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Return of the xxxx?

Scoble just let it slip in the comments to his post on http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2004/06/16.html#a7776

I'm returning to work on the Internet Explorer team. A team that I used to work on a few years ago and I'm very excited to be returning to the team where we clearly have much work to do. I've really enjoyed working on Longhorn as a technical evangelist and remain very very excited by the capabilities that Avalon and Longhorn will bring but the time was right for me to return to work on a product team.

What am I going to be doing? I'll be on the Program Management team focusing on helping customers and bringing customer feedback to the team. As I've just returned from vacation and getting married there are details to be sorted out, so I'll post more later.

What are we planning for Internet Explorer? Tony Chor the Group Program Manager on the team put it well on Channel 9. At this stage there isn't much more to add other than to reiterate the point that the Internet Explorer team does exist and does care. In my new job role I'm very interested in hearing about what you the customers would like to see. I know that there are many requests already out there around CSS support, transparent PNG support etc. and we do read every single one of them. I can say though that somewhat vague requests for “better standards support” are not as useful as a specific example of what you'd like to see changed and specifically why it would improve things. Obviously I cannot guarrantee that every request will be implemented but please let me know what you'd like to see. Probably the best place to do that is on the Internet Explorer Wiki on Channel 9 or post here.

I can't promise a response to every question or request but I will read and consider everything.

Published Wednesday, June 16, 2004 10:01 AM by DMassy

Comments

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, June 16, 2004 10:20 AM

'somewhat vague requests for “better standards support” ' is not what you would have seen if you have read the pages you link to. The requests (more like requirements, actually) are well documented. PLEASE don't start this conversation over yet again.

Shannon J Hager

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, June 16, 2004 10:27 AM

better standards support is not really a vague notion for web developers :-( This should be addressed as a proprity.

Other things could be tabbed browser, better favorites management and organization, also a better IE for PocketPC, closer specs to the desktop version. Well I think you should also look at what others guys developed around like MyIE, which is for me the way to go.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, June 16, 2004 10:49 AM

Shannon, I didn't mean to imply that every request we see is a 'somewhat vague request for “better standards support”'. Unfortunately though some of the feedback is a little highlevel. In order to prioritise the work correctly it really does help if requests are specific. I'm very thankful for all the effort people have put into some of the specific requests that are out there and we have and will continue to look at it all. I agree let's not just have the same conversation again and regurgitating the current feedback yet again is probably not useful :-)
Thanks
-Dave

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, June 16, 2004 11:30 AM

I suspect the reason you get such vague feedback is because, for people writing a Web app, the official API reference is at w3c.org; if you want to know what method you need to call, the DOM specs are the place you look to find it, and if you want to know exactly how to make your text look just so, the CSS specs are the place you look to find it. So asking "Which pieces of the published API should we actually implement?" is kinda frustrating, because the answer is that we want the whole API, dagnabbit.

That said, my specific requests are: 1) DOM Level 2 Events, which make adding a behavioral layer to HTML much cleaner, and 2) proper XHTML support (i.e., handling the application/xhtml+xml MIME type and using a strict XML parser for it).

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, June 16, 2004 11:43 AM

I think that IE needs to get rejuiced -- it's seemingly been sitting idle for far to long -- FireFox is a good example of what the "competition" has done in the time that IE has been sitting..

Good things in IE SP2 -- ActiveX and Popup blocking. Yes! Awesome! wonderful! Security perception of IE has to change..

I'm seconding tabbed browsing and better favorites mgmt.

Integrated SVG viewer? I'm sure XAML will require some IE changes, having plain vanilla SVG would be good.

Auto-forms fill in, Identity/Authentication management.

Better performance (yeah, I know, vague and hard) Fix quirkyness when large amounts of temporary internet files exist.

Managed API. 'nuff said.

Innovation! From that blog entry that MS employs the biggest research dept, there's got to be some killer ideas coming from them or us customers that don't fall under the category of copying features from other sources...

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, June 16, 2004 12:04 PM

There are a lot of problems with the IE cache that need to be addressed soon. When the cache fills up, IE needs to start the oldest items in the cache, even if they haven't expired yet.

I can't tell you how many times I set my cache size small (say, 300mb) and then run into issues like:
1) Can't save an image from the site in anything but BMP format
2) File downloads complete, but then an error occurs when it tries to copy the file to the download location (this brings up another point, how about some way to download directly to a location!! Often times I want to download something on a computer with very limited space on the C drive, but nearly unlimited space on other driver, but IE won't let me do it).

I'd also like to see issues with loading working better. Sometimes IE appears to get "hung up" on loading a page, and then after that point nothing will work. I have to shut down IE and restart it before I can browse anything again.

Another feature that would be handy is some way to back up IE configuration settings, so that they can be easily restored or reset. In some lab situations it would be nice to restore all of the IE settings without flushing the user's profile or Ghosting the machine.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, June 16, 2004 1:51 PM

Fix that feature where you can be typing in the Address bar, when the previous page finishes loading it puts the cursor at the START of the bar, so you end up with typed urls like icrosoft.comhttp://www.m :)

oh, and popup blocker and tab-based browsing.

Thanks

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, June 16, 2004 3:07 PM

The problem with the "standards" is that there are too many of them and often contradicting. For example, should IE implement XHTML 2? Or CSS 3? By the time any improvement to IE will be done, those specs will be out. Or maybe not. I think what Dave is asking is specific issues, like the above mentioned cache problems, compliance to a SPECIFIC w3c reccomendation (DOM lvl2), support for SVG, etc.

And don't forget that it still have to display ALL the pages out there, the majority of them technically not valid HTML.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, June 16, 2004 3:11 PM

Dave, I'm not going to get too involved in the discussion, mainly because I do understand why things are where they are (even if I don't agree). I'll simply watch. And read ;-)

Jeremy C. Wright

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, June 16, 2004 3:12 PM

Hi Dave - great do see you doing some real work again. ;-) (my apologies to all evangelists out there, as you know very well, I am just kidding. I just couldn't resist.)

Two requests come to mind:

1) Rather than Large/Small Fonts, it would be more useful to have a general scale that works similar to a Zoom in Word or print preview, where it scales both text and images (and text in styles that specify point sizes).

2) Internet Explorer shows the security icon in the statusbar when the page you're on is encrypted. It would be much more useful if it would indicate whether the form's post-back URL is encrypted (in other words, whether the data you're entering will be encrypted or transmitted as plain text).

3) Auto-fill information (like Google/MSN toolbar) with suggested standard naming conventions that web-designers can follow would be very useful.

4) Some sort of security mode that alerts users of masked URLs. If I send an email message with <A HREF="http://hacksite.com">http://www.PayPal.com/MyAccount</A> it's obviously designed to mislead the user. There may be other cases like that.

5) In general, the current UI for security, privacy, and other warnings isn't all that effective. Maybe instead of tiny icons and popup messageboxes, something like a "Security-bar" could help? There may be much more creative and better solutions.

