Microsoft Is Planning To Renew IE Development 525
jm.one writes "In his weblog the Mozilla developer Gervase Markham (aka Gerv) points out that Microsoft is re-constituting the Windows IE team. You can save Mozillazine's bandwidth(they've been /.ed every day this week) by directly checking out this post at Dave Massy's WebLog at MSDN.
They even have set up an IE Feedback section in their channel9 wiki."
The best solution for everyone (except Opera) (Score:5, Interesting)
And how exactly (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And how exactly (Score:5, Funny)
it might shave off a couple of their Douchebag Points.
Re:Yes there is (Score:4, Interesting)
Or better "integration" with Office products (for example, determining filetype based on magic numbers/file extensions instead of filetype).. Things like that.
Re:Uh-uh (Score:5, Interesting)
Imagine having to tell our users (many of which are using GNU/Linux or Macintosh) that our web site only works reliably in Windows with Internet Explorer 6.0 and above. Just because a PR agency can't develop web pages. It's impossible. I had to do something about it.
So when I implemented the layout for our department (scheduled to go live later this month), I scrapped everything they had done. I took a printout of their page (as it looked in Internet Explorer) and marked up what colors and fonts they had used.
Then I set down and wrote the same thing using XHTML/1.0 Strict and CSS1. This was about two days work, but the finished result now validates using w3c's validate tools, and it works reliably in all browsers I've managed to try, all the way back to Mosaic and Netscape 3, with or without images (yes, Lynx, Links, w3 and other text browsers work very well indeed too).
Not only did I get the pages to validate. By using CSS, I was able to get rid of several images they had been using with their design. The overall size of a page, including graphics and CSS, now weighs in at about 35 kbytes. This is compared to around 120 kbytes with the proposed code.
And even better, most things can be cached by the browser (CSS code and images). The only thing that needs reloading when you hit subsequent pages is the dynamic XHTML code, which weighs in at around 5 kbytes, compares to 40 kbytes in the proposed code.
Now, I think our students will like us. This result is even better than the pages that we have today. They render quickly and effortlessly even on old equipment or on extremely slow links.
I havn't been able to convince the faculty to make my code the "default" yet, but they might get the idea once people start noticing that our pages load much more quickly than the rest of the faculty pages.
So, using standards isn't always about making things render nicely in all browsers. It gives you a while heap of nice side effects that isn't worth sneezing at.
Re:Uh-uh (Score:3, Interesting)
IMHO, many or most of the web developers available today don't know how to develop web page with good compatibility and accessibility is because of their arrogance and ignorance, and partially, lack of good guidance of web developing.
However, we are all arrogant and ignorant, nobody can change this. So a good guide of web developing is the solution to the problem.
But the web was constructed in such a quick manner that most of the developers are not well trained. I bet, third of the web developers around t
Re:Uh-uh (Score:4, Insightful)
My first web page (not site) was done in Netscape 1.x.
I remember bitching when there were more things to learn when Netscape 2 came out.
Most developers do not have a firm grasp on how the www works.
- Was designed to render in ANY browser
- That browser may be text based
- That browser my not support any font attributes.
- Your text will be rendered in a text area of arbritrary size, the end users browser, not the author of the page has control over how the page renders.
- Firmly grasp the concept of open tags and closed tags
- Then understand what is possible with the html 1 spec
- Then learn how to add html 2 attributes to your page, and do so, in a manner that they fail gracefully on a browser that only supports html 1
- Then learn to add html 3 attributes and css level 1 attributes and how to have them gracefully fail on browsers that only support html 2 or html 1 spec.
- Learn how to make your fonts cross-browser compatible. I.E. so they render at a viewable size under default settings on IE Windows/Mac, as well as with geco based browers.
- Now, keeping in mind that some people are on dial up, or are using text only browers, start to do all your page layout with css 1.
Most "web developers" have never coded for the html 1.0 spec. The do not understand that a web browser was originally designed to render content, not deliver adverising and pixpel perfect rendered graphical pages.If you understand what is in each html spec and how these features were added, it is not to bad creating comaptible pages.
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Re:Uh-uh (Score:4, Insightful)
Bandwidth actually costs money - If I were to pay for international traffic at my current hosting center, 68GB would cost me dkk 2040 - or roughly $330.
$330 for two days of work is not too bad for a student imho.
AND - you assume everyone is using a 10Mb line - on a 56Kb modem the load time would be reduce from 24 seconds to 7 seconds - and with those numbers only 3389 pageloads would be needed to get a net time "profit"
Further proof (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Further proof (Score:5, Insightful)
Not really. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is still just a single example, so maybe I should have used the word "evidence" instead of "proof". But when you look at the repeated examples over the years, it becomes proof.
