Microsoft Is Planning To Renew IE Development

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."

Re:Longhorn even later?

You are assuming that they port it without creating more security vulnerabilities. It should be re-written from the ground up with security in mind from the start.

--
Please donate some Gmail invitations for the contest. Only 2 left! [dealsites.net]

Re:Longhorn even later?

Yeah, and they base it on gecko for improved standards compliance and interoperability. Oh, wait...

Re:Longhorn even later?

I completely disagree. Rewriting an application from scratch is the worst thing you could possibly do. This is how Microsoft beat Netscape in the first place, remember? It's a key concept of software design. If you have something that works, build on it. You can argue all you want that IE isn't all that great. And you're right. But, it's still a whole lot better then starting from scratch.

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?

Normally, I would agree with you and with the sentiments posed in "Things you should never do". However, we are talking two entirely different kettles of fish here:

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?

IE really only has one major design flaw -- that you when you are the "local machine zone", there's no sandbox and anything goes.

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:Longhorn even later?

I have no great love for MS, but there is way too much hypocritical criticism of them.

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?

Yes, it is good they are apparently making sure their product works this time before they release them. I for one don't have any problems with that.

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

"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."

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

It's only 3 weeks since I posted more about this [slashdot.org] in my journal, so I won't try to do more than reiterate a couple of points here.

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".)

The best solution for everyone (except Opera)

Microsoft uses the Mozilla source code to create an IE7. No more worries about anti-trust concerns since they're working on an open, free project. Users get a stable, secure browser that's standards compliant. Users get a browser with a rendering engine that's supported across platforms. Heck, it might even be easy enough to release IE for Mac and Unix again!

And how exactly

...would that be a good thing for Microsoft? You seem to be forgetting MSIE's purpose: As a lock-in tool to other Microsoft products. A browser which is a drop-in replacement for Mozilla-based browsers-- and thus conversely has Mozilla-based browsers as a drop-in replacement for it-- doesn't serve this purpose at all.

Re:And how exactly

...would that be a good thing for Microsoft?

it might shave off a couple of their Douchebag Points.

Re:Yes there is

They can make extensions to enable stuff like ActiveX components. And ActiveX components pretty much require windows to run.

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

Our faculty of the university at which I work has decided on a new layout for their web pages. This was done and delivered to us by a PR agency. I feared that it might be bad, but that fear didn't even come close to what I had to witness.

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

A lot of it, is a lack of depth and understanding.

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.

1. Was designed to render in ANY browser
2. That browser may be text based
3. That browser my not support any font attributes.
4. 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.
5. Firmly grasp the concept of open tags and closed tags
6. Then understand what is possible with the html 1 spec
7. 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
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. 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.

------------

Re:Uh-uh

AH yes - and you have reduced the bandwidth by 68GB...

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

Microsoft doesn't improve their products-- ever-- except in the presence of a viable competitor

Re:Further proof

Umm no. It proves that Microsoft improves their products in the presence of a viable competitor. It doesn't show they don't otherwise. I'm not saying I don't agree I'm just pointing out that these facts have nothing to do with the main point of the arguement made, only with the exception.

Not really.

Look at the broader picture. The proof would be in that when Netscape died and birthed Mozilla, MSIE development came to a total screeching halt, and didn't start again until the Mozilla project, after years of dicking around, finally managed to create a product (FireFox) that anyone in their right minds would want to use.

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.

"I call bullshit. Nobody "loves" OpenOffice. People tolerate it..."

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.

NOT a bullshit. Right, in the begining, it's clearly GoodEnoughWare. But later, when I found lot of functions which helped my productivity, I fell love with it.

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.

I do.

I took a try at OOo after a particularly hair-rending night spent with Office. I never looked back. Anything I had trouble with in Office is fixed or greatly improved in OOo-to say nothing of the new features it brings. There have been plenty of times when other students have been unable to open files in Office-I pull a LiveCD out of my pocket, and it simply works. OOo is not simply Good Enough-it is Better.

Re:Not really.

Ah, a real limitation, or maybe a bug, at last! Nothing is perfect...

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).

Viability

in which case I might say that a combined 5% market share (at best) is hardly "viable".

It's not market share that's important right now -- it's mind share. People are starting to sit up and take notice of Mozilla and Firefox, and that's (probably) what has Microsoft worried. So they start up their IE development again in hopes of keeping their current monopoly.

Re:Further proof

"Most of the CS students I know at my college have switched to Linux. So 5% is pretty serious competition when it contains nearly half of the demographic that decides the future of software development."

