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IE9 Released, Media Has Opinions
Yesterday Microsoft released IE9 and since
then we've been getting tons of submissions about it: It's hard to tell if it is
a threat to web development or
the fastest thing on the web
or even a waste of time. You'll just have to decide for yourself... if you are one of the 9% of Slashdot readers who actually uses IE.
I'm impressed with the work, but it's still a little glitchy, slower to load and just not as blazing fast as Chrome.
if you are one of the 9% of Slashdot readers who actually uses IE.
I think that says it all...
Actually, this is Internet Exploder ;)
which is totally what she said
No, we all hate IE, it's just 9% of us are at work, libraries, etc. where they force us to use IE.
SSC
Well in my own (albeit not very scientific) testing with canvas/js performance. It's running at around 10x the speed of Firefox. Much faster for sites with a lot of Canvas animation (as their own demos display - Firefox stutters along badly, while IE9 is so fast some of the tests are a blur.) I'm primarily a Firefox user, but it's hard to ignore this huge performance difference.
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
... at least until I can afford a monitor larger than 1024x768
i spit up my coffee when i read this
-- if you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine
As with any Microsoft product, I will wait at least one year for all the bugs/features/etc to be worked out of the "final" product before I use it in a production sense.
Because you're just generally interested in the browser on the majority of desktops round the world perhaps getting closer to being standards adherent?
Do you just completely ignore stories on any piece of software that you don't use?
I wouldn't say it's irrelevant in the least. IE is still the leading browser, and it's kind of a big deal when the industry leader has a major release, especially one that addresses many of the issues the 91% of Slashdotters using it has. I'm not a big IE fan either, but I tried the 9 beta and it's a hell of a lot better than I remember IE being. Hell, I honestly think IE9 is a much better browser than Firefox is nowadays, and it's my #2 browser to go to when crap doesn't work in Chrome.
I am part of the majority. Me and 91% of the Slashdoters think that this story is irrelevant and IE is a piece of ... :-)
Anyone else with me ?
While I personally reach for pretty much anything but IE when I'm doing my browsing... It isn't irrelevant. IE is installed on the vast majority of computers out there.
I'm going to have to download and evaluate IE9 to see which bits of software it works with, and which bits it breaks. And then I'm going to have to build a deployment package and roll it out to the folks that need it. Because some essential website somewhere is going to start requiring it before too long.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
I must say, this is an impressive version. I've been using it since beta, and regardless what 'benchmarks' may or may not say, it's perceptually the fastest browser I've used.
Now if there was just a decent ad blocker available, rather than the TPL's that only block 3rd party scripts and images.
Until then I'll stick with Firefox for a cleaner view of the sites I visit.
That wasn't an ellipsis. It was ASCII art.
If we're going to write inane headlines, let's at least try to be funny...
1. Include Your Children When Baking Cookies
2. Something Went Wrong in Jet Crash, Experts Say
3. Police Begin Campaign to Run Down Jaywalkers
4. Drunks Get Nine Months in Violin Case
5. Iraqi Head Seeks Arms
6. Prostitutes Appeal to Pope
7. Panda Mating Fails; Veterinarian Takes Over
8. British Left Waffles on Falkland Islands
9. Teacher Strikes Idle Kids
10. Clinton Wins Budget; More Lies Ahead
11. Plane Too Close to Ground, Crash Probe Told
12. Miners Refuse to Work After Death
13. Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant
14. Stolen Painting Found by Tree
15. Two Sisters Reunited after 18 Years in Checkout Counter
16. War Dims Hope for Peace
17. If Strike Isn't Settled Quickly, It May Last a While
18. Couple Slain; Police Suspect Homicide
19. Man Struck by Lightning Faces Battery Charge
20. New Study of Obesity Looks for Larger Test Group
21. Astronaut Takes Blame for Gas in Space
22. Kids Make Nutritious Snacks
23. Local High School Dropouts Cut in Half
24. Typhoon Rips through Cemetery; Hundreds Dead
Which version of FireFox do you mean?
People who hate IE currently will still hate it (for some its almost a religion - IE could give them free money and they would still hate it), those who like it will probably still like it (having used some of the Betas I can't see anything that would piss off an existing user). There will still be lots of frothy-mouthed ranting on the internet and those of us who really don't give a shit about who uses what browser will still just pick the one we like and get on with our lives.
Exactly. I have certain on-line tasks that require IE. I have no choice in the matter. For all other browsing requirements (work or personal) I use Firefox.
Exactly. Think of them as very small bird droppings. :-)
1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
While IE use has fallen drastically in the last year or two, that 9% figure is going to include quite a bit of audience bias. Unfortunately for those of us who have to support IE professionally the amount of people using it in some audiences is much higher, and an irritating percentage of those populations will be using ancient versions for some time to come. One of our banking clients (one of the largest in the UK) is planning to roll out IE8 "some time this year". The rest of out clients (including others in the "largest in the UK" category are still IE6 only on company desktop and laptop builds.
