Browser Wars 2004 313
J. Hobbs writes "Recent posts on David Hyatt's site describing the new technology he's working on for Dashboard, coupled with recent announcements from the newly formed WHAT-WG alliance (Apple, Mozilla, and Opera) could add up to a potentially new kind of application development and deployment that I explore in this highly speculative essay. See if you don't agree..."
Competition (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Competition (Score:5, Interesting)
One such work order system works flawlessly under mozilla, I had to use proxomitron to re-write the javascript code on the fly to get it to work.
If someone writes a plugin thats IE only, most likely microsoft is there somewhere, with its fingers in the mix.
Re:Competition (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Competition (Score:4, Interesting)
wait a minute! are you saying there's a relatively painless way to get IE-specific javascript to work in mozilla variants?
Re:Competition (Score:5, Informative)
It's possible to use some IE-specific sites in another browser via the Proxomitron, but you basically have to rewrite all of the scripts from within a regexp-based search-and-replace program, which can be quite a hassle.
Re:Competition (Score:3, Insightful)
What I see from this (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What I see from this (Score:5, Insightful)
We have very different memories of the debut of ActiveX. As I remember it, every sensible commentator out there was saying that ActiveX was a dystopian disaster just waiting to happen. Of course, 'twere the early days of the internet, and sensible commentators were few and far between.
Re:What I see from this (Score:3, Interesting)
The big issue at the time was that IE3 would automatically run ActiveX stuff without any prompt at all. That was fixed in IE4. People were also incorrectly comparing it to sandboxed Java Applets, when a better comparison was non-sandboxed Netscape Plugins.
Realistically, ActiveX has not been a huge security problem or a "dystopian disaster" (rolls eyes). ActiveX is just one of a t
Microsoft's secret weapon (Score:5, Interesting)
The stagnation of IE has been made to be seen as a bigger issue than it really is. We see Firefox making headway now and we are happy, but in reality, from a strategic point of view, it is no threat to IE in the long run unless it makes some fundamental changes.
If Microsoft gets its way, the fight is no longer going to be about rendering web pages.
I submit to you that this is due to
Right now, today, we are already beginning to see things like WYSIWYG HTML editors built with ASP.NET, that work like a native application embedded within the browser. (take a look at this, Devedit [interspire.com]. Requires IE.
One might argue that we can sort of already do such things using XUL, Javascript, DHTML, Java etc. That's all nice and well, but how many technologies do you have to learn to build a simple app?
With
This was the dream everyone had for Java, and from the way things are going, it looks like this dream will come in to fruition in the form of
(btw, I am no MS supporter (my main machine is a Mac OS X box). But I have to admire the
Re:Microsoft's secret weapon (Score:4, Insightful)
your enthusiasm is unwarranted (Score:5, Interesting)
That's great and all, but as a practicing web developer, I can assure you that dealing with MSFT's various idiocies as embodied in IE is a titanic pain in the ass. Just to pick one area where IE's stagnation is very much a big issue if you do this for a living: CSS support. They barely support CSSv1 correctly even in the latest IE, and anything later than that is totally haphazard. As for why CSS is a big deal, well, this comment box isn't big enough to contain all the reasons behind that. I'll leave aside for brevity all the other ways that IE makes our lives difficult at work!
As for the rest of your post, despite how much I'd love to use web-like tech to make traditional applications, I don't see that working. It's been tried before by quite a number of people unsuccessfully, and C#/.NET/blahblahblahbuzzwordsoup isn't different enough to really stand out. I find it ironic, to a degree, that you ask "how many technologies do you have to learn to build a simple app?" when you yourself list quite a number in relation to the MSFT development paradigm. .NET is a bit better
than the trainwreck that is traditional win32 development, but not by a whole lot (see Joel Spoelsky's writings on this topic, that I'm too
lazy to link at the moment). Fred Brooks said it best those decades ago, there is no silver bullet in computer programming, and there never will be.
Re:your enthusiasm is unwarranted (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, Internet Explorer 6 gets CSS 1 almost completely right. I agree with the "haphazard" description of CSS 2 support though.
Re:Microsoft's secret weapon (Score:4, Insightful)
"Imagine a browser that can run a native lightweight UI"
If it's native, wouldn't that be heavyweight? I thought lightweight was the exact opposite of native. :-/
At any rate, I'm pretty sure that you can interact with XUL via Java instead of JavaScript, if you really don't want to deal with JavaScript.
