RSSInterview: Microsoft Exec Talks IE7, RSS
By Nate Mook and Ed Oswald | Published February 17, 2006, 9:00 PM
Following a decision to release a standalone version of IE7, browser development at Microsoft has come fast and furious. BetaNews this week sat down with Gary Schare, Director of IE Product Management, to discuss the changes coming in IE7, Firefox's growth, and how Microsoft will bring RSS to the mainstream.
When BetaNews last spoke to Schare in late 2004, he explained why Microsoft had no plans to add features like tabbed browsing directly into Internet Explorer or update its CSS support. After much feedback, things changed in early 2005. With a standalone IE7 now feature-complete, Schare delves into the reasoning and gives us a look at what to expect when the browser is released later this year.
BetaNews: Let's start with the basics. Exactly one year ago at the RSA Conference, you announced the plan to restart IE development and release a beta version for testers before the end of summer. Can you recap the reasoning behind this switch and give us some insight as to the goals of IE7?
Gary Schare: We really didn't announce a restart of IE development, we announced an extension of the development to bring the work that we were doing in IE7 for Windows Vista down to Windows XP users. It's not like we were starting from a standing start a year ago. We simply broadened the reach to bring a lot of the innovations -- both the end user experience and the security innovations that we were doing for IE in Windows Vista -- to the Windows XP installed base.
BetaNews: Originally IE 7 was supposed to come as part of the larger package of Windows Vista. Did the growth of alternative browsers such as Firefox and Opera affect the decision to move forward with Internet Explorer 7 on its own?
Gary Schare: The primary driver behind expanding the reach of IE7 to Windows XP was security. That was the core of the message that we delivered last year at RSA and remains true to this day. The nature of the attacks you're seeing on the Internet, along with the nature of just how things have evolved and the worries that our customers have, made it a very easy decision to bring that technology to Windows XP for security reasons.
In addition, when we talked to customers, they said they really would like to see a lot more than just security. There are a number of new feature areas that were showing up in alternative browsers -- ones built on the IE platform like Maxthon and Avant Browser, as well as the alternatives such as Netscape, Firefox and Opera -- that people said they would really love to see in addition to better security.
BN: How big is the IE development team at Microsoft now? We're seeing new faces post on the IE Blog almost daily.
GS: We've been growing the team. That's part of the natural growth cycle that development teams at Microsoft go through, typically as they ramp up for major releases. We can't release specific numbers, because frankly a lot of the contribution to the Internet Explorer effort comes from people who don't report into the IE ward. These are build managers and test managers on Windows Vista, and people that do other kinds of infrastructure around the company.
Some of the code that goes into IE itself comes from the Networking team in Windows. It's impossible to pin a number on it, but we certainly have been growing it because as we ramp up to two major releases -- both IE7 for Windows XP and IE7 in Windows Vista -- it takes a fair number of people to pull that all together.
BN: Once we're past the IE7 release time, would the team then shrink in size?
GS: In this case we plan to continue aggressive development of Internet Explorer. There are a number of things we wanted to do in IE7 that we didn't quite get to, and there are new innovative things that people have been dreaming up, which we plan to come out with in future releases. We don't have specific milestones in place just yet, but we definitely plan to keep investing quite heavily.
BN: When BetaNews last spoke to you in November 2004, you said another standalone release of IE was not necessary because of the community of add-ons available (like those for tabbed browsing). Now, IE7 is building in a lot of new native functionality within the browser. Why the change?
GS: The additional functionality is only one half of the equation; the other half is security. The kind of changes required to protect our customers were things we had to change at the core IE platform. Thus, a lot of changes we made -- rewriting entire sections of the code, changing the way ActiveX works with ActiveX Opt-In, and changing the way the security settings worked -- required changes to the core of IE itself.
In addition, the features are things our customers have asked for. There are certain customers that love using the IE add-ons and will keep doing that. And there are many other customers who say we want to use IE, but we want to see some additional features like tabs, better printing, page zooming, integrated RSS, and so forth.
BN: How much more secure is IE7 than IE6?
GS: It's impossible to quantitatively measure that, but when you look across the areas of investment we've made, they're very, very substantial. For example, let's look at the anti-phishing work. We hadn't really done anything significant to help users fend off phishing attacks in IE6. There was a little bit of anti-spoofing work done there, which has been helpful, but now we're really giving users the kind of trust information they need to know whether they're on their actual bank site, or a fraudulent site that's pretending to be their bank.
