Will Internet Explorer 7 Have Any Impact? 136
John Seyton asks: "A recent posting regarding Internet Explorer 7 has me pondering what impact this next release will have on the web market. Firefox has fought hard to make a small dent in Internet Explorer's armor, to the point that we can browse most of the web with no loss of functionality, yet if Internet Explorer 7 recaptures a sizable chunk of that market share, web authors might once again create offensive 'please upgrade to Internet Explorer' web pages. Based upon the known features, what does the Slashdot community think the impact of Internet Explorer 7 will be on the web in general? Will we be forced to live a two-browser life once again?"
not this time (Score:5, Insightful)
I think by definition since IE7 comes from Microsoft IE7 must have an impact. But I think it will have less impact than Microsoft's original reaction to get back into the internet race.
"Last" time Microsoft managed two things at one time by bringing their browser to the internet: they managed to cut off the air supply (never liked that group anyway) to Netscape long enough to make Netscape irrelevant competition, and they actually created a less buggy browser (Netscape 4, anybody?). I hated them for it, but it was the perfect storm that killed Netscape and made IE king.
The net scape today is too different for Microsoft to pull this off again. Like before they're mostly playing catch up... seemingly lulled by their victory, virtually ALL other browsers surpassed IE in features, and even in reliability when you factor in the security issues.
And, ahh yes, the security issues -- features Microsoft included in IE combined with their Windows platform to enhance the web and browsing experience were also their undoing. While Microsoft always had and will have their cadre of softies following and coding to all of the Microsoft whistles and bells, I think this time many middle-roaders feel stung by the crap that was IE and are more inclined to steer clear of gee-whiz stuff and cater more to globally accepted standards.
I can hardly wait to see what IE7 brings in enhanced functionality, but I can hardly believe there's anything they can do to convince the world they're for real this time. (Though, I never cease to marvel at Lucy's ability to convince Charlie Brown to kick the football one more time.)
So, yes there'll be impact, but I don't see IE7 as the bombshell that was IE classic (or am I just whistling past the CSS yard?).
Re:not this time (Score:2)
Add to that the fact that Microsoft now wants everybody to re-code their websites to work around the required EOLAS patch...
Re:not this time (Score:3, Insightful)
I can see IE7 having a more substantial effect than you suggest. You're right in that MS is playing catchup, adding features to IE7 that have been in FireFox for a while, but that's precisely why I think it may be impactful. Except for the anti-MS zealots and users of nonWindows OSs, why does anyone switch to FireFox? Basically it's tabbed browsing and a decreased vulnerability to malware and similar exploits. What does IE7 offer? Tabbed browsing and decreased vulnerability to malware and similar explo
Re:not this time (Score:3, Informative)
Extensions. IE 7 doesn't have AdBlock+, FlashBlock, Tab Mix +, session manager, live bookmarks, web developer toolbar, HTMLTidy source checker, HTTP live headers, Greasemonkey scripts, Slashdotter, or any number of a huge list of extremely handy utilities.
Re:not this time (Score:2)
Re:not this time (Score:3, Interesting)
*ALL* of them. Not the fiften I use, or the four you love, every last one. Corporate managers will love it, but the IT departments will stay on Firefox - .
Re:not this time (Score:3, Insightful)
Whats the motivation to download IE7 for features I already have with Firefox? Why would my mother or my mothers friends want to use IE7 when they already have the features of IE7 and then some (such as extensions) simply by sticking with Firefox?
IE7 is only going to get a massive user base if MS force it upon us through WindowsUpdate as a "critical update". Otherwise, I don't think we'll
Re:not this time (Score:2, Informative)
Whats the motivation to download IE7 for features I already have with Firefox?
I can't speak for people in general; I can only describe why I switched to IE7. I primarily switched to Firefox for tabbed browsing. I endured Firefox frustrations that manifest on an XP machine, which include unreliable cut/paste and a frequent inability to scroll using arrow keys. I haven't seen this behavior on Linux, but it's much more convenient to run XP at work. So, when IE7 came out, I switched back because I got t
Not much (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not much (Score:2)
Re:Not much (Score:2)
Re:Not much (Score:2)
Granted I am doing little more than criticizing right now, I am at least digging for some browser statistics from 95 to 2000, might I suggest you do the same?