IE9 would be good news (afterall, it is far more compliant then any version of IE that has gone before) if people using older IE versions switched to it. Unfortunately this is not going to happen as many people who are still using IE for day-to-day browsing either don't care enough to upgrade (hence aren't already using FF/Chrome/Opera/other, though if IE is pushed as an "important" update MS will catch most if the Vista/7 users automagically) and/or simply can't because IE9 will not run on XP.
Ie9 is a massive improvement but I'm still a chrome user.
Considering how many people out there still haven't upgraded from IE6, I have to wonder how important this really is.
is the 'pin tab on taskbar' feature (if you have Win7). My company blocks access to GMail, so I have to use the web interface -- now I can have GMail in its own 'application' on the taskbar next to Outlook :)
And yes, I am aware of the Firefox 4 'application tabs' feature -- I've been using my GMail that way ever since I started using the FF4 beta.
Now time will tell which solution fits my needs best.
I just tried that canvas bench in the link.
31 FPS in FF 3.6.15 and 302 FPS in IE9.
Beyond that bit of trivia, browsing with this thing is a lot faster and smoother than Chrome or FF.
Of course, it was a no reboot install and I'm concerned that my PC won't boot correctly the next time around or my drive will be filled with malware the next time I click on IE.
I am part of the majority. Me and 91% of the Slashdoters think that this story is irrelevant and IE is a piece of ... :-)
Anyone else with me ?
...
here we go again...
IE isn't irrelevant at all.
It's a major part of why the web works and looks like it does today, and IE affects how web sites work for you with Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Opera. You don't even have to use IE - these news still matter to you! Both as a developer, or an end-user.
The web is usually designed after the weakest link (usually IE, standards-wise), so of course this story is irrelevant.
The browser forming the weakest link is still the weakest, but today got a whole lot stronger than with IE 8.
We can finally start developing for some aspects of HTML5 without having to restort to relying on updates in some sort of cross-browser third party "compatibility library" where it's easier to just not use those features at all. So the features aren't used at all. So even if you aren't a developer, it still matters, since web sites will start working better.
Authors will now at least start being able to take the step to exploit the potential of Chrome 10 or Firefox 4 better while not having to worry about ~50% not able to be supported well.
IE 9 still has flaws, and is still not there with the competition, but it's miles ahead of IE 8.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
My first thought upon reading the summary was, "Nine percent? I'm glad that at least the majority of slashdot users have switched." And then I thought, "Oh wait, look what I'm running..."
I bounce from machine to machine at work, never staying long enough on one machine to bother customizing it. Rather than install Firefox or Chrome on each computer I use, I just use whatever's already there. IE 8 is on every machine, so I find myself using it more often than I realized.
It never occurred to me that a lot of the 9% is probably people who aren't using it by preference, but simply because they're lazy (myself included).
And it runs natively in decent Unixy systems! Oh wait...
Have you heard about SoylentNews?
A more standards compliant IE is always to be welcomed. What should not be welcomed is that "more" standards compliant != standards compliant. Things like web workers & WebGL are not implemented in IE9 which is quite disturbing. Web workers have massive potential for interactive sites, and WebGL is critical for games and some kinds of visual sites. What I hope is that nobody bothers to compromise for the sake of IE's inadequacies or egregious omissions in the way they may have done in the past. Design the site to a standard and if a browser doesn't meet the standard send the user off to the "reduced experience" version or to a page to download a decent browser. The days where sites had to bend over to IE's inadequacies should be over.
IE9 Released, Media Has Opinions
No one else uses it.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I might actually develop a website that takes advantage of what the IE9 has to offer, until then I'll be stuck developing for the lowest common denominator between IE/Firefox/Webkit/Opera.
It's running at around 10x the speed of Firefox.
Is IE ten times as fast as Firefox 3.6 or Firefox 4 RC1?
I always have at least two computers in front of me on my desk; I use FireFox and Google on my primary browsing/reading laptop, and IE and Bing on the workhorse desktop. So I like variety. I'm keeping a tight grip on my geek card, thank you very much.
When your phone catches up to your desktop, it's definitely time to upgrade.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I feel this is a bigger issue than might seem at first glance.
We have a powerful plateau situation in desktop tech. Cite "The Economy", social changes and more; the first two generations of former active experimenters are starting to become satiated now that modestly significant progress has been made. If you merge all the disparate threads of "we can't figure out the next quantum leap in OS", the Age of Good Enough, and the hidden walled up cost of moving Enterprise off of XP, for Microsoft to start to pit a browser as a hardware-based deliberate fragmentation will cause a pressure-cooker situation of a type that will simmer slowly until some further factor sets it off.
Let's coin a word: "Rhetorical Luddite". I thought ahead and built a custom quad core XP machine in 2006 that is still middle of the line now. Now it's MS's job to "prove" why XP absolutely must go to make way for the upgrade they'd like me to make. To do that, I currently guess it would take another Killer App of some kind. These little deliberate fragmentations instead are irritating.
My approximate current plan is that Windows 8 in 2013 will be the switch point, if at the same time both a hardware and application super-breakthrough shows up.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Anyone know how to turn off cleartype? There doesn't seem to be an option for it in options, so, registry change?