I can't wait for OpenOffice to become a viable product so that we'll finally see the end to the total lack of improvement that has marked MS-Office development since WordPerfect died.
Re:Not really. (Score:4, Interesting)
I love it because a 300 page document that MSWord one day refused to open having been editing it fine for months, opened in OO, and when I saved it out again it opened fine in MSWord with no difference from the original. I use OO 90% of the time now.
I 8> OO!
Re:Not really. (Score:3, Informative)
It's heavy, granted, but it's very cleanly done (specially when compared to MS-Word and Wordperfect, not so against Lotus' WordPro).
It's pretty by himself (though heavy, as I said), but one can make it look even better (see projects to adapt it to Gnome and KDE).
Could it be lighter? I don't know, but not loading the entire suite would help. MS-Office, besides the Windows startup pre-load, doesn't load Excel when Word is summoned up (or at least I've rea
Re:Not really. (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, I still want to load it faster, take less footprint in my system, be with more apps, be more correct, support much of Microsoft closed doc format. BUT I know that If I will (or at least 5% of those people who use it everyday) will help developers with bug reports and suggestions, I think it will succeed and everyone will love it.
So, actually, you are wrong. I love it because I see what it can became. In other corner, Microsoft Office have been stagnating for years. And each next version requires newer Windows version for perfect work, etc.
Re:Not really. (Score:3, Informative)
I could not disagree with you LESS.
Open Office does EVERYTHING I ask of it. However, the dear MS Office solution has a few minor problems (that Open Office doesn't). This includes
a) The ability to draw objects (circles/lines/etc.) that don't jump 20 pages away
b) The ability to count the correct number of pages (page counting??)
c) A normal.dot that works on any system i've ever seen
d) Reliable compatibility between different major revisions of Microsoft Office [eg. 97/2000/2003 are not
I do. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Not really. (Score:3, Interesting)
speak for yourself. or at least change that to "at least one person, and possibly more, absolutely loves openoffice." that one person being me.
compare the math editing capabilities of openoffice and ms office and you will realize which is the goodEnoughWare.
i've gotten a whole letter grade 'raise' simply because my take home CS exam (which involved math eqns.) was typeset *much* better than the exam itself. the prof was using ms word. i used oo.o (i used to use latex/emacs but o
Re:Not really. (Score:3, Insightful)
It is in response to anti-Microsoft FUD. Some of the insults/complaints thrown at Microsoft around here are completely ridiculous imho. Two of the most popular complaints are that Microsoft creates bloatware, and that they force users into a strict upgrade cycle. How many other companies are actively supporting products that came out 6 years ago? When Longhorn comes out, its going to scale very well to the hardware (i.e
Re:Not really. (Score:3, Insightful)
The same could be said for the Unices of Sun, IBM, HP, SGI, etc (though they support their old systems usually); but like Apple, none of these are Monopolies. When a company has a
Re:Not really. (Score:4, Interesting)
I have just tried it in OOo 1.1.0 on my Windoze XP box, which is not up to date, seems OK to me, but it might depend on a lot of factors. I can't try the Linux box right now, as I am in the middle of upgrading to SuSE 9.1. I just made up 3 columns, the first filled with numbers, which became X values, the second and third had formulae applied to give me two diverging curves. Your situation may of course have been more complex.
I was using OOo at work a year ago (I had a very enlightened boss who did not care what I used, and an IT department who did not care what I loaded as long as I did not break the network), and the anomalies were few and far between. I used to do all the spreadsheet editing in OOo and then convert the final work to Excel. It did involve graphs with more than one series.
You could submit a bug report, it might get fixed fairly quickly, or at least in the next major release.
Some Excel bugs are still there from the first version! Some even cause serious data loss.
I currently work on a "secure", or rather, independent, network, detatched from everything else, so that our work cannot be corrupted. (BTW it is very pleasant working that way, no spam on the main work PC! Every company should have one for their real work.) We have to independently verify all calculations (safety-critical), if done by hand they will be checked manually by another engineer. Those done by spreadsheet also have to be checked, the calculations performed by the spreadsheet cannot be trusted as it is an unvalidated tool. It is probable that we will be using OOo to do the checking, it will read the same input data, and hopefully produce the same answers as Excel, but as Excel is closed-source there can be no commonality of code, so no common errors. (We do have to check what maths libraries OOo uses, if complied with Visual C++ we may instead have to use the Linux version, or recompile with a different compiler, to get true independence).
Re:Further proof (Score:3, Insightful)
Viability (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Further proof (Score:3, Informative)
I'm using Linux (Fedora) and Mozilla Firefox right now. Thunderbird for email. And I have Windows XP, Office XP, Visual Studio.NET, etc. and have barely touched them since my switch to Linux. I use Visual Studio when required for homework assignments, and Microsoft products at work, but that's it.