And at the point where you're writing purely XUL + Java, I don't see how writing XAML + C# makes life any easier. If anything, it's learning two more languages than the average developer already knows (most people already know Java.)
Re:Microsoft's secret weapon (Score:3, Interesting)
Native is completely unrelated to lightweight. Lightweight refers to the size (lack of bloat). Native refers to whether it's emulated or whatever.... can't think of a good way to explain it.... anyway, it has nothing to do with the weight.
Re:Microsoft's secret weapon (Score:3, Interesting)
Well in Swing terminology, "lightweight" means rendered by Java, on the canvas, whereas "heavyweight" means rendered by dropping a real widget on the screen. Although admittedly, in some cases (e.g. menu items and tooltips which end up needing to appear slightly outside the canvas) the heavyweight widgets are still drawn in Java.
My guess is that they named them like this because the heavyweight widgets consume WM resources, whereas the lightweight widgets do not (the heavyweight widgets take longer to dis
Re:nice but (Score:5, Funny)
Are you missing a V, or did you just misplace that R?
Active Desktop??? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Active Desktop??? (Score:5, Informative)
It didn't? Let me check. Nope, seems to still work. All my network monitoring pages are still on my desktop.
Re:Active Desktop??? (Score:2)
I will likely try it out just because that's what most of us do... try it, if it breaks, put it away. If it works, figure out ways to make it work for you. I'm rooting for WHAT.
Faster, lighter? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Faster, lighter? (Score:4, Informative)
- A ~4Mb download
- Much faster at rendering and downloading pages (especially with user-defined speed improvements [mozillazine.org])
- Less of a memory-hog than IE (IE is only any good because of it's integration with Windows)
Mozilla is slower than Firefox, but it is a full, feature-rich browser suite.Not ONLY Faster, lighter, but also IE-compatible (Score:5, Insightful)
IE has one thing that no other browser has: it shows almos Every Single Page as it was intended by the designers.
I know, I know, web designers' fault. They should create cross-browser pages, but they don't.
So, while MS does not respect W3C standards, the only way to compete with IE is being able to render the pages exactly like IE does. What would be better is to provide the user with an option: "show this page as IE would or show it as it should be rendered attending to W3C standars".
Until then, we'll be in a IE driven web (which, btw, is cyclic, designers design for IE 'cos the own the market, and users use IE 'cos the web is designed for IT).
P.S. I know, Microsoft is bad. And ppl use IE 'cos is there, but ppl does not change browsers due to what is stated above.
--krahd
Mod me up, Scottie!
Re:Not ONLY Faster, lighter, but also IE-compatibl (Score:5, Insightful)
So, while MS does not respect W3C standards, the only way to compete with IE is being able to render the pages exactly like IE does. What would be better is to provide the user with an option: "show this page as IE would or show it as it should be rendered attending to W3C standars".
Until then, we'll be in a IE driven web (which, btw, is cyclic, designers design for IE 'cos the own the market, and users use IE 'cos the web is designed for IT).
How would this help? Everyone would turn the option on, so that their favourite websites render properly, and web designers would continue to design for IE because that's what everybody's emulating.
Re:Not ONLY Faster, lighter, but also IE-compatibl (Score:3, Interesting)
I have been using Linux only browsers for 4 years and have had no problems with any webpages displaying incorrectly. As a matter of fact the only things I have heard of not working correctly are some streaming media type's (mms:// URL's) and little sites that were made using WYSIWYG tools.
And I wouldn't hold my breath about it being an IE only web, the more major site's and groups bash IE and promote alternatives the more it hurts MS, no matter how hard they try they wont be able to preve
Re:Not ONLY Faster, lighter, but also IE-compatibl (Score:4, Informative)
The jargon for this: "bug-compatible". You want to make a browser that is so compatible with IE that it's even broken in the same ways, so that pages render the same.
The problem with this is that you are trying to shoot a moving target. If the spec is "do whatever IE does", then you spend all your time tracking changes to IE. (Microsoft has been letting dust pile up on IE, but that's about to change anyway. And any strategy that relies on Microsoft to just lie back and not interfere is doomed.)
IE has been ruling the world, but there are several cracks in its armor.
