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The empire strikes back

Friday October 20, 2006

I guess I should tow the party line and pause to celebrate the release of Internet Explorer 7 but without linking to it because, of course, I don’t want to encourage anyone!

In fact I haven’t yet looked at this release so who knows what nice surprises (and no I am not being sarcastic) may be waiting. I do know there are certain things I like already, from playing with the beta. The way they have introduced tabbed browsing, for instance, is not going to appeal to geeks but it is probably going to help make sense of the whole idea to my Mum (I have had little success getting ordinary people to tab in Firefox). Transparent PNG support is a real bonus. Also, I think Microsoft may be one of the few remaining companies who actually manage to get their products out of beta… so Web 1.0 but so refreshing.

I think the whole we broke your hacks thing is a slightly bitter pill to swallow but I do think it’s a very sane move to load in styles using conditional comments. I might even dare to suggest that the whole culture of CSS hack superstars, of days gone by, is probably more to blame for this mess than Microsoft themselves; conditional comments have been around for a long time. Hmmm… did I just say the standards community is not perfect and prone to making the odd bad decision, also? Crikey, this Microsoft reality distortion field they built into 7 is real strong!

I have already made the decision that upgrades to clients’ sites before a certain period of time (i.e. any time before the first working (standards-based) beta was released) will be charged work. I don’t go with the update for free nonsense; I am guessing those who do subscribe to that philosophy may have pushed the future proofing sound bite that little bit too hard ;). So I have no concerns on that score, though I am sure there will be some heated exchanges! :D

But I do have a concerns about this release. Concerns that Microsoft is, well, the Microsoft we know from history. Will they do just enough to put themselves where they want to be and leave the browser to rot again? Do they (not the developers the management) really give a toss about web standards or are they just paying it lip service to bring the big names on board, thus generating good PR for their browser? I guess time will tell.

Personally, I hope to see more updates more often. I still feel (without understanding the technicalities) that Internet Explorer has a long way to go before it catches up, certainly I don’t yet feel I want to recommend it to anyone as a [sane] browser of choice.

Most of all though I am concerned that the competition remains strong, nothing would be worse than a world where IE was without rivals, again.

Firefox

Comments are open for this one.

  1. Ben Ward

    679 days ago

    Well, I think on the whole I’m happy to see it arrived. It is very hard to let go of that fear that comes with Microsoft regaining market share though.

    The features have caught up (although still no download manager), the standards support has caught up, but restoring trust in the brand is a long long way away. It will take them to carry on communicating on the blog and have a timetable for IE8 out in public before I feel that start to grow. As much as Chris Wilson seems to be a lovely, honest guy, it’s the fear of his management and the unknown we can’t account for.

    Assuming all goes well though, the talk is that IE8 will bring DOM Scripting improvements and given future-Microsoft-overlord Ray Ozzie’s apparent interest and passion for Microformats I think there’s a genuinely good shot at having some hCard and hCalendar (with Live Clipboard) support in IE8, especially since Microsoft will have shipped Vista with the new Address Book and Calendar applications by then.

  2. Nice Paul

    679 days ago

    Let today be known as The Day The Internets Broke.

  3. ben

    679 days ago

    Good post. Weird comment. What are you talking about? :) JK.

    Anyways, I think it’s important to remember that Luke leaves his jedi training early to go after Vader and in doing so gets his frickin’ hand cut off. (Microsoft: Firefox, I am your father) (Firefox: No you’re not bi#$h) Should he have done it? No. Would everything have turned out the same? Maybe not. More importantly, it’s the beginning of the end for the Empire. Cut off our hand, we’ll replace it with a cybernetic one and learn the force even more so that we can come back and destroy you.

    Microsoft will probably continue to be Microsoft and do whatever they feel like doing whether it’s actually what users want or need. Firefox hopefully will continue to gain market share and continue to be cool and useful and follow what users want and need. Yoda will die, but Luke will carry on and eventually Vader will throw the emperor down the shaft.

    We must be cautious…

  4. dr.happy

    678 days ago

    One of the most interesting aspects of the IE vs. Firefox battle is the development of the ecosystem of extensions or add-ons. It’s not just about bugs and features. Right now Firefox had a great advantage in this space but you can see Microsoft trying to catch up.

