When will we see features that Internet Explorer lacks in Internet Explorer? | The Coffeehouse

Shining Arcanine

Here is a list:

Support for standards as should have been done in the FIRST place - just had to mention that
Drag 'n Drop Tabbed browsing
Download Manager w/Bit Torrent support
Cookie Manager
Text Size buttons that work on sites that have text size data in the CSS - bug
MSN Messenger button option in Toolbar Manager

I'd say a download manager period, popup blocking and addon management but that will be in either XP SP2 or Longhorn from my understanding.

CumpsD
Mine! Mine!

Download manager will be in Longhorn for sure, I already used it there Smiley

And I thought I've seen a cookie manager in there as well

mykoleary

Shining Arcanine wrote:

Drag 'n Drop Tabbed browsing

The heck with drag and drop, I'd be happy with plain old tabs (of course, don't stop there, but at least go there!)

mykoleary

Dup post...

ArSa
HAL 9000

There will not be a new version of IE per MSFT.
Meaning that you will not be able to get new functionality in IE unless you upgrade to new version of Windows. Think of versioning like "IE from Windows 2005" or "IE from Windows 2007" etc.
I hope dump that idea Smiley

In the light of Avalon it's hard to see where this will end up though.

jcarlisle

Not exactly true about them linking new IE functionality with a OS upgrade (but close lol). In addition to lots of security updated the upcoming XP2 for Windows XP is getting some new funtionality including popup blocker and I believe some addin management among other things... not earth shattering but the pup blocker will be nice (although my google toolbar does a good enough job). Hopefully this will be a trend at least with the continueing delays of longhorn (which was a while out anyway).

Josh

jonathanh
My mod color is red

Yup, XP SP2 adds popup blocking and plugin management to IE6. Did we mention that we're looking for people to test it? Smiley

Of course, you might want to bring a good defragger, as I found out.

Personally, I use MyIE2 at work, to get that tabbed goodness around an IE6 core. Been meaning to blog about it... maybe later this week

dalangalma

This is really a serious issue, especially with standards support. I talked to an MS developer a year ago asking when IE would support common internet standards, and he blew me off by asking "If you had to commit 10 developers to adding standards support or making flashy powerpoint transitions for web paged, of course you'd choose the cool powerpoint transitions. That's all users care about." And that's an attitude that I find absolutely reprehensible. If I want to make a modern, accessible site today, IE is my roadblock. I want to use transparent PNGs? No go. I want to float an element? IE doubles the padding values for no reason. And on and on. The biggest use for home computers now is to surf the internet, and most people use IE. Microsoft owes its users to keep IE upgraded, since it's probably the most popular MS application ever.

TehLuz

why doesn't microsoft just upgrade the next version of IE to mozilla?

Cronan
Ivan the Terrible

I agree. Tabs would be very nice, etc etc. (I actually use Firefox for most of my browing these days), but what IE needs more than anything else is to be a truly standards-compliant browser. Just implement the stuff on w3c, OK?!!?

cloricus
...well someone had to have it, right?

<>As some one who creates web pages in his spare time I code my sites to work in Mozilla, Opera and MSIE using XHTML1.1/CSS2/PHP. The challenge? Getting it to "look" right in IE, all because it just does not support standards. Sure GRE and Opera have their flaws, Opera has a padding issue on pictures with css border styles and Mozilla/FFox has a glitch where when you use div's to make a page the background colours don't fill to the bottom but all of these have simple to work out fixes where as MSIE requires fiddling until you find some thing that remotely works with it.

I personally inform all IE users on my sites when they enter the following and laugh at any one who uses it and feels remotely safe in doing so or believes they have all the features a modern browser has to offer.
-quote-
You're current web browser, Microsoft Internet Explorer, is non-compliant with internet standards, outdated by over three years and dangerously insecure. Upgrade immediately to one of the following Mozilla FireFox, Opera Internet Browser or Mozilla Web Browser 1.6 which are all available to download and free to home users.
---
<>
My over all feeling? It should be scraped and built from the ground up so that it has a chance at being as good as Moz/Opera/etc because it is constantly patched for big flaws which is not the best way to "improve" software.</rant>

Also what is going to happen in the up coming search wars in regard to the home page that MSIE will be set to? A touch off topic but I've been wondering this for awhile.

aidan

I work and develop web applications for IE - and while I admit it does have it's share of bugs - it does also have it's fair share of very powerful functionality - web services in JScript, VML, client-side XML DOM support.

While I agree with the other posters that standards compliance would help a great deal - many business applications don't need to worry about cross browser issues - they are developing an app for use within a company and company's can tightly control their browser configuration and have almost all standardized on IE.

My question around this topic is what kind of enhancements should we expect in the upcoming version of IE? It think is particularly relevant considering the choices companies have now when developing apps to be widely distributed (.NET vs. IE).

flotsky

If I was asked for an IE wishlist... 1) Mouse gestures, as per Opera. This was what took me away from IE, the dealbreaker for me. I'm lazy, and I find it speeds up my surfing and reduces effort in actually moving a heavy mouse. 2) Yep, tabs would be nice. 3) Making every successive release have a lighter blue icon. 4) Built in rss reader. I use my present reader essentially as a second browser, shouldn't it all be together?