0) Mac users have Safari, and they will scream at any web site that breaks it. They tend to be rather vocal. Alas they are a small group as a percentage, but they are vocal out of proportion. Safari has much better standards compliance than IE, so this is pressure in the right direction.
1) IE has so many security holes that people are actually getting annoyed at it. As long as IE "just works" it meets the Good Enough test and people will continue to use it. But now that people are getting more annoyed with it, browsers like Firefox get their chance. I just tonight put Firefox on a friend's computer, and he's so fed up with spyware that he was eager to switch.
Rather than testing IE so much you understand it better than Microsoft does, it would be better to just insist on web browsers that actually follow the standards. Besides, testing IE and coding bug-compatible features aren't as much fun as adding cool new stuff to Mozilla. Unless you are volunteering to lead the IE cloning effort, there probably won't be many people working on this.
steveha
Re:Not ONLY Faster, lighter, but also IE-compatibl (Score:2)
Currently, I will code, check IE and then check Mozilla, Safari and IE for Mac. There are some critical differences if you're obsessive on pixel-perfect placement (I am) and it's probably more trouble if you're using CSS for positioning (ideal, but still trouble and I avoid it), but generally things look pretty decent in all of these. One of the older IE/Mac browsers was a b
Re:Faster, lighter? (Score:2)
Great idea but.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Great idea but.... (Score:5, Insightful)
It still could open up room for exploits, but not the same type of exploits as IE. That being said, I personally would prefer my browser to do nothing but browse.
Re:Great idea but.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Great idea but.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Great idea but.... (Score:4, Insightful)
By its very nature it can't be done correctly.
That is to say, of convenience, power, or security, pick any two.
For web applications to be convenient, they have to be easy to install and offer all the power of a desktop application. That includes access to the filesystem, and to the burgeoning number of peripherals: personal LANs, WiFi antennae, microphones and webcams. (Did you know that Flash pages can turn on the web cam on your computer, if you allow it?)
But security requires bright lines of demarcation between your local machine, its peripherals, the LAN it may be on, and servers owned by others. It's on those distant servers that these applications will live, but this paradigm means granting any one of them as much access to the local computer as any locally installed program.
And as others gave mentioned, the reason I like Firefox is that it's only a browser. I don't want or need a browser that tries to be a poor substitute for several other programs, like a cheaply made Swiss Army knife -- I want a browser that is just as good a browser as possible.
Re:Great idea but.... (Score:2)
Surfin' Safari webpage (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Surfin' Safari webpage (Score:2, Funny)
I just can't wait until we start skipping the article title, too!
Standards war? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Standards war? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Standards war? (Score:4, Interesting)
Remember this is not MS we are talking about here. We are talking about a development consortium that is dedicated to open source and open standards. They no intention of locking anybody out of anything.
I for one think it would be awsome if web pages looked and acted better in mozilla then IE. Maybe then the windows users would find the motivation to go install mozilla (presuming of course they know how to download and install stuff).
Re:Standards war? (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem, as I see it, is rather that once these standards become, well, standard, MS will pull out it's old standby, embrace and extend. We'll see a system compatible to Dashboard and it's Opera and Mozilla equivelents, but extended so that new MS Dashboard widgets are not compatible with the others.
The hope, I guess, is that the combination of the huge security problems with IE and these new features will allow Safari, Opera, and Mozilla to hold a plurality of the browser market, so that MS won't be able to use their market dominance to embrace and extend. It should be pretty interesting to see what happens.
Re:Standards war? (Score:2)
If they at the very least had support for open standards, they could add their own widgets/etc. on top. It's fine for specialized use, internally if that's what your company uses and you know that everyone who is going to use it will be using IE.
But it's the responsibility of web developers to make their pages standards-compliant and to degrade nicely
Re:Standards war? (Score:3, Insightful)
A Few Questions (Score:2, Insightful)
1. How will I update this browser when the next security vulnerability affects my new browser? How will home users, or worse yet, businesses, patch these vulnerabilities? I can deploy an IE patch to 5000 systems in an hour. How will I do that with these alternative browsers?
2. These browsers are good bets from a security point now, but why would they be safe
Old arguments, all flawed.. (Score:5, Insightful)
The same way you do the IE patch - using SMS. If you use SUS instead, then add SMS to your list of neat-o technologies and voila.. you can push out auto-updates to ANY app - not just MS ones.
Thats of course ignoring startup scripts, domain login scripts, and good-old-fashioned "You must install this app or your email access will be restricted until you do". Lots of alternatives.