ActiveX Opt-in, another big area of focus. We've done a lot of work in IE over the years to improve the security of ActiveX, and did some great work for IE6 in Windows XP SP2 with the information bar and the redesigned Authenticode dialog. Yet there was still more work we could do, and we found a large surface area of potential attack with ActiveX controls that are preinstalled within Windows. With ActiveX Opt-in, we're disabling most of those by default and letting the user decide if they need to use them to access a particular site or application. Those are two examples and there are many more.
BN: What about customers not able to upgrade to IE7? Will there be enhancements to the security of IE6 to keep those customers as safe as possible since they may not fulfill the requirements to run IE7?
GS: One of the hallmarks of using Microsoft software is taking advantage of the security support lifecycle. We will continue to support versions of Internet Explorer for up to 10 years, and we have a whole Web site dedicated to defining which versions are supported for how long. In fact, just today we released a security update for Internet Explorer 5.01.
There's two pieces of news there: one is we're continuing to support that version, which is somewhere in the range of 6 or 7 years old. Number two, we're finally at the point where we can say "Here's something that doesn't even affect IE6." I think it's the first time in two years that we've issued an IE security patch where IE6 was untouched, because we've finally caught up with the new security enhancements and backlog of security bug reports. Now we're working on some very old bugs, which are a little less severe and don't affect much of the installed base.
BN: ActiveX seems to be IE's Achilles heel in a sense. You're making changes to the technology in IE7; how will this affect end-user interaction and corporate users?
GS: ActiveX is a very powerful platform. While ActiveX itself is unique to Internet Explorer, the technology of extending a browser with native code is not. You have the Netscape plug-in model that runs in Netscape browsers and Firefox browsers, and is the moral equivalent of ActiveX from a code perspective. The difference is that we did a lot of work in ActiveX to ensure that users only install the controls they really intend to, eliminating the drive-by download vectors of the past. A lot of that work came in IE6 XP SP2.
The second area of concern is the architecture of ActiveX and Internet Explorer, which allows any Active X control installed in Windows to be exposed to the browser if it's marked safe for scripting. We took a look there and said "Well that can enable some powerful applications to be written using these common components that ship in Windows." But malicious hackers were using that to go after users.
Quite often when you see an IE patch coming out, it's not actually a patch to IE code. It's a patch to kill the ActiveX control that's no longer needed, which we've determined has a vulnerability in it. ActiveX Opt-in is designed to reduce that surface area of attack by turning off most of those controls by default and letting users only turn them on if they need them. The feature makes it not interesting for the hackers to go after this legacy code that shouldn't be exposed to the Internet in the first place.
At the same time, the power of ActiveX still benefits users. The mainstream controls like Flash, Acrobat, RealPlayer, QuickTime and Windows Media Player -- ones that you as the user need to have a rich experience -- will continue to work.
BN: Is Microsoft considering replacing ActiveX with another technology due to such security problems?
As a web developer, the feature that IE lacks that makes me ABHOR it the most is it's s***ty javascript debugging capabilities. Trying to debug a script in IE is like trying to build a house in the dark. The one debugger it DOES have (and I must admit, I don't eve know if it came with IE, XP, or my visual studio suite) is total crap. I can't debug code with user input, which basically makes it useless. I can't even watch variables properly.
It's bad enough that I have to practically make two different apps so that all the end users have the same experience (or close to it), but when you are not giving me the tools to even do that much, it becomes a major issue.
I'd like to see 2 things in IE7. Standards compliance, and GOOD debugging tools for the developer.
Personally, I don't care what browser you use. It's all user preference. But, remember it is a WEB browser. One web. One standard. Please stop making me code two versions of my apps =/.
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MS will never stop using this strategy. "Embrace and extend" has been their #1 strategy from day 1. Naturally the "extend" part is proprietary extensions designed to lock you into their GOOD products. The point to frustrate web designers/developers is so they WON'T waste the energy coding two versions, but only one - for the current big dog (IE).
Personally I think it'll be a tragedy if MS doesn't keep 90%+ of OS+Office+browser control in the next few years. I'd rather LOSE 10% of customers (Firefox/non-Windows users) and CONCENTRATE efforts on one platform (MS) so I'd gain, say, 20% more customers/profits and be on v3.0 of the website instead of v1.5 but catering to those Firefox guys...
