Mozilla: IE 7 to boost Firefox growth | The Coffeehouse

rjdohnert
You will never know success until you know failure

This has been one of my predictions, either Firefox or Netscape 8 will do it.

Maurits
AKA Matthew van Eerde

The boost is likely to be transitory. Windows 2000 is a small market share and getting smaller.

Steve411

HAHA, that's a hilarious article! But it's true. I especially like this part:

News.com wrote:

"We have high hopes that we'll do better and better in (the enterprise) space with Windows 2000 users," Dotzler said. "We're excited about Microsoft launching IE 7--it will remind a lot of people that if they want better features they have to spend hundreds of dollars upgrading" to Windows XP.

Funny stuff.
Steve.

W3bbo
The Master of Baiters

Steve411 wrote:
HAHA, that's a hilarious article! But it's true. I especially like this part:

News.com wrote:
"We have high hopes that we'll do better and better in (the enterprise) space with Windows 2000 users," Dotzler said. "We're excited about Microsoft launching IE 7--it will remind a lot of people that if they want better features they have to spend hundreds of dollars upgrading" to Windows XP.

Funny stuff.
Steve.

Thing is right...

I don't want "new features". I want a stable environment that works.

'nuff said Smiley

DoomBringer
Doom!

As recent bugs and problems have shown, FF isn't necessarily a better browser... (not that IE is any better, I've come to the conclusion that all browsers suck)

Dr. Shim
Inaniloquent monomathical people inlapidate me.

DoomBringer wrote:
As recent bugs and problems have shown, FF isn't necessarily a better browser... (not that IE is any better, I've come to the conclusion that all browsers suck)

As a matter of fact, I couldn't agree with you more. The idea is out-dated, IMHO. There's got to be a better way of getting content from the Web.

Michael Griffiths
Fatalism.

Dr. Shim wrote:
As a matter of fact, I couldn't agree with you more. The idea is out-dated, IMHO. There's got to be a better way of getting content from the Web.

Yeah, there is.

Web Browsers, I can see for applications - when you need to DO something.

But extracting information.... isn't it.

RSS Bandit is quite good, however. RSS, and then a nice tabbed browser integrated into it...

bonk
Ich bin der Wurstfachverkäuferin !

W3bbo wrote:

I don't want "new features". I want a stable environment that works.
'nuff said

Unfortunately a lot of potential users are not W3bbos. They want IE to be cool and shiny.

MisterDonut
The Disco Godfather

Maurits wrote:
The boost is likely to be transitory. Windows 2000 is a small market share and getting smaller.

And grow smaller still... Mainstream support by Microsoft for Windows 2000 users ended last month.

BruceMorgan

bonk wrote:

W3bbo wrote:
I don't want "new features". I want a stable environment that works.
'nuff said

Unfortunately a lot of potential users are not W3bbos. They want IE to be cool and shiny.

Completely true.

There are lot of people who want cool, shiny, more powerful, more productive UX work, and don't care in the least about any HTML or security work.

And there are a lot of people who want every D/X/HTML & CSS feature implemented, and care nothing about improving security or UX.

And there are a lot of people who just want security & stability (never crash, never lose data, never do anything weird, never be exploitable) over all else.

There are a bunch of other constituencies that want what they want in IE, and tend to care nothing about the other constituencies needs.

When you have the massive number of users that IE has, then you have massive numbers in each group, at least in terms of absolute numbers. Even if only 5% of our users want feature X, it's millions of people.

Cider
Daze-d & Confused

Firefox does need better corporate tools, definitely.

I wrote a tool for allowing lockdown and configuration of Firefox by Group Policy in Active Directory, called FirefoxADM. When I first wrote it, it was just a small idea I had, nothing massive, and wrote it for myself and then made it public domain and sourceforged it.

I've had emails from 5 continents, from schools, Universities, businesses and a few MASSIVE businesses. There is easily a six-figure number of machines running FirefoxADM now. And y'know, its a fiddly little tool I wrote requiring multiple scripts and ADM templates, its version 0.3.1 (well, 0.4 uploaded tonight or tomorrow) and supported by no one other than me.

But, the thing is, it works - and what too many people fail to realise is that in academia or corporate installations, its a case that if Firefox isn't configurable centrally, then its a no-go.