OpenOffice is a little too slow for me personally. I use it when I need to,
Re:Further proof (Score:4, Insightful)
Boy-oh-boy, are you in for a rude awakening. You think code-monkeys have much say in the product development cycle?
You'll get a taste of the real world sooner or later.
Thoughts about Mozilla, Firefox, Internet Explorer (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Thoughts about Mozilla, Firefox, Internet Explo (Score:3, Interesting)
FireFox is just the latest one, and it is still up to the test of time, and many more beta testers, before FireFox makes it to the forefront of the browser world or at least a share bigger than 1/5.
Re:Thoughts about Mozilla, Firefox, Internet Explo (Score:4, Insightful)
You are (I hope) thinking of IE2. IE3 compared quite favourably to Navigator 3.0, the latters only major advantages being incumbency and an integrated HTML editor in the Gold Edition.
Re:Thoughts about Mozilla, Firefox, Internet Explo (Score:5, Insightful)
I am a happy Windows XP user (heresy!!!) I used to use Internet Explorer and Outlook Express, and even though I occassionally boot my Fedora Core 2 install, there are many things that I don't know or don't care to fix (in addition to many others I've fixed already) to be a Linux user.
However... My IE takes around 6 seconds (proxy resolution) to render the home page. If I open the browser and want to type an URL to go somewhere else than the home page, I'd better do it before the 6 seconds elapse, or... Pfft!!! It erases all I've written and displays the home page URL!
This simple thing motivated me to install FireFox on my computer. I've been long using OpenOffice.org, The GIMP and many other tools under Windows but didn't want to relinquish IE. This was two months ago, tell you what? I forgot when I last fired Internet Explorer.
I downloaded Thunderbird 0.7 last week...
Bottom line, don't use something because everyone else uses it, and conversely, don't use FOSS just because. Just give the software a try and see for yourself, I guarantee you'll be pleased and nothing wrong will happen
Re:Thoughts about Mozilla, Firefox, Internet Explo (Score:3, Insightful)
They should give the alternatives a try, like you I think they will be pleased with what they find. But, people can have strange prejudices......
Fuck tabs (Score:5, Insightful)
Too much to ask?
Re:Fuck tabs (Score:5, Interesting)
These are all features that Firefox has and that I like, and until most of them have been implemented I see no reason to switch back.
Re:Fuck tabs (Score:5, Informative)
On the simple end, you can set a bitmap as the background of IE's toolbars. On the complex end, you can completely rewrite the UI (see MyIE2, Avant Browser, etc.).
And software plug-ins that block images.
There's no technical reason such a plugin doesn't exist today. IE exposes an interface that you can use to capture and modify/deny a request for everything it loads, including images. If you prefer going all out, IE itself can disable all images.
And making it possible to use the address bar to search from Google, *not* MSN.
Easily done. How else do you think all that spyware out there hijacks your browser's default search preferences?
Making it so that if I click on the back button while posting to Slashdot my post is still there.
Tools > Internet Options > Temporary Internet Files > Settings... > Change the value from "Automatically" to "Every time I start Internet Explorer".
You've got a couple valid points with your other items -- the ActiveX one in particular is already addressed in XP SP2, in fact.
Re:Fuck tabs (Score:3, Insightful)
The same reason (most of us) don't wear black t-shirts seven days a week, or sometimes rearrange the look or the actual desktop we sit behind. It's nice to have a little variety in the appearnce of something that's going to be looked at for a large amount of time every day.
Re:Fuck tabs (Score:3, Interesting)
'fixed background' is a particularly glaring example, but I've also had MSIE
Re:Fuck tabs (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes. It is crucial to Microsoft's strategy that they not do that. See here [livejournal.com] for example.
Re:Fuck tabs (Score:3, Interesting)
If he's right, what would be a threat is fixing all the bugs in the jscript implementation, providing mechanisms that allow better user interfaces to be developed (e.g. adding anything similar to XUL), or anything along those lines. Microsoft aren't against browser-based applications. But they want you to use ActiveX (or any other technology nobody else has) to achieve it.
Re:Fuck tabs (Score:5, Informative)
So microsoft ... (Score:5, Funny)
We now know their evil plan
I have a suggestion... (Score:5, Insightful)
patch the holes that make malware so easy to infect a machine so my job's a whole lot fucking easier.
- every goddamn ISP tech support staff.
Re:I have a suggestion... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I have a suggestion... (Score:3)
What, and kill the ant-eye-virus and security industry overnight? :-) Surely Bill isn't that cruel?
