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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, 2004 1:28 PM

Don't even consider adding any new 'features' until you've patched all the known security holes! http://www.safecenter.net/UMBRELLAWEBV4/ie_unpatched/

Hey cool, I can silently deliver and execute any code on a fully patched 'doze box that visits my site using IE.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 1:28 PM

Priority #1: Follow a documented standard. The documented standard should be available prior to the actual product release. The w3c (www.w3c.org) already has done this for you.

#2: Create and follow a publically available product/feature roadmap with deadlines.

#3: Listen to, acknowledge and utilize the internet community's feedback -- both professional and personal. This site is a good start.

As for features:

Any level of Complete CSS implementation would be great. Especially handling "display" and "position" properly.

Need more info?
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/

Other comments:

The work on a standards compliant rendering engine has been really spearheaded by the Gecko or KHTML rendering engines.

Microsoft could just start using the Gecko rendering engine and wrap it up with the windows look and feel. It worked for Apple with KHTML.

In Closing:
There's no war to be won here, there's no corporation to drive into the ground. Realize that the only people you hurt by stopping innovations on IE (as was done over the last few years) is your vocal market-base. The people that work in web development firms that actively work with your product and promote your product to the end user. By making their job more difficult, you may sway them away from suggesting your products to their customers.

Without a great turn-around in the way Microsoft listens to the entire community, not just the portion that pays for MSDN/support/millions-in-support-contracts I don't believe IE will be anything more than the first thing a user starts to connection to opera.com or mozilla.org to download a _real_ browser.

Thanks,

Ryan

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 1:30 PM

I'd like to second the requests for PNG alpha support. I'd also like to see support for the png gamma values as sometimes I find color matching HTML colors and PNG colors to be a pain in IE.

# My Requests @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 1:35 PM

PNG Alpha, XHTML support (Or at least accept the mime-type without trying to download it), pop up blocking, Tab support, Ability to turn off CSS rendering, and SVG support

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 1:36 PM

>>Rounded corners in the box model - see Gecko for an example.

Really, fixing the problem with CSS 2 (float:left is just about as squirl as anything I can imagine in IE) and implementing CSS3 -- which included rounded corners along with many other problems.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 1:37 PM

Downloading needs to be greatly improved. There is no way to manage many downloads. Also, there should be a way to directly download to the destination rather than copying it from a temporary location. I have run into numerous problems with this. Another idea is to have a download begin immediately, not when a location is selected. If the user wants the file downloading can begin in the background as they select the ultimate location. It saves time.

Another suggestion is for greater control of preferences per site. The password management is simplistic and needs more features. You should be able to say something like, "Don't store passwords for this site this time." There should be a menu option to see what sites have saved passwords. You should be able to set other features per site, like text size.

# Clear, consistent security indicators @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 1:42 PM

Mike Sax said:

> 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).

Amen to this. You try to train average users to look for simple, reliable clues to interacting securely, safely. Then site development (in general) picks up a model that circumvents those clues, e.g. having a log on page unecrypted while implementing an encrypted POST. No more padlock shown when on the log on page --> confused user.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 1:45 PM

Free MSIE from the OS. This will allow non believers to uninstall MSIE.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 1:47 PM

allow it to be properly uninstalled! I have found a browser which works for me called FireFox, but windows update and hotmail insist on dragging out internet explorer (even thou its been uninstalled) why can't hotmail work without internet explorer or outlook?
When will MS realise that users want to be able to remove MS default programs if they find something else they prefer. even if its a MS product; MSN messenger, windows Messenger. (the number of people who cant tell which is which is huge and a big difference if your trying to use a webcam and they keep starting up windows messenger...
If you ever saw Directory Opus on the Amiga it's greatest strength was the ability to configure an external program to do a particular function even if it was capable of doing it itself.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 1:51 PM

Another vote for www.w3c.org standards compliance.
Definitly fix favorites editing and organization please.
This is very good news indeed that ie team is reforming! Im jumping in my chair and cheering.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 1:55 PM

Features that I would like to see one day:

- UTF-8 support that properly handles surrogates
- Full UTF-16 and UTF-32 (LE and BE) support
(Sample test pages: http://www.i18nguy.com//unicode/unicode-example-intro.html )
- Ability to clear the 10(+?) "index.dat" files that IE caches URLs to (the files are always locked so it's difficult to manually clear them). More history controls.
- [An absolute must for modern Internet use] Ability to filter the HTML prior to loading so as to remove known advertisements etc. Ability to disable Flash. ex, http://adblock.mozdev.org/

I used IE for years, but the lack of support for all of the above has made me move on to FireFox, which implements them all, plus much more, today. If Microsoft can deliver an application with a similar feature set, I will gladly give IE another chance. Until then, I will continue to use these feature today with another product.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 1:57 PM

Just stop. Stop IE. Stop feeding crack to the kids. Opensource browsers are where its at (just like the OS) Everyone submitting suggestions is asking for everything that is already in every open source browser.

The only reason why the IE team is being reassembed is that MS *is* losing big. Mozilla and Konqueror already have SVG integrated, and they are cross platform. They both have their own open, non-pantent protected versions of Avalon.

I think it's time that MS give up on the OS war and the browser war. Opensource can innovate faster and without all the politics and monopoly concerns. (And by that I mean fraturing from the standards to keep people locked into Micrsoft.) The world is becoming an open place. There's no place for Microsoft in that world.

MS is more than welcome to remain as a software company, but they will have to play nice in other people's browsers or be left behind. That's right compete on features and security. MS is being stripped of their market inertia one government and company at a time. It is happening, and no one is switching back. Linux *is* going mainstream, and the only way to not be left behind is to ship IE for Linux. Maybe that is my request, a version of IE for Linux. But MS -c-a-n-'-t won't support that. That's the end of the monopoly...

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 1:58 PM

An uninstaller. With that all other changes will be superfluous.

# Text shadows @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 1:58 PM

I would really like to see text shadow support like in Safari. Its annoying that Safari is the only browser that supports the shadow property.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 2:00 PM

1. Be standard compliant (go to w3c.com for mor information about the standards).

2. Let me uninstall IE.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 2:01 PM

I mean w3c.org of course, not w3c.com.

# Digital Transition » IE team, back to work! @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 5:02 PM

Digital Transition » IE team, back to work!

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 2:03 PM

I would have to reiterate standards compliance. For a company that has developed such excellent tools as Visual Studio.NET 2003 (And whidbey), ASP.NET, and C# to fall flat on standards compliance is a shame.

I know IE will always have proprietary extensions, I also know that I am limited by what I can do in your development tools by your browser. Please at least create an outline of what standards you plan to implement, what the status of each of these is so that developers don't have to play darts blindfolded any time we want to use a feature.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 2:05 PM

Did someone already mention www.w3c.org ? Microsoft should stop creating their own standards (recently: WVG instead of SVG...) and comply to whatever is out there. But who am I talking, IE will remain unused on my computer for years. Unfortunately I can't remove it, for it is a "critical operating system component".

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 2:06 PM

I also vote for either web standards, tabbed browsing, or scrapping IE and using Firefox. Seriously - it's OSS so bugs get fixed quickly, and the latest version integrates an update manager.
The extensions system means that extra stuff can be tacked on without complete overhaul.
If that doesn't work, then let us get rid of IE - The current hunk-a-junk is pretty much good-for-nothing when compared with Firefox, etc, so allow us to choose. Also, honour our setup - My default browser is Firefox, so why does MSN insist on opening IE?

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 2:08 PM

There you have it! us users care about IE too! Right on! Let mgmt know and keep this ball rolling!

# DONATE TO IE7 @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 2:10 PM

microsoft could donate to my project:
http://dean.edwards.name/IE7/
http://dean.edwards.name/donate/
if i didn't have to work to pay my bills i could spend my time fixing their browser for them :-)
-dean edwards

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 2:14 PM

Great to see IE development come back to live! There's quite a few "user-space" requirements asked for above which, although quite good are not what IE *really* needs right now (after all, how difficult is it to implement tabbed browsing?)

Please, please, please make all web developer's jobs easier (and restore their confidence on MS) by implementing all of the fixes provided by IE7 (http://dean.edwards.name/IE7/compatibility/). That should be priority number one.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 2:17 PM

From a developer point of view, I'd like to echo the requests for (i) XHTML 1.0 support (i.e. accepting the application/xhtml+xml contents type as if it were XML, plus rendering contents in the "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" namespace appropriately); (ii) DOM Level 2 Events; and (iii) PNG with full alpha transparency.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 2:20 PM

go linux!@#$

# need a good browser? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 2:22 PM

forget about iexplorer.
I have made firefox my customer's default browser, and ... magically, adwares and other malicious code has dropped more than 90 %.
Enjoy!
RP

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 2:22 PM

Personally, I feel that there are much bigger problems at hand than application-relate "features." With the development team's heads already spinning over the concept of supporting *all* w3c specs, additional non-rendering related features should be back-burnered. With IE integrated into the OS, features such as tabbed browsing should fall to third party applications which use the IE engine (as is the current case).

Advancements in security related issues are already under way so the main focus should be fixing and upgrading to spec the rendering engine itself. I have no personal issue with propriety tags as I understand their importance in marketing the browser, however they must be *in addition* to core support for standards, not in place of.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 2:23 PM

There's a bug in the IE CSS rendering that has bothered our team. It's "minor", as it is visual only, but still a bug.

It seems that (text) input boxes have some weird top and bottom margin of 1px that just isn't supposed to be there, no matter what kind of margin, padding or borders you specify for the input box or it's container.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 2:26 PM

follow w3c standards.

# Quick solution @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 2:33 PM

Just copy every good thing from Mozilla and Opera. It's the only thing IE needs.

# no es queue » IE being worked on again @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 5:37 PM

no es queue » IE being worked on again

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 2:39 PM

Umm let me check my book on things I need to insult because of big bad M $ , that is microsot for you not cool hip linix peeple.

They are bad bad bad and bad and suck and stuff.

I read it, they are bad.

I will go use my exploit ridden GPL crap and be proud and happy and merry and joyful and you will be bad because of M $ and you will see.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 2:42 PM

Funny how everyone seems happy giving away good ideas to Microsoft for free. Next thing you know, they'll be trying to patent it.

# Just a release please @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 2:44 PM

How about they just release IE 6SP2 and follow it with SP3 in UNDER 6 MONTHS. The current time between service packs is unacceptable.

# Specifics... @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 2:44 PM

1) Re-read CSS specs and fix IE implementation.

2) Full PNG support.

3) SVG support.

Then, IE could be a truly modern browser!

# Ultimate Goal @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 2:46 PM

Develop a standards compliant web browser. Not an operating system assisting marketing application.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 2:47 PM

Not to be rude, but I think the best thing to do with IE is to start over. If you look at the competition, that's what they've all done in the past few years. Apple's Safari is now based on Konqueror by KDE. Mozilla have totally re-coded for their new releases. IE is old. A total re-design, with new scripting, full w3c standards compliance, and maybe some thought towards the future of web design with 3d graphics abilities and stuff at teh core level, along with full 32-albha support (PNG's would work natively then) would be good. Basically, iE is old, and adding more to it is just going to make it slower. Some things need to be done at the start, and when IE was written, them things didn't exist. Obviously this would be a tremendous undertaking, but we're talking about Microsoft. You guys have the resources. Just keep supporting the old version with patches and stuff. With enough resources put on it, you could have it ready to ship with Longhorn, or if not immediately, soon after.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 2:48 PM

Try out something new:

http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-actcont/

# Disappearing Site Icons? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 2:48 PM

This is a nitpick but...

Remember when I.E. added those really cool web site icons that sit next to your website addresses? Quite a few sites out there actually support them. Too bad that at some point, I.E. STOPS showing them!!!

I'm not sure when or how it happens, but look for yourself. How many of you out there have those icons appearing next to their respective addresses?

Where did they go?

Whassup wit that? :)

Chuck Hunnefield

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 2:49 PM

1. Copy Mozilla code into IE.
2. Get caught.
3. Deny everything.
4. Buy out Mozilla Foundation.
5. Distribute "new" IE.
6. Have press conference, insisting Microsoft "invented" tabbed browsing.
7. Deny everything.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 2:50 PM

Fix the IE box model/padding problem. There's a relatively simple fix for it, but I'd rather not have to do it at all.

# re: Return of the xxxx? Better Standards Support?! @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 2:50 PM

Better standards support from Microsoft? This is clearly a joke and a troll.

Microsoft does everything possible to "embrace and break" standards, co-opt and subvert protocols.

The day Microsoft provides better standards support will be the day pigs can fly.

josejimenez12345@hotmail.com

# Wow! MS is updating IE again! @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 5:52 PM

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 3:03 PM

Full w3c standards compliance.
Tabbed index.
Some kind of sessions ala opera. (low priority)
Fix the favicon weirdness.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 3:06 PM

I have only one request for Internet Explorer. For ****s sake, just DIE and set us web developers free.

Internet Explorer is the crack. Windows is the dealer. Bill Gates is the __ROOT_OF_ALL_EVIL__.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 3:10 PM

Faster document.<formname>.<fieldname>

In my tests, this kind of access runs at about (Mhz/5) derefs per second.

