Stuck in a World of IE 8
I’d just like to say, when you’re in a place where you can only access IE as a browser, and some of your favorite sites have the “Don’t use IE because it sucks and we’re not designing for it” philosophy — Well, it’s a royal PITA.
Microsoft’s New Problem 8
The problem: trying to catch up with everyone else. They’re still trying to stick to the “release when we feel like it” method, while most everyone else, such as Firefox and Apple, is following the open-source favored method of “release early, release often.” As we’ve seen with both Mozilla’s Firefox and Apple’s Mac OS X, “release early, release often” is very profitable, and very powerful. It keeps the project active, and brings the users back for the new features.
And while these projects are competing against MS products, MS tries to catch up by mimicking the features of these new products. Take IE7, for example. The IE team recently released two blog entries (one general entry and one more complex entry) stating they were implementing tabs. They only do this to catch up to others, after the roaring success of tabs in browsers such as Opera and Firefox. Another example is Longhorn, Microsoft’s famed OS in-developement. Press release after press release shows Longhorn trying to keep up with OS X in features and usability, but with Longhorn being slated for release late this year, if that, will it even compare to whatever version of OS X Apple has out by then, or a version they can put out prior to the release of Longhorn?
This is the problem MS faces, and they’re either ignoring it because they can soak up the losses, or are just trying to remain blissfully ignorant. Either way, they need to embrace the future, and begin applying the principle of releasing early and releasing often, or else in the long run, they will sink (though that may be a very long run).
Netscape Revived! … Not. 28
AOL made another couple of boo-boos.
First off, they tried to revive a dead browser. Number two, if you insist on releasing a new version of Netscape, at least make sure you don’t have to release a security patch 12 hours after release when you market it as secure.
Good. Job. AOL.
Rant V - IE7 11
Microsoft is finally going to get in gear. Chris Wilson, one of the developers of Internet Explorer 7, posted on the IE Blog that they will finally properly support CSS and PNG alpha channels.
My response: it’s about time. Mr. Wilson says they’re listening to web developers, but where was that a year ago? Two years? Three? Seven? The latest major release they had was Internet Explorer 5, with version 6 being a security and bug fix, if that. That’s seven years of having the number one browser in the market stagnant. Seven years of misery as Web Developers have to hack their own code just to get it to look right in Internet Explorer 5 and 6. Some may say better late than never, but that doesn’t hold true in this instance.
I say Long Live Firefox, Long Live Safari, and Long Live Opera.
Viva la Revolución!
Internet Explorer 7 14
So Mr. Big Bill(ionaire) Gates announced it. Seems Firefox (and numerous other open-source, standards compliant browsers) has put the pressure on Microsoft to better comply with standards and to just be a better browser with less security holes, since they seem insistent on hogging 90% of the browser market share.
Previously, Microsoft stated that Internet Explorer would no longer be available as a separate product.
This is, or rather, could be good news coming from the Microsoft camp. IE7, if it corrected its current major flaws, stands to be the first major update IE has seen in a good 6 years (when IE5 was released). Beta comes in summer, maybe we can hope for an official release by the end of the year. Maybe. (via MezzoBlue.com.)
Editor’s Note:
Related article: The New Browser War
Also, the same day IE7 is announced, Firefox breaks through 25,000,000 downloads of version 1.0. See Blake Ross’ Post about it and a little something concerning IE7.
The New Browser War: Turning the Tide 24
The New Browser War. Some referred to the first as the Great Browser War, as people of the time of World War I called that war the Great War. So, for history’s sake, I’ll call what I think is coming the Browser War II. Continue Reading…
