IE 7 download link (http://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/Browsers/Internet-Explorer-7.shtml)
WOW, after looking at the screenshots, it is really not IE5 or 6 anymore, finally M$ surrendered to "TAB" and have made a revolution to IE7, that is tab browsing!
also supports RSS
Personally, I haven't downloaded it yet, I'm still waiting for Firefox 1.5 and final IE7.
I'm curious about how the new IE does when compared with Firefox..
i have. it really provides nothing new.
I'm curious about how the new IE does when compared with Firefox..
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=317374"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Security-wise IE is still going to be shitty!
finally M$ surrendered to "TAB" and have made a revolution to IE7, that is tab browsing!
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=317374"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
have you ever used Microsoft Office Excel? It has been using tabs for ages...so tabs are not a new idea, just a new trend to use them everywhere, which I find useful btw.
And besides that, the company that makes IE is named Microsoft (MS)
Security-wise IE is still going to be shitty![a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=317418"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Care to prove it? Or are you just speculating wildly?
And besides that, the company that makes IE is named Microsoft (MS) [a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=317420"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Amen brother!
It still is not even close to standards compliant. I don't think the rendering engine has actually changed between 6 and 7 Beta 1. Hopefully by Beta 2 they'll be a few improvements.
I really want IE7 to be a good product, because as we all know, competition drives innovation.
http://toadstool.se/journal/images/friends...ends-use-ie.jpg (http://toadstool.se/journal/images/friends-dont-let-friends-use-ie.jpg)
http://toadstool.se/journal/images/friends...ends-use-ie.jpg (http://toadstool.se/journal/images/friends-dont-let-friends-use-ie.jpg)
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=317523"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
You can make Firefox just as bad if you try. You would have to try pretty hard to get IE to look like that.
http://toadstool.se/journal/images/friends...ends-use-ie.jpg (http://toadstool.se/journal/images/friends-dont-let-friends-use-ie.jpg)
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=317523"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
I kid you not when I say that I have seen worse than that on more than one occasion
Ahhh, the joys of being the only under 40 in the office
Security-wise IE is still going to be shitty![{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=317418")
Care to prove it? Or are you just speculating wildly?
Well, stuff like [a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/28/cert_ditch_explorer/]this[/url] doesn't exactly give me a lot of confidence.
http://toadstool.se/journal/images/friends...ends-use-ie.jpg (http://toadstool.se/journal/images/friends...ends-use-ie.jpg)
oh so many serach bars!!!!
Paul Thurrott, a journalist that usually writes about all things windows related, made a call in a recent article to boycott Internet Explorer, due to Microsoft's approach (continued in IE7) of not supporting web standards: 'My advice here is simple: Boycott Internet Explorer. It is a cancer on the Web, and must be stopped. IE is insecure and is not standards-compliant, which makes it unworkable for both end users and Web content creators... You can turn the tide by demanding better from Microsoft and using a better alternative Web browser. I recommend and use Mozilla Firefox, but Apple Safari (Mac only) and Opera 8 are both worth considering as well.'"
LINK (http://www.windowsitpro.com/windowspaulthurrott/Article/ArticleID/47208/windowspaulthurrott_47208.html)
Well, stuff like this (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/28/cert_ditch_explorer/) doesn't exactly give me a lot of confidence.[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=317550"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Maybe they learned their lesson, eh?
Security-wise IE is still going to be shitty![a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=317418"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Care to prove it? Or are you just speculating wildly?
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=317499"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
It a speculation however it's more like a premonition, and as history would suggest it'll become reality in short time.
Here's the problem I foresee:
MS releases the beta before it ever becomes final to "testers." This also allows it to be leaked to unauthorized non-testers, which has already happened. Some of the non-testers are going to be malware writters who can effectively infect a system via IE7 on the day of it's public release with no problems whatsoever.
Well, stuff like this (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/28/cert_ditch_explorer/) doesn't exactly give me a lot of confidence.[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=317550")
Maybe they learned their lesson, eh?
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=317602"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
We shall see, don't forget MS uses bits and pieces from previous OS's to make a new one and I doubt that IE is a 100% complete rewrite from the ground up.
Once it's finalized for public release I'll see if [a href="http://www.nsclean.com/dsostop.html]DSOstop[/url] states it still has the DSO Exploit, since every previous version has from Win98 to WinXP SP2.
IMO the problem of IE security is not in its holes, but in the fact that it's most popular. I suspect that other browsers have comparable number of holes, they're just not known/exploited. When someone wants to exploit something, he/she won't target the browser which is used by 1% of people, but the one which is used by 99%. That's why you hear about IE being more unsecure.
As for standards, what's a standard? If 99% of people say "wanna", and linguists say it should be "want to", then who represents the standard?
We shall see, don't forget MS uses bits and pieces from previous OS's to make a new one and I doubt that IE is a 100% complete rewrite from the ground up.
FireFox isn't a 100% rewrite either. It includes lots of junk from Mozilla and Netscape.
As for standards, what's a standard? If 99% of people say "wanna", and linguists say it should be "want to", then who represents the standard?[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=317708"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
That is actually an interesting analogy. The guys at W3C could be considered the purists that insist on utter adherence to the standards they set forth, like the Académie Française (is there a similar body for the English language?). And IE is the common guy that doesn't botter following all rules to the letter, being happy enough if he can get the message across.
Cool
FireFox isn't a 100% rewrite either. It includes lots of junk from Mozilla and Netscape.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=317714"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Mozilla/Gecko
was a complete rewrite from Netscape 4.x. Firefox is based upon Gecko. Firefox contains no significant (and probably very little insignificant) legacy code from Netscape 4.x, as far as I am aware. Gecko has always been a seperate component from both Seamonkey and Firefox; the latter depend on the former.