This shouldn't take 5 million cycles to do :)

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 3:12 PM

Native SVG support would be great!

# css fixing @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 3:13 PM

fix the damn css engine,
ie cant do nothing :-|

it cant do position: fixed, it cant do horizontal centering. text-align is a command to center inline elements NOT block elements.

margins and paddings are broken as well!

it got problems with rendering large images (i am talking about 3000*3000 images) see www.capoeirabrasil.de for an example - it loads that slowly (see the background image, its huge by pixelsize but small by kilobyte size)

further i would add a quriks mode. (i.e.: ie6 mode) that is run if no doctype is set.

further there are many comparison sites out comparing ie to mozilla/netscape to opera to khtml/safari.

go for those - you will find listed problems with ie and standards there that people listed the past 3 to 4 years!

good luck - and if the job you have to do is crap - just switch over to the MBU (mac biz unit) - the unit that does the best apps ms ever released (ms office for mac os x or entourage or however the mac mail client is called - i am a mail.app user on my mac ;)

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

Leave that crap as it is - we don't need any more of your nonfunctional rubbish. We'll go with Firefox, Konqueror, Safari or whatever we want. New versions? I say keep the newer versions to yourselves!! Enough of that crap we've seen already.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 3:17 PM

Forget about the standards people and don't forget not to break existing applications. If you break the current applications, we will curse you.

# just an example @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 3:18 PM

http://www.positioniseverything.net/ie-primer.html

oh and i forgot css 2 selectors.
dont call ie css 2 compatible if it cannot even handle that!

just take a look at this:
http://www.jonas-hartmann.com/dev/csstest/noie/

(and now take a look with a REAL browser; or go, create - create a real browser!)

# better idea @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 3:22 PM

1. keep ie6 (no joke)
2. build up a completly new bowser that cannot even handle html but just xhtml and css :)
3. check for doctype - if doctype is set to xhtml run ie7 else ie6 :)

in short: implement ie6 as a quirks mode and build up a completely new rendering engine;

mosaic(=ie) is old and i think its time has come.

so please - let it sleep :)

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 3:23 PM

So how does an updated IE for windows xp+ going to fix the previous versions of IE for windows 95, 98, me, etc? As a web developer, I'm stilling going to need to use hacks to get my website to work with the older versions of the browser. It might take years before there is enough market share for me to stop using the old hacks.

Microsoft's business ethics disgusts me. They wait around letting other people innovate, then take their ideas when they feel threaten. Just what I would expect from a monopoly.

# Work on the UI, not the renderer @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 3:26 PM

It seems odd to tell Microsoft to go off and continue on a path that has frustrated a lot of us. The internet does not need another HTML rendering engine, it needs fewer. Adopting Mozilla's Firefox backend (Gecko) and then "innovating" on top of it would get us the common behavior we all need, save Microsoft some time and energy, and still allow for the behavior and appearance of the app to be unique to Microsoft.

There is no reason Microsoft could not add its own "secret sauce" on top of the Gecko engine. Throwing some resources after Gecko would also defuse some of the animosity Microsoft receives. Providing some assistance in improving SVG support, XFORM support, etc.

Jon

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 3:29 PM

My specific wish list:

- Javascript event model, take the good things from W3C's event model and leave the good things that IE already has. Make it easy to add, delete event handlers, so don't go with W3C strictly here.

- Transparency in PNG

- Keep the box model of CSS that IE currently has. W3C's CSS is not intuitive , confusing for newbies. It shouldn't take too much time to layout components.

- Tabbed browsing. Yes, some browsers support it with IE engine, but they are not as fast as firefox and as natural as firefox.

- Support for fixed position in css.

- SVG support would be great, but not necessary.

- Drop the bad things from W3C. W3C's many stuff is confusing to newbies and hard to learn. We don't want that crap. Mozilla is trying to be complaint with W3C, but it is not the favorite for developers or designers. Zealots on the net do not represent the whole community out there.

- Be aware of zealots. They are not your real customers, thus when you listen to them you may end up pissing off the real customers.

I want my IE back. I am currently using Firefox but I don't want to use a browser which zealots praise. I have nothing to do with Apple or Linux zealots, but Firefox now is slightly better for browsing. I still use IE, but I want to fully use IE and I want you guys to make a far more superior product again, just like you did when Netscape was alive.

You can easily take over firefox's position easily. That's the only browser now that puts real competition to IE now. Few more features here and there and I think IE will be the king again. By doing that you will show the idiots here and there what Microsoft is all about, quality software.

# last post ;p @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 3:33 PM

png transparency: just build in this hack
http://www.mongus.net/pngInfo/

@ dave - i dont care about that - win2k, winxp, anything beyond - that is all we need.

those who use anything below win2k do not care about errorous working each day anyway (i mean win2k was like a holy bolt from the sky compared to all the other windows revisions; still i just switched to a mac - and i know why ;p)

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 3:35 PM

lol, sorry but my prior poster got a low brain capacity :-|.

i am really sorry for him

(standards is not about to be a zealot or not to be but to ensure that webdevelopers can make it right without making it wrong.

if there are stupid pc users out that want a webpage they should BUY one or use a WYSIWYG editor like dreamweaver)

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 3:39 PM

1)Decent, inbuilt JS debugger with nothing less than understandable JS error messages.
2)100% Standards compliance.
3)Start rejecting incorrect HTML. Let the sites have their HTML fixed and compliant with standards.
4)Tabbed browsing.
5)Secure by default.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 3:40 PM

Another idea is that when you update IE and make it available for download, please tie it with .net so that many more people will have .net automatically. I believe windows update site can do that automatically, for example if .net is already there don't download it, if it is not there then download the IE with .net.

I would like to have .net support in every IE out there.

Let's screw the zealots and idiots and talk about serious business here. ionas, this is not slashdot, you are an idiot as far as we are concerned.

# nice idea @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 3:40 PM

you could make a deal with apple and mozilla.org and netscape/aol that you will give out errors (via java script alert) on any page that is not standard complaint.

if you really do this you will bring millions of $ to the web biz cause we will have real work to do.

personally i consider that a great idea!

# Infowalker as a built-in IE feature @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 3:40 PM

Infowalker is an IE add-on that knows about *sentences* on a web page, allowing you to click on them to get them read aloud, translated, or illustrated. It would be great to have a feature like this built right into IE.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 3:41 PM

hey daniel
go fcuk yerself ;) (if you know what i mean)

btw - your last suggestion is okay to me. .net is a nice framework - much better than winapi or com+

# Hello, IE @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 3:42 PM

Please, die.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 3:45 PM

Use the standards (http://www.w3c.org/), Luke!

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 3:47 PM

need specific standards?
how about fixing your box model for starters? then maybe you could get to something simple like supporting minimum-height. next, fix your pseudo classes, so that i can :hover over a div, use :last-child and the like. and maybe i could create a dotted border? in the absence of these, a dom inspector would be nice, i could spend a lot less time figuring out what's wrong with your browser if you gave me a tool to do so. if you need a model for any of these things, mozilla has done a great job.

# Return of the DHTML Dude @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 6:47 PM

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 3:49 PM

Oh, yes - We need resumable downloads where they are supported by the server and a small notification when the server doesn't support it.

# Specific list, covers a lot of ground @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 3:59 PM

I guess I'm repeating what others have said. IE will be better if it is standards compliant. This isn't generic - there's a lot of ground to cover here, so I suggest fixes to DOM, CSS, PNG as to make the following criticisms unnecessary:

http://www.positioniseverything.net/explorer.html
http://dean.edwards.name/IE7/
http://alistapart.com/articles/pngopacity/

# collaborate @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 4:02 PM

stop fighting firefox and mozilla - if there is one thing that microsoft could do to raise their PR value, is to actually collaborate with the mozilla team and stop being so bloody monopolistic and so hyper-competitive.
sometimes a bit of collaboration can do wonders for a companies standing.

the cassini space probe

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 4:07 PM

Wow this could be good... decent SVG support would be a great step... svg seems stuck in a quagmire at the moment, but vector graphics have to be the way forward, being stuck with flash wont do...

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 4:09 PM

I know this is probably not something you guys want to hear, but the best thing you could do would be to merge internet explorer and mozilla. Take the gecko engine, help improve it, contribute it back to the mozilla project, and build your own browser around it - but with the same engine. That will make the world of web-design 10 zillion times better. Of course, microsoft would never consider such a thing, would they? Open source is cancer right?

# nosense pandora suggestion @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 4:20 PM

I have a evil idea for forms:

method=mailtocodec , so you can send forms as mails, withouth OutLook or other external tool.

I know this will break internet, a bit. Sorry.

# font and CSS changes @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 4:21 PM

While it might be nice if MS used the gecko engine, personally, I'd be very happy with Internet Explorer if you just changed a few small things:

As someone else suggested, infinite font scaling like in Mozilla would be awfully nice, instead of "Largest, Larger, Normal, Smaller, Smallest".

Combined with that, I'd also really like it if Internet Explorer would ignore the declared font sizes if I tell it to resize. As it is right now, if someone specifies the font in a point size, changing the text size in IE won't make it larger. Since there are a lot of designers who think they need to use microscopic fonts, I'd like to be able to override it. This is one of the single biggest reasons I use Firefox most of the time.

The third thing I'd love to see, and I would think it wouldn't be that hard, is some kind of support for switching to any alternate stylesheets that are defined.

Other things like tabbed browsing would be nice, but those three are on my must-have list.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 4:26 PM

Split the application bindings away from the ones used by the desktop Windows Explorer application, so that only file types, protocols, MIME types, and other mappings explicitly intended for use by untrusted documents (web pages, email messages, etc) are usable from them. This probably means API changes at a low level, but it's the only way to fix the deep security problems in the Windows / Internet Explorer merge.

Using the Gecko engine instead of the MS HTML Control would do the same job, but splitting the HTML rendering and internet access into separate components and splitting the application list as above would do as well without having to have two separate rendering engines in Windows.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 4:27 PM

For the User in me:

1) MUCH better stability/robustness (i.e., stop crash/hanging so frequently). At the very least, have an option to have the windows for different domains be using different instances of IE (i.e. separate processes) so if I'm browsing multiple sites and one page hangs/crashes, I don't lose all the other pages when I using task manager to terminate that one. Ideally, allow each IE _window_ to use its own instance, so I don't even risk losing the other pages of the same site.

2) Don't conflate my preferences for a Web browser with what I want in, say, an e-mail editor! In other words, changing text size, etc. in I.E. should not affect what I see in Outlook IN ANY WAY. The fact that they both may happen to be using an HTML rendering engine is purely an implementation decision, the UIs MUST not be coupled.

3) The current Favorites support in IE is great, but I've long since reached its limits. In particular, it needs much better searching & organizing capabilities and should scale easily to the low thousands of bookmarks, at least. And please DON'T break the current Import/Export mechanism while you make those improvements.

4) Fine-grained (but easy to use) pop-up controls. I want a one/two click way to say things like: - don't ever show me pop-up windows from this domain again. But I _don't_ want some sort of overly-automatic or 'dumb' blocker that can't recognize (or be told in a click or two) that say, yes, I do that pop-up page from our corporate intranet's expense tracking system.

For the Developer in me:

5) Full, complete, cross the t's, dot the i's support for: CSS1, DOM1, XHTML, and PNG images (including Alpha blending, darn it!).

6) Very solid, nearly complete (OK to skip a few of the most esoteric corner cases IF YOU DOCUMENT THEM) support for CSS2.* & DOM2.

7) No more 'creative' inpretation of MIME types or allegedly 'helpful' auto-content type detection.

8) Exception handling (DOM/Jscript): minimize having to put try/catch blocks around everything to deal with exceptions. At the very least, be more aggressive about documenting when exceptions can be thrown and by which objects. (And what conditions will cause them to be thrown...)

9) Jscript: some better way of supporting background or asynchronous processing (than a single timer object), but without the complexity/overhead of threads.

10) (Well, as long as I'm asking...) a *standards-based* way of making out of band server requests (e.g., something similar to XMLHTTPRequest()).

11) Oh and(Jscript/DOM), a 'live' DOM object inspector/debugger would be SUPER.

Banned in Boston

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 4:28 PM

Hi,

First of all I don't thing you -as an obvious MS dude- are using anything else then IE, but I'm conviced that when you start using Mozilla (or any other IE alternative) for a while, you'll actually experience the difference/(dis)advantages of either one of them first handed. And as some time passes by you'll experience yourself what should be improved (this could be while implementing some widely know unimplemented things).

But as a web-designer I always use a dutch web-site I once found that contains lists of all functions either HTML or CSS in the rows of a table and the different browsers in the cols of the table. The remaining cells are checked, unchecked or marked for comment at the bottom in case of partial support.
Example in dutch (at the bottom):
http://www.handleidinghtml.nl/css/selectors/selectors05.html

I think there are english examples of this as well??

Paul

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 4:36 PM

better feedback to the user. We don't want to see faked loading bars that progress even when there is no traffic. We want to know exactly what is happening. If it's stalled... tell us.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 4:50 PM

Glad to hear that IE will be improved before Longhorn is released. Some of us may not live that long.