Re:Not much (Score:2)
Personally, I think the "cutting off the airsupply" deals with ISPs had much larger effect than the default install issue. It wasn't so much the default install but making it more difficult to get Netscape.
Re:Not much (Score:2)
Then in August 1998, all things went pear shaped and IE was supposedly built in as a core part of the Windows platform. Although, I'd dispute this saying that the Windows 98lite project managed to remove it completely by my recollection
Re:Not much (Score:2)
This is wrong. IE was installed by default on nearly every OEM system that shipped with Win95 B/C/D
Re:Not much (Score:2)
Before this, IE4 - when installed - replaced several parts of the system (eg: explorer) with those that used the IE components as Windows 98 (and followers did). So, effectively, as soon as you installed IE4, IE was "part of the OS".
Before this, IE3 was the first version to be of the "component" archtecture.
Although, I'd dispute this saying that the Windows 98lite project managed to r
Re:Not much (Score:2)
Re:Not much (Score:2)
Don't forget bandwidth (Score:2)
1) Netscape's browser was not keeping up with IE
2) Not many people had the bandwidth to download a new browser (for all I love firefox I'd never encourage my friends with modems to try downloading it)
Frankly I think this second part is not fully appreciated in the browser war history.
Re:Don't forget bandwidth (Score:2)
One of the few good things about IE is that when you download it, what you get is a very small program, easy to get even on dial-up. Then, when it installs, it goes out to the net and gets those parts it needs and only those parts it needs from the net. With Firefox, you get the complete install program, with everything included, even parts you don't hap
Re:Not much (Score:2)
Re:Not much (Score:5, Insightful)
This argument is common, but it doesn't hold water when you consider the largest growth in IE's marketshare was the period of time between IE4's first public beta until 6 - 12 months after Windows 98 was released.
During this time, the vast bulk of end users were only able to get IE4 from either an internet download, or magazine cover CDs and the like.
IE4 most certainly *did* "captured massive market share" because it was better. People sure as hell weren't manually installing it because it was worse.
Re:Not much (Score:2)
The sad fact of the matter is that Netscape versions after about 4.0.8 completely sucked. It was impossible to get *just* a browser (like IE), you had to get a whole "Communicator" package full of crap you'd never use. Which of course was bloated as hell, slow, sucked memory, and cra
Re:Not much (Score:2)
And it took years for Mozilla to reach the 1.0 release. I know this, because I never used IE regularly. That period between Netscape 4.0something and Mozilla some stable 1.0 release was a loooong wait.
Meanwhile, IE kept adding new features.
It's as if two people are racing, and one person stood
Absolutely! (Score:5, Funny)
Will it have an impact? I can hear the impact of it hitting the fan as we speak... but it's not the impact that I'm worried about as much as the splatter.
No IE 7 for Windows 2000 (Score:5, Informative)
Unlike the features of Mozilla Firefox 2.0 (currently in development under the codename Bon Echo), the features of Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 do not include compatibility with obsolete operating systems such as Microsoft Windows 2000.
Latest Nightly Build? (Score:1)
Bon Echo nightly builds (Score:1)
Is there a latest nightly for Bon Echo?
The Firefox 2 branch plan page [mozilla.org] states that Firefox 2 (Bon Echo) development happens on the 1.8 trunk [mozilla.org].
Re:No IE 7 for Windows 2000 (Score:2, Informative)
Will Internet Explorer 7 Have Any Impact? (Score:3, Funny)
Seriously, IE7 will only have an impact if they can fix the security issues. Otherwise, Firefox, Opera and others will continue to gain share in the market.
The only impact I can see... (Score:2)
I always could before, but the fact that it's another Quality Microsoft Product (TM) means that folks who are unwilling to be persuaded by reason can still use the Internet when the Internet stops being proprietary.