6) An easy way for Jscript to know whether you're working in offline mode (if this already exists, my apologies).

That's it for now... enjoy!

-- Mike

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, June 16, 2004 3:20 PM

Please fix the problem where IE ignores text/plain content type... I know that I can force this with a registry setting but then cases when web app does not set content type default to text/plain (mess, and not just IE fault, I know).
SVG support would be great. Ignore tabs, there are freeware apps that offer this functionality for years.
Improve standard conformance, use w3.org as a reference.
Thanks for listening :)

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, June 16, 2004 3:45 PM

Funny nobody's mentioning XForms... I suppose we *will* get tight infopath integration. Fine with me.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, June 16, 2004 3:49 PM

Developers would love to be able to use the latest and greatest (I should know, I concur) but I realise that this isn't feasible for a team that's essentially on standby. Personally what I'd love to see in this order is:

1) Fix for alpha PNGs - I use these a lot and having to add IE specific filters each time bloats my code un-necessarily.

2) application/xhtml+xml support. Even if it isn't a validating parser simply having not to set up access rules to stop IE from trying to download and save files served as it would be very nice.

3) Bug fixes for current CSS support. Places like quirksmode.org are full of bug listings and testcases. Even if only the more obvious ones that are fixed, this would be a good start.

4) Full CSS2.1 support? A pipedream? Possibly, but you've got to look to the future :) I can see that MS was wary of CSS2.0 as it's reputation as an unstable standard seems pretty founded, but 2.1 was designed to fix the majority of the flaws.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, June 16, 2004 3:55 PM

Heard of Central and Alchemy?

Viswanath Gondi

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, June 16, 2004 4:27 PM

The product feedback pages on the wiki are my baby, so I'd encourage everyone to add comments / votes / structure / new issues to them. I'll take a pass through them this weekend and update with any comments here that didn't get added.

Jonathan Hardwick [MSFT]

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, June 16, 2004 4:35 PM

My main request, as an ad-hoc IT helper for friends and family, is to make security settings more transparent, and be clear about what each setting means.
Joe SixPack or my Aunt Emma may not know what is the impact of 3rd-party cookies, or any of the myriad options that should be set for secure browsing. All they want is to browse without fuss. However they have the right to use a system that protects them (by default!) from popups, spyware etc..
Currently, the compromise between secure browsing and functional browsing are not well explained, so most users just leave it at a somewhat not very secure default, and just plain ignore the issue.
The result can be a mess. An example in mind is what happened to some friends of mine: after a few months of usage of a computer by an average family of 4, they have a system that is slow, borderline non-functional, and so inundated with spam, they are scared to let the kids use it.
Note that they started with a factory-install of XP home, have added Norton AV, kept up with Windows updates, Norton updates etc..
However, they still ended up with a half-dozen spyware programs/malware, several Mb of cookies and internet files, on top of stuff nobody remembers installing. Some issues here are larger than just IE, but secure defaults for IE would have made protected them somewhat.

So my wish list?
1- Make it secure and private by default
2- Make managing security more transparent, and use words Joe Sixpack can understand (not everybody is a developer)
3- Make it easy to block pop ups, ads, privacy invasions and the like.
4- I liked the isea running IE at a lower security setting. Could you make it so anything run under IE (scripts, ActiveX, etc.) runs at a low privilege, even if the user is an admin? For activiy that do require full user privileges, let IE be explicit and require credentials of some sort(good luck making it impossible for a malicious hacker to spoof your login dialog!)

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, June 16, 2004 4:42 PM

IHTMLPaintSite methods InvalidateRect and InvalidateRgn are broken, can you have them fixed?

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, June 16, 2004 4:46 PM

Zoom style bugs fixed please, when IHTMLStyle3->zoom is greater then 100%:

1. Parts of zoomed text cannot be selected by the mouse. For example, if I zoom in 200% on the text "Call me Ishmael.", "Ishmael" cannot be selected with the mouse.

2. If zoomed text is set to "contentEditable=true", the caret is the incorrect size. It is the size it would have been if the text was showing at 100%, not 200%

Here is some HTML to duplicate the first 2 bugs.
<div style="zoom:200%" contentEditable="true">
Call me Ishmael.
</div>

3. Using IHTMLElementRender to draw anything zoomed past 100% to a DC doesn't work, portions of the element are not drawn.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, June 16, 2004 4:46 PM

People have already said alpha on PNGs, obviously that would awesome. They've also mentioned the security stuff - improved security is surely a must have; using any browser but IE seems to be a practically surefire way to avoid getting spyware, whereas the opposite seems also to be true. It should be practically impossible to install anything that I don't want on my system through IE, and it should definitely never happen automatically. I really am not familiar with the subtleties involved here, so I don't want to say anymore, except to second any propsed change that improves that problem.

Finally, if you had to pick one thing from CSS - please, correct box model would be it. I am SURE that is a simple change, and it makes doing good CSS layout, well, nigh impossible, which is just tacky. I know a CORRECT box model will probably break old pages, I dunno what to tell you about that. That's why they should have done it right the first time I guess :)

I would almost take back every bad thing I have ever said about IE if the security problems were resolved and the box model support was better.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, June 16, 2004 4:54 PM

Standards or no standards what ticks of web developers is that they have to tweak pages to look the same in different browsers. Differences in rendering things like empty table cells, DIV tags, borders, etc. drive us crazy. What we need is a consistent way to build ONE page that renders close to, if not 100%, the same on all major browsers. If I have to learn a new language to do it that's fine. Just make my life easier so I'm not fighting javascript that breaks in browser A and when fixed, breaks the original code in browser B.

Marcus McConnell

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, June 16, 2004 6:05 PM

Ben - IE6 has a correct box model if you use a proper doctype declaration.

Marcus - I was pleasantly surprised today that after spending a couple of days building a site that the only browser I needed to fix it for was IE. I'd been testing in Moz as I went along, and this was enough to have it work in Safari/Opera etc. This is how web development should be :)

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, June 16, 2004 9:14 PM

OK, this probably isn't the best suggestion, falling on deaf ears and all. Dump IE. Include firefox in your OS, contribute to the Mozilla community.

CK

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, June 16, 2004 11:20 PM

Rounded corners in the box model - see Gecko for an example.
Tabs
Proper PNG support
Nicer plug-in architecture
Better support for gradients in the box model - DHTML filters just don't cut it

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, June 16, 2004 11:34 PM

Christian, you're right ... or just use the Gecko renderEngine ...

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Thursday, June 17, 2004 12:24 AM

How about better javascript debugging? Hate having to switch to N*scape when I need to check the line that failed.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Thursday, June 17, 2004 1:53 AM

I stopped using IE over a year ago when I discovered Crazy Browser, and unless IE grows to support similar functionality I'm unlikely to go back.

