I sent an email to Dave Massy, Senior Program Manager on the Internet Explorer (IE) Team at Microsoft, asking him what Microsoft had in store for the next release of IE. The next major update is expected in 2006 with the release of Longhorn. I put it to him that IE may need to see some major updates and features in order to catch up with more popular (and free) alternative web browsers, like FireFox.
His reply, although giving little new away, did sum up the current Microsoft position - the fact that 'it will get better'. Dave offered thought about just what Microsoft can actually do with IE to satisfy consumers and yet keep competitors from filing law suits similar to the Netscape debacle in the 90s.
At the moment IE has a large number of 3rd party add-ons available from the Windows Marketplace website, yet more often than not these are not free and require a license (shareware); this might explain their limited exposure and notoriety. If Microsoft were to incorporate all the features most talked about (like tabs and a download manager) the company runs the risk of making a lot of the 3rd party add-ons obsolete; one cant but wonder if this is one of the reasons for the lack of speed when it comes to integrating these modern features.
Read more for the questions and responses from Dave Massy. If you want to give feedback direct to the Internet Explorer team, or find out more about the development of the browser, head over to the wiki at Channel9.
View: Internet Explorer Homepage
His reply, although giving little new away, did sum up the current Microsoft position - the fact that 'it will get better'. Dave offered thought about just what Microsoft can actually do with IE to satisfy consumers and yet keep competitors from filing law suits similar to the Netscape debacle in the 90s.
At the moment IE has a large number of 3rd party add-ons available from the Windows Marketplace website, yet more often than not these are not free and require a license (shareware); this might explain their limited exposure and notoriety. If Microsoft were to incorporate all the features most talked about (like tabs and a download manager) the company runs the risk of making a lot of the 3rd party add-ons obsolete; one cant but wonder if this is one of the reasons for the lack of speed when it comes to integrating these modern features.
Read more for the questions and responses from Dave Massy. If you want to give feedback direct to the Internet Explorer team, or find out more about the development of the browser, head over to the wiki at Channel9.
View: Internet Explorer Homepage
Q: How does the IE team percieve the ongoing interest in Mozilla Firefox and what plans do the IE Team have to intercept it?
Dave: From my personal perspective I think it is great to have interest in other browsers. We believe that browsing is an essential part of a modern operating system and we certainly plan to provide a great browsing experience as part of Windows. We’ve done a lot of work to ensure that Windows customers have an opportunity to choose from the broadest set of third party applications in the industry. While Internet Explorer is the choice of hundreds of millions because of the unique value it provides, we respect that some customers will choose an alternative. We also know that choosing a browser is about more than a handful of features. Microsoft continues to make major investments in Internet Explorer, including significant security enhancements with Windows XP Service Pack 2 and the dedicated focus of the Microsoft Security Response Center. Microsoft also encourages ISVs to continue adding to the broad ecosystem of third party add-ons to extend the functionality of Internet Explorer. All of this, combined with Microsoft’s enterprise and consumer customer support and Internet Explorer’s vast Website and application compatibility, continue to make Internet Explorer a compelling choice for consumers and enterprises.
Q: I'm not sure it's a smart thing to do to wait 5 years for a major IE release (Windows XP 2001 > Longhorn 2006) the general opinion is that the updates in IE SP2 fell short of what is available in the current '3rd party' web-browser market.
Dave: Beyond our recent enhancements delivered in Service Pack 2, a vibrant ecosystem involving hundreds of partners and independent software vendors continues to develop some of the most popular browser features and add-ons for customers to download and enjoy today. These range from complete browsers with tabbed browsing built on the Internet Explorer platform, to toolbars and other utilities that plug directly into Internet Explorer itself. Users can visit http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/addon to find and download the add-ons that meet their needs. Going forward, IE will deliver new features that will make it even more powerful and more secure. The IE team is in the process of designing and developing Internet Explorer for Longhorn. It’s too early to provide a list of specific features, but major investments are being made in the areas of end user features, security and privacy, and developer support (for both add-on and website developers).
Q: I understand you won't be able to say much about the future but isn't it fair to at least confirm some features that are long wanted/needed in IE and are available in Firefox/Opera.
Dave: As someone who worked on the Internet Explorer team for IE4, IE5, IE5.5 and part of IE6, I'm excited by the work we have to do. I returned to the team last year as there is clearly a need to provide improvements and update IE. As a company I think we recognize the importance of the browser and plan to continue to invest heavily here on an ongoing basis not just for the next version. While I think the other browsers have been doing a good job, I think we all have a long way to go to improve the overall browsing experience. Some may look at tabs as being revolutionary but it is worth noting that they first appeared with NetCaptor http://www.netcaptor.com which is an IE-based browser; some users love them but others do not. It may take us some time to get there but I really think we need to think further out about how we want to be browsing in ten years time. That means working on a trustworthy experience, a productive user experience and improvements for web developers as well to provide better content. We definitely have a sense of purpose and understand the need to deliver a great browser and are excited by the work we have to do.
Thanks Dave for answering our questions and I wish you all the best with the ongoing development of IE.