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

If Mozilla Firefox hasn't achieved anything else (besides being the first web browser to be rated above IE by just about everybody), the fact that it would spur Microsoft to resume work on Internet Explorer is an interesting achievement. It, at least, will make the world a better place for WIndows users who are forced to use IE due to ignorance or because everybody uses it (that includes me).

Re:Thoughts about Mozilla, Firefox, Internet Explo

I think IE 4 was a much better browser than Netscape 4. IE 3 was the last version that Netscape could win against, I think. IE 3 was horrible.

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

Afriguru:

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 :)

Fuck tabs

Give me full XHTML and CSS2 compliance please. Oh, and transparent PNGs.

Too much to ask?

Re:Fuck tabs

And themes. And software plug-ins that block images. And a plug-in that keeps Flash/Shockwave animations from playing unless I *want* them too. And making it possible to use the address bar to search from Google, *not* MSN. Making it so that if I click on the back button while posting to Slashdot my post is still there. Making ActiveX a way to make browsing more enjoyable, not a way to make my computer install spyware.

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

And themes.

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

IE PNG hack [mongus.net]

Re:Fuck tabs

Give me full XHTML and CSS2 compliance please. Oh, and transparent PNGs. Too much to ask?

Yes. It is crucial to Microsoft's strategy that they not do that. See here [livejournal.com] for example.

So microsoft ...

... is promoting mozilla so they get /.ed everyday!
We now know their evil plan ;-)

I have a suggestion...

Dear Microsoft.

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...

You want to be out of work too?

Pop-up blocking in MSIE is bad for us

I consider the recent addition of pop-up blocking in MSIE (XP SP2) bad news. Advertisers will just find more obnoxious ways to place their adds, making the pop-up blocker in Mozilla less effective.

Re:Pop-up blocking in MSIE is bad for us

But the Mozilla Team (or someone else) will come up with a solution whereas microsoft will not (at least not until two years).

that's the little difference!

Re:Pop-up blocking in MSIE is bad for us

I gotta say, as much as people bitch about popups. The one popup we have to have on our site (damn sales) is by far the most successful ad we have.

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

>I'm just saying, I hate them too, but hey if they work, they work.

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

Isn't this exactly what we wanted to happen? Microsoft realized that a competing product (mozilla, opera, etc.) is advancing at a rate that might cause MS to lose market share on the browser front.

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 .NET framework becomes mainstream, why care so much about IE? Maybe this is a PR move?

Re:Good, I think

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

The reason is because Bill Gates is not stupid. He isn't going to wait until MS has lost their market share before doing something about, he will make sure it never happens.

BTW IE is losing market share to Mozilla, though at the moment, the numbers are pretty small.

Hmmm

So you ask us /.'ers to not /. MozillaZine, yet you provide THREE links to MozillaZine.

Kinda ironic eh?

Window sizing

Remember if the friggin' window is maximized or not!!!!

Provide user options to kill popups

Don't allow friggin' Drive By Downloads!

Support all W3C standards. Deprecate all your proprietary extensions.

Oh Dear

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)!

Darn! I woke them up!!

I should have kept quiet yesterday [slashdot.org]. ;-)

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?

From the blog [msdn.com]:

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

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.

Upgrade today!

Dear windows users, you can already upgrade your Internet browser: here [mozilla.org] and here [opera.com].

Enjoy

ho-hum

So, somewhere in 2007, this will be released with the often delayed Longhorn. At the least, this will hopefully bring them up to the current level of web standards.

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

I recall reading here on Slashdot that Internet Explorer was getting updated for Longhorn. I don't remember exactly where it was, but it quoted one of the members of the IE development team. I think Microsoft will be taking a (small) step in the right direction by supporting standards. Well, if they do. It'd be nice if Mozilla and IE actually rendered things the same way; then you'd only have to develop for one target platform. What about Internet Explorer using the Gecko engine? Maybe Internet Explorer will become one of the 'better' Microsoft products. But seriously, what would happen to products like Firefox/Mozilla if IE became totally standards compliant. I know I would still use it, but what would happen to the argument that Firefox is better than IE? Hopefully Microsoft will actually fix the bugs and have a solid product. Even though it may become a 'competitor' for Firefox, at least the average user who doesn't know more than Internet Explorer will have a usable, secure, browser.

Re-constituting???

So one person write in his weblog that he's changing roles from Longhorn to IE, and that means the team is being reconstituted? People at Microsoft change teams all the time. Some people will jump from project to project every year or two, others will stick with it for 4 or 5 years.

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

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.