What are you basing this on?
Download free e-books, lectures, and tutorials at bookgoldmine.com
The REAL nightmare is when your client want old IE6/7 to load all that state-of-art tabeless layout
In my experience, IE 7 displays basic CSS-based layout with a few minor flaws. For IE 6, on the other hand, you'll usually want to redirect the user to install the Google Chrome Frame plug-in, which uses WebKit instead of IE's built-in engine for sites that opt in to Chrome Frame using an HTTP header or meta element.
Or they browse at work where IE is a standardized across all systems.
I have a feeling at least 5% of these must be behind some proxy servers which mask the User-agent string with IE one.
Ok I admit that the feeling is not speculation, but more like hope.
i have several people at work who only run 1024x768... but then again it is either that or get e-mails from them in font 16 or some crap like that.
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
my job forces me to use Ie7. I haven't used it at home since the early firefox days, and I use crome 1/4 of the time I'm at home. the fact i have to use it at work on our net based apps makes me rage ... especially considering we just went "all windows" this spring (2011) after using a shitton of dos apps (we use SAP now, and I don't remember what we used for the last 8 years ... some sort of inventory program).
At work on Win XP (imagine that) trying to upgrade. . . "To install Internet Explorer 9, you need to upgrade to a more recent version of Windows"
What's the point of Mod points over a long weekend?
Then ask IT in work, libraries, etc. to install Google Chrome Frame. It's a plug-in for IE that makes sites that opt-in look better.
Chrome + IE Tab https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/hehijbfgiekmjfkfjpbkbammjbdenadd
use chrome for everything and use the tab for the crap that wants IE only..
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
I hate IE and don't use it unless I have no choice.
I am on the other hand a web developer and the fact that Microsoft is finally supporting standards is a fairly big deal. It may not be better or faster or more extensible than the competition, but the fact that the browser which will come pre-installed on most people's machines is not a gigantic pile of suck is something I'm actually quite happy about.
Most people simply aren't going to shop around for web browsers, and personally I'll be a happy man when I no longer have to go through and make significant changes to standards compliant code to make it work properly in IE.
Unless you write websites.
Talk about being closed minded. Kind of like the people that will not use free anti-virus because it can not be good if it is free.
Have you tried IE9? If you are on Windows Vista or seven you probably should try it. If you work on websites you should use it for testing just like you use Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera... You do test with all the available browsers don't you?
I still use mainly chrome and Firefox but I sure as shooting have tried out IE9. It wasn't bad at all just not better than Chrome for my day to day use.
That and it doesn't work on XP which I still use as along with Linux, W7, and OS/X
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
The browser forming the weakest link is still the weakest, but today got a whole lot stronger than with IE 8.
At this point, the weakest link is the wide remaining deployment of the nearly decade-old Windows XP operating system. IE 7 required Windows XP, which kept businesses that stuck with Windows 2000 on IE 6. Likewise, IE 9 requires Windows Vista, which will keep a lot of businesses on IE <= 8 for a while.
Because lately is is your lowest common denominator that you need to check for compatibility with. If it is as good as Microsoft says then that means the bar is raised, You can dump IE 6 and Put IE 7 and 8 on a functional approval set and IE 9 for full functional. Having worked on the Beta 9 I can tell you is is now much better in terms of following the standard. I wouldn't use it as my default browser but at least when I write code for it I am spending less time trying to make the quintet of IE, FireFox, Opera, Safari and Chrome to work the same way. I know a lot of people hate Microsoft for either good reasons or just some psuto-religious/political beliefs and giggle and joy every time they screw up, thinking that some how this will cause the catastrophic end of Microsoft. However real life if Microsoft make a better more secure product the better everyone is. IE 9 is a step in a good direction, Sure it is closed source but at least it is following the Open Standards much better then any previous version.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
i have several people at work who only run 1024x768... but then again it is either that or get e-mails from them in font 16 or some crap like that.
If you deal with visually impaired people at work, the right solution is to increase the system DPI, which will increase font sizes uniformly across all applications. Or are you talking about custom applications known to fail in high DPI?
Searching "update internet explorer" in Bing top hits are for IE6 SP1. Going to the IE9 download page with IE9 release candidate leads to warnings on "certificate errors" and malicious contents. Oh Microsoft, do you have to be that crappy?
Nah, they could change their DPI setting to get bigger text without having a tiny resolution.
Nothing really, I just wanted to see how content-free a Microsoft bash could be and still get modded up.
If "used by less than 10% of Slashdotters" made something irrelevant, we'd never have stories about "BSD", "Facebook", or "other people's genitalia".
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
...slashdot wouldn't trump about how few corporate users visit their site.
But then that's the Linux attitude all over - not 'our userbase is one hundredth of the world', more 'our userbase has grown by 4000%!'
XP is scheduled to go end of life in 2014. (See http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/search/default.aspx?alpha=Windows+XP) Corporate IT is going to have to start upgrading/replacing XP desktops over the next 3 years to Windows 7 (and maybe Windows 8). Win7's first service pack just issued a few weeks ago. So the whole "wait until the first service pack" crowd doesn't have an excuse anymore. (And we'll ignore Vista. It's best to ignore it. Do not speak it's name lest ye offend the computing gods.)
