... and nothing says Firefox can't just translate IE 6 CSS extensions in a compatible manner. Just because IE 5.5 box model renders text the right way doesn't mean anyone else is allowed to use it, but that rather that it should be compatible with the IE implementation.
He is a senior engineer according to his posts and thinks he knows what is best. I supported users before and consulted with migrations from Office 2k3 to Office2k10 and XP to WIndows 7.
I stand by my claim people need a reason to change and will fight you as the bad guy getting in the way of them doing their job to all so supperior MS Office. It is the same crowd who sees leaving 11 year old XP behind for the sake of change and wasting money is just that. LibreOffice needs to be better as these users love being locked into a standard everyone else uses. If it is a clone that is not quite as right and the few who are now used to ribbons and not menu's see it they will freak out and panic fearing they wont be able to do their job.
My argument with my ex showing me IE 7 with a smile is true too. I made her use Firefox and it took a good week before she stopped clicking the blue E even though FF is supperior. We may hate MS with a passion on this website but we look like abunch of crazy homeless guys ranting on in a strange dellusion to these folks. Make a better product and be different. THis is how Firefox the most successful opensource product won!
Part of the article dealt with employees complaining about it.
They felt it was inferior. I used my silly sig below because their were actual employees who had state of the art smart phones and used Firefox at home, but whinned like a baby and threatened to fire me if I dare upgraded their apps from IE 6 to a modern version because it was not percisely the same. Pffft.
These same users bitch about the ribbon YES. But if it is Microsoft they feel more comfortable (doesn't mean they fully agree) with the upgrade. LibreOffice after using the ribbon for a year will freak them out further as menu's are something they no longer do everyday and therefore a negative. If you have Office2k3 they will then complain about its quirkiness and the fact the menus are not identical enough to find everything.
It is a losing battle and every IT's nightmare. If you must upgrade using MS is a must! Want people to be less hostile? Make it a better mouse trap? Put things in that make it faster and do things with sleeknes and elegance that MS office does not. Otherwise why change what works?
Well if CEOs and PHBs at these beloved powerplants and other critical and potentially dangerous places didn't have PLC logic controllers and equipment to the live internet for their report generations and slick marketing videos by Allen Bradley we wouldn't need regulation!
They are not acting in the best interest of the public, but for their jobs getting reports to management. Not for the greater good. Yes, an attack is needed sadly to change this.
As has been pointed out many times on Slashdot, computers that control critical infrastructure are connected to the Internet more often than not, due to factors ranging from operator's creating unauthorized connections for personal convenience, to management wanting flashy real time reports to government regulations requiring offsite backup of process parameter data history.
Those PLCs on unpatched XP boxes are not secured on purpose due to retarded management. Sadly we need laws and an attack on the US wont be on websites but by these PLCs from the likes of Iran or someone else.
What is sad is an attack by Iran or anonymous will be needed and government intervention because the PHBs are stupid and retarded with their internet enabled report generations from the marketing videos.
PLCs and not website hacking is the biggest threat in which Iran wants to do out or revenge for Stuxnet.
I disagree. Intelligence reports to Iran utilizing PLCs with nuclear powerplants and energy on the the internet. If the reports are true they are insecure for PHBs and run non patched XP SP 2 then with horrible to no encryption then yes it is an easy target
I think also what I failed to emphasize more above is office politics (no pun intended). People hate change and with Office can do what they were doing before and it looks all pretty and familiar. Everyone I have shown LibreOffice hates it within a few seconds because it doesn't look exactly like Office.
I mentioned it needs to do something more substantial to entice people to switch.
The browser analogy is perfect. I showed my ex Firefox in 2006. She didn't like it at all initially. IE 7 just came out and she was showing me she had tabs too. After seeing how much quicker it was she started using it and within one week never touched that foul POS again. She was even happy when she got a new job and they had Firefox on all the computers and only then turned into an IE hater.
My point? Unless it does something new people will give into their fear of change and oppose it. My guess is the workers were the ones fighting for Office back and the government gave in. We had vendor lock-in too with the world wide web a decade ago too. It went away and will do so again if anything can get that magical 10% of the market. PDFs are the obvious replacements for now unfortunately.