CSS... (Score:2)
Re:CSS... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:CSS... (Score:2)
Re:CSS... (Score:2)
Re:CSS... (Score:2)
Re:CSS... (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh, you're so, so wrong. I used to work for a major provider of online training courses. We made everything from accountancy to basic literacy courses, all delivered online through a web based
Re:CSS... (Score:2)
yup, too lazy
Remember it takes a few minutes to tell you it looks funny, it takes a few seconds to poke an X then poke a big blue E.
Sorry it was simpler to just close FF and open IE especially when the class time is in a few minutes. By the end of course, noone remembers to complain...
Most FF user will have ran across this accessing their bank or something somewhere
My $0.02 (Score:5, Interesting)
I think we never left the 'two-browser life' stage. As a developer, I obviously have both browsers installed and regularly use both to test designs, despite favouring Firefox for personal browsing. I think the competition is healthy, better to have people divided amongst 5 or 6 'core' browsers (IE, Opera, Firefox, Safari, Lynx maybe and Konqueror) is better than having everyone locked into one single program. It does make continuity and consistency an issue for web developers, but I'd still rather it was that way than have everyone using the same badly-written software.
Regarding the topic at hand, I think the release of IE7 won't change too much. Probably everyone running XP now, unaware of the alternate options, will just get the XP "upgrade now!" bubble and download the newer version without really being aware of the differences. From my attempts to educate my spyware-ridden family regarding OSS, it seems that often, computer laymen aren't aware that there are other browsers, and just see IE as the abritrary, sole browser in existence. The biggest thing is educating them to their options then allowing them to freely choose. IE7 won't convert many Firefox users back, it'll just upgrade the IE6 and Vista-buying public who never really know the difference to start with.
Re:My $0.02 (Score:2)
You make a good point -- that the vast majority of the public doesn't even know that there are "other browsers". Take it a step further -- a large part of the surfing public doesn't even know what a "browser" is. They click on the big blue "E" to see Google, much like they
Re:My $0.02 (Score:2, Interesting)
New features? (Score:1)
As for the security, we all know how much improvement they have done in that area since Bill Gates' call to revamp IE (and Windows in general) security few years back. Few securities gaps have already been found in IE7 Beta.
I think the damage done by security issues in IE6 and previous versions of IE has started the downhill, and its not gonna be reversed that soon, that
Two levels of Impact (Score:2, Interesting)
Two: All the rest of us will have to cope with any mistakes they make, no matter how much Firefox penetration there is.
Web Development Issue (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Web Development Issue (Score:1)
Re:Web Development Issue (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes you can [tech-recipes.com].
Re:Web Development Issue (Score:1)
Re:Web Development Issue (Score:1)
Short answer: Yes
Long answer: Yes, and they didn't fix the problems you needed the hacks to work around either.
To it's credit, I did notice one new rendering feature I liked, now ANY element can support
Again to be fair, I myself haven't dug deep into rendering changes.
Re:Web Development Issue (Score:1)
Erm, if that doesn't set it up with IE7 for you, click the link at the very top (to change which browsers show).
Re:Web Development Issue (Score:3, Informative)
As for hacks specifically, a few months ago, they started recommending a shift away from using CSS hacks and toward using conditional comments. The latter can be used to target specific IE versions with intended functionality, rather than side effects.
Re:Web Development Issue (Score:2)
I agree with them. Conditional comments kick ass!
Re:Web Development Issue (Score:2)
That statement doesn't make much sense to me. Last time I did this (luckily I've gotten out of it) I used a conditional comment to include the CSS containing the IE hacks. That way my main design is 100% clean with no hacks. Not only that, but some of my origi
Re:Web Development Issue (Score:2)
Things like prepending * html to a rule so that it will only apply in Internet Explorer (because technically, * html shouldn't match anything, but IE6 allows it), or using
The hacks they recommend against are those that rely on bugs in the way browsers parse or implem
Re:Web Development Issue (Score:2)
The voice-family hack was broken by SP2.