Re:I have a suggestion... (Score:3, Funny)
Pop-up blocking in MSIE is bad for us (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Pop-up blocking in MSIE is bad for us (Score:5, Insightful)
that's the little difference!
Re:Pop-up blocking in MSIE is bad for us (Score:3, Informative)
I've been using a firefox extension that stops all flash animations from starting and replace it with a box to click on to start the animation so I don't get any anoying flash ads.
Re:Pop-up blocking in MSIE is bad for us (Score:5, Informative)
Until people somehow become more intelligent, SPAM and Popups are not going to go away.
Advertisers wouldn't find ways around popup blockers if the popups didn't prove profitable.
I'm just saying, I hate them too, but hey if they work, they work.
Re:Pop-up blocking in MSIE is bad for us (Score:3, Insightful)
popups are successful, however probably only to the people out there that dont care about them. people who go out of their way to block them (and yes blocking is off by default in SP2) are just going to be annoyed at the whole deal. i say you can keep popups but dont try to find fancy ways around them. one recent thing ive seen is when you click on a link, it also has has a popup in the mouseup attribute which brings up a window. damn annoying and i refuse to ever buy anything advertised in one of those win
Re:Pop-up blocking in MSIE is bad for us (Score:4, Insightful)
So would forcing me to watch 10 minutes of commercials before what I want appears. Think of the trailers at the movies.
It may "work" but it sure as hell doesn't make me want to visit or do business with those people. For example, I knew full well that the Punisher movie was coming out and all the PR and the crappy trailer sealed the deal: i'm not even going to rent it.
The more aggressive your marketing the more hits you'll get, but remember a lot of those will be from people accidentally clicking on your ad, being forced to pass through it, or from people with very low tech skills thinking its part of the site they are visiting. Heck, all the pop-ups I've seen lately misuse words like 'upgrade' and 'patch' to fool more people into visiting these sites.
There's a real cost with doing aggressive marketing and the blowback is already here with pop-up blockers and angry web users, not to mention the hate of spyware. I hope your business isn't put on some blacklist in the near future for 'malicious advertising.'
Good, I think (Score:5, Interesting)
The positive of this is that the world gets an improved Internet Exploder^H^H^Hrer and Microsoft is adding new jobs. I think that's a win for everyone.
However, my question is why is Microsoft going to great lengths to improve Internet Explorer? Though they could lose browser market share, they haven't yet. The vast majority of desktops running Windows use Internet Explorer, flaws and all. Also, Microsoft doesn't really have much to gain by revamping IE. There's not much money to be made in the browser business anymore. It's not about the browser that is used online, so much as it is the content people are viewing. As long as Microsoft's patented
Re:Good, I think (Score:4, Insightful)
I believe there is a piece of the puzzle we are missing here. I'm sure that many companies out there would like to do more with their websites, but can't because of the many problems with IE. There must be some companies out there who are MS-friendly that have been telling MS "Can we please get transparent pngs? Oh, and we've been trying to make our new site (with obligatory MS portal) look nice with CSS but IE is not capable of it, and is blocking our development."
Although I believe MS is a bit concerned about losing market share, I doubt that is a motivator. The competing browsers are light years ahead of IE and they have yet to make a significant impact on the number of IE users. It would take a browser going ludicrous speed to make MS revamp IE based on market share alone.
It's even possible there are some MS friendly companies that have secretly been wishing they could make their websites useful for both Windows and (gasp!) those techy Linux gurus.
Re:Good, I think (Score:5, Insightful)
BTW IE is losing market share to Mozilla, though at the moment, the numbers are pretty small.
Re:Good, I think (Score:3, Informative)
what I see looking at the Google Zeitgeist [google.com] is a steady upward trend for IE 6 since 2002 and overwealming dominance in 2004.
Hmmm (Score:4, Funny)
Kinda ironic eh?
Window sizing (Score:4, Insightful)
Provide user options to kill popups
Don't allow friggin' Drive By Downloads!
Support all W3C standards. Deprecate all your proprietary extensions.
Oh Dear (Score:4, Insightful)
I can say though that somewhat vague requests for "better standards support" are not as useful as a specific example of what you'd like to see changed and specifically why it would improve things. - Dave Massey
What part of "better standards support" does he think is too vague? Does this guy need it spelling out to him or what (rhetorical question by the way)!
Re:Oh Dear (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally I have no interest in Microsoft products being improved upon, and I will not be contributing to the "How can we make IE better?" parade.
People at Microsoft must understand the following:
If the people at Microsoft don
Re:Oh Dear (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh yeah, those are real specfic, that's why none of the browsers out there could agree on how exactly to interpret them.
"How much more fucking specific can you get?"