MS Office 1. (Office politics... pun not intended) It means employees do not have to change and learn anything different 2. It reads other MS proprietary files better than anything else 3. It is less bloated 4. People who are now used to the ribbon do not have to learn a complex and ugly menu driven system
#1 sadly is what is keeping MS in just like the XP and Firefox 3.6 loyalists on here. Why change what isn't broken? People by nature fear change unless they fear the present more. If their job is secure they will fight tooth and nail to get you fired! My hunch is these employees were the ones who lobbied to go back to Office for that reason.
We saw the same situation with browsers and operating systems. People are just now warming up to the mac after being introduced to Apple products which would be nearly impossible a decade ago. Mozilla lost to IE 6 becuase people were used to IE 6. Why change again? Firefox had to be made after SeaMonkey failed which finally gave a reason to change. Even then it took years.
Offife works well with other systems on an enterpise network like SQL Server as well. Cut and pasting big CSV dumps is not as effective as native ODBC support for report generation.
THe internet was 40% IE 6 only in 2003/2004 too. Just like when.doc was the default file format. PDFs are gradually taking over and MS will loose its file compatibility format too.
I hate keep bringing up the Browser analogy (like the car one), but it is relevent. People wont change and will resist unless there is something in it for them to do so. Once Firefox had 10% to 15% of the market in 2008/2009 it quickly went up to 50% in 2-3 years! Why? Website makers gave up and supported it and now there was a reason to change.
RIght now if you build a better mousetrap all you need is 10% of people to use it. Once that happens it will balloon as the file compatility will be broken.
Better yet give users a reason to upgrade? No sense upgrading to something that already works for people who can't stand change. Especially if that change gives them a bad performance review if they can't figure something out?
MS Office has improved, but still has its bad formatting bugs in word, and quirkness in Outlook, but overall has added no new features in years. It is stagnant.
What could LibreOffice or OpenOffice offer that gives someone a reason to try it? Firefox is the most popular opensource app in existence! Is it because everyone hated IE 6? Or is it because it was a better browser, gave tabs, was more secure, and worked on other Macs as well as PCs?
Proof again that LibreOffice is no MS Office replacement.
It has been stated over and over again that without exact formatting and file compatibility it will not be useful. If you want people to switch you need to give them a reason. Make it lighter, faster, and features regular MS office doesn't have.
Under the same token Mozilla failed in the face of IE 6 too. It was not until they fixed the horrible Netscape rendering bugs (which were worse than IE 6 even) and made a "Firefox" fork that had tabs, security, and a much quicker and better renderer that people switched.
I have not used OpenOffice nor LibreOffice in a few years but what I do remember is it is behind the times with a menu and does not even have a ribbon yet. I know some people who are Office 2k3 and LibreOffice loyalists will jump on me on this! But, think of it from a users point of view who hate change? The ribbon is better once you learn how to use it and especially true if you are visual such as myself. Anything that looks different is threatening from a product everyone has used for 15 years. So why change?
I've been using Windows 8 for weeks. The start menu is now full screen instead of a button, which makes it easier for me to start my programs and the tiles provide information without having to open anything. My email, news, calendar, weather, and stocks all display what I want to know with no effort on my part. I think it is an improvement. I used to have to go to Start -> programs -> and search for my program's folder and try to click on the executable without clicking on the Help, Order, Uninstaller, or Read Me. Now, unless I click on All Apps, the start screen hides all that for me and I need only a single click to get what I need. Administration is easier with just a single right click in the lower left. Holy shit, why didn't someone do this sooner. The start menu is a giant pile of shit that I had to scroll though and search through. With Windows 7 I always created a new toolbar because the start menu sucked. Now I just click. What is your specific grip about it? How long have you used it? Are you a just karma whore?
It was done sooner! That was WIndows Vista that had all of that. The only reason I stuck through it rather than go back to XP... other than the school semester already started.
Windows 7 instant search is much better than 8's, as it does not require you to use the arrow keys to differentiate which is a file, program, or setting, and to top it off doesn't take the whole screen! If you had to add a second toolbar to your Windows 7 installation then you are doing it wrong and still thinking like it was XP.
Give Microsoft some credit? MS typically makes shitty clones of popular products. Windows 3.11 was an ugly clone and copy of the Mac. Nothing innovative. Netbios was their poor attempt of copying VMS networking technologies. Word was a copy of Wordperfect. Excel was bought and was a cheap clone of Lotus. IE a buggy clone of Netscape etc.