So my no. 1 request would be a fully customisable implementation of tabbed browsing (by customisable I mean having the ability to group tabs - look at the WndTabs advanced module for VC6 if you're not sure) and drag tabs out into a new frame. The user should determine which windowing model is displayed, not the developer!!

Actually Trillian Pro has a good model for this with its concept of "containers". You might want to take a look, although I'd go further and say you should support the Visual Studio model of being able to "tear off" tabbed windows and re-dock them later.

Integrated script debugging (single step, breakpoints etc.) would be good too - but maybe that's better left to the Whidbey team.

Finally I'd also suggest that you follow in Nick Hodapp's footsteps and ask the some questions on www.codeproject.com. Believe me you'll get a *lot* of feedback if you do!

Cheers,

Anna

Anna-Jayne Metcalfe

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Thursday, June 17, 2004 2:45 AM

IE is lacking the support for some standards.

It would be very nice to have built in support for SVG Viewer, and even better if supporting all the features of Adobe SVG Viewer (i think it is the most used one).

Also native support for XForms would be appreciated, as it allows the development of better web forms

Regards,
Pedro

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Thursday, June 17, 2004 3:06 AM

A managed API for creating plug-ins.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Thursday, June 17, 2004 5:29 AM

How about a browser that supports all the pertinent web standards, plus the various de facto standards (innerHTML, a sane box model, and so on and so forth) and is quick and bug-free with it?

Too much to ask?

I mean, I know that the various web standards stink in a whole host of ways, but really, the way IE/Win32 has stagnated is sad. At the very least, can we get the rendering engine from MSN for OS X?

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Thursday, June 17, 2004 5:36 AM

Ummm.... it would be nice to have "better standards support" but honestly, I hope all web browsers just dissappear. HTML is such a hack. Don't get me wrong, the web is good for simple displays of info, but I cannot stand web "applications".

Also, the last thing I need is yet another browser to have to test my web pages on. Blech.

Oh, so my request is to make it possible for me to write a web page, test it _once_ and know it works on a resonable list of browsers/OSes.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Thursday, June 17, 2004 5:42 AM

If the fixes and new feature requests are incorporated in to IE, how will this be available to the users? Will this be available only on Longhorn? Or will it be released older OSes too?

I have commented about this in my blog too: http://www.vasanthdharmaraj.com/PermaLink,guid,f6ebf610-0566-4f3d-a853-5c15a0b8305a.aspx

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Thursday, June 17, 2004 5:46 AM

I'm not sure if I should get my hopes up, but if a new version of Internet Explorer is released that will be improved over the current one, these are the improvements I'd like to see, in prioritized order:

1) Proper CSS2 support. At least all the selectors and a less broken box model. Else than that, implement as much as you can make room for. And work by the CSS 2.1 spec and not the 2.0.

2) Better MIME handling. E.g. no content sniffing to «help» the user. This just makes for lazier developers and administrators, as binary content are served as 'text/html' and yet downloaded properly. 'text/*' should ALWAYS be displayed as text in the browser, no matter what the content might be.

3) Fixed <object> parsing and representation so we don't need hacks lik this (http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1081798064&order=-1&count=5). In short: it should be possible to nest <object> tags without IE displaying all of them beneath each other. It should only render the first one it «understands».

4) XHTML support. The whole stuff. At least no barfing on 'application/xhtml+xml' MIME types, and hopefully native XML parsing of XHTML pages. Microsoft already has some of the best XML tools available, so I can't seem to understand why this is so difficult.

5) Full DOM 1 and 2 support. Legacy support for proprietary IE code is OK, but please offer a standard compliant way to do the same things.

6) Full PNG support, not only the «PNG as GIF» support we have now. I actually think no PNG support is better than the support PNG has today.

7) SVG support. Implement what you want, but at least be clear on what you choose not to implement. I realize that this is an extremely difficult spec to fully implement, but please give it a try.

8) Possibility to zoom fonts set in 'px' sizes. Having all 'px' fonts locked in one size is a huge accessibility issue.

9) Support for XForms and MathML. A really nice addition to XHTML while you're at it.

Asbjørn Ulsberg

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Thursday, June 17, 2004 5:54 AM

I would like to see full CSS1, CSS2 and bascially any w3c web standard fully supported in the browser.

also,

Fix the damn box model to work accrding to standards! Other browser do it right. I hate having to figure out hacks for all my positioning and padding becuase IE gets it wrong!

# Internet Explorer isn't dead @ Thursday, June 17, 2004 9:06 AM

Apparently, Internet Explorer isn’t dead. Dave Massy is back on the Internet Explorer team and his job is to bring customer feedback to the team members. If you care about Internet Explorer and have ideas on how it can be...

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Thursday, June 17, 2004 6:09 AM

The problem with Internet Explorer's box model is basically (no matter what DOCTYPE you choose) that the 'width' of the box is used as an outer width, while the CSS specification states that the outer width of the box is the sum of 'width', 'padding', 'margin' and 'border-size'.

I guess it would be smart to apply the wrong box model in quirkmode, but in standard mode the correct box model should be applied.

Asbjørn Ulsberg

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Thursday, June 17, 2004 7:37 AM

How about an integrated RSS Agregator?

# re: Return of the xxxx? - performance issues @ Thursday, June 17, 2004 8:31 AM

Having spent roughly 18 months (ending 6 months ago) doing what I would call "pushing the limits of IE" in trying to build business applications based on IE, but mimicing the look and feel and functionality of a WinForms style application, I'd love to see the "boundaries" of what I was able to do extended. Granted bloggers such as Eric Lippert have pointed out that creating that type of application inside of an environment such as IE is not even recommended, but the reality of the environments that business applications get deployed into demand development for the type of environment that IE gives. I've already started researching replacing IE-based applications with Flash applications (seeing how Flash now has support for most of all of the stuff we were doing by hand in IE).

Anyway, specifics include:
- deterministic "killing" of memory objects - using the MSXML XMLDocument's can quickly drag down an instance of IE
- faster parsing/loading/etc of large chunks of HTML (meaning for better or worse, if I create a 1MB+ chunk of HTML, IE simply pukes on itself)

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Thursday, June 17, 2004 8:34 AM

Don't know if this helps, but I had a post about this a while back:

http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/bsblog/archive/2004/05/13/13487.aspx

Brendan Tompkins

# SECURITY! SECURITY! SECURITY! SECURITY! @ Thursday, June 17, 2004 8:50 AM

I could rant for days about all the big and little defects in IE, but they all pale compared to the one gigantic problem:

Using IE on the Internet is like running around naked on a battlefield with a bullseye painted on your chest.

Do whatever it takes to make it safe to permit, say, my mother to browse the web with IE. This is emphatically not the case today.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Thursday, June 17, 2004 9:01 AM

check it out ideas in this:
http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0422/040602_news_microsoft.php

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Thursday, June 17, 2004 9:46 AM

SP2 goes a long way toward helping out on the security and privacy side. That said I have many gripes about developing for IE. Below are my desired changes.