Firefox contains no significant (and probably very little insignificant) legacy code from Netscape 4.x, as far as I am aware.[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=317751"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Just look at the SSL routine.
It still is not even close to standards compliant. I don't think the rendering engine has actually changed between 6 and 7 Beta 1. Hopefully by Beta 2 they'll be a few improvements.
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=317507")
Wrong. [a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/07/29/445242.aspx]http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/07/29/445242.aspx[/url]
IMO the problem of IE security is not in its holes, but in the fact that it's most popular. I suspect that other browsers have comparable number of holes, they're just not known/exploited. When someone wants to exploit something, he/she won't target the browser which is used by 1% of people, but the one which is used by 99%. That's why you hear about IE being more unsecure.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=317708"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
While it's certainly true that other browsers have security issues caused by bugs -- and from time to time they are exposed -- the difference with IE is that it's biggest problems with security come from it's
design, not from individual bugs or holes. The whole mess with ActiveX, tight OS integration, and stuff like that is the reason you see the level of problems that you do.
On the other hand, at least some other browsers attempt to be secure by design and try to move quickly to correct exposed design flaws. I can't speak much for Opera, but at least Firefox has managed to stay on top of things relatively well compared to IE.
And for what it's worth, it should be pointed out that MS has a hell of a lot more resources to throw at fixing bugs and they have a lot more theoretical brainpower to prevent design level stupidity. But they still manage to have problems on both counts. Worst of all is that they don't even bother to fix half the problems they know about. Kind of baffling really.
As for standards, what's a standard? If 99% of people say "wanna", and linguists say it should be "want to", then who represents the standard?[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=317708"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
That is actually an interesting analogy. The guys at W3C could be considered the purists that insist on utter adherence to the standards they set forth, like the Académie Française (is there a similar body for the English language?). And IE is the common guy that doesn't botter following all rules to the letter, being happy enough if he can get the message across.
Cool
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=317715"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Cool?
There's a huge difference between a
formal standard and an
informal standard.
Natural language is not formally specified. There is no exact formal semantic for the English language. But then again, it was never designed with that degree of formality in mind -- originally there was no need for it to have such a feature.
But that doesn't mean that there is
never a need for such a feature. Some things
should be formally specified. Mathematics and logic are good examples. Can you imagine if people just went around using notation that they could be "happy enough if they could get the message across" with? Imagine the impact that would have on science. In fact we wouldn't have science probably. And without that, we wouldn't have all this technology at our fingertips. But I digress...
In communications, especially of the automated, computational sort, it is important for a standard or specification to be non-ambiguous. Computers aren't good at dealing with ambiguity. We don't want to have to have the web browser attempt to "guess" what the page is supposed to look like because someone was too lazy to do things in a strict and predictable fashion (thanks MS!). The programmer doesn't want to have to implement an AI in the rendering engine just to get decent output. And the end user doesn't want to have to deal with buggy display. Of course, things aren't
that bad right now, but I'd venture to guess that in most of the popular rendering engines out there, there's a huge amount of code dealing with making buggy, incorrect, and ambiguous code look like something someone might expect from average joe's webpage that he made with an old clunky version of frontpage or something similar.
And guess what? If IE is a "standard," you can surely bet that it's not a "standard" that's defined anywhere. You can't simply look up the IE "standard" and make your rendering engine compliant. This sort of "standard" is not only totally informal, but nobody but Microsoft even knows exactly what it is (and maybe not even many of the people there know the whole of it!).
The web standards for a given protocol presented by the W3C are what the W3C say they according to the specification documentation, references, drafts, etc. Does this mean that people have to listen to everything they say there? Surely not. But it doesn't mean that someone else providing a buggy and incomplete version of one of their specifications is providing the actual standard in it's stead. Such a version
might become the "de facto" standard (as IE has for people too lazy to learn the real thing), but even that's
still not the same.
Beyond that, I think just about anyone who has done any web development or web based programming (and no, dreamweaver doesn't count) and has used anything other than MS stuff at least at some point along the way, should see quite readily why formally specified, non-ambiguous web standards are a good thing, and why a so-called "IE standard" is a very bad thing.
Paul Thurrott, a journalist that usually writes about all things windows related, made a call in a recent article to boycott Internet Explorer, due to Microsoft's approach (continued in IE7) of not supporting web standards: 'My advice here is simple: Boycott Internet Explorer. It is a cancer on the Web, and must be stopped. IE is insecure and is not standards-compliant, which makes it unworkable for both end users and Web content creators... You can turn the tide by demanding better from Microsoft and using a better alternative Web browser. I recommend and use Mozilla Firefox, but Apple Safari (Mac only) and Opera 8 are both worth considering as well.'"
LINK (http://www.windowsitpro.com/windowspaulthurrott/Article/ArticleID/47208/windowspaulthurrott_47208.html)
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=317599"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
I especially liked this part:
Microsoft blames backward-compatibility problems for the stalemate over true Web standards compatibility. Put succinctly, the company has gone its own way for so long and now has to support so many developers who use nonstandard Web technologies that it will be impossible to make IE Web-standards-compliant without breaking half the commercial Web sites on the planet.
Yet another reason why tight standards are a good thing. If things had been implemented properly from the get go, or at least as early as possible, it would have made the transition path so much clearer. It's a hell of a lot easier to upgrade a system while simultaneously providing backward compatibility when the previous system is well defined and self contained.