    Microsoft has an interesting partner in Trailfire, a recommended download for IE7. See link:
    http://www.ieaddons.com/SearchResults.aspx?keywords=trailfire

    But this extension is also available for Firefox. See link:
    https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/3524/

    I think the ecosystem for Firefox and IE will decide who wins this battle. What do you think?

  5. Mark Kenny

    677 days ago

    I’m really pleased that CSS hacks are broken, can you imagine the mess that would have created if they had to keep supporting hacks as well as standard code?

    It’ll be interesting to see how quickly it shows up in my browser logs.

  6. Matt Robin

    676 days ago

    I’m late getting to this post, the news of the ‘release’ occuring while I was busy with other stuff (offline)...but it’s significant news indeed.

    As with other web-standards web designers, I quickly grew to dislike many things about the Internet Explorer browser (all versions up to the present)...and Microsoft have certainly appeared to be trying to resolve issues in the software for the realese of IE7. This doesn’t mean the new browser will be faultless (in fact it might have a whole batch of new problems we’ve yet to discover!) but it will be massively improved over the previous versions.

    As with you John, I’ve been using conditional comments in the css to hopefully side-step legacy issues…bug-fixes that are needed for older IE versions…and probably redundant in the new version (with any luck)...if any designer/developer hasn’t been using conditional comments – then that’s their mistake…IE 7’s bug-fixes, beta or otherwise, has been on the cards for awhile.
    All-round, I think the improvements in IE 7 will be a very good thing for the web (and web-standards) in general…I don’t think it’s so much about MS increasing their market share – and more about improving the browser that will be shipped with computers that account for the majority of web users on the planet…bringing a better browsing product to those users overall. Another key thing is that it will open-up the world of rss feeds to the standard IE user…(those who haven’t been using feeds so far)...and that will spread information even better on the web. :)

    Of course we can be cynical of Microsoft – Bill Gates is already saying his farewells, but the company itself won’t change overnight…and it’s natural for the web design community to be cautious of any promises Microsoft make about a product range.

    I’m still a supporter of competitive browser solutions (with a preference for the brilliant Firefox)...and don’t think the launch of IE 7 will sweep away any rivals in the near future.

    Ben (Ward): Interesting note about IE 8 there….hmmm.

  7. Christian

    675 days ago

    In my opinion, this is great news for webdevelopers. As the new IE7 is soon put out to all users through Windows Update, it means the “general populace” now have an (almost) standards compliant browser.

    As IE7 is pushed through Windows Update in a short time, we can expect most users to update automatically – the joy of having 80% of the browser users use a standards-compliant browser (or almost at least) will be ours at last! With the last 20%, mostly taken by FireFox and Opera, we can soon expect that our code will work for 99% of our users – can’t we?

    You’re right, the reality distortion field is strong indeed ;)

  8. David W.

    673 days ago

    I think you’ve got the right idea by considering compatibility updates to be change orders. If a client fires somebody and needs an update to their About Us page, it would be a change order because keeping the site current, free of charge, wasn’t part of the agreement. If the client wants to move to a new server, and there were compatibility problems—same answer. And I say the same goes for the code if there’s a new browser in town.

    Still, even if there’s not much fuss, this is a good lesson that it’s a good idea to specify what browsers a project targets in with the initial bid.

    I’m not expecting much fuss, though. I didn’t have a single client complain about change orders in order to comply to the new IE ActiveX modification, and I have many clients with flash header animation or flash news crawlers, and a few that I couldn’t talk out of doing a flash-only site.

  9. kartooner

    673 days ago

    I updated to IE7 and loved many of the changes including tabbed browsing (already a “feature” implemented in Firefox and Safari) and of course the squashed CSS bugs that hindered IE6.

    Yet, only after having it installed for 2 hours it brought my machine to it’s knees at random points and so sadly—depending on how you look at it—I immediately downgraded.

    I’m sure there were files including in IE7 that didn’t play nicely with various programs on my machine but it’s regrettable that I wasn’t able to experience it for that long.

    I’ll just wait a few more months and try again.

  10. John M

    672 days ago

    Excellent. Seems faster, again, too.
    Only one problem, presumably due to the new UA string it passes, FF2.0 will not work with NatWest Online Banking (www.nwolb.com), which is nice.
    Way to shut out 1000s of home and business users as FF auto-updates to version 2.0 across the world.


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