1) Proper PNG support. That means transparency and proper gamma reproduction. The gamma problem is really annoying as you can't match a color in a png to a css color.

2) Better CSS support. Things like :hover on more than just links. Fix the "fixed" attribute to really fix an object properly to a location/viewport. Proper selector support.

3) Prevent pages from auto-popping up dialogs asking to install spyware. Make it something that a user has to initiate other than just browsing a page.

4) MIME Types. Hello "application/xhtml+xml" It is in the spec, why isn't it supported?

5) Implement the "object" tag as it is supposed to be done so that we can program support for fallthrough. Don't have flash, then show the inner photo. Don't support images, then show the nested text.

6) Implement a proper box model regardless of doctype. Why teach new web developers bad habbits because they haven't put in a doctype?

Finally -- Make the improvements available for Windows 98 and above (or 2000 at the very least). Don't make this a Longhorn only thing or you will further infuriate web developers.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Thursday, June 17, 2004 10:20 AM

Going a long way isn't good enough. It has to be bullet-proof. No more one-line malformed HTML crashers, no more malware, no more reading arbitrary files locally, no more anything.

Someone at Microsoft needs to recognize that they're not writing an HTML browser for a disconnected LAN, but a web browser for the hostile, malicious Internet at large -- for use by all the clueless masses who make up Microsoft's huge user base -- and fix the damn thing!

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Thursday, June 17, 2004 10:25 AM

Tabs..for different browser windows

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Thursday, June 17, 2004 10:43 AM

I have to agree that tabbed browsing is the number one feature I would like. Also, I will give some details regarding favorites management. A feature I really like about Opera is the ability to give a favorite a nickname and then use that to access the page. For example, I could nickname my http://msdn.microsoft.com/ favorite 'msdn' and then simply type 'msdn' into the Address bar to pull it up. Also, the ability to add personal notes to web pages / favorites would be cool. Finally, something I like about Opera are mouse gestures. Mouse gestures are shortcuts to navigation. For example, hold down the right mouse button and move the mouse left to go back, etc. Things like that would be wonderful to have in IE. Thanks.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Thursday, June 17, 2004 11:01 AM

1)XForms and SVG Support
2)Update Webservices.htc so that it supports proper error handling and new SOAP versions
3)Support for DOM3 and XSL2.0

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Thursday, June 17, 2004 1:01 PM

Mouse gestures are great but the program StrokeIt has a decent implementation that works for the entire os - not just the browser. I don't think that gestures should be a "browsing only" feature.
I have somewhat the same feeling about tabbed browsing - it's annoying to have all the windows in the task bar and thus, tabbed browsing works better. But in a sense, it's just a clever way of grouping windows which I would like for other app's also (and I am well aware of the feature in WinXP but I have turned that off - it is really annoying to have to go through two mouse clicks to activate a program). But naturally, until some great program turns up that enables this behaviour at os level, tabbed browsing would be great to have.

I think that Opera has some great features which would really suit IE:
- easy navigation with the keyboard. This is very difficult in IE.
- easy and arbitrary zooming
- integrated RSS. Or maybe the possibility to recognise RSS data and export the link to an external viewer.

Kristian Dupont

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Thursday, June 17, 2004 1:42 PM

Tabbed browsing - until IE has it, Firefox wins easily - just rip off their method, it's very simple and works well

Allow font scaling to go from completely miniscule (1pt) to huge (100pt), eg, a percentage, rather than the 5 settings you have now - I don't care if it breaks the page, I just want the text bigger/smaller)

(general windows setting) make maximized windows' scroll bars hittable on the right hand pixel of the screen (now they have a small border which means you can't just shove your mouse over there, you have to carefully place it there)

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Thursday, June 17, 2004 2:10 PM

You want to know what I want from IE? Go look at Firefox. THAT is want I want from a browser. STANDARDS COMPLIANT, tabbed, skinnable, plug-ins, pop-up blockers, smaller footprint and for God's sake don't play innocent about not being standards compliant. Nobody is fully compliant but IE doesn't even try. It really pisses us off as web devs. In fact at this point it might be better if you just get a copy of the Firefox source and sit back like a little kid being punished. Look at the source code and think about what you've done. DON'T come out of your room until you are willing to play nicely with other (standards) and improve IE's behavior.

Brian

# Memory Leak @ Thursday, June 17, 2004 4:14 PM

Any plans to fix IE 6.0. SP2 memory leak?

Aleksey Nudelman

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Thursday, June 17, 2004 5:04 PM

It would be nice if there was better printing support. If the page you want to print runs past the printer page width it is just choped off. It would be nice if the printing was smart enough to break the pages up like excel.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Thursday, June 17, 2004 5:38 PM

Please implement support for:
1) XHTML x.x
2) XML Events
3) Managed code integration:
- DOM accessible from managed code
- Scripts in all managed languages, not just JavaScript, et. all. Moreover, support for compiled scripts - it's about time people start compiling their code before running it in the browser.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Friday, June 18, 2004 1:19 AM

1) Tabbed Browsing with persistance
3) A quick way of searching favourites directly in the menu / toolbar
4) Why can't the favourites toolbar autohide like in VisualStudio
4) Defered link following: A way of saving a link until later "i need to check this but not now because i'm focussed on a particular task"

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Friday, June 18, 2004 1:39 AM

* Find in page as I type. (like Mozilla's "/" command)
* F3 to do "find next"
* Make the bookmarks manager resizable
* Expose the bookmark keyword functionality that's in TweakUI for WinXP.

# How IE can be standard compliant without breaking the web @ Friday, June 18, 2004 5:40 AM

You might be interested, if you are still reading, in this: http://annevankesteren.nl/archives/2004/06/standard-compliant-ie

AFAIK it is the *only* way which prevents breaking backwards compatibility.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Friday, June 18, 2004 6:41 AM

Some of us embed IE (into VB6, usually) to build business apps with HTML as the UI rendering portion. This is truly great, particularly since IE also then gives you a printing engine as well. HOWEVER.. it is truly brain-damaged that in order to print to a printer other than the current default printer in this way, you have to change the default printer programmatically, print, then set it back. Because there's no way of knowing when printing has been complete, this is very problematic to do reliably.

(yes, you can use DrawToDC - and I do - but you give up pagebreak handling and also print preview that way).

Also, what's with the margins?. Having to hack the registry keys is bad enough but the numeric values you put in there don't collate sensibly with what gets actually printed... it's black magic!.

# Firefox 0.9 @ Friday, June 18, 2004 11:05 AM

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Friday, June 18, 2004 11:22 AM

Here are 2 very specific request regarding how to handle the SELECT object:
1) Make it render to a control that behaves like other html controls - i.e. respects the z-index
2) Add in type-ahead support so that it works the way a combo-box does in Windows

Oskar Austegard

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Friday, June 18, 2004 12:22 PM

Keep it simple; I like IE as the simple alternative. If you want millions of bells and whistles, load Mozilla.