I agree with the posts that council against throwing every new feature and the kitchen sink into IE. I think the priorities should be:

1) Security - Every Windows user who also uses IE that I know of has a hard drive littered with spyware. Fix it.

2) Standards - for CSS2.1, full support for PNG, XHTML.

I just finished building a site this week. I wrote it to the standards for XHTML and CSS, checked it in Safari, Mozilla, Opera, and did *not* check it in IE for Windows. If it looks good in those browsers but not in IE - too bad. I will spend no more of my time cleaning up after you.

On the site's "About" page I included the following text along with badges for XHTML and CSS validity and a link to the Mozilla Firefox page:

"This site was built with XHTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) that fully comply with the specifications of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Without such open and widely recognized standards the Web would degenerate into a Tower of Babel as corporations sought to carve it into mutually unintelligible, captive markets.

"If any part of this site does not display properly it is because you are using a Web browser that does not fully support the XHTML and CSS specifications – probably Internet Explorer. I urge you to try a browser that closely supports W3C standards, like the open source Mozilla Firefox. Less idealistically, Firefox can block pop-up windows."

The above will be included in all web sites that I design in the future until such time as IE's standards support is satisfactory.

Josef Schneider

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 4:53 PM

Joel on Software has already compiled this list which mirrors my onw wishes exactly.
(http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2004/06/17.html)

1) Improved inline editing (step one: make contentEditable work in Gecko just like it does in IE 5.5+)

2) Javascript features to do fast REST queries back to the server, so I can implement things like a lush spell checker with the dictionary on the server. It should be possible to have a 300,000 employee directory on the server and create a web app that has a list box where you can type the first few letters of an employee's name and see a filtered list as fast as you can type on the screen.

3) A rich set of standard controls for application development that provide better ways to upload files, better ways to drag and drop with the desktop, etc

4) Compiled or compressed JavaScript, so that web applications can use really large amounts of JavaScript with decent performance

5) Better standardized windowing features. At the very least I'd like modal and modeless dialogs that pop up instantly, a standard way to do a menu inside a web page (with ONE consistent UI, not everybody's wacky DHTML menu that are all a bit different), TreeView and ListView controls, and a standard way to make a toolbar/button bar

6) The ability to get a "device context" (in a platform neutral way) on an HTML control and wail on it to paint just about anything you want

7) A far richer set of events. At the very least I need to be able to use the entire keyboard. Combined with #6 I should be able to develop any custom control I want that is 100% client side.

8) Media integration, so I can play sounds or stream music in standard ways without relying on <objects>

9) Graceful degradation for legacy browsers (IE. It's time to make Microsoft play catchup again. Fire and Motion Baby.)

Regards
Rolf Tollerud

# The Licquia Family » “Microsoft Cares” (IE Team Reorganizes) @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 7:53 PM

The Licquia Family » “Microsoft Cares” (IE Team Reorganizes)

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 5:00 PM

Definitely update the Pocket PC IE
It's fine for browsing, but we want to be able to do things with it that we can with IE6.
I mean, we can't even save images!

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 5:05 PM

"better standards support" gets my vote.

Basically, pick a standard. Read the standard. Then, make IE do what the standard says its suppossed to do. No more, no less. Then, go on to the next standard. Rinse/Repeat.

If thats too vague for you, I'm sorry.

And...
-Separate IE from the OS.
-Windows Update should NOT use IE by default. It should use my default browser. (Different team, I'm sure, but it's IE related, so I thought I would mention it.)

BTW... I disagree with daniel above.. .net and IE are NOT the same thing. I happen to have both on one of my machines, but not all. And if I don't want it on all, don't force me.

I guess my ultimate request would be: Go ahead and add everything you can think of, and incorporate every suggestion you want. BUT... allow ME (the End User) to download/not download and turn off/on anything I want at any point I want.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 5:08 PM

Mostly I would like to see Microsoft to commit, adhere to and contribute towards standards set by w3.org. Why, because I want to see Internet Explorer PROUD of it's compatibility and aiming to be better and faster.

Tabbed browsing - I cannot live without it, it makes organisational sense.

Download to specific folders according to filetype for instant organisation and no need to select where to save files. You instantly know where things are.

Too many other things ... browse the firefox extension lists.

Hell, just USE firefox! Consider being compatible with their xul scripable gui, it is a standard, it is here, ready and useable and it works! If not then perhaps allow for it and others to be created as plugins. User choice rules.

Back in the day netscape ruled and ie felt rubbish, then ie 5/5.5 came to be and it was best, but now firefox rules the roost and I think you MS guys have to match them because ie just feels ancient ... i hope you don't have to re-write the browser because you will have a VERY hard time if you do. I cannot stand ie at the moment, for pure useability/look&feel reasons.

# Schwang! The sound of a Gordian knot getting knotted @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 5:12 PM

Badge-engineer FireFox. You could almost do it with Konqueror as well, which is a *really* nice browser, but the JavaScript's still not quite up to scratch.

Too radical? Maybe, but it instantly fixes a lot of MIME-handling and security issues, and bolting the ActiveX frobnules and other IE cruft onto Gecko to make it look IE again would buy you a chance to get it right - or at least righter - this time around.

But wait! There's more! Instant tabs that work, instant popup killer, instant lots of other little features that your clients have been begging for over a span of many years. And serious portability. IE for MS-Windows can look and/or act like IE for Mac or IE for Linux.

Oh, yes. IE for Linux... retain a toehold on the system that's quietly(?) white-anting MS-Windows.

# PS, about konqueror... @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 5:18 PM

The 3.2.2 version fades in your most-likely completion ahead of what you type, and includes spell-checking within forms. It's fast, does a lot of the tabbing tricks of plugin-enhanced FireFox, and has a lot of really handy tools built in (click to validate,click to translate, click for new browser ID). The only thing that's not up to speed is the JavaScript support, and that's been improving by leaps and bounds rather than degrees. Built-in transparent access to all of the KDE-supported protocols (fish://username@ssh.server.name for example). Try it! What've you got to lose? (-:

# re:Very Specific Requests for IE @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 5:19 PM

1)Support for JPEG2000, PNG on the graphics side;
2)Support for XForms and SVG on XML side;
3)Write a toggle routine for the Visual Studio and other app development tool gals and guys whose default behavior is that it will emit or auto-generate only W3C, ECMA and other standards compliant code - no Microsft proprietary extensions. If the users turn-off the toggle - then have at it - all the proprietary code that they can consume. Think of this as the Default W3C Standards lock down;
4)Default Security lockdown. Features are turned off if they have an possibility of increasing security risk - then by turning them on, users have to deliberately choose to expose themselves to such risks;
5)In organizational settings allow administrators to lock down those security privilege settings - so that end-users cannot circumvent organizational standards and policy.
6)Do this before the end of the year - whats a matter ? Short on cash ?

Jacques Surveyer

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 5:25 PM

Slashdotters should go and fuck themselves. Let all those idiots use Linux or maybe Apple. We have real business problems to solve.

Firefox is not what developers want. The original developers left Netscape. Mozilla has very few developers who go to different companies. IBM and Sun are trying to develop it, but they are not serious about it at this point.

Let's fix the problems I have mentioned before. Take the good stuff from W3C, leave the bad stuff there, keep the IE's good things. Screw the slashdotter idiots, just follow what real customers are talking about. Clearly on the net it is quite hard to determine that, but I do believe that somehow you can deduce who is real and who is a net thug.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 5:25 PM

Add my voice to the "support w3c standards" list. The notion that such a request is too vague to be useful is incredibly insulting. Many of the people making comments here are in fact developers.

Many of us work on implementing standards that are frankly far less specific than those described by the W3C. We do this every day with far more success than your team has demonstrated, Dave.

Microsoft has always dodged the standards bullet by stating that they would rather listen to what their customers want than what some ivory tower committee wants. Well now you know that your customers want you to listen to the ivory tower.

Last year we all enjoyed watching your CEO dance around and shout. While many of us were laughing we were also listening to an important message. "Developers, Developers, Developers," was that message. It's about damn time your team started listening.

# Simple On/Off Switch @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 5:46 PM

Just a few things...

THE "IGNORE" TAG
One of the best things that would help with the adjustment from the "IE Standard" and the W3C Standards would be a simple tag that IE can use to interpret how to display some of the old hacks many of us are accustomed to doing. This also could be done by actively looking for the hacks and reading them as if it were IE6. This would be especially important in migrating CSS2 Box Model from IE6 to a CSS2 standards compliant browser. Which brings me to...

CSS2.1
Secondly get CSS2.1 working completely, or at least working flawlessly on all parts of it you choose to implement... some less important tags that haven't been implemented in the past won't be missed so much.

DISTRIBUTION
It is little wonder that AOL has such a large user base with their widescale CD distribution. Maybe using this model put IE7 in the hands of as many people as possible. Users rarely update their web browsers anymore because so little has changed. Give them no excuse and make it simple for the stupid users (the ones that won't be posting here).

SECURITY
Put some small tech firms out of business--make IE7 much more secure. The people in this forum don't need it as much as Average Joe... but this could help stop the proliferation of DDoS attacks that can partially knock down *Akamai*. Along with many other things.

COMPATIBILITY
Make IE7 as universally compatible (old OS's) as feasible WITHOUT sacrificing security goals and. This also is part of the no-excuses approach to making Average Joe update his browser.

I personally use Firefox but address enough things and IE7 might be much more widely embraced by the geek population...

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 6:00 PM

I think the main reason the IE team can't give up and use firefox, at this point, is the fact that the rendering engine is built into the OS. So here's my recomendation : While windows still needs a render engine, make it a configureable dll which has *specified standards* that way, people could switch the render engine with Moz / Opera for the whole OS, not just IE. Then we would finally be able to remove IE (and the MSIE render engine) off our machines. The ability to remove IE (and Windows messenger) off our machines is important, for choice. (That, and teh fact that on a couple of occasions, bugs in the render engine have been vulnerabilities, even outside IE itself)

--
Urz
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040206 Firefox/0.8

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 6:08 PM

Something I would like to see in IE is the ability to choose how many files you can download at a time, because only being able to download only two files at a time is annoying. I think you should have an option to allow you to download more files at a time (and include an option to allow unlimited downloads at a time).

Also, I'm not sure if this is possible, but if you can make it so that you can easily copy and paste an RSS feed directly into a simple HTML page without having to use any kind of RSS parsing program, that would be great. I'm not sure if that would be asking too much.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 6:09 PM

Three comments:

1) Browser window size and attributes: Why must IE constantly change it's default size for new windows?? At least, there should be an option to lock the window size (preferably with and option to just lock the default size and another option to ignore window size changes request from content). Also, after viewing some urls, the status line is turned off for new windows. Finally, when the windows do change change size, then the toolbar positions, especially link, don't return to their previous positions even when the window is maximized.

2) Scale images to fit paper width when printing. Text layout during printing is pretty reasonable, but when pages with larger images are printed, the images are cropped!

3) Google-type searches restricted to only pages in favorites.

# IE Standards @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 6:12 PM

The most obvious problem with Internet Explorer, which keeps help spreading the myth that PNG's are not supported is the lack of alpha/gamma in Internet Explorer when it's used as a img. Likewise, the object tag simply needs to work, as it doesn't work or behave as intended (it should stop at the first object it can parse.)

It's kinda hard to do some next-generation image manipulation when two versions have to be made, one for IE, and one for the browsers that have better support for IE... like MacIE did. How can you layer alpha blended images over top with antialiased edges when the browser ignores the alpha channel?

Next on the hit list, SVG. Trying to implement above in native SVG/XML, Adobe's viewer is great and all, but that is also bloating the system when all you want to do is mix some semi-transparant vector objects with a few images and text.

Security, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE add a button to "never trust content from this publisher and ignore always" ... GAIN needs to disappear. In the same vien, ALWAYS bring up an install box with the option to "yes always, yes, no, no and ignore further attempts" when something trys to install itself. Default to NO. People are stupid, joe-sixpack or whomever is going to probably be typing something when the popup comes up and hit enter.

Speaking of popups. Some security settings for Javascript are necessary. Like blocking first party (this site), third party (off-site) javascript, iframes, images, and any other content. So many tricks are used by advertisements that the code they use is generally bloated and broken. The option of disabing parsing html in document.write when in XHTML mode.

On the flip side, firewall developers also need to stop tampering with the referring page, as this is allowing IE to steal bandwidth. Put this feature into IE as part of the privacy setting. "I trust this site, send full headers". That way content sites know people aren't trying to steal their content instead of having to throw back "sorry please visit the site instead of hotlinking to my content" errors.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 6:12 PM

Im still using win2000 so Im not sure but does the newest version of IE have themes? That would be cool!

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 6:13 PM

What IE really needs, as well as tabbed browsing and vastly improved web standards support, is
a completely rewrwitten rendering engine. Although I can't see MS using Mozilla's Gecko engine
anytime soon in future versions of IE, maybe it'd be a good idea to totally replace the ageing
and rusty old "Trident" engine currently used in IE for Windows, with the "Tasman" engine
that was used in IE5.x for Mac. Since IE for Mac was discontinued last year, "Tasman" is
still being developed for the Mac OS X version of the MSN internet service.