Besides, this isn't a religion to most people, so the majority of Firefox users would probably use IE or IETAB for your site.
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Gary,
Can you explain how the IE7 team and Microsoft can justify releasing a brand new browser that doesn't conform to open web standards for CSS, HTML, and XML as defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (or the W3C, a group in which I believe Microsoft participates)?
Given its vast resources, how can Microsoft let tiny little teams like those building Konqueror (Linux), Safari (Mac OS X), Firefox/Mozilla (cross platform), and Opera build browsers that are all significantly better at complying to open standards than Microsoft's brand-spanking new flagship browser? Isn't it deeply embarrassing for you? It sure would be for me.
Why didn't Microsoft simply adopt the Firefox or Safari/Konqueror code base, both of which have been offering most of IE7's advances (and standards compliance besides) for quite some time now, as their open source licenses allow you to do?? Too much pride? Not enough smarts? Not enough lock-in?
As a web designer, I believe the sorts of poor technical decisions Microsoft makes and its bizarre (and utterly indefensible) refusal to adhere to open web standards simply makes my job much more frustrating. Working around the pathetic deficiencies of IE5, 5.5, and 6 more than doubles the time it takes to develop a reasonable site. My customers pay twice as much because of Microsoft's incompetence. And now the IE7 team is perpetuating it for another generation of browsers by stating categorically (in the IE7blog) that W3C standards compliance isn't even on the agenda.
When is Microsoft going to surprise me, by doing something kind or honourable or courteous or something good for mankind? But then that might lead to you gaining good will in the marketplace - something you don't need when you're a brazenly law-defying monopoly who has the US government in your back pocket, I guess.
Good luck to you, Gary - you'll need it. I voted with my feet long ago, and I'm working with an ever growing team of developers that is actively pursuing a day when Microsoft is irrelevant.
(written in Firefox 1.5 on Linux)
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It's an arms race. MS will shove new web "standards" down everyone's throat, and they'll swallow it happily because it'll be "good enough" and guess what - the easier thing for them to do (the users), and won't frustrate them with a week-long customized firefox configuration journey...
All MS needs to do when they start to lose control (if it happens) is keep providing easy ways to take advantage of their own version of web standards (or other technologies), say with free Frontpage on stereoids, or even just by integrating flickr or a full-fledged web publishing engine in the OS. Content could be hosted on end-users machines (now that they have Groove and Foldershare p2p tech on their hands) or on MS servers (perhaps still using some p2p client while viewing content to offload burden onto end-users a la bittorrent).
Anyway the point is the users will USE such services happily, not realizing (nor caring) that by doing that they're locking themselves into using IE7+...
I think the good luck wish should be given to you, my friend. MS is WAYYYY powerful and obviously funded than the open source community. For every high-quality programming hour spent (by whomever) on a popular open-source browser/OS, MS can happily spend 50 hours. Who do you think will win that arms race in the end? ;)
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The question I have is will IE7 ACTUALLY SUPPORT web standards? Will us web developers have to create two web pages, one for all other browsers and one for IE users? Will the IE7 developers understand the simple concept of web standards and read the couple of paragraphs that describe the box model? It's not hard. I just taught a 7 year old how to use CSS and HE started complaining about IE. It's crazy. . .
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MS's ambition is to be THE web standards governing body. They actually should have come up with more proprietary web-related stuff during IE5-6 reign of past few years but I'm sure they've realized that mistake and come up with more of that stuff in the next few years.
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Yeah that's right MS, you're on the right track, just dont stop development of IE ever. Continue to evolve and dont stop like u did in 2001. That was where u went wrong. And as for size, the day wont be long when FF will exceed IE's size.
Except for the plugins and selective frame reloading, I like nothing about Firefox and fail to see how they like the overall UI and the 'experience'.
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MS does not innovate unless pushed into a corner so I'm very glad the Firefox guys are around. Personally, I really like the fact that major releases of OS/Office/browser take 3-4 years (about the same time you'd wanna replace your hardware too). Gives everyone enough time to "get on board", "learn it well", "fix it easily", and "maximize the potential" of this software due to 100s of millions of users worldwide using it.
As for efficiency - 95% of people don't care for slightly faster experience. They would almost always opt to pay a little more for more RAM or faster CPU but still stick with whatever MS shoves down their throats because it just does everything they wanna do without spending too much time re-learning it (Mac/Linux).