So, Mozilla, you do need to make official corporate lockdown tools because there is a huge market need for it. Yeah, I know it will kill FirefoxADM eventually, but, as I say, I didn't expect much from it and didn't exactly do it for the money...

W3bbo
The Master of Baiters

IRT's Bruce's post.

Just to point out that:

I staunchly care about W3C specification compliance
I support good HCI experiences
I believe the 2nd step in network security is with the browser (after Kernel network security)
I believe that non-essential features should come 2nd to all of these

Internet Explorer (in the past) has failed all of these:

We're still waiting for CSS2 compliance
IE7 uses a seriously "dumbed-down" RSS button
IE's use of ActiveX was a major security issue shortly after IE4 was released
*cough* <marquee>

Cider
Daze-d & Confused

I believe the 2nd step in network security is with the browser (after Kernel network security)

I believe that non-essential features should come 2nd to all of these

I wonder why you are so pro-Firefox then, when - if you compare Firefox 1.0.5 to IE 6 on XP SP 2 - it can easily be argued that the level of security to ActiveX is vastly higher than with Firefox XPIs.

As we saw with the previous code execution security flaw and today with GreaseMonkey, its an extremely versatile, flexible system, and therefore in web terms extremely dangerous. There is simply inadequate protection put in place (a whitelist? Easily bypassable with a bit of carrot-dangling social engineering).

If things are allowed onto the other side of that whitelist through inadequate checking, then that's even gone. Grease Monkey is a case in point. An extension that allows user scripts to be run on pages was ALWAYS going to end in tears. It should never have been whitelisted.

Cider
Daze-d & Confused

BruceMorgan wrote:
Completely true.

There are lot of people who want cool, shiny, more powerful, more productive UX work, and don't care in the least about any HTML or security work.

And there are a lot of people who want every D/X/HTML & CSS feature implemented, and care nothing about improving security or UX.

And there are a lot of people who just want security & stability (never crash, never lose data, never do anything weird, never be exploitable) over all else.

There are a bunch of other constituencies that want what they want in IE, and tend to care nothing about the other constituencies needs.

Bruce,

Reading that, it makes me wonder if the correct model would be to split IE into seperate IE-based products for the different groups who require different functionality.

For example, I've always thought it would be best if there was an Intranet Explorer as well as an Internet Explorer. I know many companies these days would love an Intranet Explorer which has free reign to the Intranet but is hardened by default to the Internet. The admins would then just open up web sites as allowed. Its draconian but many corps would like it.

I know you can do this with IE but its extremely fiddly even through Group Policy (actually scrap that, ESPECIALLY through Group Policy).

rjdohnert
You will never know success until you know failure

DoomBringer wrote:
As recent bugs and problems have shown, FF isn't necessarily a better browser... (not that IE is any better, I've come to the conclusion that all browsers suck)

Its not the browsers that suck, its a human invention, humans suck.

Maurits
AKA Matthew van Eerde

Cider wrote:
Reading that, it makes me wonder if the correct model would be to split IE into seperate IE-based products for the different groups who require different functionality.

As a web developer and a user, I need at least two browsers.

I need a Draconianly pro-standards browser that puts big red error messages on the screen whenever it is asked to render anything that deviated one jot from the standards.
font-size: 10 pt; <-- INVALID CSS
I need this when developing, so my sites work in any standards-compliant browser.

I need a can-put-up-with-anything browser for actually browsing the internet, as opposed to developing. This browser must support all code, even non-standard code, even when it's full of typos and missing closing tags... and all popular plugin modules (ActiveX, XPI, etc.)

AdamKinney
Agent of Change

Hmm, it seems that then your development time in the clean browser would be wasted as everyone else would probably be using your lazy viewing browser.

As FireFox goes I prefer developing for and using it over IE for simple reasons.

Developing for - It supports modern day CSS properly. makes CSS much more viable and fun.
Using - I like tabbed browsing and it sems to crash on me less (or mostly not at all).

Maurits
AKA Matthew van Eerde

AdamKinney wrote:
everyone else would probably be using your lazy viewing browser

If only it were so...
I have (un?)fortunately a very diverse audience. My user-agent logs show a very wide variety of browsers, as well as non-browser user-agents such as spiders, RSS readers, java bots, etc.

(EDIT: and that's only counting the user agents that honestly report themselves!)