Lightweight is beautiful (ignore the folks asking for tabs, integrated RSS aggregators, the kitchen sink). Standards and security only.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Friday, June 18, 2004 8:17 PM

What is the IE team's goal?

If you guys do want to build the best browser, IE updates can not be tied to OS releases. Unless you either change that policy, or decouple the browser UI from the rendering engine that is updated more frequently I am skeptical that you can deliver a browser that wont end up stagnating like IE6 has today.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Saturday, June 19, 2004 1:42 AM

Oh, yes. Another point to my list: Make all windowed objects non-windowed and thus rendered by the browser. Not being able to put stuff above HTML SELECTs are extremely frustrating.

And to all: Internet Explorer will have tabbed browsing when Service Pack 2 for Windows XP comes, afaik, so there's really no point in asking for that.

Asbjørn Ulsberg

# It Couldn't Last @ Saturday, June 19, 2004 6:08 AM

Microsoft is re-constituting the Windows IE team. Bill's woken up to the danger. In one way, this is bad. IE 6 is easy to compete with. It's a buggy, insecure piece of junk. Just show people the pop-up blocker and...

Hacking for Christ

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Saturday, June 19, 2004 6:11 AM

Wishlist:

- CSS2 Selectors
- decent RTL support

More general:
"frequent" (compared to now) updates to IE, small improvements

I´d like SmartTags to return, but I guess I´m alone on that.

All UI stuff is irrelevant, there is MyIE and others that are obviously quite capable of creating a decent UI.

Patrick schriner

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Saturday, June 19, 2004 6:25 AM

Support for absolute positioning like the following would be nice:

#foo {
postion: absolute;
top: 10px;
bottom: 10px;
height: auto;
}

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Saturday, June 19, 2004 7:06 AM

Without repeating the many good suggestions above, I'd also like to see the security zones bit figured out.

I guess the real challenge here wouldn't be technical, but communication - it seems different teams have differing ideas on how the zones should be used.

We were told that custom zones are now fully supported, but I would ultimately like to see this moved towards a .NET model, with code groups and permission sets.

# BETTER SECURITY @ Saturday, June 19, 2004 7:20 AM

Many of the comments posted here are great, but I must stress that along with all the other requests here that MS make security for IE job number 1. In current default settings for IE on WinXP, even with all the current updates, it is too easy for websites to install malware, crapware, spyware, adware, and evilware on the average person's computer (sorry, I got carried away with the word ware). Technical users like me can tweak IE to make it more secure, but the average person does not.

PLEASE, do something about this horrific problem.

Regards,
James

James Summerlin

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Saturday, June 19, 2004 9:37 AM

Tabbed browsing is great but I can live without it (maybe) (ok probably not). Better popup blocking is absolutely necessary, as is improved security.

The most specific css2 item I'd love to see implemented is position: fixed. Sure there are a million other things that should be implemented, but it's hard living without that fixed positioning. :)

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Saturday, June 19, 2004 10:04 AM

1) As an advanced feature, the ability to disable method calls/events within the entire DOM. Either that or a popup blocker that is capable of blocking these new ones (not spyware) that Google isn't catching
2) Debugging mode: Considers malformed HTML, missing style sheets, improperly-named classes all page errors, ala script errors.
3) Tabbed browsing: I don't really use it, but it seems that just reworking the History explorer bar and tweaking the caching would go a long way towards getting there.
4) Ability to drag and drop hyperlinks of certain file types into their parent apps (i.e. drag a hyperlink to an .mp3 onto WMP, Real, QT, whatever, and the app accepts the hyperlink...I know the apps can handle URLs, but is this a factor of the browser not passing the right info, or do the apps not know how to handle dropped URLs?), and it plays it)

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Saturday, June 19, 2004 10:43 AM

internet explorer?? do people still use it???

# Lumpy: Blog » Microsoft reorganizuje v??vojov?? t??m Internet Exploreru @ Saturday, June 19, 2004 2:33 PM

Lumpy: Blog » Microsoft reorganizuje v??vojov?? t??m Internet Exploreru

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Saturday, June 19, 2004 12:44 PM

1. Good "hidden" features documentation and customizability for advanced users/developers might be able to cure half of the complaints. There are quite a few features that are implemented already, but learning barrier prevents majority of devs from using those features.

2. Ability to run any plugin by click-to-see method will let people to have greater control of THEIR browser. In order words, make IE not to load any plugin automatically, but just show a placeholder (button). Only if one wants to see what's behind the placeholder, one will click on it to load the plugin and its content.

3. Spell checking for <input type="text"> and <textarea>. For people who use webmail and for anyone who fills out a form on the internet, such feature can be mighty useful. Maybe make spell checker only available to people who have MS Office installed. I'd guess that is about 99% of all Windows users.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Saturday, June 19, 2004 3:41 PM

I use IE as a platform for an application that uses a lot more client-side functionality than your typical web page, mostly using Javascript('Jscript' if you insist).

I would love to see:

1) The ability to set printer settings in javascript(obviously, only if the relevant security settings were enabled). Currently, we have to use print templates, which require an external control, or else something even clumsier.
2) Native support for web service requests. Currently, this either requires you to add a control, or use the 'webservice.htc' behavior, which is really slow when consuming complicated web services.
3) Select controls always appearing on top is irritating.
4) Ability to scroll the body of a table while keeping the header in place.
5) Would love it if there were some way to say you didn't want the browser to redraw the page until a specific block of code is done executing. For instance, when you add a bunch of options to a select control, it appears to redraw the page after each one, which causes it to take forever.
6) Some javascript statements seem to cause memory leaks, even without any obvious reason. This makes it impractical to embed IE inside a background application that would run for long periods, even though it is not a big deal when doing normal browsing.
7) Ability to detect user's security settings, so you can warn them if they are blocking functionality you need. Admittedly this presupposes some degree of clue in the user, but anybody who just clicks "Yes" when a random program asks if he wants to install it is screwed anyway.
8) SVG support!
9) Javascript TOO SLOW!

I could go on forever but will stop here.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Saturday, June 19, 2004 6:45 PM

seems like most things have been covered already, but there's one thing that i have yet to see mentioned: MSHTML.

i, for one, would love to see "designMode" support XHTML if at all possible... would be great if you could add an attribute for the output mode, like > mode="xhtml" or something along those lines.

also, when looking at the HTML generated dynamically, it'd be really great if it color coded the HTML tag output. this would almost be #1 on my list for developing web-apps, both for the Internet and the Intranet - especially in today's age of DB's and XML. it's an awesome feature that was finally picked up with Mozilla (though they did it a lil differently, and more intelligently some might say, using the DOM) and it'd be great to see it improved upon if given the chance.

as for CSS, everything in the CSS 2/2.1 spec's... Google is your friend for everything else, including all the damn CSS hacks we have to emply to get things working between browsers. position:fixed, :focus, :hover, css selectors, proper support for all @media (including @media print), etc....

glad to see security if finally #1 and cant wait for everybody to get XP.SP2! tabbed browsing, is a must these days - just rediculous surf'n around these days without it. bookmarks need a serious overhaul, cuz they're next to useless. download manager (bittorrent? ftp manager? resume-download feature?). extension manager for developers to plugin and extend (RSS? heh)

# stream of thoughts » Internet Explorer is not dead anymore! @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 7:45 AM

stream of thoughts » Internet Explorer is not dead anymore!