Windows 8, Surface, and Windows Phone, are innovative and new. Metro may suck on the desktop but I could use it on a phone or tablet. It is the first time in recent memory that MS is actually trying something new and different.
Maybe non power users and hipsters will like it? We are just old and set in our ways, but for most uses a tiny tablet that has a keyboard attachment and a tile UI is innovative.
MS is no longer the monster riding on IBMs monopoly. MS has never faced competition like this before. It was their nightmare of the internet multiplied over by apps and devices that use the internet as their platform which has the inertia to compete. What does MS have to gain by making poor knockoffs? Nothing.
I am using it rignt now replying in this post. Pulling teeth?
I have the gradients here on slashdot. In addition, I have the rounded corners, the javascript, the baloon on the bottom and it is smooth and fast. In IE 8 I have none of that and a limited javascript run cough Jscript cough to change the comments, rough corners, and it is chop chop chop with more than 50 comments etc.
In other words from where I am it, it performs no different than Chrome or Firefox. I ran FutureMarks HTML 5 benchmark peacekeeper after I disabled webGL from Chrome and FF and did a test. IE 10 beat Chrome! Firefox was 1st place. All in all they were all within 10% of each other.
It is not 2001 anymore. I am curious to what web developers have to say and this is welcome news for you too. I want my gradients and HTML 5 but can't because XP users are still stuck on IE 8. This is great news for anyone who uses the world wide web.
Chrome is doing this harder than anyone with its own cloud based ecosystem. All your history, bookmarks, passwords, GDrive, all in Chrome only! Websites that require Chrome are popping up.
So far IE is being nice because it has too. Also Microsofts incentive is to create a great METRO environment in which it needs bug free graphically rich applets in HTML 5 and CSS 3. Think you can make it look pretty without gradients in a shitty IE 6 rendering engine? Ha! Developers would give up after the text would be all over the place.
IE 10 is shaping up pretty nicely and is usable if you really have to use it now.
Young people 5 years ago HATED IT as they remember IE 6 and how fucked up it was, but with newer verions not sucking why change? Old people use it who do not know what HTML is or CSS. The blue E is the internet etc!
IE always will be the most popular browser whether you like it or not. It works! Might as well be happy it acts like everyone else on the playground now so webmasters can move on and we can finally give a reason for XP loyalists who use IE to leave so we can finally enjoy HTML 5! Yes slashdot is HTML 4 becaue of these users who refuse to upgrade and who do not know what a browser is too or do not care because it is what they used for 10 years.
FOr the haters I have to say try it? You do not have to use it but it is at least in the same ballpark as the other browsers.
Basically HTML5test does not test just the HTML 5 spec by W3C.It tests things the authors think is cool on web mailing lists as well as WhatG.
So W3C is dividing it into HTML 5 and CSS 3 and its.1 counterparts for the more experimental things which HTML5test.com look at. Whatg tries to put it all together in html 5 and css 3. That is the confusion.
Webworkers (example) are HTML 5.1 which IE 10 does support so technically IE 10 is very HTML 5 compliant and partially 5.1. If you look at Firefox 16, IE 10 supports 90% of the same standards! That is pretty good as the 448 is for things not implemented in draft yet. Compared to ancient IE it is excellent!
Now if we could get the corps to upgrade and the grandmas we can finally develop more modern sites!
I disagree. THe download Firefox page renders much better and downloads quicker than ever!... on a more serious note I notice a big difference in smoothness. As an experiment open Chrome and use the up and down arrows on www.slashdot.org? Now do the same with IE 9? One is smooth with a few chops. The other is chop chop chop. Firefox is starting to enable this by default too which is now.
Sites that have tons of pictures like entertainment mag sites are best with IE 9 for that reason. While Chrome is best for lots of ajax. IE 10 ties this.
Slashdot Mirror
... and nothing says Firefox can't just translate IE 6 CSS extensions in a compatible manner. Just because IE 5.5 box model renders text the right way doesn't mean anyone else is allowed to use it, but that rather that it should be compatible with the IE implementation.
He is a troll. Why bother?