This continuing mess with backwards compatibility on wintel PC's is really kind of shame, from the win32 core and apis, to the x86 ISA, to IE and web standards, etc. It all just keeps getting crustier and crustier...
Just look at the SSL routine.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=317753"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Is this the only instance? I'd hardly consider borrowing SSL code to be very significant.
While it's certainly true that other browsers have security issues caused by bugs -- and from time to time they are exposed -- the difference with IE is that it's biggest problems with security come from it's design, not from individual bugs or holes. The whole mess with ActiveX, tight OS integration, and stuff like that is the reason you see the level of problems that you do.
I don't think you can say that design matters more than holes. These things are tied - secure design = less holes, unsecure design = more holes. Even if we imagine that IE is designed to be top-secure (no ActiveX, loose OS integration, etc.) constantly having only 1 known bug to exploit (which is impossible in something as complex as modern browser working in modern OS), but is used by 99% of people, we get something that can be called "potential damage factor" of 0.99 (1*0.99). Now if we imagine that FF or any other browser constantly has 50 known bugs to exploit, but is used by 1% of people, that "potential damage factor" would be 0.5. There still would be two times more browser-based-attack victims who use IE than the ones who use FF, all the people still would be whining that IE is two times more insecure than FF.
I'm quite sure that if in the future other browsers will share the market more equally with IE (and they'll parallely share the zealotry & anti-zealotry market more equally ), there suddenly will be a bunch of voices saying "oh, FF was so good some time ago, now it ain't any better than IE". And it will be not because IE got so much better or FF got so much worse, but because of what I said above - they'll become a more popular target for exploiting - one of the slogans, the "FF is safer" one, will be gone.
On the other hand, at least some other browsers attempt to be secure by design and try to move quickly to correct exposed design flaws. I can't speak much for Opera, but at least Firefox has managed to stay on top of things relatively well compared to IE.
And for what it's worth, it should be pointed out that MS has a hell of a lot more resources to throw at fixing bugs and they have a lot more theoretical brainpower to prevent design level stupidity. But they still manage to have problems on both counts. Worst of all is that they don't even bother to fix half the problems they know about. Kind of baffling really.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=317783"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
I guess it's all true. Partially it's probably because of their politics of killing aging products - "if we won't fix & add this to IE6, more glory will fall on IE7, and IE7 will work on XP+ only, so by the way we'll faster get rid of older OSes too". As for the resources, having so many doesn't neccessarily speed things up, actually it can slow things down, I guess the way which every patch has to pass is quite long there (gather all the brains, analyse, fix, analyse the fix, make translations, make documentation, etc. etc... seal the "approved" stamp, release).
While it's certainly true that other browsers have security issues caused by bugs -- and from time to time they are exposed -- the difference with IE is that it's biggest problems with security come from it's design, not from individual bugs or holes. The whole mess with ActiveX, tight OS integration, and stuff like that is the reason you see the level of problems that you do.
I don't think you can say that design matters more than holes. These things are tied - secure design = less holes, unsecure design = more holes.
This is exactly the point I was trying to make. IE's biggest problem with security holes comes from it's poor design. Individual security holes will pop up more often in a poorly designed program. Of course the two are linked.
I'm quite sure that if in the future other browsers will share the market more equally with IE (and they'll parallely share the zealotry & anti-zealotry market more equally ), there suddenly will be a bunch of voices saying "oh, FF was so good some time ago, now it ain't any better than IE". And it will be not because IE got so much better or FF got so much worse, but because of what I said above - they'll become a more popular target for exploiting - one of the slogans, the "FF is safer" one, will be gone.
And this is where we disagree. The only way in which what you describe would happen is if it isn't actually possible to design one program to be more secure than another, and instead "secure-ness" is
only a function of popularity.
I don't believe that.
Of course, popularity will have
some effect on how secure a program appears because bugs will become well known more easily, but I do not think it factors into the equation as significantly as you seem to. There are plenty of design methodologies that can be applied to programs that naturally lend to greater security. IE just happens to not make good (or any) use of them.
exactly. how comes that Apache is much more secure than IIS if not? (Apache has more than 70% web pages)
exactly. how comes that Apache is much more secure than IIS if not? (Apache has more than 70% web pages)[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=317959")
Is it really? IIS 4 was damn buggy, I agree, but I think that stereotype doesn't apply to 6.0 anymore:
[a href="http://secunia.com/product/73/]http://secunia.com/product/73/[/url]
http://secunia.com/product/1438/ (http://secunia.com/product/1438/)
Now if you go to Secunia and look for IE and FF, will see that IE has much more critical open bugs that FF, and for much more time. FF developers take security as an important issue, and any serious security bug that is found is fixed in as much as a few weeks. You can't say that for IE developers.
http://secunia.com/product/11/ (http://secunia.com/product/11/)
http://secunia.com/product/4227/ (http://secunia.com/product/4227/)
About the topic, this IE7 is more an alpha than a beta. IE developers have said that final version will have many improvements in regards to standards support (probably not to the level of Firefox or Opera, though), which is a good thing.
can someone check the png support?
http://somestuff.org/png/png_test3.htm (http://somestuff.org/png/png_test3.htm)
(just compare with firefox)
The only way in which what you describe would happen is if it isn't actually possible to design one program to be more secure than another, and instead "secure-ness" is only a function of popularity.[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=317948"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
One note - not "secure-ness", but rather "perceived secure-ness"
All I really mean is that IE isn't so incredibly insecure as brain-washing FF-campaign suggests.