When it comes to functionality, IE is getting better, with the forthcoming Service Pack 2
for Windows XP incorporating a popup manager into IE that's a virtual clone of the same
feature that's been available in the Mozilla Foundation's browser products for ages now.

But while IE still has the technically obsolete (Based upon NCSA Mosaic) "Trident" engine,
a rendering engine that is proven to be dangerously insecure, no matter how many IE
security updates that Microsoft put out on a somewhat rather sporadic basis, I'll
continue to recommend that internet users steer well clear from IE as thier
primary browser, and use alternatives such as Mozilla Opera and Netscape.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 6:14 PM

POPUP BLOCKERS ARE A MUST HAVE
ALLONG WITH AN EASY WISARD TO TURN OFF THINGS LIKE ACTIVEX AND JAVASCRIPT AND SO ON.
Sorry about the caps. thats just something that made me initialy switch to mozilla then firefox along with the quick and easy search bar right next to the URL where it makes it really easy to conduct searches. also I love and use constantly in firefox where you can start typing a word and it finds it on the page. Thats awsome.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 6:18 PM

A standardized XMLHttpRequest() function that does not require ActiveX to be enabled (and preferably compatible with Mozilla and Safari). The current situation between various versions of MSXML is severely messed up.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 6:29 PM

Haven't seen this one yet, easy and very helpful. Simple request if something is highlighted on the page and I hit Ctrl+F that should be copied into the Find dialog. This should not be put into the copy cache.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 6:33 PM

Daniel, get a life.

Free software developers have come together to create a superior application: Firefox. Too call the developers idiots is like booing the other team at a ball game. Cheer your own team, and have fun.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 6:38 PM

This is a post for those vehement arguments against slashdotters:

I am a Linux user and I believe in choice, the freedom of choice to consider options to BUSINESS PROBLEMS, not to be held captive to the next service pack release.

This post is quickly becoming anti-microsoft so I will move on,

The further development of IE will perpetuate competition and innovation. Both sides of the argument cannot deny this and I think that both sides will be better off for it. I think that the first priority is standards support. This should not be fixes on user suggestions, or what they feel Microsoft isn't doing with IE, but should be based verbatim on the standards themselves. The internet is public property and Microsoft is in no position to dictate what should and should not be accepted.

To the linux camp: see the big picture and the resultant innovation in OS software that the further development in IE could bring.

To the windows camp: We are not zealots, we have just expereienced the freedom to be able to make choices and not to be locked in to one train of thought and one solution. You should try it some time.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 6:44 PM

All I cay say is, this guy has obviously been trapped inside Redmond for a long time. It's about time he get out and see the light of day.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 6:59 PM

I like IE. I like how it loads instantly when I click the quick launch icon, unlike every other browser that takes 5 minutes to load. Nevertheless, it's getting stale, and it needs some improvement. I agree with the masses, SVG, transparent PNG, tabs, etc. Beyond that, here are my suggestions:

-Please, no skinning support!! I hate how every non-MS app these days has skinning support. I have my own custom Windows theme, I don't need help from every developer out there.

-Don't download to a temporary directory and then copy; it takes forever on large DLs.

-I think the popup blocker should be more integrated: don't patch on something that says "if it's a popup, block it." I can get that w/ the google bar, Avant Browser, etc. but it doesn't always work. Instead, write IE7 *without* support for popups, then add it as an option afterwards.

-I never use the option to always accept installs from X vendor. How about instead you let us "always ignore from Gator." Better yet, block those pop ups completely and just flash an icon in the status bar.

-Built-in Torrent support?

-Stop Javascript from changing the status bar

-Allow us to zoom CSS fonts, and store zooming options per-page

-better password/autocomplete management. I like my personal PC to remember passwords, but it doesn't always seem to work.

-When I click back to go to a page that contains posted data, don't ask me twice if I really want to go back. Don't ask me at all.

-When I'm typing in the address bar, don't ever let it lose focus

-Flash options. On some sites I like it, on some I don't. I never like Flash popups.

-Make sure you keep the startup time fast! Remember, there is a difference between functionality and bloat.

Here's to hoping that IE stays a priority as MS. It's by far the most often used program on my PC.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 7:02 PM

Simply untying it from the desktop explorer would make me happy. I despise it when a web browsing problem causes my desktop to "reboot", and all my taskbar items are then lost.

There are lots of other things that would make me even happier, but nothing will make me happy until the above is good as gold.

Just my opinion...

# Introducing Firefox Bugdays @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 10:16 PM

As we drive toward Firefox 1.0, we are looking for three highly motivated community members to oversee a new Firefox...

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 7:17 PM

Please fix the support for g-zip decompression of Javascript, CSS and XML resources. I know for sure that IE fails when I configured my J2EE Web container to gzip my html, js and css files. Mozilla expands the files just fine, however IE does not.

This I feel is a huge drawback to IE and has hampered my ability to deploy efficient DHTML application.

Thanks for your Time

Tim

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 7:17 PM

Daniel -- please don't speak for me.

I make my living off of Microsoft's products and platforms. I sell applications built on top of .NET in the 6 and 7 figure range (yes, $USD). I AM a developer. I have been a developer for a VERR LONG TIME. Maybe even longer than you have BEEN ALIVE.

And, yes, Firefox IS WHAT I WANT. You show your lack of wisdom by saying that Firefox is not what developers want. Of course it is; it's so plain to see. I've educated literally hundreds of Windows folks about Firefox, and most of them have "made the switch." And, yes, many of them are developers.

I truly think that IE is broken; it would not be a simple task to fix. I honestly think Microsoft would have to start from scratch to "do it right". Now, mind you, Microsoft has recently had a good track record here. I remember when attribute-based programming, COM 2.0 and 'cool' were part of the sea-change at Microsoft (and I saw some interesting C++ demos to that effect). That was, oh, 1999? In the end, we got .NET and it was a VERY GOOD THING. But it took a long time. Is it really worth the effort for Microsoft to go that same route with IE?

Microsoft could do a world of good by supporting Firefox. That would send an amazing message. IE served its purpose -- it killed Netscape. A future IE is not going to kill the non-profit Mozilla Organization.

What Microsoft could consider is taking the Firefox code and porting it to the managed world -- that would be really fantastic for me, as a developer. I'd love to easily embed a modern, standards compliant web-browser within my WinForm application. This, in turn, could grow the popularity of other .NET platforms such as Mono. In my world, that would be a fantastic thing. Microsoft has the power to co-opt Firefox -- XUL could be replaced with XAML, for example. Now, I'm not sure that would be a good thing, but I'd rather see a Microsoft-supported, open-source Firefox derivative than IE7.

Indeed, if this browser of which I dream permitted XAML code to run under older versions of Windows, that could be damaging to Microsoft's Longhorn plans. But, then again, does Microsoft expect people to write XAML applications if they ONLY RUN under Longhorn? .NET thankfully runs on more than XP and W2k3.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 7:38 PM

Have the history able to be viewed chronologically, with a viewable timestamp column, and not just limited to 'today'. It's annoying when I try to look for something after midnight that I was looking at during the daytime. Maybe a more robust search function for the history tab?

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 7:41 PM

I'm a bit of an alpha geek among family and friends, and I'd like to share with you (rant about) a couple of my activities regarding webbrowsers, and the reason behind them.

First, unless IE is explicitly needed, I now install FireFox as the default browser for all my friend's and family's computers. This is not because of any hard feelings towards microsoft or IE. Simply put, most users are morons when it comes to spy/adware, and Firefox, mostly be nature of being less ubiquitous, is in my experience, less prone to spy/adware installations. Fix this.

Secondly, I'll admit to being enamored with the simple, space efficient layout of Apple's Safari. By default the entire interface section of the browser is on one line, ~20 pixels high, leaving the rest of my screen free to read the internet. With some effort (and adding the google toolbar) IE can be made to look very similar (and I set it up in just such a manner on my windows boxes) but it takes some work and is less than perfect. So I guess my second point is this--IE is a web browser, nothing more, nothing less. Make the layout as simple and efficient as possible by default. If you have to include additional functionality, make it something the user has to want to consciously seek out to enable. This 'minimilist by default' mindset should also prove somewhat helpful in security.

Tangentially, before I get off my soapbox, I might mention in this space that the lack of 'simplicity in design' and 'pixel conservation in layout' is a problem across Microsoft's product line. It is this way for one simple reason--Microsoft is too bound to listening to the consumer to think for itself sometimes. Customers tend to only ask for new features, they're usually not smart enough to think to ask for simplicity, or more room on their computer screen, although that's what will ultimately make them happier and more productive.

Sheesh, I've talked too much...

# Simple and fast solution @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 7:49 PM

1. Right-click IE
2. Select "Delete"
3. Go www.mozilla.org
4. Download Firefox

As for MS, it could simply abandon IE completely and start using Firefox as the default Windows Browser. It's much better, it's open source, it's ready and it's standards compliant. No need to reinvent the whell, methinks.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 8:02 PM

I'd love it if requests that encountered 404s didn't show up in the address combo box.

I'd second SVG support, and tabbed browsing.

Ensure that when an office document has been updated on the web, the updated version is downloaded and displayed when it's requested, rather than having the old version served out from the cache.

The feature that would take it to the next level would have to be integrated support for subscribing to and reading syndication feeds.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 8:31 PM

I would really like to see.

1) <select> tags that don't float over dynamic content.

2) Useful Javascript error messages. Be nice to get the correct line number or some times even the correct script file in the error message.

3) **** Proper PNG support ****

4) Do away with "friendly" error messages 404 screens often contain useful information that people want to see.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 8:31 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. "

We can only dream. Not to knock the IE developers, but this is one area where open source is not only better under the hood (CSS/layout) but WAY more user friendly (tabbed browsing).

As a side note, I've always thought fonts looked way to big on IE, even when using CSS and font-size tags.

Jonathan Haddad

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 8:44 PM

tabbed browsing ^_^

# Better Plug-in Development support @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 8:59 PM

See number of plug-ins mozilla has. IE should also provide a better way for developing plug-ins.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 9:12 PM

So, is this updated version of IE, going to come out with longhorn, and only work with longhorn? That's what I heard, and it sounds very much like a Microsoft thing to do.

# Plugins/Entensions @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 9:16 PM

Probably most requested things could developed by 3rd parties, if the plugin model/extension model would be enhanced in many ways.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 9:19 PM

Hello!

Whats with the obsession with Tabbed Browsing?

That is a feature only needed on platforms that does not have the same functionality as Windows XP's Activity bar has. So it is much needed on older systems and on Mac OS for instance. On XP it is not needed and I preferr not having them. I usually surf with up to 20 browser windows open and Tabbed browsing would mean that not all of them would fit and some pages would be closed or the tabs would be so small you could not see which page is which. This is not a problem in XP as all windows gets grouped into a very handy menu which I think is way better then tabs.

Feautures I would like to be added are:

More advanced Pop Up blocker. As it will be in SP2 it is either on or off just as simple as that. But some sites requires Pop Ups for their function so it would be great if an option would be added to the right click menu that enables the user to allow pop ups for that particular site temporarily.

Nicer GUI! Why the boring office like GUI it has today?. Why not use the MSN Messenger application for Mac OSX as an inspiration and make IE's GUI just as attractive.

Option to display a sites IP address so that you dont have to do a whois lookup just to find out!.

Right Click option to double window surfing. meaning that 2 windows side by side could be open and that pages within a side would open in one window next to the main window instead of opening in the same window or in a window that opens up above and hides the main page. Especially good for people with larger high resolution monitors.

Sincerely Joakim Agren!

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 9:27 PM

I hesitated to bring it up, but now that others have, I'll add my "second" on the idea...

face it... Longhorn is 3 years away. Uptake by >25% of users is 3+ more years after that. MS needs to fix IE for the EU, more than the EU needs MS to fix it for them

Ditch IE development. MS makes how much $ on the development and market share of it? My guess... >Zero but < $1million.

Admit the fact that IE has been obsoleted by the OSS community. Work with the people that are doing it right. If standards support is equal, then you can focus on GUI presentation and UI. This has gotta be cheaper than redoing the program (which is really the only other option (Joels comments notwithstanding)), and the EU benefits because the web ends up working the way it is suppossed to across multiple platforms (MS or otherwise).

A "good" IE on Longhorn < a standards-compliant IE on all Windows+Linux+Mac.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 9:38 PM

I third the idea of dumping IE and including FireFox (or even full Mozilla). The whole means of building a browser-based location application that team has implemented is way better than anything Microsoft has come up with on their own.