Are you kidding? You're not even CLOSE to being specific. Specific is when you take the behaviour of a specific tag under certain conditions and describe why it is not acting correctly. That is fucking specific. Your example was about as specific as saying Star Trek sucks.
They could at least *try*. (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh come on. People have been pointing out specifics for bloody ages. They have even started emulating a more standards compliant browser [edwards.name] using the IE engine.
Obviously it will never be perfect. Though, with the developer resources available to Microsoft, MSIE should actually be the most standards compliant browser ever. But they simply don't care. People want them to care and at lea
Standards and STANDARDS. (Score:3, Insightful)
What people want is that Microsoft would fix what's already there. Why have they left their CSS implementation broken for so long?
Sure, no browser is 100% bug free, but they could at least get the basics right, such as the CSS box model.
Darn! I woke them up!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Right now, I am hacking away on an article about browser competition on the desktop and how Firefox is gaining ground. Now this! Well, looks like we have reached the point where Microsoft copies OpenSource innovation. It used to be the other way round. That's the good part. Another upside is that there is still time left. Longhorn is far away, and if SP2 is any indication than there won't be another major update to WinXP in reasonable time. But still, the giant woke up. And Microsoft is though competition to say the least...
Standards support? (Score:3, Informative)
I can say though that somewhat vague requests for "better standards support" are not as useful as a specific example of what you'd like to see changed and specifically why it would improve things.
New Longhorn IE (Score:5, Interesting)
From using Internet Explorer on a recent Longhorn build, my prediction is that Microsoft plans to add more features rather than support web standards. Thus far they've added Firefox/Opera-esque features like a download manager, pop-up blocking, and a "Clear Browsing Records" menu option. Perhaps tabbed browsing is next? It looks like they will keep adding options until IE is comparable to its competitors, but with regards to web standards I doubt Microsoft will have interest.
Re:New Longhorn IE (Score:3, Interesting)
Probably not. IE's ways of interpreting HTML is a de-facto standard. As long as it works, MS is going to put its energy into other aspects. If it's really that bad (from my own web development experience, it's not.) then the others have two options: 1.) Mimic IE. 2.) Create new interesting web features and lead the parade instead of followin
Upgrade today! (Score:4, Funny)
Enjoy
ho-hum (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately, I would believe there is a better chance that they will instead incorporate a bunch of elements above and beyond standards compliance, that ties a user into IE and Longhorn combo, trying yet again to lock out other web browsers.
Microsoft has seemingly lowered it's self another step.
They used to be a company that copied exisiting technology and made it "good enough", if slightly annoying. Now, they are turning into a reactionary company, trying to play catch up to existing software with some future release.
Internet Explorer Upgrades (Score:3, Insightful)
Re-constituting??? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not any news of anything special. Each version, there's something new planned. Whether or not that sees the light of day is another thing.
The IE team has lived for a long time and will continue to live. The IE team is probably always changing as people move to it and other people move off it.
If someone said "I'm changing roles from Office to Longhorn" does that mean that Office is now dead and Longhorn just now got re-constituted? No. What if it's a big guy on the totem pole? No.
Standards support (Score:5, Insightful)
It's pretty obvious why a web standards [webstandards.org] compliant IE would improve things (google: web standards). Oh, but it wouldn't allow Microsoft to extend the web anymore with stupid proprietry shit. I guess they're right out the window then.
I seriously doubt IE7 will be compliant. It would be nice, for sure, but given Microsoft's history it's extremely unlikely.
Re:Standards support (Score:3, Insightful)
I seriously doubt IE7 will be compliant. It would be nice, for sure, but given Microsoft's history it's extremely unlikely.
Then again Visual C++ 6 had horrible C++ standards compliance, but Visual Studio.NET has improved considerably in that area. IE7 standards compliance might be unlikely, but I wouldn't consider it extremely unlikely.
This could be dangerous (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe not as big news as you think... (Score:5, Interesting)
On a completely different subject - I can tell you that these folks (working on this new MSN) are not very happy with gmail.
Re:Maybe not as big news as you think... (Score:4, Interesting)
A friend that works at Microsoft MSN fessed up that Hotmail *still* has a lot of FreeBSD boxes when I causally asked He claimed that Microsoft decided that there wasn't and competitive advantage to move Hotmail to Windows - but because of GMail, Microsoft has decided that the are reasons to move off of FreeBSD. He woulden't elaborate.
Look at this! (Score:4, Funny)
(start quote (note the nested quote))
(end quote)
Godwin's Law, anyone?
New feature suggestion (Score:4, Insightful)
"we clearly have much work to do" (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm returning to work on the Internet Explorer team. A team that I used to work on a few years ago andI'm very excited to be returning to the team where we clearly have much work to do.