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 7:15 AM

With CSS positioned layouts, the layout jumps around on some pages when I click a button or a textfield.

When I use z-index to create overlap, it appears that if an image in the layer underneath another layer loads after the top layer renders, it shows through.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 12:06 PM

Before anything else you should address the total lack of security on MSIE.

I, among several other, longtime net users have stopped using MSIE solely based on the fact that you can not use the browser without getting infected with some sort of spyware. The Browser Helper Object mechanism is broken by design.

Make it easier for users to control the security features. The security zones are inadequate. I need complete control on a site by site basis of what sort access to my computer the site should have.

While I'm quite sure Microsoft's motivation in all of this is to kill off the competition now that they've actually gained a little bit of foothold after Netscape was decimated, but I'm certainly hoping this is not yet another technological arms race that leads to feature bloat, but that you would instead concentrate on making the usability of MSIE (and by competition, other browsers as well) better.

And before you forget, prioritize security!

# Start with the documented CSS bugs @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 12:11 PM

A good starting point would be to fix some of the more insane bugs in IE documented in great detail at Position Is Everything:

http://positioniseverything.net/

Most of these bugs I run into *daily* and I have to work around them just for IE.

Also, make IE not choke totally on the correct MIME-type for XHTML would help a lot.

Thanks. :)

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 12:13 PM

The user should be forced to type their password or atleast their username to install something. This will deter people from just clicking ok again and again installing spyware. If they have to type something they are more likely to just cancel.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 12:13 PM

To help make standards compliant web pages, I would like to see an option in IE that rejects any pages that are not well formed (perhaps it could display a page of error messages instead of rendering the page if it is incorrect, like a compiler's output). This obviously wouldn't be the default but it would allow web developers who care about getting their code right to see errors earlier rather than later.

# Security, Security, Security @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 12:13 PM

The biggest thing, for me, would be if support for things like browser helper objects and automatically-launching external programs were removed, so that IE was just for browsing web pages in a nice, self-contained environment. For example, it would be GREAT if IE didn't download and run spyware automatically, like ...

http://news.com.com/Pop-up+toolbar+spreads+via+IE+flaws/2100-1002_3-5229707.html

That kind of stuff is REALLY annoying. Even with all of the current security patches from Microsoft, that still happens without prompting as long as JavaScript is enabled (which MUST be enabled for lots of websites to work properly). I spend something like four or five hours every week helping my friends remove that stuff from their computers, and it has to be done OVER and OVER again....

# re: The man to beat is clearly Firefox Broser @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 12:16 PM

The man to beat is clearly Firefox Broser, what a powerfull broswer compare to the dusty IE, witch make me feel going back in time when I' forced to use it for validation.

# Type-ahead-find seconded @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 12:22 PM

Someone else here mentioned Mozilla & co's type-ahead find (aka "find as I type") feature. That's an absolute must for me -- I won't use any browser without it except for the amount of time it takes to download Firefox. (Well, I still won't use IE most of the time, as it doesn't run on my preferred OS).

# ECMA and W3C DOM support @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 12:25 PM

IE definetly needs to be ECMA compliant, when it comes to Javascript and also support the W3C DOM. It should also have the option to activate a 'strict' mode, which would allow developers to make sure that they are coding their Javascript without the 'bugs compatibility'.

I was brought up with, and firmly believe in, the principle of being able to write a web site once and be able to view it no matter what the browser and the platform. The number of times I have seen this fail on me because someone did some Javascript that worked with just IE or some other browser, or endless 'if IE else Mozilla else Netscape else Opera' conditions. I am not a big fan of Javascript, since all too often it is used badly, but at least if ECMA was supported, there would be a bit more predictibility.

The mobile phone industry, at least with GSM, has shown us that sometimes following standards provides opportunities at another level, even though we don't compete with competing standards.

Also, taking a leaf out of Mozilla's and Konquer's books, ensure that the rendering engine and the chrome are both distinct beasts, but that can work together. This would allow a modular design.

Discourage the use of VB. This has caused me a few problems, with short sighted companies finally realising that maybe there is a bigger market.

Finally, a good guide on how to write good web pages, this is especially true when it comes to Javascript. For many IE is a reference, but it doesn't mean that they are doing a good job of distinguishing between what is the right approach and what they can do, but shouldn't.

Prevent auto-install sites. I have had some sites auto install cursors, even though I was at default security level.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 12:26 PM

You want to know what kind of standards IE needs to support? www.w3c.org

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 12:28 PM

Uhmz, what do you think of

*** DOWNLOAD RESUME / ACCELERATOR ***

??

I mean, it is very very strange for me that not one of the Microsoft-team people thought about that.. ;-)

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 12:28 PM

Proper and consistent documentation for webdevelopers.

For instance: why the @$@&%$&#$^& does the MS website still claim that IE 6 fully supports CSS Level 1?

# MS @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 3:30 PM

It looks like Mozilla's release of FireFox 0.9 woke Microsoft out of it's coma...

Eightlines Comments

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 12:31 PM

Fix the list-style-image property, which doesn't align the images properly (Mozilla seems to do it right)

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 12:33 PM

Fixing these bugs should keep the IE team busy for a while

--------------- CSS ----------------
http://www.positioniseverything.net/explorer.html
http://www.macedition.com/cb/ie5macbugs/
http://www.dracos.co.uk/web/css/ie6floatbug/
http://www.quirksmode.org/css/ie6_purecsspopups.html
http://devnull.tagsoup.com/fixed/
***** Properly implement all the hacks which were developed as IE7
http://dean.edwards.name/IE7/
---------------------------------------------------

--------------- Security ------------------
Fix ALL the security bugs that are reported at securityfocus.com - just run the query on the vendor Microsoft. There is now reason to create any execuses of why some of these should not be fixed.
---------------------------------------------------

I think at that point IE can become viable again. I know so many people and so many companies who run Win 2k and WinXP workstations, who have not used IE for over a year. It is amazing to see people who are used to using IE and are introduced to the lightweight Firefox, tabs, etc..

The IE team should NOT create their own interpretations of the W3C specs.

Good luck,
Mohammad.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 12:34 PM

i recommend that you save the effort of upgrading IE and ship a mozilla variant with windows.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 12:37 PM

Tabbed browsing is great and all, but PLEASE make sure that, if you guys do go that way, people who don't like tabbed browsing don't have to use it. (*gasp* I know, there /are/ people out there like that -- I'm one of them). This is something I have to bring up with the Opera devs every time there's a new release -- support for non-tabbed browsing. It's a waste of space, to me.