Thunderbird, BTW, is a kick-ass, clean, lightweight, and unclumsy email client. And there's no paperclip to annoy you.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 9:44 PM

OK, I would like to rebut a few arguments that were made here. First of all the many posts on this list praise the Gecko engine for it's speed, stability, and consistency with well-documented (a la. w3c.org) features. There was one person who screamed opposite saying, "Drop the bad things from W3C. W3C's many stuff is confusing to newbies and hard to learn. We don't want that crap. Mozilla is trying to be complaint with W3C, but it is not the favorite for developers or designers. Zealots on the net do not represent the whole community out there." First of all "bad things" is subjective. All those "bad things," as a definition of being approved by a standards body are there for a reason. To unilaterally change those standards created by a collaboration of the IT industry and REAL developers is an insult to all those bodies and people. Then to claim, "W3C's many stuff is confusing to newbies and hard to learn," is completely subjective. Where's your empirical evidence. What's harder to learn Daniel, is some POS quirk that is specific to one browser. I want to write my code conforming to a well documented standard that requires no special code and exceptions for different browsers. Then the statement, "Mozilla is trying to be complaint with W3C, but it is not the favorite for developers or designers." Who are you? Developers and designers write for IE because they have to write special code for the millions of IE users. A standard is by definition a favorite because a huge percentage of people have to like it for it to be passed by a standards body. So to say a standard is not a favorite is contradicting a definition in the english language. Then Daniel tries to discredit many of the posters here with, "Zealots on the net do not represent the whole community out there." A Zealot, my friend, is exactly what you are. You cannot claim, "Slashdotters should go and fuck themselves," "Let's screw the zealots and idiots and talk about serious business here."
"Screw the slashdotter idiots, just follow what real customers are talking about," without being a zealot yourself. You make angry insults and generalize people. It may shock you that the power customers or the ones that have done the most experimenting with other products are developers. It may also surprise you that the usability features that developers want are what most people who use their computers long periods of time want to use. Developers live on their freak'in computers and have to spend tons more time than aunt tilly with their programs. For Example, daving to kill an IE window rather than it throwing up and letting all the other IE windows live, alone can piss anyone off. However, it pisses developers off many times more often than Joe sixpack because he hits that poorly written code in IE way more times than Joe sixpack.
Second, developers are serious business, without developers Microsoft would not be a successful business. Third, Slashdot is a meeting place for developers. Many developers read slashdot. How can their not be? Most of the articles are about IT projects. Many of the most heated arguments on slashdot are over API's. The fact is that most people on slashdot use windows. Therefore, most of slashdot is also a market for more microsoft products. If it weren't then why the hell are there all those Micrsoft advertisements on slashdot? You support Microsoft telling people to go fcuk themselves. However, that completely contradicts your statement, "talk about serious business here." Let's take an example from history: CP/M told IBM to go fcuk themselves so IBM went to Microsoft for their OS and the rest is history.

# To Daniel... @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 9:49 PM

Developers (like me) love the tools (in FireFox) like "Live HTTP Headers" that save the request and reply headers for review and debugging. We also *love* Mozilla Composer a lot more than we love FrontPage; it's free, it's simple, and it's not a framework. Real developers hate frameworks. ;-)

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 10:09 PM

What about a CSS WYSIWYG editor? For those of us that want to develop (quickly) using standards, we mainly test under what we develop under...

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 10:18 PM

1) Alpha channel support for PNGs

2) :hover available on every element, not just As

3) zooming that affects px-sized text. If you have a philosophical problem with it (if the designer said px we should respect it, or something), don't -- everyone else adjusts the size of px-sized text.

4) Tabbed browsing is the reason I switched to Firefox.

5) Some form of download manager, instead of lots of popups

6) Support for all the CSS2 selectors, in particular ">" as in body > ul

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 10:41 PM

Cool CSS

For example, opacity and rounded corners. DHTML filters just don't cut it.
Support for flowing content between boxes-so that documents will flow between columns of a multi-column page.

Provide an officially-sanctioned way to run multiple versions of IE at once.

Make View->Source work more reliably. Have you ever tried viewing source on very dynamic sites? I'm thinking of GMail. A lot of the time, View->Source never actually works.

Radically overhaul bookmarks. Why can't I perform simple text searching of bookmarks? Why doesn't IE keep the last visited copy of each bookmark around for searching purposes? Why can't I place my bookmarks on a central server and use them from every computer I use (and please don't go off on one of your "every computer you use...hmm...you must mean every windows device." - I have a mobile phone with a DHTML web browser on it which doesn't run Windows. I'd quite like the manufacturer of that Web Browser to support the server-based bookmarks too.) Come to think of it, why not merge this feature with server-based OPML?

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 11:02 PM

Just two things.

1. A port to Apple-OSX, Windows98, and Linux as well as XP/Longhorn so web pages I develop can be seen on all the platforms we care about.

Programming to ONE API is really really the most important issue on the web today. I want ONE standard to develop towards, and if you're big enough to be the defacto standard for across all platforms, great. If not, a browser that does run on all these platforms will.

2. A port to Windows98, Solaris, and Linux as well as XP/Longhorn so I have the same experience (keyboard shortcuts, etc) on work systems and home systems.

This is the reason I first went to Netscape, and the reason I never looked back.

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

It's to late already. Our company is moving to Firefox because of ongoing security problems with Internet Explorer. IE will only be allowed for certain specific websites.

already moving to FireFox.

# Tabbed Browsing @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 11:20 PM

Unfortunately, I must admit, I am a FireFox user. There are two main reasons for that: first of all there is the FF bookmarks toolbar which is WAY more convenient than the IE Favorites Sidebar and secondly, but definately more important; _tabbed browsing_.
Just ask anyone arround browsing the internet, Shift-Clicking a link is not always a solution (definately not if it results in 678432 separate IE windows...).

Tabbed browsing in IE would convert me from a FF-user to an IE-user overnight... :D

Cheers

Thomas

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 11:25 PM

1. Please implement ALL of the CSS2.1 selectors at http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/selector.html -- just like Moz/Firefox and Opera did years ago.

2. Allow (e.g. View Menu and toolbar item) the user to choose any *alternate* stylesheets when such are specificied in the markup.

3. Implement CSS generated content --http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/generate.html -- it's been in Moz & Opera for aeons. It's really time IE users be able to see what the rest of the world is seeing.

4. Have a "Navigation Toolbar" (like Opera and Moz, though not Firefox) that activates whatever is specified in the <link rel="..." elements ("chapter", "section", "contents", "next", "previous", "author", etc.).

5. Fix the bug where the first line of subsequent *printed* pages are treated like the first line of a paragraph, even when it's obviously the middle of the paragraph that was continued from the previous page. (To see this in action, declare "p { text-indent: 2em }" then print out a five or ten page document where some pages break mid-paragraph. Look at the first line of the next page. That's ridiculous behavior in a supposedly modern browser.)

6. While you're fixing page break print-related bugs, please implement http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/page.html#page-break-props properly...

7. As has been already suggested, please implement scaling for elements specified in points and pixels in the same way you do with ems and percentages. Moz/Firefox and Opera have also had this right for ages.

8. As suggested, a working "application/xml+xhtml" mode that fails with non-wellformed markup. Don't need a validating parser for *that*, but it really would be great if we had a menu option or button available to validate the XML (when it *is* XML) as part of the stock IE, now wouldn't it?

9. At least implement MathML so we don't have to download a !^?*#@ plug-in (or resort to GIFs!) to display plain math equations in our markup. SVG would be really sweet too. But MathML is an absolute must.

If you are prioritizing, the UI stuff (tabs, mouse gestures, etc.) is of negligable importance -- it's the *engine* that matters. Trident may have been the Tripple Crown winner of 1997, but by now she's a failing, crippled old hag. AvantBrowser, MyIE2, etc. all do great jobs with the UI, and we can always download one of those. But they all wrap IE's senile Trident engine, so you get the equivalent of a stunningly beautiful girlfriend only to find out she's retarded. Fix the engine first. Make it right -- really, you know what you need to do. Then clone AvantBrowser for the UI if you have some spare time.

Sorry you've to put up with so many illiterate imbeciles who can only rise out of the primal soup long enough to regurgitate "better standards support" (when you explicitly requested us not to and to provide specifics), but there *are* a number of good suggestions here too. I hope you've waded this far through the mire to read mine.

Thanks,

/Jelks

# re: Standards Support - what else @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 11:38 PM

<i>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</i>

Well Dave, you can start here: <a href="www.w3c.org">w3c</a> And when you are done with that you can drop the Avalon garbage and implement an open standard for SVG.
<br><br><br><br>
<i>and specifically why it would improve things.</i>

So we don't have hack around all your attempts to control the web.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 11:42 PM

How about the darn simple thing: security. The problem with IE is that it attempts to be awefully smart by providing an aweful lot of features that seem to do no good to any average user but are great means for a hacker to get in and do his thing. Why not yank all that junk and concentrate on less useless features, BUT more security? Make it paramount not second hand.

Of course, I would never convert from my beloved Firefox. So, wish you nothing but luck this time around. ;)

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 11:42 PM

I'm glad to hear, that you'll be working on IE again. There are some ideas, which you perhaps don't like, but I think they *should* be a priority:

1. XHTML 1.0/1.1 supprt (with XML prologue, xhtml+xml mimetype and strict xml parser)
2. CSS1/CSS2 full support with good box behaviour and proper support of all parameters
3. DOM support with standarized ECMAscript handling without your own implementations such as document.all
4. Strict document rendering (why IE renders every page "properly", even if it's got rubbish code?)
5. WAI support

Meta: generally, w3c standards should be *strictly* supported.

6. Transparent PNG support
7. Native SVG support
8. Tabbrowsing
9. Other useful things.

Look at Firefox - it's a great browser. It supports almost everything in the proper way. It can render almost every page. And it's not stopping the internet evolution because of lack of standards support like IE.

Greetings,
M.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 11:43 PM

Better support for Windows Forms controls (.NET Framework) is a must! The UI shouldn't freeze which the control is loading, for one thing. And it should be possible to fire events in the control which are caught by the page -- at present I'm pretty sure that doesn't work.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 11:46 PM

How about we all just switch to Mozilla and end the discussion now? Trust me, we'd all be much happier.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 20, 2004 11:49 PM

I don't like the explorer Icon, can you do away with that?

# Don't bother @ Monday, June 21, 2004 12:03 AM

Just don't bother. I've had it with IE. 2 weeks ago my IE was visited by a nice CoolWebSearch BHO. Even with CWSShredder etc I can't get rid off it. So for the die hard IE slaves a nice BHO shredder would be helpful. I consider BHO's like the slugs from outer space from The Puppetmaster by Heinlein but it also has a nice analogy with M$ don't you think? And security. Did anyone already mention security? Or pop up killers? Or... or... or why not just install Firefox like I did. After that you just don't bother what happens to IE.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 12:09 AM

Better standards support is not vauge, implement CSS2/CSS3 standards as specified by W3C, and people will be happy :)

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 12:11 AM

It is a bit late for IE. The last few years have seen zero movement other than patching. You folks have a long way to go. Good luck.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 12:13 AM

well, I had one more point to add until I finally got down here to check on my posting (after reading 90% of what is here). So now its two.

1. I was totally wrong. Dont bother with my suggestions, Firefox is already standards compliant. We dont need another one.

2. Support html tags on yer blog fer christ sake! Thats a mess up there now.

I love when the MS guys look like hacks. It comes from meeting some of you all and always hearing the superiority complex.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 12:13 AM

Looks like it's been said many times....but probably not enough........

TABS!!!

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 12:20 AM

MathML. Please???

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 12:21 AM

the best idea yet:
DONT WORK ON IE, IT SUX

# Please support display:block; in table, tr, td, tbody, thead elements @ Monday, June 21, 2004 12:29 AM

It would really help to reach one of the goals of XHTML, which is a good seperation between content and presentation.

For example, if you have a list of text messages posted by web users on your site, and you want to display them, and if a message is a structure {author, date, message}, the right tag to use is table.

But in IE, an XHTML table is always displayed as a graphical table. So the content is closely linked to the presentation.

If one could use display:block; in the elements of a table, it would be possible to display the author and the date of the message on a line, then the message himself in a rectangular zone under the previous line, with nice borders, etc. Because one could use float:left; , margin-left: XXXpx , clear:both; , etc.

François Beretti

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 12:31 AM

Hi
I saw you wrote that you promise to read every post but canot promise to respond to everyone.
I realize the that makes sense in the current structure but would it not be very good if there was a forum where anyone could post a request for a feature and "you" (meaing MS) promised to actually read it and give a response to weather you will implement it or not?

That would ofcourse take alot mor effort but I am sure Microsoft could spare a guy for that. It would give a little egotrip to any user who got a yes response and a good discussion on the pros and cons of the feature everytime there was a now answer.

The real drawback will ofcourse be that you have to make official statements about features and then stick to them. Neither of the two are desirable but I am quite sure there wil lbe a lot of good and well formulated sugestions for improvments so the question is wich one outweights wich.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 12:38 AM

<blockquote><em>Obviously I cannot guarrantee that every request will be implemented but please let me know what you'd like to see.</em></blockquote>
<p>
Simple request: as a web developer I'd really like to see basic and consistent support for at least a useful subset of HTML and, if you have time, CSS1.
</p>

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 12:39 AM

" 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. "

That is not IE that is hung-up, that is a "feature" of Windows. I suggest you try Linux and Mozilla or Mozilla Firefox if you are getting tired of Windows locking up. Much more stable, more updates, better features, and better compatiability with industry standards. Internet Explorer has not had any kind up update other than bug fixes in years. MS doesnt care about Internet Explorer because they won the browser war, and now it is a good couple years behind in features. If Mozilla crashes on your Linux computer it wont bring down your own system like Internet Explorer will, and unlike IE & Windows, you can install patches and update without ever having to reboot. And to use a term that Microsoft has been attempin to blabber about, the "Total Cost Of Ownership" of Linux for a home user is $0.00 since you can download and use it for free. If you can teach yourself Windows, you can teach yourself Linux.