He is a senior engineer according to his posts and thinks he knows what is best. I supported users before and consulted with migrations from Office 2k3 to Office2k10 and XP to WIndows 7.
I stand by my claim people need a reason to change and will fight you as the bad guy getting in the way of them doing their job to all so supperior MS Office. It is the same crowd who sees leaving 11 year old XP behind for the sake of change and wasting money is just that. LibreOffice needs to be better as these users love being locked into a standard everyone else uses. If it is a clone that is not quite as right and the few who are now used to ribbons and not menu's see it they will freak out and panic fearing they wont be able to do their job.
My argument with my ex showing me IE 7 with a smile is true too. I made her use Firefox and it took a good week before she stopped clicking the blue E even though FF is supperior. We may hate MS with a passion on this website but we look like abunch of crazy homeless guys ranting on in a strange dellusion to these folks. Make a better product and be different. THis is how Firefox the most successful opensource product won!
Part of the article dealt with employees complaining about it.
They felt it was inferior. I used my silly sig below because their were actual employees who had state of the art smart phones and used Firefox at home, but whinned like a baby and threatened to fire me if I dare upgraded their apps from IE 6 to a modern version because it was not percisely the same. Pffft.
These same users bitch about the ribbon YES. But if it is Microsoft they feel more comfortable (doesn't mean they fully agree) with the upgrade. LibreOffice after using the ribbon for a year will freak them out further as menu's are something they no longer do everyday and therefore a negative. If you have Office2k3 they will then complain about its quirkiness and the fact the menus are not identical enough to find everything.
It is a losing battle and every IT's nightmare. If you must upgrade using MS is a must! Want people to be less hostile? Make it a better mouse trap? Put things in that make it faster and do things with sleeknes and elegance that MS office does not. Otherwise why change what works?
"Sorry, but hahahahahahaha you are fucking stoopid"
Yet, smart enough to know it is spelled stupid.
Well if CEOs and PHBs at these beloved powerplants and other critical and potentially dangerous places didn't have PLC logic controllers and equipment to the live internet for their report generations and slick marketing videos by Allen Bradley we wouldn't need regulation!
They are not acting in the best interest of the public, but for their jobs getting reports to management. Not for the greater good. Yes, an attack is needed sadly to change this.
As has been pointed out many times on Slashdot, computers that control critical infrastructure are connected to the Internet more often than not, due to factors ranging from operator's creating unauthorized connections for personal convenience, to management wanting flashy real time reports to government regulations requiring offsite backup of process parameter data history.
Those PLCs on unpatched XP boxes are not secured on purpose due to retarded management. Sadly we need laws and an attack on the US wont be on websites but by these PLCs from the likes of Iran or someone else.
What is sad is an attack by Iran or anonymous will be needed and government intervention because the PHBs are stupid and retarded with their internet enabled report generations from the marketing videos.
PLCs and not website hacking is the biggest threat in which Iran wants to do out or revenge for Stuxnet.
I disagree. Intelligence reports to Iran utilizing PLCs with nuclear powerplants and energy on the the internet. If the reports are true they are insecure for PHBs and run non patched XP SP 2 then with horrible to no encryption then yes it is an easy target
I think also what I failed to emphasize more above is office politics (no pun intended). People hate change and with Office can do what they were doing before and it looks all pretty and familiar. Everyone I have shown LibreOffice hates it within a few seconds because it doesn't look exactly like Office.
I mentioned it needs to do something more substantial to entice people to switch.
The browser analogy is perfect. I showed my ex Firefox in 2006. She didn't like it at all initially. IE 7 just came out and she was showing me she had tabs too. After seeing how much quicker it was she started using it and within one week never touched that foul POS again. She was even happy when she got a new job and they had Firefox on all the computers and only then turned into an IE hater.
My point? Unless it does something new people will give into their fear of change and oppose it. My guess is the workers were the ones fighting for Office back and the government gave in. We had vendor lock-in too with the world wide web a decade ago too. It went away and will do so again if anything can get that magical 10% of the market. PDFs are the obvious replacements for now unfortunately.
