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Re: IE7? Hmm.

I was going to abstain from a Microsoft-bashing opportunity, but I can no
longer hold off.


__/ [ Kelsey Bjarnason ] on Sunday 04 June 2006 11:28 \__

> Just installed IE7.  They have got to be kidding.


Actually, they never kid about it. The poor quality of the new Web browser is
a very serious matter. Microsoft have already announced plans for a sequel
to IE7, which is currently on feature freeze and thus cannot be truly fixed
(not feature-wise and not standards compatibility-wise, either).

Here is an example of an opinion on IE7:

,----[ Quote ]
| My advice (Paul Thurrott) is simple: Boycott IE. It's a cancer on the
| Web that must be stopped. IE isn't secure and isn't
| standards-compliant, which makes it unworkable both for end users and
| Web content creators. Because of their user bases, however, Web developers
| are hamstrung into developing for IE at the expense of established
| standards that work well in all other browsers. You can turn the tide
| by demanding more from Microsoft and by using a better alternative
| Web browser. I recommend and use Mozilla Firefox, but Apple Safari
| (Macintosh only) and Opera 8 are both worth considering as well.
`----

http://www.windowsitpro.com/Article/ArticleID/47208/47208.html?Ad=1


The following was published only yesterday:

[Okay, couldn't find the link in my fees reader, but from memory]

Microsoft intend to take the browser "more seriously" and release patches
more often. By this, they pretty much imply that they have not been honest
about the problems thus far. Whatever the article said, it sounded rather
grim.


> First, they've "innovated" the interface - meaning that ain't nothing
> where you expect it to be, so even something as simple as "home" or
> "refresh" means consciously overriding long-ingrained habits and doing
> things the new way.  Pointless.


They took Opera's ideas, in part.


> What struck me as even more pointless, though, was this.  I made google my
> home page, and headed off.  I see a weird little window in the top right,
> which lets me set google as my search engine in IE.
> 
> Okay, fine, very good.  It needs to run a program to do this, though, for
> some reason, but fine, let it.  Now refresh the page.  Hmm... still see
> the box, asking if I want to set google as my search engine.
> 
> So... did it *not* in fact do what it said it was doing?  Or did it do it,
> and it's just too stupid to get rid of the box?


[Wintroll/devil's advocate:] but it's just a beta (i.e. early alpha)!! It
will be ready later this year... or... errr.. make it next year, or later
than that.


> Yes, in fact, it *did* do it... it's just too stupid to *know* that it did
> it and get rid of the box.  Hey, moron, google already *is* my search
> engine, how about cluing in, since *you* set it that way?  No, that'd be
> too much to expect, wouldn't it?


Why are you using Microsoft Windows anyway? A fair question, I think.


> I note, as part of the setup, it asks if you want to enable the
> anti-phishing filter.  On the one hand, it's kinda sad to need this, but
> on the other, if one does need it... why not just turn the stupid thing
> on?  It's about like when XP shipped with a firewall... that was
> *disabled*.  Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.


Giving the customer a wrong impression. A false sense of security, you know?


> How about extensions?  I've got like 20 in my FireFox setup.  If I bring
> up the extension manager, it tells me the name of the extension and a
> brief description of what it does.


I have over 20 extensions enabled and I find the extensions manager to be
extremely trivial (drag-and-drop interfaces to install, even in Linux). I
don't know about IE, but in the past, any 'extension' to it was bound in the
form of general software installation, which led to clutter in the package
manager (Control Panel->Add/Remove Software). There was no hierarchy.


> By contrast, IE7's add-on manger shows me the name and the publisher.  So,
> for example, there's an add-on called "Research".  Which is enabled.  By
> an unknown publisher.  With *no* associated description.  Shall we assume
> this is a harvesting exploit?


Check the source code. Oh, wait! You can't do that. It works with Java, on
the other hand. You can see if spyware is part of the 'relationship'.


> I decided to check out their additional add-ons.  They've apparently got
> an entire site for this - ieaddons.com.  Hmm.  Owned by "ZAAZ, Inc."  No
> clue who that is.  Apparently _not_ MS - but apparently MS thinks they're
> "white hats".
> 
> First thing I check out is something called "Fireball CyberProtection
> Suite" which supposedly has, among other things, a firewall.  Price?
> Free, according to the page.  Sounds like a good start.  Turns out it's a
> 15-day trial, just a free _download_.  Nice use of completely misleading
> information, folks.  And these are the folks MS builds a link to *right
> in the browser*?  Pathetic. of
> 
> On a related note, the site lists "browsers" as a tab where you can
> download, well, browsers, apparently.  FireFox is conspicuously absent.


