Microsoft asking EVERYONE to rewrite web pages for IE 7!!

eweek.com — According to information reaching eWEEK, Microsoft announced plans during a conference call on March 28 wherein Redmond officials reiterated the need for Web pages to be completely re-authored to avoid possible disruptions as a result of major changes to IE 7 as a result of a patent dispute. Mar 29, 2006 View in Crawl 4

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darthmdh Mar 30, 2006

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@angryredplanetLets put things into perspective:Opera 8 - 13 advisories, 0 unpatchedFirefox - 27 advisories, 2 unpatched, worst unpatched rated "less critical" (2/5)IE6 - 97 advisories, 21 unpatched, worst unpatched rated "extremely critical" (5/5)You're right in that no software is bug free. If the SEI5-rated shuttle guys make bugs, how much more so the rest of us? However what the stats show is IE is almost (3 bugs away from being) an entire order of magnitude buggier, and that some of these bugs are of a severity level 250% higher than the closest comparison in Firefox.No, Firefox isn't a bastion of security but I don't think they have ever claimed to be, either. Microsoft always claim to be "more secure" yet the proof shows significantly otherwise. One would expect much better from a) a dominant market force and b) the worlds richest companyAlso, neither IE nor Windows in general is attacked because of their install base (and I'd argue your point on Windows being dominant in servers, but another time). They're attacked because they are trivially broken into and take forever to be patched by the vendor. So for minimal effort you get maximum return on how long you get to exploit these systems for. What's the point in spending 6 months finding a hole in Firefox when that hole is closed the day after its made public when you can spend an hour or two finding a hole in IE that is still open & exploitable 2-3 years later as many of those known advisories are?

hotspot Mar 30, 2006

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This link provides the Latest Information Officially blogged by Microsoft on the IE ActiveX Update:<a class="user" href="http://blogs.technet.com/msrc/archive/2006/03/29/423560.aspx">http://blogs.technet.com/msrc/archive/2006/03/29/423560.aspx</a>

Closed Account Mar 30, 2006

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Yeah, and too bad Eloas have said they wont sue people making non-commercial use of their patent.Hmm, wonder if Firefox falls under that?

macbirdie Mar 30, 2006

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So, Eolas, the next target is Opera? Afterall, it allows "for the embedding of small interactive programs, such as "plug-ins," "applets," "scriptlets" or ActiveX? Controls, into World Wide Web documents" [<a class="user" href="http://www.eolas.com/zmapress.htm]">http://www.eolas.com/zmapress.htm]</a> , just like IE and is not open source either.

johnny2085 Mar 30, 2006

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1.) Eolas has stated they don't intend to go after open-source projects.2.) The behavior change is simple: The user must click on the interactive portion of the control before they can actually interact with the control. If they don't interact DIRECTLY with the control, there is NO change.3.) The end result? A user must click twice if they wanted to click at all (button, ad, slider, whatever).4.) If your control automatically does something now, it will continue to do so just fine.5.) If your user's interact with your control purely via javascript, your control is immune.6.) IF your control is written into the page DYNAMICALLY, your control is immune.

shovel10 Mar 30, 2006

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I really hate those ActiveX controls and IE has a history of this kind of jokes with your lay... would believe it straight away. Seems to me a problem for M$ itself.

zorbo Mar 30, 2006

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Actually ie allows to write conditionnals inside comments in pure html to test for its presence or version, so you can include custom stylesheets for ie.Code below but i have no idea what digg will make of it

Closed Account Mar 31, 2006

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Be sure you bill Micro$oft for every hour you need to spend redisigning a webpage that you've had to spend hours and money on earlier so their pos web-browser would show it ok.No kidding, do it!

Closed Account Apr 24, 2007