MS Office ... pun not intended) It means employees do not have to change and learn anything different
1. (Office politics
2. It reads other MS proprietary files better than anything else
3. It is less bloated
4. People who are now used to the ribbon do not have to learn a complex and ugly menu driven system
#1 sadly is what is keeping MS in just like the XP and Firefox 3.6 loyalists on here. Why change what isn't broken? People by nature fear change unless they fear the present more. If their job is secure they will fight tooth and nail to get you fired! My hunch is these employees were the ones who lobbied to go back to Office for that reason.
We saw the same situation with browsers and operating systems. People are just now warming up to the mac after being introduced to Apple products which would be nearly impossible a decade ago. Mozilla lost to IE 6 becuase people were used to IE 6. Why change again? Firefox had to be made after SeaMonkey failed which finally gave a reason to change. Even then it took years.
Offife works well with other systems on an enterpise network like SQL Server as well. Cut and pasting big CSV dumps is not as effective as native ODBC support for report generation.
THe internet was 40% IE 6 only in 2003/2004 too. Just like when .doc was the default file format. PDFs are gradually taking over and MS will loose its file compatibility format too.
I hate keep bringing up the Browser analogy (like the car one), but it is relevent. People wont change and will resist unless there is something in it for them to do so. Once Firefox had 10% to 15% of the market in 2008/2009 it quickly went up to 50% in 2-3 years! Why? Website makers gave up and supported it and now there was a reason to change.
RIght now if you build a better mousetrap all you need is 10% of people to use it. Once that happens it will balloon as the file compatility will be broken.
Better yet give users a reason to upgrade? No sense upgrading to something that already works for people who can't stand change. Especially if that change gives them a bad performance review if they can't figure something out?
MS Office has improved, but still has its bad formatting bugs in word, and quirkness in Outlook, but overall has added no new features in years. It is stagnant.
What could LibreOffice or OpenOffice offer that gives someone a reason to try it? Firefox is the most popular opensource app in existence! Is it because everyone hated IE 6? Or is it because it was a better browser, gave tabs, was more secure, and worked on other Macs as well as PCs?
Proof again that LibreOffice is no MS Office replacement.
It has been stated over and over again that without exact formatting and file compatibility it will not be useful. If you want people to switch you need to give them a reason. Make it lighter, faster, and features regular MS office doesn't have.
Under the same token Mozilla failed in the face of IE 6 too. It was not until they fixed the horrible Netscape rendering bugs (which were worse than IE 6 even) and made a "Firefox" fork that had tabs, security, and a much quicker and better renderer that people switched.
I have not used OpenOffice nor LibreOffice in a few years but what I do remember is it is behind the times with a menu and does not even have a ribbon yet. I know some people who are Office 2k3 and LibreOffice loyalists will jump on me on this! But, think of it from a users point of view who hate change? The ribbon is better once you learn how to use it and especially true if you are visual such as myself. Anything that looks different is threatening from a product everyone has used for 15 years. So why change?
I've been using Windows 8 for weeks. The start menu is now full screen instead of a button, which makes it easier for me to start my programs and the tiles provide information without having to open anything. My email, news, calendar, weather, and stocks all display what I want to know with no effort on my part. I think it is an improvement. I used to have to go to Start -> programs -> and search for my program's folder and try to click on the executable without clicking on the Help, Order, Uninstaller, or Read Me. Now, unless I click on All Apps, the start screen hides all that for me and I need only a single click to get what I need. Administration is easier with just a single right click in the lower left. Holy shit, why didn't someone do this sooner. The start menu is a giant pile of shit that I had to scroll though and search through. With Windows 7 I always created a new toolbar because the start menu sucked. Now I just click. What is your specific grip about it? How long have you used it? Are you a just karma whore?
It was done sooner! That was WIndows Vista that had all of that. The only reason I stuck through it rather than go back to XP ... other than the school semester already started.
Windows 7 instant search is much better than 8's, as it does not require you to use the arrow keys to differentiate which is a file, program, or setting, and to top it off doesn't take the whole screen! If you had to add a second toolbar to your Windows 7 installation then you are doing it wrong and still thinking like it was XP.
Give Microsoft some credit? MS typically makes shitty clones of popular products. Windows 3.11 was an ugly clone and copy of the Mac. Nothing innovative. Netbios was their poor attempt of copying VMS networking technologies. Word was a copy of Wordperfect. Excel was bought and was a cheap clone of Lotus. IE a buggy clone of Netscape etc.