Now if you go to Secunia and look for IE and FF, will see that IE has much more critical open bugs that FF, and for much more time.
[...]
http://secunia.com/product/11/ (http://secunia.com/product/11/)
http://secunia.com/product/4227/ (http://secunia.com/product/4227/)
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=318020")
That's true. That's why I prefer these Secunia pages:
[a href="http://secunia.com/product/761/]http://secunia.com/product/761/[/url]
http://secunia.com/product/4932/ (http://secunia.com/product/4932/)
One thing that I am truly concerned about, is wether IE7 will conform to W3C standarts in terms of CSS and XHTML.
Everything else (Tabs, other UI improvements) is just bells and whistles, and really does a minimal effort to improve upon the end-users surfing experience.
IE has crippled the possibilities for web developers and webdesigners since it first got out, by utilizing faulty CSS and XHTML processors.
When will this insanity stop?
Hehe, whenever I see a webdesigner whining about how much IE ruined his life, I remember this guy:
(http://www.rarewares.org/rja/moron.gif)
For more amusing quotes taken from the Spread FireFox forum:
http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=2980 (http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=2980)
rjamorim >>>
Blocking IE users is the exact opposite of what I want. I want my web sites to be w3c compatible, so any user can visit any of my pages using any browser he wants, through any device.
The only problem is that IE is _the_ major browser, on _the_ major platform for web surfing.
The IE7 (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/IE/ie7/default.mspx) announcement from Microsoft states that theyve fixed their broken CSS engine, so there might be a slight amount of hope for the likes of me.
Funny site, by the way
The only problem is that IE is _the_ major browser, on _the_ major platform for web surfing.
Right. That's why the post I linked to just illustrates some webmasters' foolishness
The IE7 (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/IE/ie7/default.mspx) announcement from Microsoft states that theyve fixed their broken CSS engine, so there might be a slight amount of hope for the likes of me.
Funny site, by the way [a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=318083"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
The only thing that kinda bothers me in IE's substandard CSS is the lack of floating menus. But I'm not afraid to use java script to solve that, anyway...
(...)Everything else (Tabs, other UI improvements) is just bells and whistles, and really does a minimal effort to improve upon the end-users surfing experience.
that your opinion. a main reason for me to change browsers actually was the lack of tabbed browsing in IE among other things (e.g. interface and setting options. and I don't want to miss some really useful plugins for FF (adblock, switchproxy, spellbound, sessionsaver, x, just to name a few)).
ohh, I didn't notice this post! Shame on me.
Just look at the SSL routine.[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=317753"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Is this the only instance? I'd hardly consider borrowing SSL code to be very significant.[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=317826"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
I don't know, that's enough, for me, to invalidate your claim that "Mozilla/Gecko
was a complete rewrite from Netscape 4.x."
If you can be arsed to, browse the source code trees to find more cases where they share code, or to try to validate your point.
My guess that it isn't a complete rewrite is that if they really rewrote everything, they would probably be using OpenSSL now, since it's a much more trusted library than Netscape's, and it has its own team of maintainers - that way, the Mozilla development team wouldn't need to waste their time in a redundant effort, that is, maintaining their own SSL lib.
Edit: they also seem to be using Netscape's JavaScript module
is OpenSSL Tri-Licensed? That could explain why they won't use it.
is OpenSSL Tri-Licensed? That could explain why they won't use it.[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=319210")
OpenSSL is licensed under terms pretty much "as nice as can get"
[a href="http://www.openssl.org/source/license.html]http://www.openssl.org/source/license.html[/url]
It can be used by closed source (Opera) and Open Source (wget) projects alike.
The only way in which what you describe would happen is if it isn't actually possible to design one program to be more secure than another, and instead "secure-ness" is only a function of popularity.[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=317948"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
One note - not "secure-ness", but rather "perceived secure-ness"
All I really mean is that IE isn't so incredibly insecure as brain-washing FF-campaign suggests.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=318033"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
But it wouldn't hurt if you'd use real stats. (here FF is at 10%, Opera at 6, Mozilla at 2...can't be much worse at your place?)
Yet another reason why tight standards are a good thing. If things had been implemented properly from the get go, or at least as early as possible, it would have made the transition path so much clearer. It's a hell of a lot easier to upgrade a system while simultaneously providing backward compatibility when the previous system is well defined and self contained.
This continuing mess with backwards compatibility on wintel PC's is really kind of shame, from the win32 core and apis, to the x86 ISA, to IE and web standards, etc. It all just keeps getting crustier and crustier...
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=317800"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
I love it when people who are still in college try to explain the importance of standards to those of us who have worked with them in the private sector for 20 years.
Don't get me wrong, formal standards are important to teach programming concepts to students, and also important to scientific fields which require strict and detailed operational frameworks.
But to understand why Microsoft has never made adherance to what they consider "external standards" important for projects like Internet Explorer, you have to understand two things...the history of the company and market incentive.
In terms of both standards and backward compatibility think
market demand,
corporate acquisitions,
technology integrations and
development frameworks. These are the primary drivers in what becomes the most important type of technology standard to the majority of corporations: the "de facto standard".
To business, de facto standards are all that matter. When they coincide with "formal standards" then so be it. When they don't, then the "formal standards" left behind will remain in the realm of college classrooms, scientific niches and defense contractors that require them.
The example of the kid who wanted to "block all IE users" was fallacy, I know, but I hear the idea being tossed about from time to time. And it's a sure way to get locked out of any paying gig. If you tell a company that you want to block out over 90% of their target demographic they'll laugh you out of the lobby. And claiming adherance to "formal standards" will mean exactly zilch to them. Unless "formal standards" come from a specific market requirement, their "formality" is worthless to almost any corporation, including Microsoft.