Re:Web Development Issue (Score:2, Interesting)
Doing my part to right the wrongs as I see them.
7.0 won't, 7.5 might (Score:4, Interesting)
Let's face it, 7.0 is a hurried release to get the Internet Explorer brand going again. It doesn't even close the gap between it and last year's browsers, let alone this year's. Yes, it has a couple of interesting features, but nothing that really stands out. Furthermore, everybody still using Windows 2000 won't be able to use it.
However Microsoft have indicated that they aren't going to let Internet Explorer rot for another four years after this release - there's likely to be a 7.5 and 8.0 in quick succession. These versions are likely to have an impact.
They are likely to get the rendering engine into the kind of shape where they can make proper changes to it (think display: table, XHTML and the DOM event model) without massive regressions. If they do implement XHTML, they won't be limited by their requirement to keep bug-for-bug compatibility with earlier quirks because they can implement a new strict mode for application/xhtml+xml. They won't be fooling around with tabs for the interface, they'll be doing something new. Everybody using Windows 2000 will skip Internet Explorer 7.0 and get 7.5 or 8.0 when they upgrade.
Apart from the year 2010 or so, when web developers will be able to use things like 1998's CSS 2 selectors and expect it to work for the majority of their visitors, 7.0 will have virtually no impact compared with the subsequent versions.
Re:7.0 won't, 7.5 might (Score:5, Interesting)
But there will still be a lot of IE6 users a year, two years, three years after IE7 is released. And that will continue to hold back web development until IE6 goes the way of Netscape 4.
As for marketshare, I suspect IE7 will get some of the people who were on the fence about switching. I don't think it'll stop or reverse the trend -- in other words, I expect few people will switch back, except under the circumstance that they get a new computer and don't want to bother migrating their settings.
Re:7.0 won't, 7.5 might (Score:2)
Losing Marketshare (Score:1)
Heh. Hee hee. HAR!
Oh sorry, I just love the fact that there's actually a nugget of truth to the implication that IE has lost tons of ground. Even given that IE still has the lion's share of the market, it has less than 5% of the market that affects my daily life now. I've converted 50+ employees to Firefox or Safari, as well as my closest friends and relatives. Bwahahahaha!
What will keep IE out of devs love (Score:4, Insightful)
Will IE 7 implement standard HTML dom methods?
Will IE 7 implement standard HTML dom methods to the spec?
The answer to this is a loud no from the IE team. They have already said that they know their scripting engine is woefully out of date and have no intention of fixing it in this release cycle. Something to look foward to in IE 9 then (since IE 8 will probably be a fix release like 2 was for 1 and 5 was for 4).
I'm a Two-Browser Man... in a Different Way (Score:3, Interesting)
see Userfriendly.org (Score:2)
Playing the fence... (Score:3, Funny)
Please, give some info in the summary! (Score:1, Funny)
Asking Slashdot what they think of IE is like.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Heh.. Asking Slashdot users what they think of IE is like asking the Chinese
government what they think of free speech.
Re:Asking Slashdot what they think of IE is like.. (Score:1)
Well... (Score:5, Funny)
Too many interactive diagrams both for the cataloging webapp and for the search webapp rely on SVG. If I have to convince people to install an Adobe plugin, I might as well do right by them, and convince them to use a real browser.
Re:Well... (Score:2)
Re:Well... (Score:2)
The Firefox Plug-In!
Seriously, that would be awesome. Switch out the rendering engine with a plug-in and save me (a web-developer) the pain in the ass of hacking my pages to work on the abomination that is IE. Tell the users that it comes with new emoticons and wallpapers and other equally worthless crap and they'll install in droves. SpreadFirefox.com wont know what
Re:Well... (Score:2)
IE simply isn't anything that you can make decent webapps for. Seriously, try to code up something for everything but IE sometime, you'll be amazed... it all uses the same damn code. 90% of the cruft in anything like digg.com or whatever has to be IE-switching bullshit, is my guess (speculation, never bothered to view source on it).