>These browsers are good bets from a security point now, but why would they be safe in 6 months, or a year?
Because they are designed with better security paradigms - they don't by default trust DATA as EXECUTIBLE CODE.
>As these browsers gain market share, they will be everyone's new favorite target, and there for no better off
Wrong. See Apache v. IIS. Far more Apache servers, and its attacked far less than IIS, and far less effectively. Market share != vulnerability. Even if it did, alternative browsers wont reach "majority" status for AT LEAST two years - even at the current-this-week migration %'s.
>Additionally, users will clamor for the same features, bells, and whistles IE has
Users already clamor for the features, bells, and whistles that IE *DOESNT* have that the other browsers have - tabbed browsing, pop-up blocking, and *real* css and png support. So much so that - oh look - SP2 will fix some of those "issues".
>don't switch because of security. Why not? Because anything computer related will be compromised.
Somethings are compromised more easily - security is rarely black and white, and it definitely isnt here.
Re:Old arguments, all flawed.. (Score:2)
This begins the circular argument. This begins the question that has never really been answered. If an open source program becomes the dominant standard for a large number of desktop users, open source will be tested as never before. The code will be available for all, white hats and black
Re:Old arguments, all flawed.. (Score:2)
I agree with the general idea. But not the details.
Apache gets considerable attention. If you can trust Zone-H
A Few Answers (Score:2, Interesting)
Check out Remote Desktop [apple.com] for Apple. I am sure their are plenty of Open Source alternatives. Hell, I could even write a Windows AT job that checks a directory and runs any executables inside it. All you have to do is write a self-installing executable(most have -silent installs).
These browsers are good bets from a security point now, but why would they be safe in 6 months
Stupid Questions. Administrators have to be ready to update software and
Re:A Few Answers (Score:2)
Try, say, an AT program that contacts a secure, internal server, which then tells the local machine what to download and execute.
Same idea, just a bit more secure.
Re:A Few Answers (Score:2)
Re:A Few Questions (Score:3, Insightful)
2. IE is a horrible bet from a security point of view right now. Six months down the road it will likely be just as bad. Mozilla on the other hand is much safer right now and will likely continue to be pretty safe six months down the road. Mozilla's also got quite a few features IE lacks entirely. Firefox
Make (browser) war! ... (Score:2, Funny)
Down with IE (Score:3, Funny)
I thought Safari was the best until I ran into a new website using Flash 7.0 which I wasn't prompted for nor asked to download and it wasn't until I tried it on my Win2000 machine that I figured out what was wrong.
Just stop it. Just stop moving forward until the rest of us catch up before you deploy the next level of interactivity to the web.
IE is dead in the water if you listen to the government. Too bad the entire world isn't listening to the American Government.
Re:Down with IE (Score:5, Insightful)
When was the last time standing in front of the bleeding edge of technological progress and screaming 'Stop!' did anything except get you cut off at the knees?
Those of us who are, in fact, interested in what advanced content tools are authentically useful for are uninterested in your neo-Luddite tendancies. Lynx is a fine browser for those things that can be represented in text, but if you think that everything the web is good for can be presented in Lynx, you're living in a dream world. Or 1991.
Re:Down with IE (Score:2, Insightful)
You have a point, however, your point is worthless unless you can distinguish between the bleeding edge of technological progress and that which is merely new.
They aren't the same thing at all.
KFG
Who Cares About the Browser War? (Score:3, Interesting)
I care more about a web content war. Like when is there going to be an open source initiative to put Flash out of business?
As soon as most of the people on the web have broadband, such content will be king.
Re:Who Cares About the Browser War? (Score:3, Informative)
Why? (Score:3, Informative)
Opensource is not about putting commercial companies out of business.
Re:Who Cares About the Browser War? (Score:2)
For the same reason people insist on making annoying PowerPoint presentations: Because they can.
anyone else read it Iexplore (Score:2)
(Apple, Mozilla, and Opera) could add up to a potentially new kind of application development and deployment that Iexplore
Ok, its official, I'm a nerd. go moz.