That is not at all surprising. If it weren't for pressure from the vendors
and customers, your search bar would not have had Google listed.


> Selecting "view source" opens the page in notepad, which does no sanity
> checking, syntax highlighting or other goodness - despite having both
> Office and FP on the machine.  Lousy choice, that.


Notepad?!?!? Isn't that a tool from 3.11 and maybe 95? Do they fear novelty?
Maybe they add a menu item here and there... to Solitaire and some other
rubbish...


> The UI gets confused fairly easily.  For example, click a link and while
> the browser is sorting that out, hit F3 - search.  The browser loses
> focus, but there's no search window. Apparently it knows it's not the
> foreground window anymore... but forgets to actually create the window
> that is.
> 
> I made the mistake of clicking "Favorites Center".  What I've got - aside
> from the inevitable MS advertising - is a mess of what appear to be
> folders, but which are emtpy.  Had they contained content, they'd be, for
> the most part, _more_ MS advertising.  Blech.


I hear that Windows Vista will have advertisements in the login screen, too.
That's "Blech" to the power of 5.


> There are some serious annoyances.  However... there are some perks as
> well.
> 
> Tabbed browsing.  About goddamn time, though it only took 'em like six
> years to catch up, and in a beta at that.  That said, the tabbing more or
> less does the right thing; middle-click launches a link in a new tab, but
> does _not_ make the new tab the active one.  This is good.


In Konqueror (as early as KDE 3.1/2002, if not earlier), you have both
options, namely background tab or active tab (force tab to be in focus). As
a matter of fact, there are many /more/ options, which require no addons at
all. In Firefox, on the other hand, there is a plethora of tab extensions
(choose your poison), some of which are so complex and versatile that they
make you lose the will to live. *smile*

I personally have my tabs at the bottom of the Web browser and I use
drag-and-drop interfaces, keyboard navigation, context menus, and mouse
clicks to manage them.


> Side note: loading a new tab takes excessively long.  Not that we're
> talking 30 seconds or anything, but it's just opening a new window; it
> should be virtually instantaneous.


Firefox hogs a lot of resources (primarily RAM) because of the way it stores
history (hit "back" to have page re-rendered in the frame buffer instantly),
as well as tabs. Internet Explorer has to mature if it wishes to compete
over efficiency, _as well as_ function. Again, development at Redmond is
feature-driven and deadline-driven, which leads to poor outcome that is
poorly tested and optimised.


> They seem to have fixed the printing problem, in which previous versions
> of IE would regularly cut off the page at the right margin.  It's possible
> it's just the page I tested that worked, but IE at least _seems_ to do the
> right thing here.


I remember having people complain about printing. I told 'em to use Firefox
and all was fine and dandy. I bothered to mentioned that IE is buggy, not
secure, and therefore should never be used.


> "Quick tabs" - a graphical preview of the pages you have open in the
> various tabs - is actually pretty cool.


You can use something like KasBar to achieve similar things. Also, see a
Firefox extsension called BetterSearch.


> It's a bit of a memory pig - 64Mb here - but it doesn't seem to suck up
> noticeably more resources when firing open new tabs.


That's probably better than Firefox, but the comparison is not kosher. It's
like compring memory requirements of OpenOffice and Office upon Windows.
There are shared libraries involved.

I once wrote about it:

http://schestowitz.com/Weblog/archives/2006/01/11/office-comparison/


> I just got a notice from the phishing filter; says it can't verify the
> page, because the Microsoft online service is temporarily unavailable.
> One of those "we're helping you be safe when we can bother" deals? :)
> 
> So, okay, it's got some issues.  All in all, it's relatively stable,
> generally does the right thing, and is fairly clean and usable.
> 
> The real question, IMO, is going to be how it holds up to widespread use,
> whether it's going to be yet another in a long string of wildly
> exploitable browsers, or whether they've finally cleaned it up somewhat.


It has already been the victim of critical bugs, which it shared with
Internet Explorer 6. They share the same codebase. If a browser has serious
flaws (not exploits yet) before it has been released, this should provide a
clue. Exactly the same things have been said about Windows Vista (citations
available upon demand *wink*).

Best wishes,

Roy

-- 
Roy S. Schestowitz      |    Useless fact: 12345679 x 8 = 98765432
http://Schestowitz.com  |  Open Prospects   ¦     PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
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      http://iuron.com - knowledge engine, not a search engine

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