To the guy that said XPSP2 will have tabbed browsing... No. They're on release candidate 2, and, as a beta tester, I can assure you that there are no tabs in IE that I can find.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 12:37 PM

A "never trust software from <foo>" option as well as the "always trust software from <foo>" option. (Resettable in the Control Panel).

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 12:38 PM

Echo security.

Get rid of ActiveX, at least as a web extension. while it may have value in some cases, it is a HUGE security risk, and the source of the vast majority of spyware issues.

At the *very* least, set up the execution environment so that the very first run of such an object is in a tight sandbox that does *nothing* except to describe what the object will do (i.e., install this, execute that, access the other, and so forth). Then let the user decide whether to allow the object (or not) based on those results. Remember that choice, always. Possibly even some heuristics to preemptively identify objects with similar intents and patterns of operation.

That isn't easy, I know. But if the preferred choice of getting rid of ActiveX entirely is unacceptable, the environment should make it as difficult as possible for a malicious control.

Standards.

There's less conflict in the standards than you think. Mozilla (Firefox), Opera, and others manage to be substantively standards compliant. There's no reason IE cannot, as well.

I'm an avid windows user who *does not* use IE, except where absolutely necessary (and it still feels uncomfortable, even then). My current browser of choice is Firefox, for several reasons, not just those mentioned above.

IE has a *long* way to go before I will even consider using it as a default browser. Pay attention to the comments above, and don't make excuses (there is absolutely *no* reason for IE to be less standards compliant than Firefox, et. al.) Don't tie IE to Longhorn only, make it available to current versions as well.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 12:38 PM

Why not just bundle Firefox with Windows, make Windows update work with it, and dump IE altogether?

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 12:40 PM

Microsoft could make it easier to obtain older versions of their browsers. They can't be downloaded from MS' website any more (or I can't find them)

Since all the old versions have been discontinued, it is very hard to find a copy to test how web pages look in different versions.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 12:41 PM

Regarding my comment on Javascript. Its usually simpler than 'if IE else Mozilla else Netscape else Opera', in that it is 'If IE else everything else'.

# content-type saga etc @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 12:43 PM

Working at a firewall company where we have to implement special workarounds for MSIE I see the following main points:
- use content-type header and ONLY this
header to determine content-type
(see http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/www/content-type.html)
- complain in invalid UTF-8 encoding, at least don't interpret it as valid UTF-8
- don't allow jscript in CSS ('expression')

and of course look at the past security problems, find the pattern and avoid it. A lot of bugs seems to be caused by an inconsistent security model (for instance excute application/hta in local context if extension is .html, execute programs w/o warning if send using image/jpeg etc)

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 12:43 PM

1.unbundle IE from Windows and make it cross platform.

2. Fix the security - stop malware being installed on Joe Sixpack's machine without him knowing about it.

3. Open source the IE code - allow independent Microsoft developers worldwide contribute and bug fix it.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 12:46 PM

Some thoughts:
- Using getters and setters with javascript
- Fix issues with dynamically added images, even the .NET treeview has these issues. The issues completely crash your browser, causing somewhat of a buffer overrun. They cannot be overcome by other ways of scripting (I can explain more by e-mail, with testcases etc. because it is to long to post as a comment micha@mschopman.demon.nl)
- Better use of cached images when using for ex. style.backgroundImage
- A decent Javascript debugger, or... even better, understandable Javascript errors. Macromedia ColdFusion has the best kind of error messages of all languages I worked with.
- XSLT transformation performance needs much improvement.
- Overall Javascript performance
- Fix animated gif speed
- Fix className speed, I have some extensive testcase showing a enormous overhead using className. Like each className request parses the entire document tree.
- Fix invalid base url issues with for ex. with iframes.

I have some more, all as testcases. I hope they would be taken into account on the next IE release. :)

# Internal Rebuild @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 12:47 PM

A browser's ability to comply to industry standards is indeed a necessity; however, there may be a better way of going about adding support for them to a browser.

I am not familiar with the internal workings of the source code in an Internet browser; however, perhaps an "automated compliance plugin" set should be developed.

Example: When the browser opens a page, say XHTML (based on the code it's reading or the doctype attribute, or whatever) it loads the appropriate compliance library/plugin to render the page. This way, when standards interfere with one another, the browser complies to the standards that the particular page it's loading uses. By dynamically loading the necessary "plugin(s)", the browser can support many standards, even those that don't get along since it only uses those that are necessary at that point in time.

Furthermore, since the ability to use one standard or another is now in the form of a dynamically loadable plugin and not hard-coded into the browser, a new standard no longer means a whole new browser version, it simply means a new plugin.

Example: (hypothetical) Suppose a new XHTML specification comes out, say XHTML Version 4 for simplicity sake. The first time the browser runs into the page and realizes that it doesn't already have the correct plugins to render the page, it goes and looks for the correct one(s). By default it could goto the manufacturer website and download them as needed; or, in a corporate enviroment, it could goto a corporate server and retreive them.

Now the browser can support any standard necessary, without user intervention. This concept could also be extended to image files such as new PNG specifications for example. Of course, this is a concept and does not deal with issues such as what to do when there is no doctype atrribute. Then how does the browser figure out what to render it as? It could use a default plugin, or it could read the tags and figure out which specification the tags go with. Also, it does not address how the browser would figure out what the new specification is that it should use when it runs accross a page with using an unkown specification. Does it again look at the tags and compare them to available specificaitons from its manufacturer/corporate server and see which match up, download that spec and try it? As you can see, not all questions are anwsered here, but the idea itself may be the key to solving incompatible browser standards.

DISCLAIMER: The proposal contained within this posting is property of it's poster (Jonathan Schulenberg) and may not be copyrighted, patented, or otherwise restricted from anyone's use by any person(s) other than the owner.

Jonathan Schulenberg

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 12:48 PM

I know this may be a long shot but there may be a port for the mac, but I don't think you guys do that anymore. If you guys do port it at all, a port to Linux wouldn't hurt. I'm not sure how that would sit with Microsoft but I use firefox for everything (you must admit that it truly is an admirable browser). If I could test my code on IE itd be nice, but I don't have a computer with Windows on it, I usually ask a friend to bring it up on his computer and tell me how it looks or in some important cases to send a screenshot. I like firefox because I can easily make sure that it is w3c compliant, and if it is then it should render right in IE, but all too often it doesn't:( So I guess I'm requesting a port to Linux [does that sound crazy? :) ]. It would definitly open up yourself to a larger market and help Microsoft's image with the OSS world.
Regards,
Steve

# Standardization..... @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 12:48 PM

I know this is very *general*, but here goes.

1) I write all of my code on MacOS X. For me, it is the platform that provides me the most productivity. With that said:

2) I want to be confident that whatever code I write that works in safari/Mozilla/Netscape/FireFox/iCab/Opera works the same in IE. Right now, I have to use various little hacks to make it work *close* to the same in all the browsers, and generally it is IE, that is *different*

3) A New version of IE for MacOS X that is feature complete and identical to IE for Windows in the way that it displays web content.