Formal standards make science work. De facto standards make business work. (And again, sometimes these are the same thing, but not by rule.) So in the world of business (of which the internet is a great part), don't let it bother you when the grass isn't all nice and green and evenly cut, but rather pieced together the best we know how with the vast pace of technology development and limited qualified resources to keep it all running.
And never assume that Microsoft has this vast, endless pool of resources to throw at issues like formal standards compliance. That company has fifty times the employee base mine does. It also has 50 times the project initiatives mine does. I promise they spread their resources just as thin as we do. Maximum revenue for minimum expenditure. If you can fix it with duct tape, don't bother with the calipers and torque wrench.
In my company I manage the department in charge of standards development and compliance. And we are every day faced with new challenges to integrate two or more systems built with multiple, disparate standards, whether they are "formal standards" or some semi-compliant framework inherited from some other company that we just bought and have to integrate in three months. So where I can't find a standard that someone else has created, I create one myself. If it's never used outside my company (actually it's a group of companies), it's still a standard because I'm implementing it to integrate multiple technical initiatives, some new and some legacy. Consider them "localized standards". Collectively a means of making all the processes, orchestrations and protocols able to work together towards our business goals.
My company is not Microsoft, but they follow the same core incentives we do. And it is these incentives that drive their decisions on the prioritization of defect resolution, system compatibility and standards compliance.
But essentially, this is all a matter of education vs. education + experience. Learn the essentials. They're very important. But don't let the real world knock you over when you get waist-deep in it. Go with the flow, and improve things where you can. Here in the trenches it's all any of us can do.
Yet another reason why tight standards are a good thing. If things had been implemented properly from the get go, or at least as early as possible, it would have made the transition path so much clearer. It's a hell of a lot easier to upgrade a system while simultaneously providing backward compatibility when the previous system is well defined and self contained.
This continuing mess with backwards compatibility on wintel PC's is really kind of shame, from the win32 core and apis, to the x86 ISA, to IE and web standards, etc. It all just keeps getting crustier and crustier...
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I love it when people who are still in college try to explain the importance of standards to those of us who have worked with them in the private sector for 20 years.
[...]
But essentially, this is all a matter of education vs. education + experience. Learn the essentials. They're very important. But don't let the real world knock you over when you get waist-deep in it. Go with the flow, and improve things where you can. Here in the trenches it's all any of us can do.
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Spoken like a true business type
FWIW, (if it wasn't already apparent), I'm not.
I'm more interested in elegant solutions to problems, and care little about quick hacks that are "good enough for government work" and devised solely to keep the bottom line in check. I care little about what it's like "in the trenches" really.
But, I do think that it's not as difficult or impractical to follow standards as you make it seem. It just happens to be the case that most people (or companies) are too lazy to find the proper solution that will allow them to use nice, formal standards AND keep the bottom line in check.
People are a little too eager to go out and do it on their own than to do a little solid research and look at what's available. And that's fine I suppose, as long as most of that is kept internal to a particular department. Development houses always have their own libraries and toolsets, and all kinds of non-standard processes and methodologies by which they do whatever it is that they do. But this sort of thing should not influence the interoperability of computer systems outside of the scope of their own little world.
Especially when it is a communication standard that is at stake.
So your discussion of creating your own little internal standards is perfectly reasonable. Microsoft's non-adherence to standard -- and not particularly difficult to implement (in the grand scheme of things) -- web standards, is not the same thing at all, and therefore is not justified by the points you made.
At the end of the day, it basically boils down to what you said here:
Formal standards make science work. De facto standards make business work.
And you're right. Business people (like you I assume) will never care much about formal standards, and science/academic types (like me) will never care much about de facto standards. From the corporate standpoint, it absolutely makes more sense to push a de facto standard if it reduces interoperability and forces people to use your product (= more $$$), but for the purpose of designing an elegant and robust system (the scientific/academic side of things), a formal standard is much better. Personally, I think that for end users, the latter approach will result in a better overall user experience, and that computing would be a lot better off if it weren't for companies like MS and the corporate apathy for formal standards.
This continuing mess with backwards compatibility on wintel PC's is really kind of shame, from the win32 core and apis, to the x86 ISA, to IE and web standards, etc. It all just keeps getting crustier and crustier...
Out of curiosity - to see if i understand you right - are you of the opinion that too many "platforms" get stacked on top of each other - therefore creating chaotic complexity?
Business people (like you I assume) will never care much about formal standards
I wouldn't be so sure about that. They will (and do) care about it when the bills for supporting and fixing the inconsistencies arrive - but will of course blame it on someone else...... and if that doesn't work, then another quick-fix will do it.... for a while.
I'm more interested in elegant solutions to problems, and care little about quick hacks that are "good enough for government work" and devised solely to keep the bottom line in check. I care little about what it's like "in the trenches" really.
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Understood.
But, I do think that it's not as difficult or impractical to follow standards as you make it seem.
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I promise you it is. In my career I've worked with Microsoft, IBM, HP, Cisco, Novell, Sun Microsystems, AT&T, MCI and a myriad of smaller technology-focused companies. Don't think for a moment they'll let 100 people work soley on "formal standards compliance" when 10 will be "good enough" to provide a robust and reliable integration platform of heterogeneous systems in terms of
financial value and
market domination. Microsoft, among others, has proven this. We are here complaining that this particular company has fallen down so severely on complying with W3C, CSS and other coding and architecture protocols. And I complain too. Every day. My job would be MUCH easier if all these companies out there that provide the systems my company relies on would fall nicely into a common formalized framework of universally-accepted standards.