Windows 8, Surface, and Windows Phone, are innovative and new. Metro may suck on the desktop but I could use it on a phone or tablet. It is the first time in recent memory that MS is actually trying something new and different.
Maybe non power users and hipsters will like it? We are just old and set in our ways, but for most uses a tiny tablet that has a keyboard attachment and a tile UI is innovative.
MS is no longer the monster riding on IBMs monopoly. MS has never faced competition like this before. It was their nightmare of the internet multiplied over by apps and devices that use the internet as their platform which has the inertia to compete. What does MS have to gain by making poor knockoffs? Nothing.
I am using it rignt now replying in this post. Pulling teeth?
I have the gradients here on slashdot. In addition, I have the rounded corners, the javascript, the baloon on the bottom and it is smooth and fast. In IE 8 I have none of that and a limited javascript run cough Jscript cough to change the comments, rough corners, and it is chop chop chop with more than 50 comments etc.
In other words from where I am it, it performs no different than Chrome or Firefox. I ran FutureMarks HTML 5 benchmark peacekeeper after I disabled webGL from Chrome and FF and did a test. IE 10 beat Chrome! Firefox was 1st place. All in all they were all within 10% of each other.
It is not 2001 anymore. I am curious to what web developers have to say and this is welcome news for you too. I want my gradients and HTML 5 but can't because XP users are still stuck on IE 8. This is great news for anyone who uses the world wide web.
Chrome is doing this harder than anyone with its own cloud based ecosystem. All your history, bookmarks, passwords, GDrive, all in Chrome only! Websites that require Chrome are popping up.
So far IE is being nice because it has too. Also Microsofts incentive is to create a great METRO environment in which it needs bug free graphically rich applets in HTML 5 and CSS 3. Think you can make it look pretty without gradients in a shitty IE 6 rendering engine? Ha! Developers would give up after the text would be all over the place.
IE 10 is shaping up pretty nicely and is usable if you really have to use it now.
SVG support is implemented fully. The gradients are all W3C compliant in IE 10. Your post is a great reason to upgrade and encourage others to do so.
Fixed in IE 8. That is an old IE 6 trick with an alpha png.
Young people use IE 9 surprisingly.
Young people 5 years ago HATED IT as they remember IE 6 and how fucked up it was, but with newer verions not sucking why change? Old people use it who do not know what HTML is or CSS. The blue E is the internet etc!
IE always will be the most popular browser whether you like it or not. It works! Might as well be happy it acts like everyone else on the playground now so webmasters can move on and we can finally give a reason for XP loyalists who use IE to leave so we can finally enjoy HTML 5! Yes slashdot is HTML 4 becaue of these users who refuse to upgrade and who do not know what a browser is too or do not care because it is what they used for 10 years.
FOr the haters I have to say try it? You do not have to use it but it is at least in the same ballpark as the other browsers.
It is dying and according to g.statcounter.com it represents less than MacOSX users! Time to let it retire as even Firefox and Chrome are retiring it.
Why is this modded flamebait?
Basically HTML5test does not test just the HTML 5 spec by W3C.It tests things the authors think is cool on web mailing lists as well as WhatG.
So W3C is dividing it into HTML 5 and CSS 3 and its .1 counterparts for the more experimental things which HTML5test.com look at. Whatg tries to put it all together in html 5 and css 3. That is the confusion.
Webworkers (example) are HTML 5.1 which IE 10 does support so technically IE 10 is very HTML 5 compliant and partially 5.1. If you look at Firefox 16, IE 10 supports 90% of the same standards! That is pretty good as the 448 is for things not implemented in draft yet. Compared to ancient IE it is excellent!
Now if we could get the corps to upgrade and the grandmas we can finally develop more modern sites!
I disagree. THe download Firefox page renders much better and downloads quicker than ever! ... on a more serious note I notice a big difference in smoothness. As an experiment open Chrome and use the up and down arrows on www.slashdot.org? Now do the same with IE 9? One is smooth with a few chops. The other is chop chop chop. Firefox is starting to enable this by default too which is now.
Sites that have tons of pictures like entertainment mag sites are best with IE 9 for that reason. While Chrome is best for lots of ajax. IE 10 ties this.
What's so complex about "burning hatred"?
When you get all those overtime bonuses for having to make it work in IE6?
RIght here?