If there is a new IE

I heard that the team for IE is grouping again, for a possible new IE version. I hope that is not slashdot talk (nonese in other words). However, as a developer first and as a user later I wanted to make the following points. First of all I am well aware of the hype and some zealot talk on the net about Microsoft and its products including IE. As a developer I am fine with IE and I don't have much complaints about it. However there are certain things that I really really want it to be fixed in the new version of IE.

• Fixed positioning in CSS
  
• Better support for PNG (Transparency issue)
  
• Fixing Javascript event model.Adding multiple event handlers and making the owner of the new handler the object itself, not the window object.
  
• Having more than 2 connections to the web server, so we can use xmlHTTPRequest more freely.
  
• The ability to detect double click in javascript. 
  

When it comes to W3C's standards etc.. I think you shouldn't embrace everything in the documentations strictly. Developing for Mozilla is a pain in the *. The W3C's box model is not intuitive at all. For this reason I suggest that IE team keeps the IE's box model.

As a user I would like to see the following new features:

• Tabbed browsing, yes you can have this with plugins etc... but I want a well-thought tabbed browsing which is faster than Firefox and more natural.
  
• Better management for cookies, privacy, popup blocking. Popup blocking is not enough, it should be easy to manage which sites I allow to popup and which sites I don't allow.
  
• Finally Internet Options should be made much more usable. Right now it is always a pain to adjust certain options. For example, custom level security window can not be resized and it is very hard to read and check out what to allow and not to allow.
  
• Better security. Just recently there was an unpatched problem and I hope you will be fixing it as soon as possible.
  
• Resizing text even though it is fixed size font.
  
• Having more than 2 simultaneous connections to the web server so we can download two files at the same time.
  
• Download manager.
  

Another nice thing would be using IE update to propogate .net runtime to millions of desktops. I love .net, but not everybody has it. Put great features and fixes into this new IE and make sure that it installs the new .net runtime environment with it.

I look at Microsoft in a very positive way. I think you have done a great job, but not updating IE pissed me off both as a user and as a developer, but more importantly as a developer. Currently I am using Firefox. I think IE is the second best browser out there among all the major browsers including Safari, but Firefox puts some real competition.

--- Thanks ----

Hmm, Im not so crazy about the tabs, so make them optional. 

But one thing I would like to see is a Media Blocker.  AOL 9.0SE has a version of this, called the Animated media blocker, which blocks Flash.  In some cases I think its extremely useful, especially because of the increasing number of annoying flash ads that fly over the screen.  If it could also block embedded video and audio that would cool too. 

I agree with everything .. plus.. I think they need to add a download manager as part of the browser.

Feedback about Internet Explorer belongs in the Wiki not the forums.

Matt8109 wrote:

Hmm, Im not so crazy about the tabs, so make them optional. 

But one thing I would like to see is a Media Blocker.  AOL 9.0SE has a version of this, called the Animated media blocker, which blocks Flash.  In some cases I think its extremely useful, especially because of the increasing number of annoying flash ads that fly over the screen.  If it could also block embedded video and audio that would cool too. 

You'd probably like the FlashBlock extension for Firefox (as I do): http://flashblock.mozdev.org/
(it works much better than the older "Click to Play" extension)

You'd also probably like the Right-click >
block images from [server]" feature that FF has built in too.  Very useful for many siezure-inducing-banner-ad hosting servers. (and much easier than editing your HOSTS file every time)

I am very new to Channel 9 so i don't know if this is the right place to put this but:
 
If there is a new IE...

please fix the bug where paragraphs in the source code are beeing shown randomly....
 
for example: sometimes when i create a homepage with a lot of sourcecode. (and i am not using any kind of editor... i keep my code very clean! ) it happens that (and this only happens with IE) some alignments just aren't in the right place... now it took me a while but i found out that if i put the code, that is responsible for the alignment, into a single line it suddenly works.

you can imagine what the code looks like, if you delete every format you do to keep the code "readable" like tabs or paragraphs. thanx... greetings from berlin!

Knowing when the user closes IE

When developping intranet applications, we are often confronted with this situation. Even though we provide our users with a "Quit Application" button, they usually just quit by closing IE altogether. This often means that we must wait for the user's http session to expire before releasing objects the user had locked (ie. Invoices, orders, etc.). Problem is, sometimes other users need to access these same objects.

