I need to use 2 different CSS properties, where neither of them validate? Isn't the whole point to create valid code? It's nice that Mozilla and Webkit offered support for this before others did, but now what has happened is that people are figuring out that in order to get rounded borders you need to add "x-moz-border-radius" and "x-webkit-border-radius" rules, when what they should be learning is that you only need a single "border-radius" rule, regardless of who supports it at this point. The web pages online today telling people to use those rules are still going to be around in 5 or 10 years. The really frustrating thing is that a lof of the sites who tell people to use the hacks don't even mention the official border-radius property, so what happens when I visit those sites in Opera? Nothing, because they aren't even using the right properties.
Creating your own invalid identifiers for things like CSS or HTML attributes is a bad practice, period. It doesn't make it OK because it's Slashdot's Golden Boy Du Jour that's doing it. The bottom line is that using a proprietary name for these things does not offer a single advantage over using the already decided-upon name. Graceful degradation still occurs if they would have used border-radius.
And he owns one entire hill, and all the other kids had to share.
That's entrepreneurship at its best!
So long as it's still got ActiveX in there, I gotta consider it "not acceptable".