Reponse to post:

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 12:40 AM

I suggest a complete, distinct split between the backend and the frontend. This will allow several things. For one, you can uninstall Internet Explorer on a Windows machine and still keep full functionality. The rendering engine, used by explorer.exe, is still there, just not the front-end (iexplore.exe). Also, porting it to other platforms should be plenty easier --- the backend is the same on all platforms, only the frontend should change.

I know that you probably can't push your team to completely redo IE (or at least its backend, if you split it), but I think it would be best. Compliance plugins, as one person showed above, would be a _great_ addition, and it would likely be very hackish to implement on an existing engine that does not do that.

A bit more about portability: I doubt that IE will be open sourced in the near (or even far) future. However, it is exactly that which would make people happier as it will increase portability -- it can just be compiled for another platform. If you can, I suggest OSSing the engine (not necesarily the front-end, if you don't have to and don't want to).

Anyway, I shall stop ranting now :). I wish you and your team good luck and I wil be expecting some nice things. Windows is certainly not my favorite OS, but I use it often enough for me to wish for a better browser, and if it becomes ported to other platforms as well, I would not mind using it -- I have no bias against MS, as many other people do.

-- Chris

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 12:46 AM

1) Mozilla's adressbar search ... NOT ONLY using MSN search : Google anyone ?
2) Tabbed browsing !!!
3) Easy bookmarks management (as in Start Menu)
4) Simple history & search facilities (side panel)
5) links DnD (Moz's Personal bookmarks folder)
6) Change the hideous logo : rotating 'e' ?
7) On the fly zooming
8) In-page searching (Moz's '/')
9) Default set of bookmarks (driver update, news site, Microsoft service packs, Microsoft patches, Microsoft hotfixes, ...)
10) PUBLISH A COMPRHENSIVE LIST OF (publicly available) STANDARDS CONFORMANCE
--
For ideas about what is 1), 2), 4), 5), 7) and 8), simply look at Mozilla !!

Albert Nonymous

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 12:52 AM

If you're going to build a new IE, it will be rendering differently from IE6 and Firefox. Please make it possible to install IE7 besides IE6, making cross-browser checking more easily.
Give us better control about the plug-ins, and prevent webpages to control the status-bar.

Good luck, Piet Hein

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 12:57 AM

Sorry for not reading all the replies. What I have to say may already have been said...

My main concern is regarding cache.
Why is it that you can't turn caching off? This is a feature that's often desired when you run a caching proxy.

Also, the pragma no-cache directive doesn't work for pages less than 64K. Most of the times it doesn't work at all.

Do not cache cgi-scripts (when you've got a question mark in the URL), does not work whatsoever. Even if the page is more than 64K, and when you add a second header-section with pragma no-cache at the end of your html code.

Where do I get this?
From Microsoft:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=http://support.microsoft.com:80
/support/kb/articles/Q222/0/64.ASP&NoWebContent=1

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;234067

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 12:59 AM

I'm all for finishing off the support for CSS1 so you can start work on finishing CSS2. CSS1 has been around since 1996 (8 years ago!) and still isn't 100% supported!

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 1:03 AM

Man, a compliant Range interface and a good Selection API would make my life a lot easier!!

# Bug tracking @ Monday, June 21, 2004 1:16 AM

Reading these comments about requests, makes
me think that there is a need for a public
bug-database feature-tracker. Dare I say it
but something on the line of bugzilla. That way
there would be a bit more structure to the requests and some way of priotising requests.
Basically it would be a good way to tie down
what is ment by "better standards support".

# Vague? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 1:25 AM

The phrase "vague requests for “better standards support” are not as useful as a specific example of what you'd like to see" is completely redundant Dave. There are not multiple approaches to standards support, nor is there anything even slightly "vague" when it comes to standards support. The w3c standards are a specific, definate, and static set of rules which you simply must comply to. When pages displayed in IE begin to look like they should, and as they were written to be, then you have succeeded.

Hints: Get rid of MS-XML, MS-CSS, and any other proprietary rubbish which is in there, it is really, truly ruining the internet for everyone.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 1:26 AM

The things I'd most like to see, as a user of IE (among other browsers), and which I didn't see in previous comments are:

1 Persistence of basic state of a user's session(e.g. at least a list of windows with the URL for each), so that it's easy to resume working after a crash/outage. (See Opera for an example of this.)

2 Efficient and configurable keyboard interface to web pages IE itself. (See w3m, lynx and elinks for various examples.)

3 Support for custom edit controls for text fields (and possibly other standard fields), e.g. to allow controls based on vi or emacs to be plugged in to replace the awful edit control that's currently used. (I don't know of any browsers that support this.)

4 Caching of the final output of pages, so that previous pages generated by scripts can at least be viewed, if not modified. It annoys me to no end that I often can't click the back arrow to look at the previous page if it was generated by a script, etc.

5 Simplified browsing, for slow/small systems, slow displays (e.g. RDP connections over a modem) and, yes, even text terminals. (See the links browser, in graphics and text-only modes, for an example of this.)

Apart from these, previously-mentioned features like offline script support/caching, window tabs and zooming would be most welcome.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 1:36 AM

How about fixing the bug with the address bar that means:

mail.idnet.net.uk:8000

...always has to be typed

http://mail.idnet.net.uk:8000

This alone would save millions of man hours for network engineers who regularly have to type web addresses with non-standard port numbers?

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 1:44 AM

Why are you continuing IE development? Surely that's just a cost for microsoft that has no return on Investment. If a better browser is needed, why not just ship firefox with it? It doesn't cost anything. Why would people choose IE over better browsers? Cheers.

# 12 specific requests for the next MSIE @ Monday, June 21, 2004 1:59 AM

1- Popup blocking

2- Tab browsing

3- full PNG support

4- Entire CSS2.1 support. Opera in its own website
http://www.opera.com/docs/specs/#css
claims that its Opera 7.5 support entirely CSS2.1: so this is a reachable goal.

5- Make text size scalable, even if the web author chose absolute length units instead of relative units for CSS font-size. This is a well-known accessibility burden for MSIE and its users.

6- Fix known and documented CSS bugs. There are plenty of websites with demo pages, explanations covering this area. Consult webstandards.org if you need help. There are a few CSS test suites also identifying flaws, spec violations and bugs in MSIE

7- scrollable tbody and wise printing of table sections
"(...) This division [THEAD, TFOOT and TBODY elements] enables user agents to support scrolling of table bodies independently of the table head and foot. When long tables are printed, the table head and foot information may be repeated on each page that contains table data."
HTML 4.01, section 11.2.3 Row groups: the THEAD, TFOOT, and TBODY elements

8- Implement DOM 2 Events

9- CSS selectors support

10- Give entire veto power to the users when it comes to windowFeatures (like chrome bars presence and browser window functionalities like resizability) of secondary window generated via window.open() calls. There is nothing more frustrating than a poorly coded link that creates a crippled window (non-resizable and without scrollbars).

11- Drop support completely for "javascript:" pseudo-protocol links

12- Implement a feature which will report back to the user if a page uses valid code, has markup and/or CSS errors: some sort of a Webpage Quality indicator icon (smiley for valid page, frown when invalid) on the statusbar (or somewhere else) which when click can report more info to the user and give him more options among which one would be to validate the page with the W3C validator.
W3C HTML 4.01 specs recommend browsers to notify users about markup/syntax errors in pages:
"We also recommend that user agents provide support for notifying the user of
such errors."
http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/appendix/notes.html#h-B.1

DU

# (Pseudo) HTML Validation @ Monday, June 21, 2004 2:02 AM

This might have been mentioned already, but: How about a little red "error on page" icon in the corner that appears when a page is non w3c compliant?

There are a lot of non-compliant pages on the web. This makes life difficult for people in a variety of ways (eg web->speech tools).

The reason why web pages continue to be poorly built is because browsers still continue to accept them. Clearly, neither Microsoft or anyone else are going to build a browser that rejects that masses of sites that are poorly formatted.

So if there's just a little warning icon in the corner, no one is prevented from seeing content - but to avoid the "shame of the red icon", developers will make/fix their pages to be more compliant.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 2:13 AM

Tabbed browsing please :'(

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 2:19 AM

- Tabbed browsing is a must! :P
- Pop-up blocker
- Download manager. Show the files wich you have downloaded.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 2:25 AM

I use MozillaFirefox (Windows+Linux) for all, because I can't support an Browser, how is not standard compatible. Mozilla must be sucess to bring standard into the web.

1.) Don't support IE6 anymore.
2.) Build an new Browser with only XHTML + CSS compatibility
3.) implement SVG native
4.) Break compatibility with ActiveX (Security + No-Standard) und JScript und other Microsoft "standards"
5.) Full CSS 2 and XHTML 1.1 support.
6.) Maybe OpenSource like WIX
7.) Maybe use Gecko engine.
8.) Bring new Browser to the people and don't support older IE versions. Warnings on Webpages.
9.) Bring www.microsoft.com w3c compatible, not that unusable quirkshtml you use now

Mozilla had need 4 jears to bring up an new Browser, so an fast way is to use the new implementation Gecko. Maybe I will support IE in future, but actually the IE is dead.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 2:31 AM

keep the UI simple!!! i don't like such an UI:
http://www.myie2.com/images_screens/full.gif

It's terrible with all the features and stuff.. They are very rarely required but take a lot space!

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 2:35 AM

The best what you can do with IE is to mv src/ /dev/null ;-) If you will do it, you will have milion of fans alll over the world ;-)

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 3:04 AM

My suggestion: Just use Gecko as the rendering engine. That will save you development time and it will introduce standards compliance immediately. No prioritising necessary.

You could even support the development of Gecko by contributing code to the Mozilla project!

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 3:04 AM

Is THAT HTML?

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.microsoft.com

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 3:55 AM

I'll skip the obvious ones that everyone has mentioned (tabs, proper CSS2 support, etc.).

Store cookies in a single file like Mozilla and other browsers do. Having cookies as individual files can cause performance issues when using roaming profiles. I'd rather download one small file, rather than hundreds or thousands of 1 KB files.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 3:56 AM

Seperate IE from the OS.

Sure it's nice as hell to be able to type in a web-address into windows explorer, but it's unnecessary.

I'm also sure that the security of IE would be greatly enhanced if it was a bit further away from the OS.

.. i suppose what i'm trying to say (like a lot of the others) - is learn from firefox.

I think losing a bit of functionality in-place of security is also a must. Every week we hear about another IE exploit, or the ability for a webpage to execute foreign code through IE.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 3:59 AM

Not in any specific order:

- border: 1px dotted; Make it dotted, not dashed.
- CSS Inheritance is flawed - saying td{font-size: 70%;} should give font size 70% of the parent container, not the root container.
- Handle the sum of 'margin' and 'padding' correctly - stop unnecessary scrollbars
- Show us the mime type that the server is giving to the browser in the page properties dialog so asp / php developers can see that their 'doctype' declaration isn't having the desired effect! (need to programmatically send the correct headers)
- Bring MSHTML output into the 21st century and add support for XHTML transitional and strict output.
- Fix sub 1.0 'em' font sizes so that scaling them doesn't have such a dramatic effect.
- Fix scaling on absolute font sizes
- Add support for <abbr> tags (accessibility issue)
- Add support for turning off styles and images
- Don't worry too much about tabs. Go for the root cause of the 'too many windows' problem instead: Add option to force links to open in _same_ window - perhaps via keyboard shortcut as you currently have for the opposite effect (shift-click)
- Don't automatically adjust properties of parent containers to fit child elements.
- Support expansion of 'title' attributes in links etc. (By tooltip, perhaps?)
- Support form label 'for' attribute.
- Generally, if you support standards well, then issues like accessibility will become less of an issue... and MSHTML is pretty flawed right now (See all the myriad WYSIWYG editors available right now - none of them are brilliant).

Just a little to be going on with...

For now, I use Firefox whenever possible (Whenever the web developer has tested in anything other than IE)

Cheers,
Mick

# Technically Speaking » Microsoft is Getting the IE Band Back Together @ Monday, June 21, 2004 7:09 AM

Technically Speaking » Microsoft is Getting the IE Band Back Together

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 4:14 AM

It will be nice to have tabs (as somebody already noticed - this is reason why I do not use IE so frequently) and shared favorites (shared (maybe just shared part of favorites not whole favorites) between two computers - or posibility to synchronize it with some location).

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 4:51 AM

It does seem like a terrific idea to bring back the original development team. Since it has been a number of years since the browser has been developed last, I am sure that there has to be many good suggestions out there to be included in a new release.

# The power & responsibilities of the IE team @ Monday, June 21, 2004 4:58 AM

It's very important to remember that Internet Explorer is STILL the most used web browser out there. This means a lot of power, and with huge power comes huge responsibility.

When I say responsibility - I don't mean that the team should refrain from making changes. On the contrary; the team should, in my opinion, drive a global effort that will improve things around the web. After all, with their power, The IE team has the ability to change the face of the web, and it should do so to the better, Even if it means a new IE update will brake some sites!