Jeremy W
that blogging guy

To be honest I couldn't care a whink about most of the 'features' listed here. Tabbed browsing? Sorry, it's less efficient for me (if I can't alt + tab to it, I don't want it). Gestures? Tried it, but since it's not in my normal workflow (see ActiveWords) it doesn't help me be more efficient.

travis
eo

Shining Arcanine wrote:
...
Support for standards as should have been done in the FIRST place - just had to mention that
...

That is my entire wishlist for IE. Until they have greater support than FireSomething (Mozilla), they won't be my default browser. Where I work we've nicknamed IE as TNN (The New Netscape). In the past IE support has been out of the box for most of our web apps, then would always have to spend a great deal of time recoding to support Netscape 4x. Now we primarily develop in FireFox, then fix the issues IE has, then fix Safari's issues if there's time. To be honest it's difficult for me to picture IE being as feature rich as FF, but if it could at least render as good (or better)...

Shining Arcanine

CumpsD wrote:
Download manager will be in Longhorn for sure, I already used it there

And I thought I've seen a cookie manager in there as well

It doesn't have Bit Torrent support.

ArSa wrote:
There will not be a new version of IE per MSFT.
Meaning that you will not be able to get new functionality in IE unless you upgrade to new version of Windows. Think of versioning like "IE from Windows 2005" or "IE from Windows 2007" etc.
I hope dump that idea
In the light of Avalon it's hard to see where this will end up though.

I am referring to the version in Longhorn.

jcarlisle wrote:
Not exactly true about them linking new IE functionality with a OS upgrade (but close lol). In addition to lots of security updated the upcoming XP2 for Windows XP is getting some new funtionality including popup blocker and I believe some addin management among other things... not earth shattering but the pup blocker will be nice (although my google toolbar does a good enough job). Hopefully this will be a trend at least with the continueing delays of longhorn (which was a while out anyway).

Josh

That is why I didn't mention popup blocking or addon management.

dalangalma wrote:
This is really a serious issue, especially with standards support. I talked to an MS developer a year ago asking when IE would support common internet standards, and he blew me off by asking "If you had to commit 10 developers to adding standards support or making flashy powerpoint transitions for web paged, of course you'd choose the cool powerpoint transitions. That's all users care about." And that's an attitude that I find absolutely reprehensible. If I want to make a modern, accessible site today, IE is my roadblock. I want to use transparent PNGs? No go. I want to float an element? IE doubles the padding values for no reason. And on and on. The biggest use for home computers now is to surf the internet, and most people use IE. Microsoft owes its users to keep IE upgraded, since it's probably the most popular MS application ever.

That developer should be fired...

This makes me wonder if everything Microsoft and its employees have ever said about innovation is a lie.

FrankCarr

Important Things That Are Needed Now, not in 2-3 years

Follow W3C standards
Tighter security for ActiveX objects
Tighter security for BHO's
Easier control of BHO's
Protect IE process space from interlopers

Nice To Haves, but could be provided by 3rd parties

Tabbed Browsing
Cookie Management
Download Manager

Shining Arcanine

FrankCarr wrote:

Important Things That Are Needed Now, not in 2-3 years

Follow W3C standards
Tighter security for ActiveX objects
Tighter security for BHO's
Easier control of BHO's
Protect IE process space from interlopers

Nice To Haves, but could be provided by 3rd parties

Tabbed Browsing
Cookie Management
Download Manager

I agree.

vazz
Vazz

This has been discussed over at Scoble's blog too. But I dont thing anyone in Microsoft is interested in fixing this. The answer will be that if they fix this they will break 1000 other softwares which uses IE's rendering engine. But I dont buy it.

Shining Arcanine

vazz wrote:
This has been discussed over at Scoble's blog too. But I dont thing anyone in Microsoft is interested in fixing this. The answer will be that if they fix this they will break 1000 other softwares which uses IE's rendering engine. But I dont buy it.

This was actually supposed to be a feature and not a lack of standards compliance discussion. Anyway, I'd imagine Microsoft is listening considering that they made this site to find out where their products are lacking.

I doubt it would break thousands of other applications unless thousands of other applications using IE were designed with workarounds.

codemonkey

Visual Studio has tabbed browsing.

Jtb

it would be nice if I can program IE-Addons with dotnet.. Smiley

dalangalma

As far as features go, yes, tabbed browsing is nice, but I think most of the features IE needs are coming out in WinXP SP2 - popup blocking, BHO & activex controls, etc. The only feature I'd really like to see that dosen't seem to be coming is better privacy management - like Firefox's "clear all my stuff" buttons. That would make me feel safer using IE on a public terminal, for example, and isn't hard to implement.

dalangalma

I forgot - PNG transparency. That's a feature I really want. It makes things so pretty... even with the alphaimageloader hacks to get IE5.5+ to use PNG transparency, I can't use 8-bit pngs or pngs as CSS backgrounds. If webmasters had that ability, the web would really become a lot more beautiful, and everybody likes pretty flashy stuff, right?

Aardvark

I Just want the damn thing to print web pages w/o cutting off a characters on the right. Maybe some type of scaling?