And at this point Windows 7 is probably a better OS that XP - although it does require beefier hardware and definitely more RAM.
So, yes, the majority of corporate systems are still on XP. But that is going to change over the next 2-3 years. Corp IT isn't going to have a choice, eventually, if they still want security updates/patches. And any IT department that ignores the lack of patches for XP after 2014 is utterly negligent. So time it's time to at least have a grand XP to Win7 upgrade/conversion on your radar, like it or not.
So IE9 (and IE10, etc...) might not be relevant for corp IT right now. But it will be. Don't ignore it.
and the first thing I notice is that the giant "Back" button is cut off at the bottom? How do you not notice that and release a browser with a glaring UI problem?
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
I think that the people who really care about IE's development are always those who, at some point, have struggled to get a commercial webpage with creative/nifty features to work cross browser.
"Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world. " - Asimov.
Yep, I'd like to see the stats on version distribution. It'll be many years until this PC is on IE9...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
http://www.beautyoftheweb.com/#/highlights/all-around-fast
"Without hardware acceleration, browsers only use about 10% of the processing power your PC has to offer. Internet Explorer 9 unlocks that other 90%. "
Rubbish! Firefox frequently uses 99% of my cpu!
When you say beaten the pants off... How many milliseconds are talking about?
"Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world. " - Asimov.
File a bug with a testcase and CC :bz?
So when you say 10x faster its not really is it. Anyway I guess you have seen this post as to why IE9 looks so fast on those tests.
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roc/archives/2011/03/investigating_p.html
the summary is that the performance differences are explained by relatively small bugs in Firefox, bugs in IE9, and bugs in the benchmarks, not due to any major architectural issues in Firefox (as Microsoft would have you believe).
If XP does it for you, keep at it. That said, unlike Vista which was a dog there's no particular reason not to use Win7 in my opinion. It works very well, handles all the bells and whistles like SSD alignment, 64 bit everything including >4 GB ram and so on.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Microsoft is good/evil.
IE 9 is wonderful/terrible.
Opera/Safari/Firefox is better/worse.
The best OS is Windows/Mac/Linux.
Sun rises in East/West.
The sun does not 'rise' you insensitive clod.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
I still got XP pre-installed on a netbook last year.
People keep computers for about 5 years. Almost nobody updates. Ignoring the growth of new form factors of which Microsoft is not part of...or smartphones. The competitors will realease 9-12 versions of their browsers. Internet Explorer is already old on release.
I don't think he was stating that Microsoft makes more secure products than everyone else.
I believe he was stating that the more secure Microsoft makes their products, the better off everyone will be.
These suggestions always bug me (although it's nothing personal, tepples). I type in the Colemak keyboard layout, and have for years. At my last job they wouldn't let me install the keyboard layout.
"But then how am I supposed to type?"
"We don't care."
"Wait, so you won't let me install an open source script for AHK because it's not safe, but I have administrator access to my machine and we use IE6?"
"Does not fem-pute."
No way in hell they're going to let anyone install Google Chrome Frame. Their heads would explode first.
.there is enough of everything for everyone.
Complain the the manufacturer, not Microsoft. Phasing out XP for good is long overdue.
Let's coin a word: "Rhetorical Luddite". I thought ahead and built a custom quad core XP machine in 2006 that is still middle of the line now. Now it's MS's job to "prove" why XP absolutely must go to make way for the upgrade they'd like me to make. To do that, I currently guess it would take another Killer App of some kind. These little deliberate fragmentations instead are irritating.
I'd say security updates and new features and better support for more hardware. I mean, would you keep running Debian 2.2 on your desktop, which are both released about the same time?
you have any idea how many program UIs fail horribly when you change to a large DPI?
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
Don't worry. I'm sure it won't be long before it's actually easier and safer to run IE on something not made by Microsoft at all, and almost certainly done without any MS assistance, or access to any of their sourcecode.
But by then, they might have fixed the first round of bugs into a service pack, too.
I am part of the majority. Me and 91% of the Slashdoters think that this story is irrelevant and IE is a piece of ... :-)
Anyone else with me ?
No, we are not all driven by blind prejudice. Some of us are actually willing to try new software and new releases, even from companies whose products we didn't use in the past.
Sometimes you just have to use IE for comaptibility, But fro browsing, CHROME!!!!
IE9 is a good step, but it's not going to kill IE6 any faster than existing options (IE7, IE8) have. IE6 is still around largely because of institutional and business users with intranets, with a small "gramma" contingent who CAN'T upgrade to 9 because they don't upgrade ever. It will likely cut swathes in IE7/8 deployment, and could legitimately reduce the burden of support for 7/8-specific quirks.
The only solution to IE6 is time... so now we continue playing the waiting game.