If we take this to the extreme (just for the sake of argument), imagine a new update is released which makes IE abolutely standards compliant. MS employees help standards commitees finalize their drafts, get them aproved and accepted, and go for it! This means supporting CSS3, DOM Level 2, XHTML 2, XAML, SVG, Transparent PNG, and so on.

For the sake of support staffs around the world, End users will have the option to switch between the old style IE and the new style IE (via the "Set program access and defaults" panel).

This will obviously push webmasters around the globe into a positive course of actions, while nobody can possibly object to this change because it will be well understood that changing to a more standard format is an effort that will pay off, both in the short term and in the long term.

And hell, if we take this even more to extremes, why not fight the NIH syndrome (NIH = Not Invented Here) and just write an MSHTML wrapper for Gecko? After all, it is already a superior renderer. Why not just have Microsoft sponsor the mozilla foundation, which has produced wonderful results, have the MS team join the Mozilla team, and use Gecko? Would it not be MUCH simpler to do this rather than starting to dig into explorer's code base?

Just food for thought...

Skaag

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 5:16 AM

Speaking as a developer what about a javascript profiler as seen on Mozilla?

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 5:19 AM

Depending on what you are trying to do, there already are ways to use Gecko in place of WebBrowser control.

Are you kidding ? MS fighting the NIH syndrome ? Yeah, right. Dave Massy will be the first one to lose his job.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 5:20 AM

1)Tabbed Browsing
2)A Control in the internet options to restore the special "IE" desktop icon if it is accidentally deleted.
3)Better Cache Management,Folders for site names instead of Random x4tw34ae folder names.
4)Support for resume broken Downloads.

# How about the User? Save background images @ Monday, June 21, 2004 5:20 AM

I would like the "save" feature to include web background images from CSS. I currently switch from Firefox or IE to Opera to save pages completely.

# Forget the features - improve the user experience. @ Monday, June 21, 2004 5:24 AM

It's so easy to get blinded by features and what is happening behind the scenes. What makes or breaks any bit of software is not the code but the user experience, that is the bits people use.

IE works because it nicked the simplicity or the Mosiac browser (nothing wrong with that).

If I was doing a new version of IE I would start by looking to clean up and improve the interface, get some top user interface and usability people on board and base your project like that.

Things that can be greatly improved...

Adjusting settings. Very clunky.
Favourites - really need to be able to organise them easily and be able to share them.
A quick and easy way to maintain a favourites page would be cool and be able to send people your favourites.

Organising buttons links, the moving windows around /docking and undocking may be great if your're a techy but not good for the average user.

Other things already mentioned - the way if you're typing in a url it will be overwritten by the brower at times - awful.

Also auto completion. If I type in wwww.asite.cmo then it's fairly obvious I mean www.asite.com. I also don't want to go to web page to tell me this.

You'll get the request for skinning and other stuff but that's really not important.

Above all it needs to be kept SIMPLE. Make sure you add no wizards, none of the so called usability improvements you'll find in word, that program needs to be striped down and started back form basic principles to be usable again.

So design the user experience first before you start worrying about all the great techie stuff. After all this is why people love apple stuff, not because they have better programmers (and I personaly would say they probably don't).

Cheers

Stew Dean (stew(at)stewdean.com)

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 5:36 AM

i have not use ie for 2 years now since i have discovered firefox. there are lots of good feature on firefox and my favourite is the popup blocker and the browser follow webstandards.

please make the new ie follow webstandards too and also no more propriety tags.

cheers,
leonard.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 6:00 AM

JPEG 2000 Support would be very nice.
Wavelet compression is hot!

# Internet Explorer not dead after all? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 9:09 AM

Slashdot had this tidbit:

# Wide platform availability @ Monday, June 21, 2004 6:16 AM

There has been a lot of talk of Microsoft no longer making versions of Internet Explorer for older operating systems. There has even been some mention it would only be released for Longhorn. I've no idea what time of time schedule we're looking at for development of a successor to Internet Explorer 6.x, but I do think it should at least become available to people running Windows XP and Windows 2003. It would speed up implementation greatly when it was offered though the currently available channels like Windows Update.

Most of you will remember how long it took to get rid of the fourth generation of Netscape browsers, which in my opinion has kept developers from embracing new available technologies like CSS for a long time. Restricting availability of a new Internet Explorer will most likely have similar effects.

# //beconfused » junk//two @ Monday, June 21, 2004 9:16 AM

//beconfused » junk//two

# IE WishList @ Monday, June 21, 2004 6:18 AM

1. Proper support for all of the CSS-2 and CCS-3 attributes. One of the bes examples of this is with proper CSS-2 and CCS-3 support its possible to impliment a menu system, with not one ounce of javascript.

2. Please, Please, Please standardize on Java/ECMAscript support...having to support two different implimentations of Java/ecmascript for every site vistior is just too much of a pain. Be the Bigger party and make your Javascript engine work the same as the mozilla/netscape javascript engine, so I can write one script.

3. Since Outlook express is tied into IE and usually gets upgraded in an IE upgrade I'll toos this in...Yenc decoder support...for Yenc'ed binaries.

4. I know its a vauge way to state it, but Better standards support period...Use the RFC's on the w3c and follow/impliment everything just as it specifies, support everything at least through those made official as of this past March 2004.

William E. Dunn Jr.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 6:19 AM

My Wish List

Rounded Border Styles
I would sincerely like to see a rounded border-style which would once and for all put an end to all those stupid table and CSS hacks (innovative but archane and IMHO, unnecessary).

Would offer nice backward compatability ( those browsers that don't understand border: rounded simply display the standard squared off stuff we see today)

SRC="url" for most tags
You should be able to specify src tags for almost every tag. For instance <div src="some-included.html"></div> This of course could be dynamically changed by javascript just like current image tags can be. Unlike images this should probably be restricted to the current page's host to prevent abuses (the same way javascript is restricted to the serving host, for the same reason).

Bring back VRML at least a little
Bring back VRML a little, just enough to draw circles and boxes and lines on the screen where you want them and tie them into javascript to give more dynamic tools.

Give us control over printouts.
Give javascript the ability to modify printed page headers (Let the user over-ride and restore the defaults from the print preview page but otherwise give us the ability to set the page headers and footers from javascript).

Tabbed Browsing
As far as the browser itself, tabbed browsing would be welcome ( especially since mozilla has that horrible must use an entire line per toolbar interface, the ability to put a tab toolbar on the same horizontal as another toolbar would be very welcome).

RSS feed subscriptions.
Give us the ability to have an RSS favorites folder. RSS is here, lets recognize it! Give the favorites a special RSS subscription section (and even a sidebar as well)

Download manager
Download manager!!! Who needs to say any more?

Plugin Manager
I want a plugin manager! If a plugin wants to run I want to be able to decide if it runs or not. In addition to improving security it also gives me a way to block flash from playing unless I want it to be playing (no more in-your-face-cover-up-the-entire-page-for-20-mins ads).

Enhanced textboxes.
Give us an enhanced textbox which gives us great editor features (like this message board!) by default!

# let's get rid of malformed pages @ Monday, June 21, 2004 6:30 AM

Let's face it, it's not just the fault of MS/Netscape that the web we work in is so broken: Bad web developers are to blame also. Browser accepting badly malformed pages opened the gates for that one...

I can understand that you do not want to break existing pages (even malformed ones), but how about adding "This page contains malformed HTML"-logo in the status bar when the page is really bad - maybe this would be an incentive for the lazy developers out there.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 6:36 AM

How about reporting user proper user agent, not being a Netscape 4 compatible browser. Something like

Internet Explorer/6.x (...)

and not

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; ...)

# Microsoft's changing its mind about Internet Explorer? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 9:40 AM

On Slashdot, there's a blog post about Microsoft re-constituting its Internet Explorer development team. There's even a wiki section for posting feedback on the development site Channel 9. Is Microsoft considering to re-enter the browser wars with the eme

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 6:40 AM

An addendum...

CSS style :hover works only with links in IE, it should work on any style.

Javascript should have some mechanism to read a file from the host server (security enforced) on demand and assign the file to a variable. Technically this can be achieved if the SRC tag is added to DIV and SPAN (javascript changes the SRC of a DIV, div gets the file, javascript then does an innerHTML or innerTEXT to get the results), but a javascript ability would be more asthetically pleasing.

Enhanced Textboxes was written in a rich text editor on the channel 9 message board and when I meant enhanced editor features I was referring to a built in rich text editor like channel 9 and MSN's group pages.

XML skins, shoot even offer a mozilla skin compatability mode how evil would that be? :)

One of my favorite google toolbar options (and in SP2 the only reason I still keep it) is the autofill button that lets me quickly and easilly fill in web forms. I'd like to see this in a new IE with the ability to have "profiles" so I could select which profile to use (a real one for commerce sites I really am using, and a fake profile for nosy demographic sites like a news site I hit on a linke but which will more than likely never visit again).

A cookie manager would be nice.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 6:49 AM

I only hope IE will adhere to web standards. No more embrace and extend, please!

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 6:54 AM

Work with the Open Source community -- not against it.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 7:14 AM

This blog is really long & I don't have time to read all 20 pages, so this may have already been mentioned....I'd LOVE to see the ability to <easily!> turn off IE's plug-in/ActiveX Control download dialog that introduces so many spyware/adware programs. I've known literally hundreds (maybe thousands) of people over the last few years whose computers were brought to their knees with these programs. Of course, there are legitimate plug-ins...Flash, etc. But the average non-techie user should easily be able to discern between the good and bad without having to get a CS degree to understand. Spyware/Adware is as bad to users (and business!) as SPAM...it must be taken care of and IE in its current state does little to nothing to handle this. I hear some good news about XP SP2 doing more to handle it, but we'll see. OR...maybe the government will pass a law allowing linching of these spyware/adware software writers....that would be enjoyable. Thanks!

# CSS Edge @ Monday, June 21, 2004 7:23 AM

OK, here's what you need to do. Wander over to CSS Edge, take a look at all the parts of the CSS model that don't work right with IE, and then fix them.

Oh, and certainly fix the PNG rendering. If I can screw around with non-standard CSS behaviour: to poke some ActiveX control into rendering a PNG right, there's no reason at all why IE couldn't just do that itself for every PNG it saw. Really, that is absurd.

# Dave Massy and Internet Explorer - A revival? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 10:25 AM

I can't say what specifically caused this, but Dave Massy has returned to the Internet Explorer team (blogs? Scoble? Wikis?). Internet Explorer essentially was put in a hibernation mode at Microsoft, with a few new additions added to XP SP2, and

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 7:45 AM

You should redesign the internet settings UI.
Currently it is far a way from usable.

Put all pricay related settings below one tab
-forms, passwords and addresses autocomplete settings.
-history
-cache (option to turn off disk cache would be nice)
-cookie settings

Also simplify security settings.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 8:38 AM

Better resistance against Browser Hijackers is definitely something that should be considered. As a member of a security related webpage we have dozend of customers with problems related to Hijackers.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 8:45 AM

Currently using Firefox for it's accessability features. Very easy to configure "High Contrast" (white text and black backgound) in Firefox and then to alter hypertext links to show; and then switch back. Would like IE to have the "CTRL +" to increase font size feature of firefox. Would like to be able to save settings for use between Office and home PC.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 9:16 AM

One thing that I would like to see in IE is speach-to-text. The speech SDK has really changed my life. I find that I can copy/paste articals that I find on the web and have it read the artical to me. This way I can work on other stuff and still listen to articals that I would not have the time to read. I would be cool to just highlight text in the browser and click a read button.

Richard Todosichuk

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 10:01 AM

I have a relatively simple request. Why doesnt IE load the favicon.ico correctly? Can this be fixed. It should be a simple fix.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 10:12 AM

The concept of standards support should be simple.

http://www.mezzoblue.com/zengarden/alldesigns/specialeffects/

http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/

When IE renders everything from those two pages correctly, you should be most of the way there.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 10:36 AM

Alright, now a whole bunch of you want things that really shouldn't be implemented. Things that will go against standards compliance, and make IE even more proprietary, what good is that? Do you want to be visiting pages that have functions that ONLY WORK IN IN? I don't.

About the obsession with tabbed browsing, if it was implemented like Mozilla is, then you can open new links in a new window or a new tab... That way you can still have you long list of however many pages in your Windows XP taskbar.

Also, all of you are just mentioning, make it a clone of Firefox, thats what we want. Why not just use Firefox then?

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 11:26 AM

It would be great if IE could be uninstalled.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 11:37 AM

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# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 11:55 AM

My sweetest dreams for a Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 are made of tab browsing and spell checking inside text forms (like the one I'm using to type this message). And why not a download manager... It's been a long time I dream about this, but so far only Firefox fulfills my dream. Oh and you can also add to the wishlist one great feature of IE6 Beta, the contacts list inside a dedicate panel... Man that would rock !

# Please fix JS/DHTML bugs and nonstandard behavior @ Monday, June 21, 2004 12:07 PM

CSS problems, PNG rendering, and whatnot have been covered already, so I'll just mention IE's particular behaviors that annoy me. As a web developer working on applications that need to behave in IE 6 and Firefox, I find Firefox much easier to deal with.