My point is that there's simply no one to provide this. W3C, for instance, has a mission to create the standards and specifications for the development of the world wide web. But they don't have volunteers working in all the major companies out there who are creating and maintaining the systems for which the "universal standards" are being developed to make sure said standards are being utilized properly and consistently. And not many companies out there have a primary mission to follow formal industry standards. Most of them have the same primary mission my company does:
maximize revenue.
Please don't think I'm defending that what corporations do is philosophically right or practically ideal. The majority of our actions are not either. I'm saying that because of the natural incentive of a free-market economy, there isn't sufficient resources in almost any company, large or small, to insure that formal industry-wide standards are adhered to all (or even most of) the time. As hard as this is to believe, it includes Microsoft as well. In some cases the larger the company, the more fragmented their organizational structure. They often have myriads of very small, isolated groups with project- and task-lists that are entirely too long for their resource base. And also there are frequent cases of overlapping efforts...different groups in a company aspiring to reach the same goal with their own, different methods...some standardized, some not...yet all deployed into production.
It's people stepping all over each other's work, essentially. And it happens a lot. And the bigger the name (Microsoft, IBM, Sun, etc.), the more commonly it happens. My company group is mid-sized compared to most in the US, and we enjoy the ability to avoid much of what we call the "silo-effect" of huge organizational structures trying to achieve common standards compliance. Many large companies even give up and diverge business units in order to keep things manageable.
If I were to point to anything close to a concise point of blame for "the way things are", I'd blame the market. Not the consumers, specifically, but more the nature of our economy. If my company were to abandon our current direction by inserting "formal technology standards compliance" into our top business goals, redirected resources from other efforts to this one, then we'd be isolated in the market and left behind by our competition. I can think of at least ten major pieces of our company that would fall if we put so much as 2% more resources into industry standardization. That sounds extreme, but it would take many more pages than I'm going to type here to explain all the details.
I've been inside enough large companies, including MS, to know they would suffer a similar fate. Allocation of resources (people, money, infrastructure, etc.) is a very delicate balance in a company. Before I became a director I had no idea how delicate this balance was.
It just happens to be the case that most people (or companies) are too lazy to find the proper solution that will allow them to use nice, formal standards AND keep the bottom line in check.
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Yes, there are people in companies who are indeed too lazy. But they are in the vast minority. Because the individuals lose their jobs, or in the case of wider-spread problems their companies go out of business (sooner or later). As for my own position, to survive with the balance of resources I'm given, my team may have ten collective minutes in a day to even think about universal standardization (of system architecture, design and coding, methodology, and so forth). Because on such a day I may also have three production releases to manage, eight code drops to deploy, 300 test cases to validate, and six hours of meetings. And this isn't just what it's like in my company. It's what it's like in almost all the others I've worked with, all across the development life cycle: product management and business vision, project management, architecture and design, development, testing, training, deployment and support.
People are a little too eager to go out and do it on their own than to do a little solid research and look at what's available. And that's fine I suppose, as long as most of that is kept internal to a particular department. Development houses always have their own libraries and toolsets, and all kinds of non-standard processes and methodologies by which they do whatever it is that they do. But this sort of thing should not influence the interoperability of computer systems outside of the scope of their own little world. Especially when it is a communication standard that is at stake.
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I
always look to industry standards first...W3C, CSS, RUP, ITIL, CobIT (and anything else provided by ISACA), CMM, ISO and others. Trust me, I dedicate more time to looking there than the VP I report to would like. In the time window given for each particular task which, along with thousands of others, collude to form a complete project initiative, I only have so much time to "shop" for a universally-accepted solution before I have to get out my own "box of tricks" to meet one of my many deadlines. And if I can't comply with an industry standard in a particular situation, I put it on my list to come back later to make the issue complaint. My list grows faster than me or anyone else on my team will ever be able to catch up with. But I put them all there anyway. Every day. My yet-to-be-executed good intentions are worth nothing to the rest of the world, but they help me sleep at least a little better. Just as they did with all the companies I worked with before this one.
So your discussion of creating your own little internal standards is perfectly reasonable. Microsoft's non-adherence to standard -- and not particularly difficult to implement (in the grand scheme of things) -- web standards, is not the same thing at all, and therefore is not justified by the points you made.
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Addressed above (large organizations..."silo-effect"...conflicting priorities...etc...)
At the end of the day, it basically boils down to what you said here:
Formal standards make science work. De facto standards make business work.
And you're right. Business people (like you I assume) will never care much about formal standards, and science/academic types (like me) will never care much about de facto standards. From the corporate standpoint, it absolutely makes more sense to push a de facto standard if it reduces interoperability and forces people to use your product (= more $$$), but for the purpose of designing an elegant and robust system (the scientific/academic side of things), a formal standard is much better. Personally, I think that for end users, the latter approach will result in a better overall user experience, and that computing would be a lot better off if it weren't for companies like MS and the corporate apathy for formal standards.
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As stated above, I care very much about formally defined and published standards. And wish very much that I (or anyone around me) had the resources to comply with them all the time. And although you may never care very much about de facto standards, you (and many other people) will certainly feel their effects, just as we're all discussing in this thread. It's crappy, I know. And I promise that I and most others leading the IT industry that I've known are clearly aware of the importance of industry-wide standards, and work as hard and as efficiently as possible to achieve them. Yes, there are instances of laziness, inefficiency and even corruption. But these are all in the minority of cases, as hard as that may seem "on the receiving end".