It works just fine for the web browser and terminal emulator. What else could they possibly be running :-)
I saw what you did there. Figures particularly world wide percentages. For instance your 3% for Linux users, Does not say 35% of smartphones users use Linux. Or Firefox has the majority market share in Europe. Or IE9 is only available on the Microsoft OS SP2 and above. While the rest are cross platform...work on smartphones tablets etc.
The problem with IE9 is that already it is not as standards compliant or complete as competing browsers. In fact the specifications are still moving. IE9 is old on release and we still do not know when the next release will be it could be years. IE9 is still only available on Vista SP2 and above.
My GWT (google web toolkit) sites are not working with IE9 this morning. Irritation is starting to grow. I sure hope Google releases an update to the GWT SDK soon. It was a pretty serious error to not get ahead of this I think. The RCs and Betas have been around for and they didn't work either.
I like it. I'm not one of these people, so maybe my opinion doesn't matter here, but it runs at least as fast as Chrome on my system and is giving me quite a bit of screen real estate to work with. Having said that, the back button seems cut off by the bookmarks bar, which is really annoying.
How does it feel to be a liar with pants constantly on fire?
"But then how am I supposed to type?"
"We don't care."
That's the time when you should either A. look for another job, or if that's not possible, B. take advice from a lawyer specializing in disability discrimination law.
No way in hell they're going to let anyone install Google Chrome Frame.
If the job in any way relates to a service available over the web, you can claim that you have to make sure the site displays properly for customers who use Chrome. "Either you let me install Chrome or you'll end up turning away customers."
Lol not sure why your being posted down. Microsoft as a company should have been split been OS and Applications. IE9 only works with Vista SP2 and Above. Firefox/Chrome/Opera run on all major Operating sytems/phones/tablets. IE9 is currently aiming at 40% of Desktop users every other company is aiming for ALL devices attached to the net.
I don't run a supported platform so I can't test IE9, but anything that shrinks the IE6/IE7 userbase is just fine with me. I'm happy that MS is keeping up their focus on browser development ever since Firefox lit a fire under their ass, and Chrome lit a fire under both their asses. What up Opera. Good job everyone.
Twinstiq, game news
well one of them does all our shipping and UPS & FedEx's software does not like it.
another does the majority of our printing (books) and the proprietary software for programing the jobs fails worse that UPS..
basically the key pieces out side of e-mail that users does..
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
They wanted to use new APIs and features that are found in modern versions of Windows, in an effort to make IE suck less.
Use a different browser at work and IE9 at home, if you must.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
I'd say security updates and new features and better support for more hardware. I mean, would you keep running Debian 2.2 on your desktop, which are both released about the same time?
No, but then there has been a "no need to completely reinstall everything" upgrade path all the way from Debian 2.2 and the latest stable release - this is one of the reasons my home boxes will remain on XP for a while yet. The hassle (i.e. cost) of producing and testing a new build is wy many big businesses will be running XP for at least a year more if not longer. Also for me as a home user, why would I spend £100 on a copy of Windows 7 Pro to replace my XP install when I could spend that money on something else that will actually give me a benefit worth spending the money on?
Regarding security updates: yes they would be the key reason to update. XP is set to get them until April 2014 - so if I've not upgraded or switched completely to something else by then I'll upgrade some time before the end of 2013. This is the main reason business users will upgrade/switch, and probably at about the same time too.
Features? I'm not aware of any that I'd pay the money (and time reinstalling) for. Yes there might be some things in Windows 7 that I'd like, but not so much that I'd pay for them. DX10/11? DX9 is working for me right now, and any game that I might otherwise pay for that dares not support XP simply relegates itself to being something I might buy (at a bargain price compared to the price soon after release) in two years time when I have switched from XP. IE9? Much as I dislike IE6/7/8 I can just use Firefox instead of paying to be able to use IE9 without my preferred plugins. And so on.
If you are running Windows, wait 3-6 months for bugs to be worked out and you should install it. Even if you don't use it, C:\WINDOWS\system32\mshtml.dll gets updated with IE 9.
If you run QuickBooks, Nero or a .Net App, you are using IE.
Don't believe me: remove your account's rights to C:\WINDOWS\system32\mshtml.dll and TRY to launch QuickBooks or Nero.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
Despite what some may maintain based on the general tone of comments on /. not everyone who participates here is a Linux advocate. For my part I'm over in the BSD camp and daily curse the Linux Heretics who are working resolutely to corrupt our great institutions :) Only a fraction of the articles here are so Linux oriented as to not have relevance to the computer and geek communities outside of the Linux realm.
it doesn't support windows 3.1 either so what? windows xp doesn't have direct2d, if you need a browser that supports css3 and html5 use firefox 4 or chrome, if you can't install them because of company policies then you probably don't need them anyway
Chrome doesn't support redhat 6.0 or Debian 1.2 either
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Will it work on Wine/Crossover?
IE6 and 8 load. Sometimes, they even render a page.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Almost nobody updates
I agree, almost nobody upgrades the OS. However, IE will probably be made available as a Windows Update option, so people on Vista and Win 7 may upgrade.
Don't run on Linux either.