Yes, you do have a lot of work to do, Dave. Maybe you guys should have done the job right years ago rather than be in catch-up as well as damage-control mode.
opera (Score:3, Funny)
Its a paradigm shift.... (Score:5, Interesting)
What I see is a focus on bringing a MUCH more richer, Windows-only user experience on the internet. We will see applications being delivered on the internet. Not web pages. They would run on a
In fact, it is possible to run
With Whidbey's click-once application deployment model, this will become more mainstream. With Longhorn's Avalon and XAML, the shift to a Windows only, multimedia and 3D rich user experience will be complete. Perhaps, since all of this would be integrated into the OS itself, it would seem much less a part of Internet Explorer.
Yes, that might be what they have in mind. As for the users, most of them would like the ultra-kewl interface compared to HTML documents.
Yeah, XUL can compete with this. But as Miguel Icaza pointed out, it will be hard competing against the tremendous distribution and deployment power of Microsoft.
IE ridiculously outdated,MS bunch of lazy bastards (Score:3, Insightful)
It's really making me sad how many people are excitedly awaiting the features IE "will have in SP2 or Longhorn". All alternative browsers have those features today, you can download and use them right away.
If you don't know what a browser is or that you're using one, ask your local superuser to "repair" your computer. But then you're not reading this thread (site) anyway.
But if you know how to replace IE: Why let MS decide when you're going to get tabbed browsing and popups blocked? MS is a saturated monopolist making software for the wrong reasons. The are 1st in marketing strategy, but when it comes to product quality and innovation, it's a bunch of lazy schmucks.
If you've used a "real" browser just once, the next time MS announces that from the 22nd century on their browser will implement (insert your favorite IE web standards bug) correctly, you'll just shrug and probably feel a bit sorry for the poor bastards who get their ashes fscked (voluntarily or not) by an arrogant monopolist.
They are doing it because (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, once another browser gets a foothold again, people will have the option of building web applications that feature nice interfaces (xul!) that don't need a win32 client to run properly.
They don't actually give a shit, they just want to preserve their bloated monopoly.
What happens next... (Score:5, Funny)
2. Get caught.
3. Deny everything.
4. Buy out Mozilla Foundation.
5. Distribute "new" IE.
6. Have press conference, insisting Microsoft "invented" tabbed browsing.
7. Deny everything.
the web and the desktop (Score:5, Interesting)
MS and IE are trying for this ideal, but they have their propietary needs to take care of. while IE is sorta fast and usable it simply doesnt reach the level of opera or firefox. those browsers are simply too good at what they do. and they usually link to other common services such as google who only cares about providing the best searching experience.
the point i am trying to make is that firefox works at being the best web browser. google works at being the best search engine. google could not exist without a good web platform, but bundle the two together and you have a really good "web experience". two very specialized projects combined in the right way is much better than the alternative which is IE with MSN.
there is still a lot of work to do in respect of creating the ideal web platform for example the integration of messenger and hotmail and outlook. its a really nice combination and simplifies a lot of work for the user. here to, desktop developers can cater to standards for contacts, bookmarks, etc. the idea is to standardize common protocols and file formats. we already have this with the protocols, but we dont have as much of this in terms of file formats. even if there is no standard, the ability to convert one format into another becomes just as important. the projects that specialize in these fields especially if they are open source will be able to combine with services provided by firefox and google, to create an even better "computing experience".
somehow tho, i dont believe any of this will happen. less work is done to get towards this ideal, and more work is done dicking around. honestly how long would it take to achieve this kind of integration, or format conversion or file format standards? the open source movement need only pick the best formats for a particular job and work on those. create converters for other formats but work with just those.
the converters could be part of the desktop environment making them invisible. an important by-product here is that a user could migrate their preferences and settings to any desktop environment and be able to work immediately. no more need for worrying about compatibility issues between apps. a web page in firefox should open the same way in IE. email should open either in evolution or outlook or what ever other alternative exists out there. the main differences are in personalization, and other things such as speed, usability, and ease of use. i mean, it makes more sense to use the fastest tool.
more people will use firefox because of this until IE can move towards this ideal. and from a business point of view, you get to focus on the real money maker and that is content whether in the form of online music, or online movies, or online games, or online books or whatever. i mean do corporations like MS really believe that a standards compliant DRM that was maintained by a neutral third party would not become accepted? when users worry less about the desktop environment and their web platforms, they will only care about their access to their content. somepeople will always be loyal to Apple, others to MS and other still to Linux. in an ideal world, if MS was a content publisher they wouldnt have to worry as much where or how the user is accessing the content, and worry more about making sure that the user has the proper access rights for the content.
there has never been much money in the desktop or the web platform unless you cornered the entire market. the only way to make money in the long term would be to lock the computer, the desktop, and the web. MS doesnt have a lock on the computer, a partial lock on the desktop, and a p
Explorer 7.0 (Score:5, Funny)
The "Looks best without IE" Badge (Score:3, Insightful)
Glad to hear that IE will be improved before Longhorn is released. Some of us may not live that long.