But even the plugin is a pain in the ass. I'm not going to bother
Re:Well... (Score:2)
Just so you know, it's in the nightlies [webkit.org].
Re:Well... (Score:2)
Two things have to happen.... (Score:2)
In my opinion, #1 may actually happen. Beta2 is still a long way off from having "reasonable" CSS support, but they've got close to another year to pull it off, if I'm correct in assuming that IE7 will launch with Vista.
The second item won't happen for at least four years, assuming IE7 comes out in one year. At this point we all
Re:Two things have to happen.... (Score:2)
Also, my understanding is that IE7 is still scheduled for sometime this year, which means it'll arrive before Vista.
Firefox has already served its larger purpose (Score:3, Insightful)
Which seems to be Microsoft's company motto these days...
Will IE 7 have any impact? (Score:1, Redundant)
-Twi1
The days of 95% share are gone (for now). (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no IE7 for Linux or UNIX.
And perhaps most significantly, there is no IE7 for Mac. Microsoft has totally abandoned the platform. Apple having the balls the ship their OS with a non-MS browser, at the risk of damaging their sacred user experience, is responsible for the impossibility of another Microsoft lock on the web in the medium-term. (Though Apple owes a debt of gratitude to the groundbreaking Mozilla evangelism work which began the conversion of the web away from IE-only).
Every Mac that moves off the shelves of your local, brightly colored Apple store is not just a blow to Windows, but it's a win for the accessible web, the open, standardized office suite file format, etc.
In fact, I encourage nerds of all colors to switch, even _away from_ Linux. Massing around Apple is, in my opinion, the best way to continue to chip away at Microsoft's broad monopoly over the next few years. Linux can't do it on its own... KDE, GNOME, and 3rd party apps are still (perpetually, seemingly) not ready yet for the masses. OS X is.
Switch! And more importantly, keep OS X in mind during your UNIX development. (Props to the Firefox team; anti-props to the OpenOffice team).
Re:The days of 95% share are gone (for now). (Score:3, Informative)
True, assuming you mean XP and later (Windows Server 2003 isn't a big platform for web browsing, but IE7 is supported on it). Based on my site's stats (hardly scientific, I know), that limits them to an 81% maximum for now. This will grow as the remaining Win2k-and-older users drop off the radar. Whether enough people switch to offset that growth remains to be seen.
Re:The days of 95% share are gone (for now). (Score:2, Insightful)
Apple marketshare has dropped for six years in a row. Since *you* positioned this as a pure percentage game (see subject), you must acknowldege that Apple's market is increasing less important to the big picture. Especially compared the heydays of IE5/Mac. Now, mod me down like good zealots.
Re:The days of 95% share are gone (for now). (Score:2)
6 years in a row, ending with 2004 maybe. Have a source on this claim that the loss continues?
Don't chug the Apple koolaid too fast ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Um, sorry, but this is not because Apple has "the balls" to do this; they had no choice. Microsoft stopped IE for Mac, not the other way around, so Apple can't do anything other than push their o
For the record (Score:2)
Using, developing, and evangelizing for Linux right now, other than for your own personal fun, which I can't begrudge, is equivalent to voting for a third party candidate in the U.S. The best choice? Sure. But you're "throwing your vote away." With enough people "voting" for Apple
Re:For the record (Score:2)
You might not want an Apple monopoly, but guess who does? If you think that Apple will pass up any opportunity to lock people into Macs over alternative platforms, you're deluding yourself. The only reason they can get away with it now is that Apple has as little marketshare as Linux.
Using, developing, and evangelizing for Linux right now, other than for your own personal fun, which I can't begrudge, is equivalent to voting for a third party
Re:The days of 95% share are gone (for now). (Score:2)
Yes! Let's replace one abusive monopoly with another abusive monopoly! Let's not have just a software-monopoly, let's have a hardware-monopoly as well!