Browser War, what is it good for? (Score:5, Funny)
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Browser War
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Browser Wars is something that I despise
For it means you can kiss standards good-bye
For it means tears in thousands of coders eyes
When they have 2 sets of code to mess up their lives
Browser War
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Say it again
Browser War
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Browser War
It's nothing but a heartbreaker
Browser War
Friend only to the patent maker
Browser War is the enemy of all Webkind
The thought of another browser war blows my mind
Handed down from Corporation to generation
Induction destruction
Who wants standards to die
Browser War
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Say it again
Browser War
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Browser War has shattered many OSS giver's dreams
Made their widgets disabled and broke, Free Time is too precious to be coding indoors each day
Browser War can't give family life it can only take it away
Browser War
It's nothing but a heartbreaker
Browser War
Friend only to the patent maker
Open Source, Standards and understanding
There must be some place for these things today
They say we must fight to keep our freedom
But Lord there's gotta be better than MS'S way
That's better than
Browser War
Browser War
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Say it again
Browser War
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Yo Grark
Re:Browser War, what is it good for? (Score:4, Funny)
Not A Damn Thing Is Going To Change (Score:2, Insightful)
Why? Cause the damn browser is bundled into the OS and people can't choose to use one that isn't broken.
Fuck you DOJ. Do your damn job already.
Re:Not A Damn Thing Is Going To Change (Score:2)
Won't compete with IE6... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, running richer and richer "weblets" (for lack of a better technology-neutral term) on your local machine, feeding them with remote data and making it all flexible and (hopefully) secure, is a trend that's been going on for YEARS now. A lot of us would like this to feature open standards, open source and other such goodness, but we need to take a long, hard look at the initiatives from MS - their market dominance means that THEIR standards will become a reality.
Re:Won't compete with IE6... (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think it is so cut and dried yet. Longhorn, and hence XAML and all, is still at least a couple years off. Everything I've heard implies the release is going to go one of two ways: (1) It will be horribly late (2) A bunch of promised features are going to be heaved over
This isn't about making cool browsers... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's much easier to write UI code in HTML with some JavaScript that it is to write the same UI code with C++ or any other language for that matter. Instead of scoffing at the notion of web apps, people should embrace it as a new paradigm. Faster, cheaper, cross-platform, what could be better?
Microsoft was headed down this road with IE, but suddenly they realized that they couldn't continue or they would make the Windows API monopoly irrelevant.
IE development came to a screeching halt and they decided to come up with a perverted proprietary work-around to implement the same thing in a way that wouldn't threaten Windows (XAML and Avalon [microsoft.com]). XAML is essentially a fancy mark-up language (like HTML) that, coupled with C# (instead of JavaScript) creates rich client applications that are compiled windows apps. Throw in a little Indigo [microsoft.com] to make the apps web-aware and you've successfully recreated the wheel.
It only seems natural that someone else would want to carry the torch of rich browser-based apps. Most of the things these guys are talking about are already possible in IE. They're just trying to standardize it so people can roll up their sleeves and start writing cool apps.
Re:This isn't about making cool browsers... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, but that's not because HTML+JavaScript is such great technology, it's because C++ or Java using common toolkits are such awful technology for writing GUIs.
It's also not clear to me why we need a "standard" for this. If you are going to write applications, you can pick a good toolkit to go with that and just use that. In fact, if you like writing HTML-based apps but don't like the constraints browsers impose, chances are the toolkit you already have and use lets you do just that: use its HTML widget. In fact, you'll probably get embedded IE or embedded Mozilla out of that.
"Dashboard" (Score:2, Offtopic)
Dashboard [nat.org] is Nat Friedman's implicit query system for Gnome. That's been around for a while.
Re:"Dashboard" (Score:2)
What's funny is, when Mozilla were sitting on the name Phoenix, and then Firebird, they at least had the decency to change their name, even though the products which they had the same name as were different types of software.
Apple, though, will probably never change the name from the one they have stolen. Yet, Apple are not evil. Apparently.
mobozilla (Score:2)
Off to a promising start (Score:2)
It sounds like a nice idea but if MS chooses not to implement it or to do it badly (like say PNG support) then it is all for nothing UNLESS opera can use its dominance on the phones to some good. IF the phone is going to replace the PC (there are more mobile phones then PC's already) THEN people might be getting upset that their browser on their phones beats the pants of th
Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/flashpro/ development/ [macromedia.com]
http://www.macromedia.com/software/central/ [macromedia.com]
Am I wrong?
I love and use Java like hell, even though applets are now usable - but so far only Flash can really claim write once, run anywhere ubiquity. I don't even think XAML stands up to it and Flash is already pretty much in every browser from Win, Mac, to Linux....