I agree with the posts that council against throwing every new feature and the kitchen sink into IE. I think the priorities should be:
1) Security - Every Windows user who also uses IE that I know has a hard drive littered with spyware. Fix it.
2) Standards - for CSS2.1, full support for PNG, XHTML.
I just finished building a site this week. I wrote it to the standards for XHTML and CSS, checked it in Safari, Mozilla, Opera, and did *not* check it in IE for Windows. If it looks good in those browsers but not in IE - too bad. I will spend no more of my time cleaning up after you.
On the site's "About" page I included the following text along with badges for XHTML and CSS validity and a link to the Mozilla Firefox page:
The above will be included in all web sites that I design in the future until such time as IE's standards support is satisfactory.
my 10 wishes for IE (Score:5, Interesting)
2.a 100% standards-complient implementation of W3C CSS
3.a 100% standards-complient implementation of W3C XHTML 1.0/HTML 4.01
4.sending of HTML email off by default in Outlook with the way to turn it on difficult to find
5.changes to scripting and ActiveX so that by default, only controls signed by someone trustworthy will download, install and be used (and even then have a clear "are you sure you want to let this control have complete access to your system" warning in language and UI that even the most cluless of users can understand) and so that scripting and ActiveX controls are turned off completly in Outlook with no way (not even a registry hack) to turn it back on.
6.changes to Outlook Express so that it wont run executable attachments dierctly (and so that you have to save them to the disk before you can run them)
7.changes to how Internet Explorer handles MIME types to ignore the extention and content of the file and to treat what the server or email message says the MIME type is as gosepel. If there is none, fallback on file extentions and stuff. Also, enhance windows handling so that mime types can be associated with different handlers. (this eliminates any need to use the file extention to determine what handler to use for it)
8.Clear warnings that even the most cluless user can understand when something has changed the search settings, home page or other IE-related settings out from underneath them (e.g. spyware)
9.completly dropping the broken Microsoft Java VM so that when stuff installs (like a new version of IE or a new windows SP), the MS VM is completly removed for good and the SUN VM is installed instead.
and 10.make these chages as widely available as possible.
Yes I use Mozilla (1.7 in fact) but for those who are forced to used Intercrap Explorer, this would make the world a better place. It would also make the world a better place for those not using IE as a side effect of he changes to Outlook.
After so long of using Mozilla... (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, you mean the frontend I use for Windows Update?
Re:Renewing IE development? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Oh my (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's the kicker microsofts AV software will patent the removal of certain M$ originating viruses in such a way that the only way you can remove them without breaching the eula and various patent laws is to use Microsoft AV 2005 Personal Edition (tm).
Re:Longhorn even later? (Score:5, Insightful)
People constantly complain that MS forces artificial upgrades on their users to increase revenue. More upgrades, with new "must-have" and not backwards compatible features, means more money in their greedy little pockets.
However, recently MS has been delaying products to allow for more time to make sure the software is solid. Meanwhile they are releasing free service packs to help fix security problems.
I'm not saying that MS deserves a humanitarian award. I'm just saying that we shouldn't be criticizing MS because they have pushed back LongHorn. Allowing sufficient time for good development is a GOOD thing.
And on a self-interested note, it gives Linux solutions more time to get a foothold.
Re:Longhorn even later? (Score:5, Insightful)
However, XP came out in 2001, as did MSIE 6.0. I believe the current timetable is for Longhorn to come out in 2006. 5 years between releases is a long time in with regard to software. One of the richest software companies in the world should have no problem in putting out new releases earlier than that. What the hell were they doing during those five years? I'm not saying MS should sacrifice quality to get their products out faster, I'm just saying they should get their products out faster. As a consequence of their laziness, they have lost a lot of Windows users to Mac and Linux and a lot of IE users to Mozilla/Firefox and Opera.
Maybe if Longhorn is void of any problems at all it will be worth the wait. But I wouldn't count on it.
I disagree about the why part (Score:5, Insightful)
Interesting theory but IMHO Longhorn being pushed back is just a sign that MS bit off more than they could chew and mismanaged the project. That's frankly way more probable then the idea that MS is being a good citizen. If MS could have gotten away with shipping Longhorn this year, XP Sp2 would not have gotten nearly as much attention by them. They are in reality just covering their asses while they develop a secure alternative.