4) I suggest using the engine that is used in Safari and seemingly every other normal browser out there.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 12:51 PM

This may be somewhat radical, but I would suggest ditching the document.all model completely; DOM has been a standard for a long time now and it is about time lazy or unknowing webdevvers caught up with it. It would force them to work more standards-compliant and in the end the web will be a better place because of it. Besides that it will improve performance of the engine enormously not having to be backwards compatable.
Sure it will break some pages, but just see it as a moderate payback to all the people having used non-IE browsers over the past years and not been able to visite those pages anyway.

On the other end, why overhaul the complete engine when a fully standards-compliant engine is already available in the public domain? My worst fear is having to deal with yet even more incompatibilities because of a new IE engine. Maybe it would be wiser to adopt the Gecko engine and focus on things like usability and security, else you might be ending up wasting both your own and my time.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 12:52 PM

Make the next IE run on all operating systems. Don't think windows is going to be #1 for ever.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 12:55 PM

IE needs better standards support.

There is no excuse not to have it. Calling this request "vague" is not an excuse -- everything is defined very explicitly at http://www.w3c.org/. As for 'conflicting' standards, that's what doctypes are for.

Reiteration: There is *no* excuse.

# Better Group Policy support in IE @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 12:58 PM

Full Group Policy support would be very nice for system administrators. There are currently some IE settings that are not GP-aware. The current method of GP support for IE is a bit of a hack - for example, when generating a report in the Group Policy Management Console, some of the IE settings don't appear, because in GP the IE settings are managed in a section called "Internet Explorer Maintenance" instead of in a standard administrative template. Then there's the bug where you can't set the cache over 32MB using a policy. But setting it to anything under 60MB results in files being randomly deleted from the cache. So if you set a policy at all, you've just screwed up the user's cache.

# Tabs Schmabs @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 12:58 PM

Don't waste your time with tabs. There's no advantage to in-browser tabs over mulitple browser instances. Just alt-tab between them like any other program you're running

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 1:05 PM

Get rid of ALL the security bugs. I hate going to a webpage, seeing something flash up and going to msconfig and finding that I have spyware installed.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 1:09 PM

OK, I know how far-fetched this is but...

Why not just swallow your pride and support Mozilla/Firebird or something similar? IE is so far behind the state of the art now it's just not true and I would imagine it has suffered terrible bitrot in the last few years. To recover anything semi decent you'll be starting from scratch (hence my not suggesting you relase the code for the current incarnation of IE, I imagine the embarassment would be just too hard to suffer).

A truly Free industry standard and platform independant browser supported by everyone would be a bonus for the industry. It's really not that silly an idea.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 1:12 PM

quote -Don't waste your time with tabs. There's no advantage to in-browser tabs over mulitple browser instances. Just alt-tab between them like any other program you're running-

You can't be serious?

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 1:13 PM

Wrap Gecko

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 1:15 PM

Vagueness... how about find a w3 DTD and stick to it? Both Mozilla and IE do things their own way. While that's fine at a Greenich Village party, for a web browser...

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 1:16 PM

Plese make it not suck. That's all I ask.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 1:16 PM

I know this one may go too far at MS, but I'd really appreciate support for XBL.

http://www.w3.org/TR/xbl/

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 1:17 PM

IE Sucks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 1:20 PM

My advice to you, is work on IE with the goal of building the best browser possible. Experience with Microsoft has taught me that producing a good product is often a distant second in the minds of the company. Instead of trying to create your own proprietary standards and ways to lock users into using IE (and windows), you should try to build a browser that will give users a great browsing experience and make it easier for web developers to design pages for IE. No version of IE has done this yet. I really hope that the next version of IE is the version that changes this pattern. You will have a tough time getting people back from Opera, Firefox, etc. if it doesn't.

Most of the things I'd like to see have already been stated above, but I will restate the features that are most important to me.

1. CSS support according to WC3 guidelines. Read any web design forums and you will see that IE is the bane of most web designers. Make it so we don't have to use hacks and workarounds to get a page to look right in IE. If IE supported standards in the first place, this wouldn't be a problem. I want to design my page once and have it look the same across many browsers.

2. Fix the security problems. No program should be executed on a users computer without their permission. Spyware and viruses would be less of a problems if IE's security was fixed.

3. Tabbed browsing would be nice, but is not as important as other things.

4. The time it takes IE to render pages could be improved. I rarely use IE unless I cannot access a site without it, but when I do, I notice a huge difference in the rendering speed. Firefox is very fast by comparison.

5. Ad/Flash/etc. blocking would have to be added before I would consider switching. There is an extension for Firefox call Adblock that allows me to block ads, flash, and other items on a web page. This has made browsing considerably more enjoyable.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 1:21 PM

I have spent a great deal of time providing support to University students via it's ResNet program. The biggest problem with IE is it's trust of third party extentions that get installed (or sneak) onto the system. Because of the several times that a BHO or toolbar extention has caused IE to crash, we are now recommending student install Firefox. It would be nice if there was a Lite version of IE which avoided third party extentions but still supports MS ActiveX controls such as Windows Update.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 1:25 PM

Ummm, how about proper rendering of PNG transparancy?

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 1:26 PM

Reguarding zoom:

My biggest pet peeve:

I think a model of a "page zoom" is much more useful for people who want to zoom a page on a high resolution monitor, this would include graphics and tables, as well as the text. Yes, the CPU usage is a bit higher, but people with high res monitors are willing to pay the price.

It's absolutely useless to just zoom the text these days because often the page layout tightly contains the text and you get a terribly output.

Until then, gecko does a MUCH better text zoom anyway. It doesn't zoom images, but the page layout elements are (for the most part) zoomed.

Roger

Roger Davenport

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 1:26 PM

Dave, you don't need a customer feedback team. The really important issues concern web standards support and have been the subject of frustration for over 4 years. Go to www.zeldman.com and read Alist Apart or follow his links. You'll find everything you need. This is too long overdue to waste time on collecting information. We web developers need to see the back of buggy IE browsers that waste so much of our time sooner rather than later.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 1:27 PM

A lot of folks are going to ask you to "implement better standards support," and point you at the w3c's web pages. There are very specific recommendations attached to CSS, XHTML, SVG, etc., but most people don't realize that there is quite a bit of ambiguity in the "standards", no current browsers are fully compliant, and it's unlikely that any browser ever will be. Still, if I develop for FireFox, there's a very good chance that my work will render exactly the same in Opera and Safari. I know open standards rubs against Microsoft's cultural and strategic proclivities, but while you're thinking of how to approach the question of standards compliance, try to remember that if you succeed in adhereing to W3C standards, and yet manage (because of ambiguities in the recommendations) to implement them so that they behave differently from every other browser, you will have failed.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 200