View: Tabbed Browsing in IE by Microgarden $15 (Trial) View: Internet Explorer Add-ons Web Site & Windows Marketplace
Oh, and making it more secure.
Plus my knowledge of web standards is limited
I can always do a follow up entirely to do with (needed) web standards if you mail or PM me the questions you have i'll see what i can do
Anyway, extremely informative post Neobond. I had no idea there was such a place to get plugins for IE and after my quick browsing, most of them appreared to be free (at least the more popular ones). If you do choose to follow up with the issues of web standards support, I would be very interested to see his answer.
Thanks for the info!
Microsoft have said publicly (so from the PR guys) that they wont add standards support cause it will break old websites.
All i want to know is, when will the ie team implement current standards, and when will they listen to developers on this, not customers?
Hmm, can you clarify this? Are you saying they sneaked in updates to its standards support in SP2? Is exactly what documented somewhere in that case?
Since when did adding mean subtracting? Adding more support doesn't mean backwards compatibility goes away.
No browser fully supports for web standards.
i must admit i noticed the market place a couple of weeks ago and was pleasantly surprised at some of the software listed there and publically endorsed by microsoft. however i don't remember maxthon being there. if you insist on loving the ie rendering engine (like me) you can't do much better than grabbing this ie powered browser. www.maxthon.com
No matter what they end up doing, people are gonna bitch at them, so it's a lose/lose situation really. So where's the incentive when they're gonna get bitched at no matter what?
But of course they'll need to be able to take criticism too.
If you are referring to the mess of adding in the standards support that has been a bit lacking (and causing problems with existing made-for-IE sites that was mentioned in post #2.1, then it seems that they really got themselves into that mess all on their own.
I'd personally HATE to be on the IE dev team, cause you know that no matter what you do, a sizable portion of the userbase are just gonna bitch bitch bitch... Very demoralizing... (See... look... Even I could be construed as bitching about it with my first paragraph
What utter and complete pleonastic rubbish. A vibrant ecosystem? Who dreams these terms up?
A bit late to display them as the victim isn't it? They cannot blame their current situation on anyone but themselves. Personally I don't give a damn whether they have tabbed browsing or not. It's the very least of the IE problems that need addressing.
The fact remains that yet again, when it comes to the web, MS dropped the ball again and assumed that the browsing world would blindly follow their idea of standards without question. They did -- for a time.
However, people have woken up (albeit still in the minority) about the importance of web standards and are starting to implement them en-masse. Once they do then the stupidity and pig-headedness of Microsoft becomes clearly apparent.
As a browser, it's akin to using an early 1990's shareware package. Out of date, feature-less, and just plain old clunky.
And before the inevitable line of "Firefox Fanboy" is thrown in my direction, (and we can be sure it will be) let me point out that I absolutely hated Firefox for the longest time possible. I currently use Opera, Firefox, Netscape and IE. (The latter only because I have to.)
However, I couldn't go on blindly ignoring the weaknesses of IE, the absolutely pathetic rendering of standard code, nor the security weaknesses. Firefox has now become my browser of choice because, simply put, it works in accordance to defined web standards and has features (via plugins) that just make browing more intuitive and more convenient.
I believe that MS are now paying the price for their own ignorance and bullish attitude towards pushing out their own monopoly practises. They can't update IE easily because it's so tied-in with the OS. Will they learn from this? Will they hell. They'll do exactly the same with Longhorn, we can almost count on it. They can scream loving words of consumer care all they like but until the actions match the words it's just the usual marketing tripe.
You can't help but ask why they are so scared of letting the consumer choose MS as opposed to having it forced upon them.
Last edited by 33613 on 01 Feb 2005 - 15:36
He didn't say one useful bit of information in his entire interview and sounded like the worst kind marketing-droid. Notice how he doesn't use the word Firefox once or refer directly to it in any way even though the question(s) was explicitly about Firefox.
This guy basically threw around his collection of market speak and cliched phrases and came off as shallow and useless and completely disconnected from reality.
I stopped taking you seriously after you wrote:
You really need to learn to stop hiding behind the term of "MS Bashing" anytime someone has the audacity to criticise your demi-God. By all means live your life with blinkers on, but some of us realise how stupid we look wearing them.
That said, however, please feel free to educate me in one area where IE excels over either Firefox or Opera in terms of standards or features. (Both of which are the points of my comment.) And please, no hiding behind numbers. It has numbers from illegal practises.
There is a certain irony and hypocrisy that Neowin pretends to have such a vitriolic dislike of piracy and yet is exceedingly happy to support and promote illegal monopolies. So, as you may tell, seriousness cuts both ways.
Last edited by 33613 on 01 Feb 2005 - 18:16
Just wait...You will see Firefox Spyware extensions very soon..... And dont think that just because they block extensions by default, doesnt mean someone will come up with a cleaver flash like the one to install spyware on IE sp2...
Come on, its the users not the browser... If you visiting sites that use exploits to install spyware, well you are looking at the wrong sites...Learn how to safe surf..
I don't personally have any rendering issues with Opera. In fact, in all honesty, I have more with IE as I visit quite a few Web Standards websites.
