arstechnica.com — IE8 should make things a lot better—but it will still fall far short of the standards set by Firefox, Safari, and Opera. Some of these problems are technical, but others are cultural. Where the other browser developers are open and communicative, Microsoft is still leaving web developers in the dark.
Jun 15, 2008 View in Crawl 4
darkshroudJun 16, 2008
I'm aware of that, but MS gives away a lot more than IE for free.
wiseweaselJun 16, 2008
I love the idea of sites encouraging users to use Firefox instead of IE. Microsoft has ENCOURAGED the practice of denying Firefox access to pages made with their web development tools, so they more than deserve the tables to be turned. I strongly encourage any web designer not afraid to lose some business (i.e. those doing it for fun) to push IE users onto Firefox. It WILL make a difference, and if enough people do it, maybe we can get rid of this IE cancer once and for all. Microsoft has only themselves to blame for making such a non-compliant browser, and for using strongarm tactics to favor the use of IE over its alternatives.
Closed AccountJun 16, 2008
@MacSuxWindozSuxAfter catching syphilis from your mother last year and not realizing it -yeah a little yeah !
wiseweaselJun 16, 2008
Because Microsoft wants to do everything in their power to keep a lid on rich web apps, and give an advantage to people who develop native Windows software, which locks their customers in to using Microsoft's OS. Rich web apps are the death of MS's OS hegemony.
scarycloudsJun 17, 2008
@javaroast and init100Like I said it is *part* of the reason why IE is less secure, I didn't say it was *the reason* or *the primary reason.* As for evidence to support my theory, look at Apple, as it has been gaining market share OS X and Safari have been increasingly exploited. Specifically to init100, if I'm building a software program that hacks a web client (i.e. web browser) it's not going to care which country you are from. As such, only worldwide and/or major market share (namely the US) really matters. I don't mean this in an absolute sense however as country specific sites will have exploits tailored to the type of web clients that country uses.
kraetosJun 17, 2008
Except for the part where Safari and Opera render the sites in question just fine.IE8 breaks way too many sites for me to believe that IE8 is correct and FF/Safari/Opera are wrong.
dassoukiJun 17, 2008
similar to that are websites that can only be accessed via fire fox, defies the whole purpose of openness
seymoresJun 18, 2008
Just ignore IE8 like in the IE3 days. Heck I only used IE 3 to download Netscape and that's what it's good for.Lets just stick with Firefox 3.
womensunderwearJun 18, 2008
You eat dinner with it?
tkromoFeb 26, 2009
its true that internet explorer has always been an average internet service whereas every other service performs at a more optimal pace<a class="user" href="http://www.spreadingyourknowledge.com">http://www.spreadingyourknowledge.com</a>
echo2501Mar 15, 2009
Yeah, you remember "Oh yeah, I better check Firefox, Safari, Opera, and Chrome, other IE versions... and guess at future IE rendering changes."
johnnysoftwareNov 17, 2009
IE is the only major browser that is made from code dragged around since the early 1990s. Mosaic was released around 1993 and Microsoft licensed it around 1995 - 14 years ago!Firefox and Safari are both much newer and are based on web browsers that were written in the late 1990's targeting HTML 4. They're actually written for the standard we used today. New standards that have come out since like SVG, they have adopted.Mosaic was written to target HTML 1 which never was a standard, just a moving, self-defining target. When Microsoft got a hold of Mosaic, it was merely an HTML 2 or HTML 3.2 browser. IE really needs a fresh start. Microsoft should design a browser based on HTML 5 as the standard develops and release it when HTML 5 is done. Preferably not with any dangerous native code and OS specific extensions like ActiveX since we all still see the havoc that has wrought. At that point, they can announce an end of life (EOL) schedule for IE and gracefully transition away from it.
johnnysoftwareNov 17, 2009
Why? You are missing the point of standards and compliance.If they followed web standards, it would not matter. However, you are saying they should solve the problem [one of these years] by being stanards compliant. Everyone else has been compliant for years. Thanks to standards, they should be able to drop in another web browser engine and use it.Google released a nice IE plugin that kicks IE's renderer to the curb whenever an HTML 5 needs to be rendered. Microsoft's boys freaked. But, if you stand back and think about it - isn't that the right thing to do? Google is just doing what the web was designed to do. When one browser falls woefully behind standards compliance/implementation, is drastically incompatible with other browsers, has performance & security issues - shouldn't users be able to decide they want to switch.As for IE being used in the OS or help subsystems, maybe that is a flaw Microsoft should be looking at correcting. Why can't Windows Help be rendered with Firefox, if Firefox is more W3 compliant than IE?Microsoft uses IE in too many places too. Look at Windows Update. If you have a security flaw in IE or maybe even it is already infected and you do not want to or cannot run it, what do you do?You run Windows Update. But Windows Update is IE!! Yeah, so that's an obvious feasibility and/or security chicken-and-the-egg problem that should have been shot down in the first Windows Update design/planning meeting.Take a look at how OS/app/browser updates are handled in Linux and on the Mac. They each have an application you run and it tells you what updates are available, lets you deselect any you don't want right now, and then you can kick off the update process if you want. No HTML/ActiveX/JScript required. Windows Update should be scrapped and rewritten to not use web technologies at all. And then that is one less reason to need IE on Windows.
evancarrollNov 17, 2009
MS had a C++ compiler with template support *far* before the standard (MS (C/C++), 1992 standard came in 1998). The box model is an overplayed point, and really just boils down to a badly implemented padding.. Apple didn't make a new operating system they bought a desktop environment and glued it on top of a more modern BSD. Also, per Wikipedia, there was a draft implementation of XSLT in IE 5.5 far predating any other interest.Windows 7 is based on Windows Vista, and like it or not, its mostly a rewrite (as compared to based on) Windows NT. Windows NT 3.1 had 4-5 Million lines of source code, Windows Vista has upwards of 50 million. If you're pointing to a core interface that has stayed stable, then your same lame point can be paralleled in the POSIX, and IP standards which all of those "gangbusters" keep around. I hate Microsoft too, but that doesn't' change the fact that all of the arguments you lay out are overplayed false bull s**t. Windows 7 is a superior OS to Windows XP, and the reasons for not upgrading are simple: management, retooling costs, and software costs. A single zero-day exploit in a new product in an operating system is not overwhelmingly bad. I don't know the details of the vulnerability you're speaking of - but to require new functionality and features and expect it to compete with the stability of security of the older code is an immature expectation.And, as for the open-source point: yes, Microsoft is proprietary closed-source software vendor with few expectations. The same can be said about Apple, and if we base Google's open source contributions on the value of the asset I don't see their OCR, Search, Filesystem, Database, or webserver code online either,,, Maybe, Google is just in a more advantageous position to release code that doesn't compete with their bread and butter?