IIS Feedback

Summary: ProductFeedback about Internet Information Services

HCI Issues

I'm not exactly one of MMC's proponents... there are better interfaces for web-server administration, and to use the MMC interface was a mistake from the get-go

Also, IIS's property-pages can often contain literally dozens of tabs, this is just bad UI design... can you sort this out? Perhaps by using something like Macromedia Dreamweaver's Preferences panel to display property pages?

I'd also LOVE to see the same UI for Microsoft Office's options screen too.... its just far too cluttered

.htaccess support / "Simple" authentication

.htaccess is the de-facto standard for URI security on the Apache platform, primarily because of its simplicity, so why can't IIS support the same standard?

Additionally, a "simple" authentication system would be great too... I'm not too happy with having to create an Active Directory / Windows account for each IIS-Authenticated user, perhaps a much simpler solution integrated with say... SQL Server, to store users and credentials would be simpler

Update: They are halfway there - ASP.NET has "web.config" files which perform the same purpose, but only for server-side code (AFAIK)

"IIS-Lite"

By providing a cut-down, but (almost) equally functional version, say... with a maximum connection limit, would be a boon for home developers who wish to continue with their hobbyist ASP (or whatever) application development.

A serious rival to Apache for the home-user experiementing with internet development would go down well... considering Apache's relativly complex setup and configuration process

Perhaps ISAPI support could be removed? People needing the enhanced functionality would be running a version of Windows with the full version of IIS anyway

IIS 7 Preview

See this blog post

Ten connection restriction in desktop Windows versions

Windows XP Pro limits to 10 connections. Some browsers are already opening 8 connections to webserver. Can you change IIS so that all connections from the same IP address are counted as one?

URI Rewriting

Apache, and other HTTPD users have been enjoying the benifits of URI Rewriting, and integrating the functionality of Helicon's "ISAPI_ReWrite", this is a must-have!

ShadowChaser - I agree, this is a must have. I would love nothing more than to turn my ASP.NET pages from "www.blah.com/account.aspx?User=ShadowChaser" to "www.blah.com/account/shadowchaser"

Web-based administration panel

This would actually be a first for Microsoft.... to provide an MMC-like interface that admins can access using any browser from anywhere in the world. It would sure beat using VNC (or even RDC... but I still prefer VNC)