$ wine IE9-WindowsVista-x86-enu.exe
fixme:advapi:RegisterTraceGuidsW (0x6cd15f38, 0x6cd20180, {e2821408-c59d-418f-ad3f-aa4e792aeb79}, 1, 0x33de50, (null), (null), 0x6cd20188,)
fixme:commctrl:TaskDialogIndirect 0x33d970, 0x33d9d4, (nil), (nil)
The same with Windows7 version.
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
I would recommend dr. Watson .
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
At $DAYJOB, I have a few applications that I use that are IE-only. About a year ago, the corporate IT department finally decided that we could use IE7, between compatibility issues and security fixes in IE7, so I now can use tabs in IE. You're also going to see more corporate IT departments forced to support newer IE versions as they replace older PCs with newer ones that don't support XP, so the waiting game's going to get accelerated.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Slashdot thinks I'm running Firefox, because it never sees IE, but that doesn't mean I'm not also running IE.
For many years, I've run both Firefox and IE - Firefox for most browsing, and IE for running work-related connections that need IE, and for browsing the occasional internet site that's not compatible with Firefox. This year, Firefox has been crashing way too often, and Google Chrome has gotten a lot better, so I'm now running about half my browser windows and tabs on Chrome and half on Firefox. (There are lots of sites that also fail on Chrome, and I'd rather have Firefox just crash than Chrome turn all its tabs into the "Oh, Snap!" page, because it's easy to kill off Firefox and restart it.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Pity Microsoft, finally when they release IE 9, Chromed is ready to go to 11
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The fact that security zones are easily set up and pushed out via group policy is a win for the corporate desktop. The fact that you need to keep ie up to date whether you use it or not, as it is hooked into so many places in the OS means its going to be around whether you like it or not.
In fact, by installing a second browser on windows, whether its more secure than IE or not, in some ways you are increasing your exposure, as now there are two potential vectors for exploiting the machine via HTML/CSS/etc rather than one.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
First you need to come up with a written and documented reason why you need the plug in.
A web site supporting certain CSS and DOM behaviors is required to make full use of the web site of supplier X or client Y, in order to continue that part of our revenue which depends on supplier X or client Y. These include at least IE >= 8, Mozilla Firefox, the standalone version of Google Chrome, or IE 6/7 with Google Chrome Frame. Among these choices, the one anticipated to have the least deployment impact is Google Chrome Frame because it activates only for those web sites that specifically request to be rendered with Chrome.
they need to build a deployment package then they need to test the deployment on every type of computer in every language.
If a product will be deployed only to a specific group of employees, namely those that interact with supplier X or client Y, then why spend resources testing it in environments other than those used by that specific group of employees?
I'm not complaining, just making an observation that, until quite recently, XP was still sold with new computers.
"The web is usually designed after the weakest link "
Since when? The web is designed after the market leader, which now there is none (FF, IE, Chrome, Opera all have a significant share). That's why the web was so broken years ego and you could only use IE. So if IE falls down under 10% it will not matter anymore and Microsoft will be forced to implement the HTML standard very accurate to be used at all.
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
Just another prime example of why IE sucks sooo bad! I've been running FireFox beta (now RC) 4 since early Feb. Works great on XP! and I don't have to put up with Google spying on me with Chrome!
What's the point of Mod points over a long weekend?
Since neither MS nor the manufacturer provide a free upgrade to Win7, I guess I'm stuck until the machine dies. Not really a problem, as long as I don't try to install IE9 on it. For other things I use the machine for, XP works better, so I'm still happy.
No, you don't, because it is only used if the site notifies the browser that it is opted in to Google Chrome Frame - i.e. the designers have stated that it is compatible.. Google employs some pretty good programmers, and they tend to think of things like that. What you are describing is ignorant and underskilled IT departments - a universal problem, but one that has to be addressed or there will be no progress.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Getting rid of XP will soon become important in order to improve market share of "modern" browsers capable of rendering HTML5 / CSS3 reasonably correctly.
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
Face the fact that the user base is too small for Microsoft to bother to port the code. Not that they didn't do it in the past - Internet Explorer for UNIX.
Signature has left the building.
MS announced no XP support for IE9 many months ago or maybe years ago.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Was the exact same text you posted a minute earlier in the same thread not enough?
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
I did some snooping around to see if Joe Hewitt contributed to IE9, doesn't look like it.
Their "Developer's Mode" looks like they straight out jacked firebug.
To be fair, Safari and Chrome have similar developer modes. Still surprised me though. Now debugging IE's shitty JS and DOM WILL be easier, it allows operating in IE6, 7 and 8 modes.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Someone mentioned Opera!!
It doesnt't work on any of my computers unlike its competitors. Firefox, Opera, Chrome and even Safari are multi-platform.
You know, the whole idea of the web is to be able to faithfully render the layout and presentation as intended according to standards. If that isn't happening, I don't care how fast it is. (Similarly, I don't care how fast a car is if it can't drive well on standard roads and on standard tires.)
I'm waiting to hear how well IE9 supports current CSS standards and proposed standards for HTML5.