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A friend of mine was in Bill Gates' office and said he used a Samsung widescreen. That always cracked me up for some reason. I don't know why. Guess I expected him to use a tricked out Dell or HP.
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Not to burst any of the readers bubbles... but as Nice as Firefox wants to be, it's still only used by a handfull of people. I've been running web servers for over 6 years and have many statistics on what browsers are hitting the servers and on the average I'd say a good 87% or more are still IE users. I personally have Netscape, Firefox, Opera and of Course IE on my boxes here and a good 95% of the time I'm using IE... the only other time I use the other browsers are to view my HTML/ASP work to compare and make sure the overall view from each browser is ruffly the same.
What I get a real kick out of is the young puppies who complain about IE and probably have less than 5 years experience on a computer in the first place.
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You code in ASP. Enough said.
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One of the great advantages Firefox has against IE is the rendering of nested tables. Microsoft had promised to speed up the process since IE v5 but no change at IE7. This is one of the biggest changes I would like to see in IE because the feeling of page load is extremely better in Firefox.
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I don't think nested table rendering is as big of an issue as you make it. Don't get me wrong, I am a FF user, but how often do you hit a site with such nested table complexity that actually slows down the rendering to a point where the average user will notice?
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Everyday. Always. Almost all the sites rely on tables to proper position elements on the screen. Read this IE blog in order to understand what I'm saying and why IE is miles away behind Firefox & Opera on the feeling of the loading of the page (http://blogs.msdn.com/ie.../2005/02/10/370721.aspx).
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"Almost all the sites rely on tables to proper position elements on the screen."
Dude, people, what date is it? Are we still in 2006? Just checking. Table layouts, bloody hell...
http://www.w3schools.com/css/default.asp
Do some reading.
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what, no questions about advances in CSS2 and CSS3? mathml? SVG? (beyond IE7 that is)
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I certainly hope that Microsoft doesn't do something less than honest by claiming to have invented or even pioneered technologies like RSS, AJAX, (clears throat) CSS support, etc. I'm sure they have worked hard on this browser, but the monoculture at Microsoft that I perceive seems to feel that something doesn't exist really until they implement it. Monoculture whether it be at Microsoft of Apple will get you into trouble, and money just prolongs the severity of the consequences.
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uhm... not to rock you're boat here, but AJAX is basically XMLHttpRequest, and that's a microsoft "innovation" (you could call it a non-standard extension) which proved so useful that everyone else is implementing it too... So in a sense, microsoft did invent AJAX ;-). Of course, in another sense, AJAX is just a buzzword meaning server request without full page reload, and in that sense, it's even older, and more a design methodology that a specific technology.
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Personally, I could care less about IE7. IE7 is like AOL to stupid people- locks them in to thinking this the only thing I can use to access the internet.
IE in general is just a security problem- period.
The browser is developed to be tied directly to the operating system. That's just plain stupid. It's an applicattion and should be developed as such. The last full DL i saw of IE was 20mb. 20mb for a web browser?! Com'on! Who on dialup wants to pull down updates for IE? The last patch I saw for IE was 13mb.
Firefox is developed as a standalone app and the last DL size I saw was 5mb AND it can be ran without installing it to the system (USB stick).
IE locks you in to a fixed set of functions. Firefox offers a base set of features, but the user can decide to add more to it as they see fit (foxcast, adblocker, etc.)
The browser should be a extension of the user using it and it should never lock all users in to the bloated tele-tubby interface.
ActiveX is MS preprietary code to push users in a direction because every user that has ever loaded windows (90% of users)has ActiveX auto installed. No one wants to use to because of security issues. Even MS said not to use activeX at one time.
Lastly, MS is tired of these small mom and pop guys making better versions (and money) off of an IE GUI than what MS was offering (popups, ablockers, etc). They are just trying to redeem themselves and regain their dominance in the market.
Best wishes to all!
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Use-D. USED - past tense.
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He used MacOSX I bet :P
No, Seriously... MyIE2 (Maxthon) is just a rebuilt IE... it's nothing special... It's got all the weaknesses IE has, with a few features borrowed from Opera and Firefox... So really, the IE7 exec is still using his own product.
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" So really, the IE7 exec is still using his own product."