Also, I have to consider the possibility that new browsers might continue to come out even after I commit my code! Wink

Luckily, the authors of all these browsers have access to the standards. So long as they followed the standards when writing the browsers, my pages should work. If my pages don't work, I can reasonably deduce that there is a bug, either in my code, or in that browser.

Which brings me to my Three Laws of Web Development (apologies to Isaac Asimov: )

1. CODE TO STANDARDS
2. WORK AROUND BUGS IN POPULAR BROWSERS
3. IGNORE BUGS IN UNPOPULAR BROWSERS

W3bbo
The Master of Baiters

Maurits wrote:
Which brings me to my Three Laws of Web Development (apologies to Isaac Asimov: )

1. CODE TO STANDARDS
2. WORK AROUND BUGS IN POPULAR BROWSERS
3. IGNORE BUGS IN UNPOPULAR BROWSERS

Seconded. Although I do fix any glaring issues with browsers like Links and Lynx for "public" sites.

AdamKinney wrote:
Hmm, it seems that then your development time in the clean browser would be wasted as everyone else would probably be using your lazy viewing browser.

As FireFox goes I prefer developing for and using it over IE for simple reasons.

Developing for - It supports modern day CSS properly. makes CSS much more viable and fun.
Using - I like tabbed browsing and it sems to crash on me less (or mostly not at all).

I never thought I'd see a Microsoft employee ever say that.

AdamKinney
Agent of Change

Those are good laws, but they illustrate the problem Law #1- CODE TO STANDARDS. That should be it. But then you have to bring in Law 2, which is the main difficulty for building great UIs for web applications. How do I make it work in all browsers or at least not have a detrimental experience for downgraded browsers? And then you brought up another valid point, how do I plan to support the other means of visiting my site: pocket pc, phone, tablet in profile format (600 x 800, even). Its difficult, but its great to see that issues are being addressed. One of my latest great finds, which you may have seen, is the Atlas announcement from Scott Guthrie. I'm just glad to be around to speak up in the future on internal emails.

Yes, w3bbo, I still to get keep my honest opinion Smiley Actually one of the things that was bugging me today is the html output of this richtextbox for adding posts. Its usuable html, but can definitely be improved upon.

Maurits
AKA Matthew van Eerde

AdamKinney wrote:
Law 2, which is the main difficulty for building great UIs for web applications. How do I make it work in all browsers or at least not have a detrimental experience for downgraded browsers?

You make a standard for building great UIs, natch Smiley

W3bbo
The Master of Baiters

Maurits wrote:
You make a standard for building great UIs, natch

Already exists.

Although its a shame no-one's implemented it yet (well, Mozilla and Opera have made a start) and I hear Microsoft is interested in "extending" (*cough* bástardising) it.

rjdohnert
You will never know success until you know failure

Maurits wrote:
The boost is likely to be transitory. Windows 2000 is a small market share and getting smaller.

Actually its over 50% of corporations using Windows 2000, many small businesses use it. Right now IT funding is the one being cut from everyone. My fundings been frozen which means only the necessities. Sure I could sabotage the Windows 2k machines we have in here and use that as an excuse but Im an honest person and wont do that. We are replacing machnes and XP is coming in on the new ones but hey I have replaced like 9 machines in a year and a half. Windows 2000 is not going anywhere, now if you are referring to companies like AT& T, Nortel and other multibillion dollar companies than yeah, they are going to migrate quickly, but hospitals, schools, consultancies and content creation. They do not migrate as quickly as others. What will kill most broad use of Win2k will be Microsoft killing the .NET Framework, Windows Media Codec 9 and Office on Windows 2000. Im expecting support to be dropped for those products on Windows 2000 to happen very soon. Possibly when Longhorn is released, probably a little into Longhorns lifecycle.

DoomBringer
Doom!

Dr. Shim wrote:

DoomBringer wrote: As recent bugs and problems have shown, FF isn't necessarily a better browser... (not that IE is any better, I've come to the conclusion that all browsers suck)

As a matter of fact, I couldn't agree with you more. The idea is out-dated, IMHO. There's got to be a better way of getting content from the Web.

Packetsniffers and building raw HTTP requests... thats how I read the web. (or not)

Erisan

In my opinion, one point which make Firefox better compared to "many" other browsers is the fact that Firefox is multiplatform browser. I do understand that MS/Windows fans doesn't care but I think personally that it's very important advantage.