It was Microsoft's (and other developers) quest for speed that led to it breaking BIOS compatibility and then later the use of undocumented/unsupported system calls in software led to all sorts of compatibility problems that had to be maintained (and still are maintained) in the kernel and OS. Moving forward, I would certainly like to see Microsoft playing well with standards so that Microsoft and non-Microsoft can speak the same languages effectively and compatibly.
It doesn't matter that IE6 is a security risk because the IT department has probably proposed upgrading but due to systems X, Y and Z not working under IE7/8/9 and the costs involved in upgrading/rewriting those business applications the business case has been denied. Sure, that is CYA but the IT department doesn't generally get to overrule the business side that way. That doesn't mean they want to take on other risks they don't see a gain from and haven't got anybody's sign-off for.
You don't mention the size of the company but most large companies have some form of software directory, these are all the approved applications and versions that employees must use. If you want anything not on that list, it's either a huge approval process to get on that list or an exception process that requires lots of sign-off and disclaimers that they don't support anything that software does. Your request sounds like something they'd wisely tell you to forget, because it'd be at the bottom of the pile and probably rejected in the end too.
Pardon me for saying so, but you sound like one of those annoying business users that thinks the IT department is there as your personal hand-holding staff to tune your PC just the way you like it. What you're asking for is more obscure than dvorak and I still haven't seen a person use that. It is a support unit but they're not being paid more than it makes sense from a productivity point of view. If they can cut IT costs with $10k and lower your productivity with $8k, they will. So IT is just there to make most of the people get most of their work done most of the time. Any special needs you have better have a good reason, that you can't work with a keyboard 99.99% of the population does really isn't it unless you have some kind of disability preventing you from using what the rest do.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Using the Tracking Protection Lists, you can get very simple adblock mechanism for IE9 here:
http://easylist.adblockplus.org/en/#easyprivacytpl
It doesn't let you whitelist anything, but if you need something quick and simple, this is the Easylist TPL and it works very well.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
do people still use IE?
When will MS learn? I just installed IE 9, it asked me to restart Windows 7! Feels like I'm back in '98!
Yet they plan on getting it working on Windows Phone 7. XP was still sold on machines up until last year, and holds 50% of the market. Not really the same as Win 3.1 that is a little silly.
Getting rid of XP will soon become important in order to improve market share of "modern" browsers capable of rendering HTML5 / CSS3 reasonably correctly.
I think people moving to alternative browsers that support HTML5 / CSS3 correctly is cheaper and practical.
MS announced no XP support for IE9 many months ago or maybe years ago.
Yes they have always tried to tie upgrade releases of IE to the OS which has help back its advancement for many years. It just doesn't work as well in a market of competing better browsers.
Oh crap.
I read other replies to this, blah blah blah MS announced this a long time ago, XP is too old for new APIs, etc.
You're missing the point folks.
As a web developer, I have been looking forward to IE9 as a means of deliverance from having to add style and functionality workarounds for IE6, IE7, and IE8. Designers have been putting rounded corners and drop shadows and complicated borders on everything for a couple years now. This stuff looks great in Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Opera. And it doesn't show up at all in IE. I have to use GIFs. Not even PNGs --- GIFs, because IE7<7 doesn't support transparent PNG.
There are so, so many people still on XP, and using it happily to get stuff done. We're talking about Presidents and Board Chairs here, the people who pay the bills. They will not upgrade just because there is a new version of IE. So now, instead of supporting 3 versions of IE, we will need to support 4, with all of the same headaches.
So instead of celebrating at long last the release of IE9, I have to go sacrifice a goat and pray that MS will update the rendering engine in IE8 to include an HTML5 mode for XP. Damn you, Redmond!
I think that is unfair. I myself am not a web developer. Every now and then I will so some coding to help out our web team but it is not my profession. Of course since you are an AC and probably have delusions of grandeur sitting in your first c class I should probably just consider the source.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
"Everything you know" is limited to apt-get, huh?
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Happily! Ha, ha, ha!
http://www.acetonestudio.com
Am I the only one who thinks that IE9 is ugly as hell? It is nice to see that it gives you more vertical screen space, but the "everything bar" could look appealing, too, you know.
B. take advice from a lawyer specializing in disability discrimination law.
I'm pretty sure that people using any particular keyboard layout do not constitute a protected class of people. Much less "disabled".
It probably still falls under the scope of OSHA's ergonomics guidelines.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
They wanted to use new APIs and features that are found in modern versions of Windows, in an effort to make IE suck less.
Use a different browser at work and IE9 at home, if you must.
Uhhhh why not simply detect the version of Windows and enable/disable based on support of features required? It's not hard to do. This is just Microsoft doing what any software company does - making you upgrade so that they'll make money.
Ever done any programming, ever?
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Some Dvorak users with RSI claim that their pain became more tolerable after having switched from QWERTY.
People claim all sorts of things that are explained better by the placebo effect. This also could fall under the logical fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc. People are amazing at convincing themselves of all sorts of things.
Who cares how fast the browser is? It's magnitudes faster than the network connection and the server is, so it's not the bottleneck anyways.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
"Milk Drinkers Turn to Powder"
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
>"You'll just have to decide for yourself..."