Split Windows (Score:2, Interesting)
In-page bookmarks, with the option of being temporary or persistent would also be handy for navigating through large documents.
Another nice-to-have would to be an option to open all (or settable a maximum number
Let's Face It- (Score:2)
Give me consolidation not innovation (Score:2)
Stagnation is such an ugly word.
Wouldn't you prefer a consistent, solid interface, even layout bugs and all.
That crap earlier about mozilla learning wtf you are browsing. Who wants that in a browser. That's what a proxy is for you idiots. Stupid 'ooh lets make it do this' crap just keeps us on the treadmill so we have to keep our eye on the the bleeding edge so we know what's coming. Stop already.
You are allowed to say 'hey, it's finished'.
There should be no such thing as tabbed browsing, window managem
Let's kill browser alltogether ... (Score:3, Informative)
If choice means so much chaos and so little truely working 'standards' then please give me a working monopoly! I don't care if the steering wheel in a car is on the left or right side - as long as it works.
So far nothing really works as it should in all browsers - so I will simply follow where the money comes from: IE.
And please spare me the 'develop with web standards speach' - neither Moz, Firesomething nor Opera fully and properly support all CSS versions, DOM etc.
So far almost each new technology for the web has made things more complicated and less 'standard'.
IMHO I hope that a technology like
With real apps we could have proper and speedy shopping tools, better online forums, cool chat apps without bloated Java behind it
Instead of wasting gazillion of Terrabytes for sending html, java and css codes and workarounds lets focus on sending and communicating the truely wanted data as direct, speedy and interactive as possible - without any unnecessary wrappers.
HyperText is/was a great idea, but it should only be used for documents/news etc. - it was never meant for (web) applications. All that crap has been put on top later - and it never worked properly.
Let the server application/database and client talk directly
Re:Let's kill browser alltogether ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Come off it. All the other major browsers support 99% of the CSS, DOM, etc specifications, so it's unreasonable to criticise Internet Explorer for scraping by with something like 50% support for the
It does. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:If only the google toolbar with page ranked wor (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The Grudge (Score:5, Insightful)
Which planet do you live on? Microsoft has approximately $55 billion in the bank. Do you have any idea at all what that number means? For example, after subtracting a $400 million fine from the European Union, MS would still have ... $55 billion in the bank (to the same precision).
Apple, Adobe, Macromedia, Opera, and Sun are interested in not being caused to become financially insolvent by Microsoft. Some of them won't make it. IMHO Sun will be the first to die, but all of them are in danger. They are definitely not the slightest danger to Microsoft.
55bn isn't so much, really (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:55bn isn't so much, really (Score:2)
How do people make money from the stock market? Surely you don't rely on ever-increasing share prices?
Re:55bn isn't so much, really (Score:4, Informative)
When stocks are high growth, the shareholders don't expect or want dividends. The return comes from the increasing stock price and profits are better spent increasing the size of the business than giving out a dividend.
When stocks are high yield, they are good stready businesses that don't really grow much but turn out decent profits. The investor gets the return from the divi, and doesn't expect the share price to grow very much.Tech stocks were high growth through the 80's and 90's, but are now making the transition into being high yield. So they are starting to pay dividends (even MSFT) but they are still small so far.
Re:55bn isn't so much, really (Score:2)
Also, Microsoft has started paying out [wired.com] (small) dividends, since the tax situation changed in favour of dividend recipients.
Re:The Grudge (Score:5, Insightful)
LOL! Are you kidding? How can these companies be excluding MS from a market that MS utterly dominates? They're not excluding anyone, they're fighting for relevance - if all else fails, this will be their last great act of defiance [thetasigmatau.org].
Re:The Grudge (Score:5, Interesting)
1) They are running out of cash.
or
2) Their revenue projections are showing trouble ahead.
Clearly (1) doesn't apply as they have $55 billion. So the answer is (2). They are having to seriously slash their prices to compete on large contracts with Linux quotes.
Microsoft is not unassailable. As regards browser market share, the market share figures have started to slip for the first time in more than 5 years. [pcworld.com]
20 years ago, IBM seemed to some to be in an utterly dominating position. Their dominance had a rise and a fall. So will Microsoft. The signs that they have already passed their peak are there to see.