But basically, the entire Firefox UI is written in XUL, a user-interface markup language that is interpreted and then drawn by Gecko, Firefox's rendering engine. Considering that it's basically using a virtual machine to draw the interface (Like Java) it can needlessly hog resources.
That, or it's a simple memory leak.
I'd try one of the Firefox nightlies, as they're based off of a much improved version of gecko. If that dosn't solve your problem, you can use a Gecko browser that has native widgets, like K-Meleon on Windows, Camino on Mac OS X, and Epiphany on a GNOME desktop. If you use KDE, I hear there is experimental support for Gecko in the newest releases of Konqueror.
But I'll look into each suggestion you've given. Thanks again.
Barney
The car wash thing would be a big draw for me too.
Last edited by 20597 on 01 Feb 2005 - 15:58
I hardly consider 5-10% "more popular." Gee, I wonder what bias Neobond had in there...
maybe he just wrote this poorly and meant something else
IE is free, you can download it and run it on Macintosh, the fact that its made for Windows is a logical assumption (since it comes with Windows) are there any Macintosh browsers that are free and can run on Windows (from Macintosh, not 3rd party)?
You can also download IE6 for Windows 9x for free when that was shipped with IE4.
I understand your point about having to own a license for Windows but I don't think its correct because the anti-trust suit seeks to allow the consumer to disable the free addition of IE (and other applications like Windows Messenger, Outllok Express, Media Player) you can't buy these things if you wanted to, making them free additions to the platform.
Not such a good example, as IE for the Mac has been discontinued since last year. It also had nothing to do with Windows IE, as it didn't include things like ActiveX and used a completely different rendering engine.
So, basically the only way to get a current, updated copy of Internet Explorer is to buy a new copy of Windows.
And you're right. Apple's Safari isn't free either, it comes with a purchase of Mac OS X, which comes with a purchase of a Mac. However, the rendering engine (KHTML) is open source and part of the Konqueror web browser/file manager. Konqueror is natively for Unixlikes running a KDE desktop, but it will run on practically anything with a port of the Qt library, and Windows versions do exist.
How much are you willing to loose? Are you willing to loose the beautiful HTML help? Are you willing to increase the size of lots of programs that display web pages to include rendering engines?
We after all ie the main security problem for windows user then why not give us a option to install it or not, remove it or install it when we need it, Modular aproach its the best thing not only for customer but for microsoft itself just look how long they take to patch ie, if ie its a single application patches and updates come out faster and they dont have to worry about conflict with the OS and extensive testing to ensure that everything works.
If it means having a more secure system with less holes and exploits, then yes, sacrificing HTML help and a few extra diskspace won't hurt a bit.
IE should not be integrated so deeply into Windows.
Leaving security and it's caching policy aside, I find IE most reliable and robust at handling web pages and that is what matters to me while browsing.
Ahahahahha.
Man that's rich. ( I hope you were just kidding ).
I too agree with Dave, in that a web browser is a requirement of any modern day OS. However, if they are concerned about law suits, I have a simple solution: repackage a standard IE into longhorn and make an IE Plus package available for download. The standard IE will have everything we really want: like security and standard compliance. While the Plus package will include features we really like out of Opera and Firefox like tabbed browsing, and better media integration. Having these features as a seperate download will level the playing field for their competitors.
Isn't that why there are a ton of apps like Maxthon? :p USE MAXTHON if you're using IE and want tabs. Otherwise, use Firefox.
To shichiroji: have you even bothered to look at any of the IE add-ons? Applications like Maxthon are completely free and match everything Firefox has to offer except the rendering engine (and that comes down to user preference, as some people prefer the IE rendering engine - does it have a specific name, by the way, or is it just "the IE engine" - to the Gecko engine used in Firefo
Is the same thing like comparing, netscape, mozilla suite, camino and firefox each one share similarities but again people consider them as different browser.
So i just expect that people understand my point, so saying that maxthon its ie or maxthon its a add-on of ie its a false statement
its the same thing that mozilla its doing gecko engine for mozilla suite, firefox, netscape
its like saying that apple safari its the same thing than KDE konqueror when its not
choice? did I miss the option to choose internet explorer in the installation of windows?
the fact is no one can be bothered actually exploring alternatives they just see internet explorer and click it, they havent choosen anything.
also i keep hearing this word vibrant eco-system its starting to tick me off
If this were true windows wouldn't include a fully feature Windows Media Player to drive away competition from Musicmatch and Winamp etc.
it entire basis of IE existing was to squeeze out competition (Netscape in the 90's)
Adaware and virus protection should have been the first thing MS ever did back when 3.1 was introduced if not at least in win9x,
but the lazy *******s did nothing to secure the windows system at its conception.
Symantec/Norton instead did the work and today if MS includes the essential tools like adaware and virus protection it will probably face anti trust and be removed, because the av market is so matured now.
MS needs to learn to innovate and take preemptive action, but they will probably never learn to.
MS and bill gates even came to the conclusion that noone would ever ever ever use this stupid thing called email and the internet, hense why they were