If there was a way implement an event by script so that IE can inform "the server" when the user closes the IE window. We tried the onUnload() JScript method, but it proved to be unreliable by times.

What would be nice would be nice is to have some sort on "Event" triggered when the window closes with an URL as a parameter. When right before closing the window, IE would contact this URL (with parameters ou course). Of course, IE wouldn't have to wait for a reply from the URL. But this would allow developpers to create listeners on this URL so that we can release the locked objects.

Some might say that we just have to wait for the session to expire. But in some coprporate environments, the session timeout is VERY long...

 

JParrish wrote:

I agree with everything .. plus.. I think they need to add a download manager as part of the browser.

That is in Longhorn. I'd like to see is a download manager with Bit Torrent support.

cbrousseau wrote:

Knowing when the user closes IE

When developping intranet applications, we are often confronted with this situation. Even though we provide our users with a "Quit Application" button, they usually just quit by closing IE altogether. This often means that we must wait for the user's http session to expire before releasing objects the user had locked (ie. Invoices, orders, etc.). Problem is, sometimes other users need to access these same objects.

If there was a way implement an event by script so that IE can inform "the server" when the user closes the IE window. We tried the onUnload() JScript method, but it proved to be unreliable by times.

What would be nice would be nice is to have some sort on "Event" triggered when the window closes with an URL as a parameter. When right before closing the window, IE would contact this URL (with parameters ou course). Of course, IE wouldn't have to wait for a reply from the URL. But this would allow developpers to create listeners on this URL so that we can release the locked objects.

Some might say that we just have to wait for the session to expire. But in some coprporate environments, the session timeout is VERY long...

I'm not sure if this is in HTTP 1.1 or not. You might want to look through the specification at w3.org for it and if you find it, tell Microsoft to implement it. If you don't, you might want to suggest it to the W3C Standards Organization.

Shining Arcanine wrote:

I'm not sure if this is in HTTP 1.1 or not. You might want to look through the specification at w3.org for it and if you find it, tell Microsoft to implement it. If you don't, you might want to suggest it to the W3C Standards Organization.

We don't need to contact to W3C everytime we need a new feature. W3C's SVG takes years to become stable and it is still not complete yet. W3C also doesn't listen to these. I have seen many conversations there, most of the people there are web designers and they want to keep the specification as simple as it is. Our only chance is browser makers, but since mozilla also refuses to do for political reasons, our only chance is Microsoft. They will probably follow Microsoft when people start to depend on it. Remember xmlHTTPRequest object? It is not a standard, but Mozilla also implemented it because it is useful, W3C refuses to come up with such features because the organization is geared towards web designers, not developers.

W3C is not something we have to worship, they have to listen to us, if they don't then we should pressure the browser makers. Standard zealots try to make our lives harder for political reasons, we don't need politics in software development and web design. We should focus on the technology and unfortunately W3C become too political.

Keskos wrote:

Shining Arcanine wrote: I'm not sure if this is in HTTP 1.1 or not. You might want to look through the specification at w3.org for it and if you find it, tell Microsoft to implement it. If you don't, you might want to suggest it to the W3C Standards Organization.

We don't need to contact to W3C everytime we need a new feature. W3C's SVG takes years to become stable and it is still not complete yet. W3C also doesn't listen to these. I have seen many conversations there, most of the people there are web designers and they want to keep the specification as simple as it is. Our only chance is browser makers, but since mozilla also refuses to do for political reasons, our only chance is Microsoft. They will probably follow Microsoft when people start to depend on it. Remember xmlHTTPRequest object? It is not a standard, but Mozilla also implemented it because it is useful, W3C refuses to come up with such features because the organization is geared towards web designers, not developers.

W3C is not something we have to worship, they have to listen to us, if they don't then we should pressure the browser makers. Standard zealots try to make our lives harder for political reasons, we don't need politics in software development and web design. We should focus on the technology and unfortunately W3C become too political.

The Internet has become too fragmented with non-standard this and non-standard that. If it isn't approved by the W3C, I would prefer to not to see it become a feature at all.

By the way, standards are meant to make lives easier. With them, you should not have to accomedate this person's variation of the spec and that person's variation of the spec, just the spec.