There are a lot of gears in these machines we call "corporations", more than even most people imagine. Even quite efficient ones are pressed against the wall every day to make money and grow and overtake our competition. It's a very unnoble cause run vastly by very noble people with good intentions beyond just "maximing revenue". But it takes funding to make any intentions reality. And our funding comes from elsewhere in these machines...places where, at the bottom line, making numbers in bank accounts grow is of the highest interest.
In a capitalist economy, universal standards compliance not driven by direct market force will never have a high position in corporate priorities. Companies will do what they have to, and those of us with enough influence will do a little more...anything we possibly can to make our machine work with the others in a common, standardized way. But unfortunately the positive effects we incur in this area will be sporadic at best. You'll see improvements here and there over time, like with the upcoming IE 7, but they'll never come as quickly or as often as you (or I, or anyone else) would like.
Unless the market begins demanding it.
Nero, you are missing one single important point: longterm profit & revenue. You mentioned multiple times, that "clean solutions" would not improve revenue. This is as wrong as it can get. It is true, that in many cases, it is most efficient(in terms of profit) in the *short-term*. However, i dont want to know how many trillions are spent worldwide in corporations for coping with the problems which those "quick and dirty hacks" create. The reason is not profit - almost every corporation suffers from the effects of "the quick'n dirty way". The reason is:
1. corporations only think about short-term goals. No one cares what will be in 8 years.
2. because of the competitive and egocentric atmosphere, there is a lacking interest for global improvement. Single corporations dont have the resources to fix the mess, and colaborative progress doesn't happen because of 1. and because of the egocentric decision-making. Thus, corporations prefer that "it will become worse for everyone" over "it will become better for everyone".
Or to make it short "everyone take whatever you can grab, and then leave the sinking ship".
I am boggled at how few people follow "Best Practices."
It is kind of like "Common sense."
Nothing is so uncommon.
Pay me now, or pay me later.
A stitch in time, saves nine.
Cheap, Fast, Good, pick any two.
Nero, you are missing one single important point: longterm profit & revenue. You mentioned multiple times, that "clean solutions" would not improve revenue. This is as wrong as it can get. It is true, that in many cases, it is most efficient(in terms of profit) in the *short-term*. However, i dont want to know how many trillions are spent worldwide in corporations for coping with the problems which those "quick and dirty hacks" create. The reason is not profit - almost every corporation suffers from the effects of "the quick'n dirty way". The reason is:
1. corporations only think about short-term goals. No one cares what will be in 8 years.
2. because of the competitive and egocentric atmosphere, there is a lacking interest for global improvement. Single corporations dont have the resources to fix the mess, and colaborative progress doesn't happen because of 1. and because of the egocentric decision-making. Thus, corporations prefer that "it will become worse for everyone" over "it will become better for everyone".
Or to make it short "everyone take whatever you can grab, and then leave the sinking ship".
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I'm right there with you on long term profit and revenue. But corporations often spend 75% of their time and efforts to maximize revenue within a two year span (and the current year is always the largest focus). They will spend the remaining time and effort looking farther out.
Intentions are not the issue. Intentions are almost always well-set in a successful company. What I'm saying is that there are simply not enough resources or hours in the day to make most of the intentions a reality. It's an issue of priority and
today's profits. $1 million right now is more important than the potential of $5 million in three years, for instance.
"We can spend 50% more right now to make a steep improvement in our industry standardization, or we can wait to do that until next year and maximize our profits in this fiscal year." You can guess which way most corporate execs would answer that. Simply repeat that item each year and you'll begin to see my point.
This is not coming from a negative attitude or any kind of "doomsaying". In fact I think most of what I've said has been positive regarding the intent of corporations regarding formal standards. It's simply the tough corporate world that exists. If I was down on it every day, I'd change careers. Instead, I consider the full adoption of formal standards to be a goal to always strive for.
And it's the same inside Microsoft, and all the other companies I've ever worked with. If Microsoft could make IE fully W3C and CSS compliant right now, they'd do it. Market-driven priorities...limited resources...near-term profitability......These are the reasons it's not happening all at once.
If Microsoft could make IE fully W3C and CSS compliant right now, they'd do it.
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Are you sure? If i recall correctly, then they ditched further IE-development because they were afraid of the internet (or more correctly, affraid of web-applications which could turn the client-os irrelevant). I am quite sure that microsoft does not want the internet anymore - they want the desktop. The current and previous IE-upgrades were only to slow down firefox market-penetration a bit. However, this can only work in the short-term, so i guess they do have a hidden agenda to solve the "internet-problem" in the long-term.
If Microsoft could make IE fully W3C and CSS compliant right now, they'd do it.
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If i recall correctly, then they ditched further IE-development because they were afraid of the internet (or more correctly, affraid of web-applications which could turn the client-os irrelevant). I am quite sure that microsoft does not want the internet anymore - they want the desktop.
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They've never been "afraid of the internet". Not in a sense that would make them step away from any aspect of an online world market. They want the desktop, AND they want the internet. This is shown by their heavy push to hosted applications.
Online activation is just the beginning, boys and girls. Next we won't have to install software anymore. Just go online and use Microsoft's hosted office apps, configurable integration platforms, data management, and almost anything else you may need for your home or business. Your money won't buy a box, a disc and a product key, but rather a site admin login to...
http://<yourcompanyname>.microsoft.net/
...which will provide access to all the user management, client management, office apps, web portals, "SQL Enterprise Online", and proprietary systems that you've paid them for.