Funny, it won't load on any of my systems (hint: they are all Linux. One even has an XP virtual machine and it won't load in that either).
Guess I will have to stick with one of the other major browsers, all of which are cross-platform (Firefox, Opera, Chrome).
How long until they release the version for linux? I haven't used Internet Explorer since I gave up on Windows several years ago. I keep reading stories about IE getting better than rival browsers, including Firefox. I'd like to install it and take it for a test drive to see for myself. It's still free, right?
1.Netcraft confirms:In Soviet Russia all your base welcomes a beowolf cluster of CowboyNeal overlords. 2.? 3.Profit!!1!
I think you're correct about IE6 holdouts being WinXP holdouts. However, IE7 works just fine on XP, and (though I haven't tried it), IE8 is also supposed to run on XP. When I got my current laptop, a year or so ago, Corporate IT was claiming to support XP and Vista, but in practice they were still shipping most new hardware with XP and are likely to jump to Win7 without doing any more Vista than they have to.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I face the fact. However, since I run a unix-based system, I showed my sadness.
Microsoft make baby jorl cry...
Have you heard about SoylentNews?
I guess I am one of the 9%, and a fanboy, so, extremely biased. I'm impressed, pretty much sums it up. If you have a Vista/7 box... there's no reason not to have IE9 on there
It doesn't even work on XP, so it's highly unlikely.
Uhhhh why not simply detect the version of Windows and enable/disable based on support of features required
The "feature" in case is basic text rendering.
Sure, IE could retain the old code path for XP, and use a new one for Vista and above. But that means supporting more code.
The short story is that IE9 has very very good CSS 2.1 support (probably better than anyone else; being late to the game actually helps with that) and fairly limited CSS3 support. Of course most of the CSS3 modules are still in the pie-in-the-sky stage; the only notable exceptions are Color, Backgrounds&Borders, and Selectors, and IE9 may support part of Backgrounds&Borders.
As far as HTML5 goes, IE9 is somewhat behind the curve on the new stuff, as far as I can tell (about where other browsers were a year ago), but way better than IE8. For one thing, it supports . And SVG, for that matter.
Incorrect. If you're using Quickbooks or Nero, you're using Trident. That's as disingenuous as saying that Gecko is Firefox (it's not).
And not every .NET app imports Trident - only ones using the "WebBrowser" control. All .NET apps import WinInet though (but since that's the HTTP library, not the renderer... and even Chrome imports that).
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Well, or you could upgrade because the OS you're currently using is just flat-out obsolete.
No instant search; do you still launch apps by navigating manus or is there just a crapload of icons on your screen?
Really primitive built-in firewall; filtering options are limited and it's incoming-only.
Very painful to run as a limited user, so I bet you're logged in with an Admin account. Read up on the Principle of Least Privilege.
No ASLR means "return-oriented programming" attacks will work; the other major OSes have this too.
No integrity control sandboxing; apps run at the privilege level of their user even if they really should be more restricted.
Video drivers all run in the kernel, meaning anything that goes wrong (and in a piece of code as comlex as a video driver, they do) causes an OS crash.
Memory management algorithms intended for a time when total RAM was measured in megabytes; it's as outdated as "1.5x as much Swap as RAM" on Linux.
Minimal 64-bit capability (and you're not really running XP at that point, it's the Server 2003 kernel, which has very little mainstream driver support).
No ability to restore a file or folder to an earlier state unless you've invested a lot of effort in backup software (the built-in backup stuff sucks, too).
App switching just shows you icons, not thumbnails, much less *live* thumbnails.
Clunky error messages that don't even tell you things like what app is holding a file open when you try to manipulate it.
Relatively poor support for SMP, compared to modern OSes. I bet my dual-core system can boot Win7 faster than your quad-core boots XP.
Do you still use IE to install your updates?
How long can you delay rebooting after you install updates?
Have you ever had a Patch Tuesday where you *didn't* need to reboot?
How often do you get new or updated drivers via Windows Update, vs. needing to download them manually?
Damn, I could go on like this a lot longer too. Seriously, using XP in 2011 is like driving a car from 1980, without the "it's a classic!" appeal.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
The overall IE market share is slipping, but a proportion of windows users seem stuck to IE only. Since XP users are effectively stuck at IE8, those that don't already run Firefox or Chrome (or Opera, or Safari...) are not likely to change their ways.
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
None of those things mean much to normal users though. Cranking up a word processor or launching a web browser really is the same now as on a ten year old machine, except with some shinier buttons.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Great effort in your post.
I'll echo the reply below with the further theme that most of your points feel like the typical accumulation of time passing software by, and I'm under no delusion that XP is the cat's meow. However, for me, the upgrade process is driven by the killer app effect.
"Soonish" I will update, and then all your fair points come for the ride, but my goal is to upgrade at the correct tech tipping point to avoid the Facepalm "I upgraded one year too early". Currently my sights are set on a serious look at Windows 8 due in two years.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
The question is, have you? It's not like they have to generate entirely new code here to support Windows XP...