WAS (past tense) using his own product (in the guise of Maxthon, which is based on IE 6). Now he is using IE7.
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Obviously ActiveX is an attempt by Microsoft to lock-in the user, creating proprietary, platform specific hooks in the browser that make it difficult for the user to switch browser and/or platform when they become dependent on the functionality of ActiveX.
It has no *real* place in a browser, which should be platform agnostic and standards compliant.
Just as Microsoft tried (and failed) to lock the user into Internet Explorer with proprietary extensions to Java, they will ultimately fail with ActiveX.
Microsoft wish to control the internet, and the browser is the obvious tool for exercising such control over the user. Using Internet Explorer is tacitly endorsing Microsoft's domination game plan.
And lastly, it's frankly laughable that Mr. Schare suggests security is the predominant reason for making IE7 available to XP users. Microsoft neglected the browser for over 5 years, until they noticed Firefox encroaching and taking away significant market share. To suggest security was the driving factor is, to say the least, disingenuous.
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"It has no *real* place in a browser, which should be platform agnostic and standards compliant."
I assume you feel the same way about Java applets in the browser, right? Java is not platform independent - it has been ported to multiple platforms is the difference (an obvious attempt by Sun to control the browsers and the web).
ActiveX support in IE has been around for a long time and I don't believe IE got its market share from that technology. All they are saying is they have made ActiveX more secure which is what consumers asked for.
If it wasn't for ActiveX, where would your AJAX be? No where.
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Java was an attempt to allow platform independant programs to be made.
A very good example would be Geocitie's pagebuilder. It can run under any operating system. Yahoo only needed to compile it once.
ActiveX has no place in a browser. The only legit use I've seen is Windows Update, and you don't need to user that with IE due to Automatic updates.
"If it wasn't for ActiveX, where would your AJAX be? No where."
What the hell is Ajax?
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MS still putting all it's X in the same basket
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I believe security was the predominant reason for the recent push to update IE. If MS loses market share on a product that they give away for FREE, then so what? They're not deriving any revenue from it, and neither are the competitors. Their main rival also gives away the product for free, and yet another competitor (Opera) has just begun giving away its product for free. Even though IE generates no revenue, there still may be some long-term strategic reasons to keep it up-to-date, but they're not as important as other agendas. IE has been neglected for 5 years because it simply wasn't a top priority. IE's market share is not as pressing of an issue as renewing the OS, the Office Suite, X-Box, mobile technologies, or extending into other markets.
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"What the hell is Ajax"
Read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AJAX
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It's hard to believe that you have a legitimate reason for contributing to this discussion if you haven't even heard of AJAX.
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I used IE7 beta2 for a few days and it drove me nuts... Websites I frequently visited had images in wrong locations covering text, and input boxes (textareas) were not showing text that was typed/pasted there (for quoted messages etc). It just sucked.
I HIGHLY DOUBT IE7 final will be much better in this sense, simply because the engine has been modified to the point breaking backwards-compatibility IS A MUST (IMHO). But we can all hope. Actually, I don't really care if it works or not - in 6 months+ I'll stick to Maxthon 2.0 on whichever IE engine works BEST for me - 6 or 7... I don't give a crap if websites load 10% faster. I don't care to fight idealistic wars (Firefox) at the cost/pain of suffering daily by not seeing ALL my favorite sites "as intended". I don't care for standards compatibility. I only care for me...
Maybe in 2 years websites will be optimized for IE7 engine, or Firefox's... Till then, I'm using the engine that gives me ZERO issues, and I just may have to POSTPONE upgrading to Vista because of that, too!
With my firewall, antispyware, automatic Windows updates, and antivirus I don't fear the "vulnerabilities".
Windows XP Pro SP2 + Maxthon is GOOD ENOUGH for me for the next 2 years.
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No offense dude, but a firewall and antivirus can't protect you from all of IE's vulnerabilities. There will always be an exploit for IE's engine... (as it's STILL the most popular engine... but only cause people don't care about themselves...)
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With the simple fact that I have not once opened IE since the last time I had to reinstall windows... I don't fear the "vulnerabilities" either.
http://thinsoldier.com/v...pyware_live_install.wmv
hey, anyone with the beta on xp, does crap like this still happen?
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I have never heard, not a single time, of a person using IE (and did what I said - fully patched all software, reputable firewall+antivirus+spyware) who got financially/otherwise damaged due to the hacking of their PC, whichever way (through browser, OS, email client, whatever).