Okay, specifically then, go to w3.org. Read specs. Implement.

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.

This could be dangerous

Considering how IE is "integrated with the operating system," a new version of IE that suppresses pop-up ads could mean that Longhorn is genetically determined to be born with a passive-aggressive personality complex.

Maybe not as big news as you think...

I am two people removed from the team working on this (a friend of a friend); so it's possible I might be a victim of disinformation or misinterpretation. But as I understand it, this "new and improved IE" isn't necessarilly for general consumption. It is supposed to be part of a new, all-encompassing version of MSN that's maybe 3 years down the road. Basically you get the new version of Windows at that time, and MSN comes along for the ride. This new IE will only be available as part of the new MSN, which will only be available if you get the new Windows.

On a completely different subject - I can tell you that these folks (working on this new MSN) are not very happy with gmail. :-D

Re:Maybe not as big news as you think...

As a side note...

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!

I was reading this thread on their forum [msdn.com], until I came across this post:

(start quote (note the nested quote))

AndyJ wrote:

Yeah, so here's one guy that's too ignorant/dumb/lazy to get this site (and what a site ) working in IE and the industry is now flocking away from IE.... I'm sure MS is shaking in their collective boots.... Bill G must be apologizing to his kids for loosing his fortune even now.... -Andy

It is that thinking that allowed Linux to become what it is today and allowed Hilter to take over most of Europe. Actions must be made now and not later as little things will grow. Just as weeds grow in your yard if you don't kill them at first sight.

(end quote)

Godwin's Law, anyone?

New feature suggestion

I would like the ability to completely uninstall IE from windows machines. That would require that IE is loosely coupled with the OS and that in itself would be a huge improvement.

"we clearly have much work to do"

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.

Re:Tabbed browsing overrated!?

MUCH easier to middle-click, have the link open in the background, and keep going down the page. that way you can mark a dozen links to look at later without losing your place in the page you're at.

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.

opera

MS should just buy up Opera before they become too big.

Its a paradigm shift....

As most of the comments pointed out, there would be little interest in making IE more standards compliant.

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 .Net sandbox with as much security as a webpage or the once-upon-a-time java applets.

In fact, it is possible to run .Net 1.1 binaries off the internet, and they do not have permissions to access your local harddrive. If they do try, a security exception is triggered.

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

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

mozilla is getting too good. With the advent of xul and fast, safe, standards complient browsing, IE is beginning to look pretty sad.

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...

1. Copy Mozilla code into IE.
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

IMO the reason mozilla and firefox are successful right now is because they have a tendency towards speed, usability and easy of use. they cater towards standards compliance which relieves content developers to work on their content. if everyone in the web browser business did this, we would see an even greater content explosion than we did during the first few years of the web.

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

"Um, honey? You know that browser update you just downloaded? Some pop-up box is asking if we want to install the Gator update... should we? Oh nevermind, it just started automatically on its own... oh cool! There's a brand new version of that adsearch bar on the bottom too!"

The "Looks best without IE" Badge

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:

"This site was built with XHTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) that fully comply with the specifications of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Without such open and widely recognized standards the Web would degenerate into a Tower of Babel as corporations sought to carve it into mutually unintelligible, captive markets.

"If any part of this site does not display properly it is because you are using a Web browser that does not fully support the XHTML and CSS specifications - probably Internet Explorer. I urge you to try a browser that closely supports W3C standards, like the open source Mozilla Firefox. Less idealistically, Firefox can block pop-up windows."

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.

Does Anyone Remember??

In IE 1.0 back in the day there was a Linux Client. Anyone remember or have a copy of it anymore for shits and grins?

my 10 wishes for IE

1.a 100% standards-complient implementation of PNG
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...

What's this... "Internet Explorer" you speak of?

Oh, you mean the frontend I use for Windows Update?

Development urgently needed

Maybe they'll start fixing some of the hideous bugs that have been around for versions and versions.

For instance, there's the dreaded "jumping cursor" bug. Sporadically from time to time, when you are typing an URL in the address bar, the cursor jumps on you to the beginning ofthe line and ends up leaving you with a broken URL, forcing you to type the damn thing over again.

E.g., if you are typing "slashdot.org", and the cursor jumps, you end up with something such as "t.orgslashdo".

Have only seen this in IE, so it's not a standard behavior of the input box control.

Re:Renewing IE development?

They're going to introduce all new ones.. ;)

Re:Oh my

Well now that they have decided to sell their own anti-virus software, what better than to create demand for it by developing a new browser platform in order to extort AV software sales. ...

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).