I would encourage OS X-users to switch to Linux instead. That way you would make sure that no company could screw you over. And that includes Apple. Only
Re:The days of 95% share are gone (for now). (Score:2)
This is the project in which people would report websites that blocked non-IE browers, relied on IE-only technology or quirks, or made poor assumptions as to what browsers were out there (like telling a Mozilla 1.4 user to "upgrade" to Netscape 6.0). Volunteers would then contact the webmasters and encourage them to use cross-browser techniques, fix their coding errors or
Specialized Web Pages (Score:2)
I don't think you're going to see this again. We can't deny, of course, that it was once this way, but the internet is quickly moving away from the "wild cowboy" days and growing up. There is a much bigger focus in general for properly formed and designed web pages (at least, when you consider what the internet once was).
I'm not saying that you won't see a loss of functionality by not using a specific browser,
Little more than an annoyance (Score:3, Interesting)
IE7 will only be installable on Vista and XP+SP2. IE7 will also not be integrated into the underlying OS, so Joe Sixpack running XP likely won't just automagically get it as part of his bi-millenial visit to Windows Update.
It appears that MS doesn't know how to sell Vista, and will probably have to rely on OEMs to just "make it available". The $500M marketing campaign might directly generate some retail sales, but I think it's likely that big business is starting to catch on to the FUD.
IE7 is capable in 2006 of what most other modern browsers were capable of in 2002 (or earlier). Granted, that only means something to developers, but there are high profile ways that IE is behind the curve (tabs, anyone?).
The fate of IE7 is directly tied to Vista, which more than likely will have a very slow uptake (slower than the 2k to XP conversion), and be based almost completely on new PC sales. I doubt is IE7 will have much more than 25% usage share 3 years after Vista is released sometime (not January... maybe June/July, in time for the back-to-school PC sales rush) next year.
Unfortunately, this means that the decline of IE6 will be just as slow. Most developers I know now hate IE6 more than they ever hated Netscape 4. Firefox 2 is coming, Opera 9 is due soon, and Apple will likely update Safari, all before Vista is released. IE7 may get an independant release schedule, but I doubt it.
No going back (Score:2)
Sigh (Score:2)
New features, standards compliance, standards non-compliance, bugs fixed, new bugs exposed in Internet Explorer 7 will have a minimal impact on its rate of market penetration relative to Mozilla Firefox.
More than anything else, the rate of adoption of new users of Internet Explorer 7 is closely correlated to the rate at which consumers buy new PCs with Microsoft operating systems and Internet Explorer pre-installed on them.
That's the signal. Everything else is just noise by comparison.
Re:You will always live a two-browser life (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You will always live a two-browser life (Score:2)
Re:You will always live a two-browser life (Score:3, Informative)
Well, not natively. I've managed to install it in CrossOver Office (i.e. WINE), but it's not worth using for more than site testing.
The funniest part is the dialog box you get after installing that says, "Simulating Reboot."
Re:You will always live a two-browser life (Score:2)
ah well.
Re:You will always live a two-browser life (Score:4, Informative)
Linux or OS X.
Exactly how do I run a two browser life? And while Linux's desktop marketshare may be limited (this is arguable), it's indisputable that OS X has a small, but economically and socially significant portion of the desktop market.
Re:You will always live a two-browser life (Score:1)
Re:You will always live a two-browser life (Score:2)
Voting with your dollar. I'm with ya
Re:You will always live a two-browser life (Score:2)
I've only encountered one site in recent memory that insisted on MSIE, and that was only for the signup which I used a friend's machine for. I'm aware of other sites deliberately searching for them, but only ever ran into one during ordinary web use..
My bank is fine with Firefox, and if they ever change that I will not hesitate to switch banks.
running IE on a Mac... (Score:2)
The version is so out of date that Microsoft's own sites tell you to switch to Safari or firefox!
I believe there used to be a version of IE for Unix when I was at university... memory fading!
Re:running IE on a Mac... (Score:3, Informative)
A version of IE 5 was available for HP-UX and Solaris [archive.org]. (Not SCO Unix, not AIX, and certainly not Linux or BSD!) I don't know whether it was closer to the Windows or Mac version, but if I were to guess, I'd say Windows.
It was discontinued in 2002.
Re: (Score:2)