So if I was a multi-million dollar corporation I'd worry about those tiny holes that only extremely talented hackers can and in reality exploit (for blackmail, spying, etc).
Trust me, if the security problems were really serious in people's minds, Firefox would have 50% marketshare by now... My prediction: two years after Windows Vista comes out, Firefox marketshare will shrink from soon-to-be-15% to its natural size of 5%. That will include all Mac users (since MS totally deserted them a la "Mac user? no IE and no Office for you!")
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It is beta
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Then let me be the first to enlighten you.
I watched my wife try to check the Garfield website for the daily comic. She was viewing the site with a fully patched IE6 on Windows XP SP2 with Sygate Personal Firewall, Avast Antivirus, Windows Firewall, and was behind a hardware firewall and got infected by two viruses that installed backdoors on her machine and eventually required a complete OS.
The only thing she did was watch the home page for Garfield open up, I was standing over her shoulder when it happened.
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And I predict that Firefox marketshare will rise to 25 or 30% by the end of the year.
Why? One word: Extensions.
We all know (or should know) that people gravitate to where the applications are, not to operating systems. Firefox is the "operating system" for the many powerful extensions developed (and being developed) for it.
Re: security issues not driving more browser users to Firefox, it's a simple issue of inertia--Microsoft made it very easy to stick with IE, as it's residing on everyone's Windows PC. Installing Firefox requires an effort. I would figure many people decide: Why install another browser if I already have one?
But nevertheless, Firefox is growing and growing and growing despite this inertia. Yes, the growth is slow, but thankfully, the Firefox community is patient, and more and more useful extensions keep on coming.
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ha ha ha
It never happened. I've dealt with hundreds of PCs and PC users and NOBODY suffered ANY damage, definitely not requiring an OS-reinstall, if they did the very few things you've claimed you did.
The only people who suffered serious damage are those with harddrive crashing. Everyone who suffered slowness/popups/viruses did not lose any data and only suffered inconvenience due to VERY careless behavior, 90% of time not patching machine AND not running antivirus. Luckily all the major viruses hitting clueless folks in the past few years have been rather benign - no loss of data. Only exception is the non-event Kama Sutra which was a badly programmed virus that in labs couldn't perform the file deletion it was supposed to do, for some reason.
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By 2006's end I believe Firefox will have no more than 15% marketshare. Again, they'll lose all that during 2007-2008 IMHO.
I think you are seeing too much value in Firefox extensions. They're all cool and nice but you gotta realize many people DO NOT wanna deal with these complex issues. Their life is too complicated as it is so most folks just stick to what works. Configuring Firefox extensions or finding some extension that you like (after testing some that you didn't so much like of course) is not something to recommend to the average non-techy user (like 90% of them).
And even for the techy types - they'll care more about compatibility to all their favorite sites (IETAB is not there yet but could be eventually!). I know I do. I don't mind using non-MS stuff, heck I use Winamp (not WMP), ACDSEE (not Picture&Fax Viewer), ClipMate (not Clip Organizer), SnagIt (not PrtSc+Paint), Nero (not HighMAT Wizard), Music Library (not WMP Library), WinRAR (not zip/cab), UltraVNC (not Remote Desktop/Assistance), UltraEdit (not notepad), TrueCrypt (not EFS), and finally Maxthon (not IE).
But I still pick MS stuff when it's the best for my needs: MS Office (not OO), Windows Live Messenger beta (not Skype/AIM/etc), Windows Media Encoder (not crappy MP3 at low bitrates or "rare" formats no common hardware player supports), and finally IE (through Maxthon, again).
Point is I don't say everything MS does is golden, but the MAJOR stuff they do is pretty damn good (OS/Office/browser). IE6 sucks, but they've made it modular enough so Maxthon came along and made it into a beautiful browser that has those things you said are important - extensions. So as a techy I picked Maxthon instead of Firefox just because Firefox does not render ALL MY FAVORITE SITES properly. Same reason I dumped IE7 for now...
My feeling is that MS will eventually buy out Maxthon (if the Chinese guru-developer does the smart thing TO RAISE HIS VALUE IN MS EYES and starts injecting Firefox engine in there better than the current limited mode which now reqs browser restart on engine-switch) ... and MS will make Maxthon into a premium browser ("Internet Explorer Pro"), part of Office 13 or something.