It opens up all kinds of highly marketable benefits: No more (or at least not as many) hardware/system incompatibility issues for software apps, remote support won't have to be so "remote", "cheating" on license agreements will be a thing of the past, and centralization of most software and data storage services will be much more cost-effective for them and their customers. (It's at least gotta be less than what we currently pay for all our volume licensing agreements alone, not even counting MSDN subscriptions and maintenance agreements. )
And I hate the whole idea. When all this happens and there's a platform or system issue, we will be relying entirely on an external entity to fix it for us. One whose highest priority is not to fix problems specific to
our company. I hope I get to retire first.
But anyway, sorry to diverge from the topic of IE 7 and standards compliance. But then again, it's all leading to this...
Online activation is just the beginning, boys and girls.
[...]
And I hate the whole idea.
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The solution is pretty simple: don't use Microsoft products.
Really, it's that easy. It won't be the end of the world by any stretch. There's a ton of good software out there that won't end up this way either because the small time developers creating it all won't be able to afford hosting things centrally in such a fashion, or because people will have ideological problems with it (Linux/BSD crowd).
I'll be a little upset if Apple plans to follow suit, but as much as I am happy with their current products, I'd switch in an instant if it came to something like this and I decided that I didn't like the way they were handling it.
It's a lot like the whole music/movie thing really. People complain and complain about the RIAA and MPAA, but then go out and dump a whole load of money right into their pockets. There's no need too, most of the stuff they have a hold on is crap anyway and there's better stuff out there if people bother to look.
In the end though, this sort of move from MS might be a good thing for certain segments of the computing population. It'd open up a lot of opportunities for other people/companies to fill in the kind of gaps left from MS's exodus to network service based software systems.
Good points. Certainly feasible for the consumer market. But the corporate market is a different story. It's much easier to compete with MS in the home than it is in the office. Many companies have huge scalability needs and require on-site support contracts; difficult needs to fill for smaller software companies.
But many companies try to "fill in gaps" with non-MS, and even non-licensed, software whenever possible. My company uses quite a few freeware and open-source apps, for instance.
Internet Explorer, however, is firmly entrenched in the commercial world. Not many (especially consumer-targeting) companies out there will, any time soon, develop their websites specifically for anything other than IE, for the simple reason that some 90% of the consumer market uses it exclusively. Many commercial sites are also Opera- and FireFox friendly, but this is very often incidental. (Meaning the corporate web designers happened to not bungle the standards so badly as to lock them out of the more standards-compliant web browsers.)
A significant percentage of consumers would have to change web browsers before companies would begin developing for the IE alternatives. The trend already exists, I'm just afraid it will never move quickly enough to loosen IE's foothold.
[span style='font-size:7pt;line-height:100%']And just to note...at home I'm a loyal Opera user. And as soon as there's a very easy-to-implement, turn-key Linux distro with enough compatible software to replace the bulk of my current apps, I'll leave Windows behind as well.[/span]
Not many (especially consumer-targeting) companies out there will, any time soon, develop their websites specifically for anything other than IE, for the simple reason that some 90% of the consumer market uses it exclusively.
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Interesting that you mention market-penetration. Two years ago, it was still about 97%, no its down to 90%. And in germany, its already below 80% ! Really, no need to worry about a rapidly changing market.
What you wrote is interesting. So, does this mean that they have already given up on windows-supremacy and are now trying to take over the internet and make money by creating a monopoly on "services"? Wouldn't that require aggressive lock-in methods in multiple departments(hardware, software, networking)? I sincerly hope that they will fail, because then the PC and Internet-world would be quite dead and more like an empire/police state. It is interesting to note that if this is their plan, then open webstandards are their enemy. I would expect more MS-only webextensions for lock-in purposes.
With relying on all those "hosted services", has anyone thought about what this would mean if the net-connection gets interrupted for a while? What possibilities this would open up for worms and virusses? Or even one step further: what this would mean for mankind when a high-priority component (satelites, rootservers, continental cable-bridges) get attacked, while almost *everything* in the world at that stage is depending on the inet? Sounds like a safe ticket to destination "global disaster"
- Lyx
Market penetration of IE-alternatives is indeed making headway, just not quickly enough to make companies design for non-IE browsers anytime soon.
MS isn't going to ever give up on "Windows supremacy". They'll leverage it in every way possible to maximize their penetration of the internet as a "market".
And I agree with you completely on the risks of the widespread adoption of hosted applications. This is where I'd say we should take the approach Dibrom suggested to not follow Microsoft's push to use their products and not bow to their strategies, and instead make a dedicated effort to expand the user base of non-Microsoft alternatives out there, in web browsers and every other type of application.
But this is where "what I'd want to happen" and "what is likely to happen" differ, I'm afraid. Looking at the history of technology adoption over the past twenty years by both the consumer and corporate markets, Microsoft is very well anchored and getting stronger every day. People gravitate to that which they know. And many people in this world know Windows and Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player. Not nearly as many know Linux and FireFox and Foobar2000, for instance. Technically superior alternatives will remain mostly in the realm of the tech savvy, which number few in this world. Bad news for us; great news for Microsoft.
The solution is pretty simple: don't use Microsoft products.
Do you think people should stop using Microsoft products?
What do you think about these words by Bill Gates?
Microsoft has finally presented its new version of Internet Explorer, IE 7. Bill Gates noted: “What we've decided to do is a new version of Internet Explorer, this is IE 7, and it adds a new level of security.” Read More>>> (http://forum.arovaxcompany.com/index.php?showtopic=240)Does it really add new level of security to
your Windows system?