I agree that criticizing them for a late Longhorn over and over is dumb as well but I guess I just disagree as to the why MS is doing it part. All IMHO and such.
Re:I disagree about the why part (Score:5, Interesting)
A ground up implementation of what is thought to be the Longhorn spec is probably not doable, no matter how many $billions, given the current state of the art of software engineering.
However at some point Microsoft will bring out something that they claim to be their next great operating system, but it will soon be shown to be just another a cobbled together incremental development.
So while I think two earlier respondents to the parent have made valid points, they haven't quite seen past the "just throw money at it" assumption about software development, to which Fred Brooks's Mythical Man Month [slashdot.org] still has something to say. (Another earlier respondent is just living in fantasy land, so I'm posting this as we don't have mod categories better than "interesting" for "half right" and "plain wrong".)
Re:Longhorn even later? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Longhorn even later? (Score:3, Insightful)
But one does have to question their management. A large and profitable company, with massive amount of developers delaying an operating system upgrade (maybe a partial to total rewrite?-only time will tell) that will make them massive amounts of money. An upgrade that by most accounts will not be particularly appealing to end users, will have taken at least FIVE years (assuming on time release-not lik
Re:Longhorn even later? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Longhorn even later? (Score:4, Insightful)
--
Please donate some Gmail invitations for the contest. Only 2 left! [dealsites.net]
Re:Longhorn even later? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Longhorn even later? (Score:5, Interesting)
Joel Joel Spolsky (Joel On Software) has an excellent article on this topic that I'd recommend any coder-types reading. It's from way back in 2000 but I find I just keep pointing this gem out over and over.
Here's a link for you. Things You Should Never Do, Part I [joelonsoftware.com]
Re:Longhorn even later? (Score:5, Insightful)
1. IE has become a tangled mess of security-hole laden crap that I am not convinced it can be just fixed. Netscape had HTML problems, but that represents a smaller portion of the overall browser.
2. Many of the problems in IE are ones of design, not of implementation. In order to be secure, major portions of it need to be redesigned from the ground up with security in mind. At the same time (and this has evrything to do with security, also) the user model could be designed rather than just being grafted onto what is essentially a single-user program. Again, I don't think Netscape was in quite this bad of shape when they made the decision to rewrite.
3. Not too many months ago, Microsoft made the decision to abandon this product altogether. If they felt confident enough in their position to do that then, what makes today any different? Two words; Longhorn delays. If Microsoft thought they had a chance in hell of getting Longhorn out on time (even if that time is 2007), they would not even be worried about IE development right now. They would be developing for whatever they are going to call the browser that ships with Longhorn. After all, it is to their selfish interest to lock people into the new OS rather than creating something else that will let them coast on their older OS even longer. Netscape's only desktop product at the time they did a rewrite was the browser. The long delay incurred by the rewrite was deadly, since they were effectively a one-product company.
But Microsoft can't get Longhorn out on time, so they must give the users something to stem the switch to other browsers. IE 6.0 is unusable right now (don't flame me, if you think it is, my rates for cleaning spyware are outrageous, but reasonable compared to losing all your data by reinstalling). If they rush another POS like WinME out the door (WinME was another "patch 'em up quick" filler product caused by delays in win2k), they risk alienating people even more! So that's maybe a 4th reason: history. Microsoft has done this once with WinME; how credible will they be for Longhorn if they pull another WinME?
Re:Longhorn even later? (Score:4, Informative)
Interesting point! And why is that? It's because they "integrated" the browser into the OS. Functions that used to be separate in the OS were integrated into the browser components. It makes a certain amount of sense; why duplicate the code that displays bitmaps? One for the browser and one for the OS; instaed, use the same for both. Except that when a vulnerability in the bmp display routines is uncovered, as one recently was, the vulnerabiltiy puts you smack in the middle of the OS, with unlimited access, because the browser is calling the same routines, at the same level, that the OS uses to display bmp icons on the desktop, fer chrissakes!
And this is a prime example of what needs to be redesigned, IMHO. And the entire class of these problems have a root cause; Microsoft didn't make these decisions based on anything except political reasons! They need to base decisions on good engineering, good software design practices, and throw the fscking politicians out of the coding process!
Re:Tabbed browsing overrated!? (Score:4, Insightful)
Right-click-menu is MUCH less convenient and more intrusive, then the page opens in front, forcing you to alt-tab or click back. plus IE opens the page in some stupid size usually, so you have to maximize. The tab experience is MUCH MUCH smoother. It's like the difference between a scroll wheel mouse and a normal one -- sure, you can get by just as well with arrow keys and the scroll bar on screen, but once you've tried the alternative you never want to go back.