A complex browser (too many features that average folks don't use) MUST be optional. Most users pick OE over full fledged Outlook any day even if latter was offered for free (or bootlegged). Most users' needs will be covered by IE7 and more websites will rush to work with its weirdness (compatibility issues) than the websites that'll spend same limited resources supporting Firefox (or non-MS). Those users who'll need more power than plain IE7 will choose Maxthon over Firefox more often in my opinion, once Maxthon 2.0 is out (with many promised awesome features) and their PR starts to take off. I know of 10 folks who use Maxthon just because I showed them how better it is than IE. About 3 of them tried Firefox and found it lacking. Now between you and me, if they spent more time on Firefox they could have found extensions to make it into a worthy browser in their eyes -- but why bother when Maxthon 1.5 already comes with most nifty features built-in, and then of course you can add plugs. As a very heavy browser user I have not yet found a real need for any plugin for Maxthon, though I toyed with the idea of installing at least 20 really highly recommended ones. Why? Cuz It Just Works right now, and perfectly well for me. A little more a little less is not a big deal...
I spoke too much...Anyhow we'll see in 2.5 years where Firefox stands ;) I hope it'll be under 10% or over 90%, but not in between. ;)
Ciao
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If IE7 starts to have as many FREE extensions available to it as Firefox does, I'll consider using it. I cannot browse without AdBlock, IE Tab, ForecastFox, Tab Mix Plus, and about a zillion other great extensions that are FREE.
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i agree with you. after having so much control over the way the browser and web is presented to me i'd find it hard to even consider paying for the same functionality with ie (even more so when they rip windows update out of its ie requirement and directly into windows).
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FIrefox is still my browser. I used IE7 - it was nothing more then a slower version with IE6 with a facelift. There is only so much you can do with a browser - and looks dont matter - they just slow things down. Why doesnt MS just buy firefox - shut down the open source and call it IE 7 :)
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that's really a mind numbingly stupid comment.
which part of tabs do you consider a facelift?
which part of smarter pop up blocking do you consider a facelift?
which part of quickly seeing the contents of all open tabs a facelift?
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"Why doesnt MS just buy firefox - shut down the open source and call it IE 7"
Oh yea, so they can destroy it with the first release under their ownership.
That has got to be the most insane comment I've ever heard.
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Which is probably why ladylust put a smiley at the end of the post.
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retard
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Which is probly the reason I'm not really panicing over ladylust's statement.
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You don't know much about open source do you?
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ie7 i use more than firefox, but firefox has amazing extensions like "view in IE" or "IE tab" or "multitab plus" i use all of them and honestly.... better, faster, more fun experience....
still IE7 is almost there!! great job!
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I'm using a Beta copy of IE7 and I must say... I prefer IE6 over it... IE7 is just too slow and bulky :(
And what happened to the toolbars and stuff?
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even yourself said you are using a beta version of IE7, so why do you whine about it?
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A beta is a reflection of the final product, just with a few bugs and stuff
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Like slowness and missing toolbars...
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what retard uses toolbars today?
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They are still there, just check your settings.
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I don't experinece slowness and like the way in looks and acts. You missing the toolbars is an oversight in your settings. They are there, but they are assuming that most people don't use them anymore and they come deactivated by default.
Go to options and then toolbars and you will see them.
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I know this will sound odd for me to say, being a general supporter of Microsoft, but I believe IE7 is a great improvement over IE6. However-- ActiveX really does need to be replaced, or at least amended, by the "Netscape plugins" model.
At the very least, one of the features I would like to see in the final IE7 is a much improved Restricted and Trusted Zone list... better "wildcard" options for the lists would allow users-- especially administrators-- to better manage the restricted zone list to prevent malicious sites from being a problem and thereby circumventing many cases of user-misjudgment.
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ActiveX needs to go IMO.
I had no real use.
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Microsoft did support Netscape plugins in most versions of IE prior to version 5.01. Microsoft discontinued support for Netscape plugins because they thought ActiveX was better.
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Yeah, Windowsupdates, Housecall antivirus (and other brands), X-Cleaner, Shockwave Installer, Plugins--no real uses for it.
Many software DEPEND on ActiveX. Many mfr. driver recovery CDs will not work if ActiveX is disabled. Removal of ActiveX would be suicide for MS. Disabling it by default is the absolute best compromise, period.
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