Re:The Grudge (Score:3, Interesting)
There are people still using Windows 95. There will always be people using IE. A lot of people. We can hope for MS to lose a chunk of their browser share, but that, in turn, could force them to up their standards compliance.
In a couple years, if
Re:The Grudge (Score:3, Interesting)
That it is the webforms stuff that goes first is not at all surprising, as Hixie isn't very fond of XForms.
Anyway, I think it is pretty straightforward: The guys forming the group didn't want MS on board. It's probably a matter of personal taste, not a big attack intended to bring Goliath down once and for all.
Re:The good old days (Score:3, Insightful)
Stop it. Just stop it.
The web wasn't built for all these crazy extensions or streaming media.
Build and deploy us a better Internet before added to the pile of restless options.
Re:The good old days (Score:5, Insightful)
You have a point, but you overstate it (and probably some grumpy moderator will mod you down for that...)
Some of the post-HTML standards are really beneficial. For example, the separation of document structure from presentation style (using CSS) is good, because it simplifies website maintenance and will allow programs to make sense of web pages. We're not there yet, but there's progress toward some really useful goals.
But the addition of a bunch of features just for eye candy ("very, very, very cool stuff" as the article referred to by the story puts it) is a giant leap backwards. It's just like flashing popups. The kids and the salespeople yell "wow! cool" for about 3 weeks and then suddenly they're no longer cool.
When I use the web, I want information. Stuff that looks like a video game in attract mode is just a timewasting distraction. Unfortunately, much of the advocacy for change is coming from graphic artists, not from real users.
It'd be a good sign... (Score:2)
Peace
Re:The (Bright) Future of IE (Score:2)
Re:A Web Browser (Score:4, Informative)
If you want to be a coder speaking the truth, you could try to be informed first.
The philosophy of only coding for what browsers can handle is a noble one... and one that, as far as I know, every sane web developer has been doing as long as the field has existed... who wants to code for non-existent clients?
As for your description of that as "Just HTML", that's Just Wrong. The W3C standards are, currently, XHTML 1.1 and CSS 2.0.
The W3C has long been advocating HTML/XHTML for markup and CSS for layout/design, pretty much since that paradigm was invented (or reinvented) by them. The W3C standards have evolved a bit since you've last checked. Your assumption was:
W3C standard: HTML 4.0
Browser Proprietary Stuff: everything else
However, there's a very different story today:
W3C standards: XHTML 1.0-1.1 [w3.org], CSS 1.0-2.0 [w3.org], SVG
Used by browsers commonly, but not W3C compliant: JavaScript (or JScript), DHTML, Java (not so much anymore)... I think that's about it.
The only designers not following your advice are those coding for Internet Explorer and not for Mozilla or for W3C standards.
Re:A Web Browser (Score:3, Informative)
And DHTML is just a wank term composed of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and whatever else the person wants it to mean at the time they say it. It has no features in and of itself.
Re:Microsoft is the suxx0rz. (Score:2)
Re:Microsoft is the suxx0rz. (Score:2)
The other reason to love Apple is that Linux software works on it, and proprietary software (e.g. MS Office, Adobe stuff, games lik
Re:Web overkill (Score:2)
That's why we now separate the information from the presentation. If you don't want to see the pretty presentation, there is a nice icon in the bottom left of Firefox that can turn it off. Enjoy.
As for HTML 3.2, it stinks, though ironically for precisely the same reason that you seem to hate the later ones... idiots using <font> tags and other atrocities which go against the idea of conveying information.
Zealot alert! (Score:2)
I'm sorry, but you win the Most Ridiculous Slashdot Metaphor award for this week. Use of the FONT tag simply is not comparable to mass murder, rape or torture.
Pedantry aside, I very much doubt that use of the FONT tag is going to hurt any web surfers in the vast majority of cases - even disabled people. The most it will do is piss off the person who has to maintain the page, most probably. That's the most signif
RTFC (Score:2)
It's not pedantic if you read between the lines.
If you would take the time to actually read my comment, rather than reading as much as necessary in order to make an attack, you would see that I didn't make any mention of mass murder, rape nor torture in my comment, and that your sick little mind merely inserted these as they're probably the sorts of things your mind likes to see. :-)
And whereas disabled access to sites might be important, I would argue that these days, mobile access to sites is more impor
Re:How this plays out depends on US, not them (Score:3, Insightful)