Yes Virginia - there IS a new IE

http://news.com.com/Microsoft+appoints+a+new+IE+evangelist/2100-1032_3-5243583.html?tag=nefd.top

..so it's not IF its WHEN

Currently almost every browser has some non-standard feature already, especially for javascript and DOM stuff. Non of the browsers are standard complaint so far. I don't see people who talk too much about standards worrying really about standards. Some people initially started to talk about it for legitimate reasons, netscape 4 issue, but later on anti-Microsoft crowd embraced that notion to bash Microsoft, and in many cases they are not fair at all. To me IE and Mozilla are both great browsers, but not Opera, yet to standard zealots say only IE is not fine and the rest is ok. So we should stop worrying about religious things and start worrying about improving the lives of web designers and developers. If some anti-Microsoft people do not want to use some feature in the IE, let them not use it. This is not about politics, this is about technology.

Matt8109 wrote:

Hmm, Im not so crazy about the tabs, so make them optional. 

But one thing I would like to see is a Media Blocker.  AOL 9.0SE has a version of this, called the Animated media blocker, which blocks Flash.  In some cases I think its extremely useful, especially because of the increasing number of annoying flash ads that fly over the screen.  If it could also block embedded video and audio that would cool too. 

So just don't install the plug-ins and you do not have to block anything.

Keskos wrote:

Currently almost every browser has some non-standard feature already, especially for javascript and DOM stuff. Non of the browsers are standard complaint so far. I don't see people who talk too much about standards worrying really about standards. Some people initially started to talk about it for legitimate reasons, netscape 4 issue, but later on anti-Microsoft crowd embraced that notion to bash Microsoft, and in many cases they are not fair at all. To me IE and Mozilla are both great browsers, but not Opera, yet to standard zealots say only IE is not fine and the rest is ok. So we should stop worrying about religious things and start worrying about improving the lives of web designers and developers. If some anti-Microsoft people do not want to use some feature in the IE, let them not use it. This is not about politics, this is about technology.

Are you insinuating that I'm bashing Microsoft?

I defend Microsoft against Linux/Firefox/etc Fans...

And yes, defending Microsoft against Firefox fans is interesting, especially when there isn't much to say in Microsoft's defense.

By the way, improving the lives of web designers and developers means abiding by the standards which Microsoft created along with the other members of the W3C...

I'd just like to be able to consistently save web pages that I'm viewing to my hard disk. In IE6 (on WinXP SP1, fully up to date with patches), most of the time when I try to save a web page in IE it goes and downloads all the files again, then crashes out with a resounding "boom". If the save does appear to work, a lot of the time when I re-open the page from the hard disk copy there's nothing there. This is a major pain. Is all this misery a universal problem with IE6, or just my computer? So I use Netscape 7.1 instead, which always (touch wood) saves pages immediately and properly. It's also much safer from the security point of view of course, and quite a bit faster. I haven't had any problems with incompatible web sites with Netscape, and it has its own built-in pop-up blocker which saves the very small amount of labour installing the Google Toolbar. I tried Opera, Mozilla, etc but I don't like their tabs (very personal, that one) and their incompatibility with most online banking and e-commerce sites. John

I like IE and the Mozilla browsers, though I have to say that Mozilla is very slow for the dhtml animation I use in my work.

The funny observation I make when people talk about standards is this:
IE has about 95% market share and is accused of containing non-standards.

Mozilla is only about 2% market share and is championed as adhering to standards.

Now, this seems odd to me. I would have thought that by definition, standards would have refered to the one that is in highest use. So perhaps w3 et al should consider IE to be the industry standard, and the others need to alter their methodologies in order to move closer to the way IE does things.

Just throwing a cat among the pigeons. Now I'm gonna duck for cover

Brent.

bsilby wrote:

Now, this seems odd to me. I would have thought that by definition, standards would have refered to the one that is in highest use. So perhaps w3 et al should consider IE to be the industry standard, and the others need to alter their methodologies in order to move closer to the way IE does things.

IE should be changed so that it is compliant with the W3C specification as Microsoft made it along with other W3C members.

I find it ironic that while Microsoft makes the standards as a member of the W3C, its own software fails to comply with them.