1) IE should stop putting all named objects in the global namespace.
2) I wrote a function to populate a select box, taking a reference to the box as one of its arguments. Calling this function from a parent window on a select box in a child window will cause IE 6 to throw bizarre errors and usually crash. Firefox populates the select box as expected. I'd be very happy if this nasty bug were fixed.
3) Dynamically created form elements need to be accessible through the form's object collection. It's annoying and redundant to have to give these both a name (so the CGI script can process them) and an ID (so IE can access them once they're in the document).
4) If I use JS to set a textarea's value to null (with no quotes), IE 6 actually puts the word null in the textarea. If that were what I wanted, I would have put the word in quotes. The browser should not reinterpret reserved words in such a manner.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 12:08 PM

Oh and add to it better cache management like when I click back all the contents of the form i was filling don't disappear... And you know what, there's that thing called OE that seriously needs to be udpated !!

'Why not just use Firefox then?'

That makes me wonder... IE is used by over 90% of PC users but since the last months more and more people are using Firefox because it's definitely better with more features. At some point Microsoft will lost its leadership on the browser market. That's why you need to come up with a better IE that includes acclaimed features like the ones in Firefox and innovate on some other points. IE is a standard for many novice users that'll never look elsewhere. Those users deserve a better browsing experience for better productivity. I do believe having tab browsing is a gain of time. Essentially what I'd adore is a IE that can save a profile where all my important sites are opened every morning when I arrive at the office. I check them all clicking the tabs, close the ones i'm no longer interested in, avoid the mess in the taskbar with that stupid windows listing feature of XP, and keep an eye on the most important sites while doing my daily chores. That's productivity, that's ease of use, that's how Microsoft software should be : powerful, innovative yet simple to use.

Making a clone of Firefox isn't negative. That's not because someone invented the icons that the others shouldn't or that people should stick with the creator of the initial thing. I mean Firefox is nice but it still has a lot of feature bugs (much more than IE), it's getting constantly updated, it's not that stable, I mean this is a power user thing. IE is something stable (except for security breaches maybe :)) : something one would like to be more powerful to continue using it rather than looking for alternatives that aren't designed for the average users.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 12:35 PM

- gind as you type (Opera does this really well: typing ".xyz" will find "xyz" in the whole document (F3 finds again), ",xyz" will find "xyz" in the links on the page)
- tabbed browsing (maybe configurable, as an alternative to non-tabbed browsing) and session management (e.g. save the set of open pages when I close the browser, reopen the pages, when I restart the browser)
- real Zoom (ideally using the + and - keypad keys)
- place the cursor into the address bar when I open a new window
- undo functionality for accidentally closed windows/tabs
- make the search shortcuts in the address bar (e.g. g for google, etc) easier configurable

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 12:37 PM

Multipart MIME support over HTTP would be great. Netscape does this, it's considered optional by the standards, and it would greatly ease the pain of dynamic images with dynamic text content, which currently requires having the browser make multiple requests.

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

This will be an echo of many previous posts, but more votes is better...

1. Tabbed browsing.
2. CSS support. Sorry, but Mozilla/Firefox is now the standard for CSS support. Be as good as them. If you're going to be different, at least match the CSS standards from w3c, otherwise IE will still be seen as "broken".

Sadly, on Windows I think I would still use IE only for Windows Update. But at least I would have no reasons to hate it.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 1:55 PM

I hope IE will not have tabed browsing. But if they put it in there I hope they give a way to disable it. Things I would like to see in IE would be a way to search for a favorite place, and a download manager.

# mac ie @ Monday, June 21, 2004 2:18 PM

How about a single version for Windoze, OSX, Linux, Solaris, etc. Surely the biggest competitor is Mozilla, which works identically on each of these platforms. I am not a mac user, but have spent many hours battling with the differences between the major differences between ie on the mac and on windoze. If I were M$ i would take a leaf out of apples book and make a khtml browser. Why bother revamping a third rate browser when at least 2 good and free implementations exist. I guess if M$ took that line they would ditch windoze and do a linux distro ;-)

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 2:58 PM

And of course, do not forget support for scandinavian characters in domain names

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 3:52 PM

1. I would love to see an easy bug report system. Similar to what Apple has done with Safari. One click on an icon and you can submit a report with screenshot. This to me would be an awesome feature that IE needs. This way Microsoft gets only IE bugs and doesn’t have to sift through all the other error reports Windows generates.

2. IE engine is slow when compared to others such as Opera and Firefox. I would like to see it become faster. Along with showing a more attractive progress bar. Something someone can find useful. For example something that displays the time till the page is fully loaded (including flash movies or any other type of media).

3. A completely new UI. The same look just doesn't drive people towards it.

4. Support for complete themes.

5. Support Toolbar (easy access to certain bookmarks right below the address bar).

6. Intergraded search bar right next to the address bar. Where users can EASILY add any search engine they want. That also keeps a small history of what searches you did.

7. A way to manage History, Saved Form Information, Saved Passwords, Cookies, Cache, and Download Manager History all in one central location (I shouldn't have to jump around under settings to find it).

8. Secure password and other information reminder feature.

9. A Download manager that lets you resume, stop, add things to download, reload transfer, etc…

10. A version of IE built with Security & Privacy in mind.

11. Bookmarks manager and easy access to bookmarks manager. Perhaps a small (tasteful) icon on the browser that opens in into a new tab. That can import from every browser be it Opera, Safari, Konqueror, Firefox, Netscape, Mozilla, etc…

12. Text increase and decrease feature.

13. IE render pages correctly according to the web standards (http://www.w3.org/).

14. Built in spell-check & grammar for forums, message boards, etc... Maybe have it connect into Office Word?

15. Tabbed browsing!

16. Transparent PNG support.

17. Support a larger number of webpage characters. For example IE doesn’t support some mathematical symbols. While Mozilla and Opera support almost all of them.

18. The ability to log in to all my Web sites (currently saved my login and password) with one password.

19. Please add some nice eye candy

# gregorybowers.com: talk talk » The Slumbering Giant Shifts in His Sleep @ Monday, June 21, 2004 7:05 PM

gregorybowers.com: talk talk » The Slumbering Giant Shifts in His Sleep

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 6:04 PM

Firefox is not yet at Version 1, IE is at Version 6.. I'm just saying, instead of saying make it exactly like Firefox, note the features you like in Firefox...

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 6:06 PM

"19. Please add some nice eye candy"

Right, that will make this program more useful...

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 8:13 PM

This has to be the biggest load of crap I have ever heard. My BULLSHIT Meter is at 9.7 that maxes out at 10. People are really gullible. Stick with the competition.

BTJustice

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 8:44 PM

Man, try to make IE look like Moz.FireFox
-> it's simple
-> it's compatible
-> it's almost a standart
-> it's free

Do Ie cross-plataform (like win+Lnx+mac) and open code to msdn community...

i'ts so easy to do, only if you want to recycle you code before release!

kisses in the ass
bazil

# mshtml @ Monday, June 21, 2004 8:56 PM

1. Add an uninstaller to IE
2. Decouple Windows Update from IE, make it a standalone app
3. Publish complete specs for the MSHTML engine, make it easy for MSHTML to be replaced with a Gecko- or Opera-based alternative
4. Make Windows work without the need for MSHTML (see 1)
5. XHTML 1.1, CSS 2.1, PNG, JPEG2000, everything else listed above

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 10:19 PM

One and only request, tabbed browsing...

Thanks,
S.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 10:58 PM

yay!!!

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 21, 2004 11:03 PM

If you want test cases, then use all the tests for CSS at (and pass them):
http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/Test/CSS1/current/

After that, implement CSS 2.X.

Full PNG support, and all the other recommendations. I just wanted to include the test cases for emphisis.

http://www.W3.org/ is your friend!

IMarv

# Dropdown-Lists @ Monday, June 21, 2004 11:04 PM

One little thing that would make IE more usable is to allow the "dropping down"-Entries of a Dropdown-List (<select size="1">) to be wider than the size of the control (if its width is limited by css-properties).

Tony Kapfenberger

# phpMyFAQ devBlog » New version of Internet Explorer? @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 2:31 AM

phpMyFAQ devBlog » New version of Internet Explorer?

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 12:00 AM

You guys really should take a look at MyIE2. Things like "URL alias", the "download control" and "mouse gestures" are features I can't live without. Not to mention the tabbed browsing, of course. :)

# Client Session Management @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 1:06 AM

We have been deploying web applications for a number of years now. Where possible we have adopted standards, how for transactional web based applications we have had to question the standard "CGI" model.

One thing we think that would be of massive benefit is client side session data (more than just cookies) support. Such that data can be held in the memory of the client. This would enable not having to write code to repopulate forms. Also would overcome the constant issue of Browser back buttons picking up cached forms (which then have to be expired so the server can represent the data).

If this is to be considered I would be happy to give you more requirements.

Dharmesh Mistry

# EXOTEC: CSS - Design | Typo3 - Hoster | CSS - Layout | Alexander Weber @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 6:03 AM

EXOTEC: CSS - Design | Typo3 - Hoster | CSS - Layout | Alexander Weber

# MyIE2 @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 3:26 AM

You should look into MyIE2. Its cool.

# <button> support @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 3:42 AM

CSS2, PNG, DOM, of course... non-sublucent <select>, surely...

But IE has some old and very annoying bugs with <button> tag.
1. Less annoying. <button> must be type="submit" by default.
2. More annoying. <button> should send to server not it's content, but "value" attribute.
3. Must annoying. If form has several <button> tags, only one (pressed) button should be sent to server (by analogy with <input type="submit"> behavior). Now IE is sending all buttons regardless to which to be pressed.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 3:43 AM

Dont be nice to bad (X)HTML or CSS coding. Let it break! If its not right it shouldnt be supported.

- Attribute selectors
- pseudo selectors (:hover on everything, :before, :after etc...!!)
- box model! (ok its better in IE6..)
- PNG's!
- drop proprietary CSS!

Did I mention that IE shouldnt try to fix broken HTML?

Full CSS 2.x support. Start implementing CSS 3.x now! And dont do it alone, talk to your compatriots in Mozilla/Netscape/Opera/Safari - really make it a web standard!!

Ok you have XAML and the like that you want to be proprietary, but please if you are going to support standards, try to make sue they ARE standard across ALL browsers.

If microsoft wants to take control of the browser market then it has to take the responsibility that goes with that.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 5:53 AM

My comments/requests (in no particular order):

1. IE won't let me resize all the fonts, this is a problem when designers have better eyesight than myself. IE 4 was good, it went a bit wrong with IE 5 and above. Mozilla works well in this respect: ALL fonts resizable.

2. Tabbed browsing. This is a huge revelation for browsing and I wouldn't go back to IE without it.

3. Standards compliance. Examples already cited above, basically check and double-check compliance at www.w3.org and engage with developers (focus groups/forums perhaps) to establish what should be supported.

4. Security. Drop (or phase out) all the ActiveX stuff, open up all code for peer review and conduct in-house audit too. There's no way I'd do online banking with IE.

5. Cross platform support. Browser itself should run on Linux in addition to current platforms. Any extension/plugin/scripting technology should be cross platform too. I use Windows and Linux so naturally Mozilla suits me better than IE at present.

6. Use a free/open source licence such as GPL or BSD. Commodity software like browsers does not sit well with limitations on distribution and usage. Open source is also necessary for security (and quality) peer review and community contributions.

7. High degree of ad blocking software needed. Mozilla is years ahead in this, I can stop scripts messing with windows and menus. I can block annoying animated GIFs, flash, Iframes etc. Adding pop-up blocking in XP sp2 is good but not nearly enough.

8. Ability to run multiple versions on the same machine. This can currently be done on Linux with Wine or Crossover, but not natively on Windows. The issue was address with IE 5 but subsequently ignored. The current result is that the 1% of my site visitors who use Mozilla are better supported than the 20% who use IE 5, simply because of the barrier to testing. (Before anyone responds, yes I do still support IE 5, just not was well refined).

9. Option to integrate better with Google and any other search engines.

10. Better range of SSL certificate authorities. Opera and Mozilla have far more choice available, it would make for a more healthy market if IE had updated these since IE 5.

By the way, IE is already a better FTP client than Mozilla in my opinion. This is the only good thing I can think of with IE at present, it hasn't had a significant update since IE 4 back in, oh, 1997 (IE 5 thankfully fixed a lot of bugs though).

# Want XForms @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 6:07 AM

Here's another vote cast for adding support for XForms to IE!

# Skylab » Toasted On One Side, Frosted On the Other @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 9:34 AM

Skylab » Toasted On One Side, Frosted On the Other

# Tighten up IE to not let non valid code pass through. @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 6:44 AM

" # re: Return of the xxxx? 6/16/2004 3:07 PM Paolo Marcucci

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

I don't agree. Of course nothing should be changed over a night but the biggest issue and what you can fix is the not valid code issue.

The way to go is to first adress that the IE team will work towards one or more standards
and then obviously get IE to support these without worrying about supporting old not valid code.

Daniel Oskarsson

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 7:05 AM

One of the things that makes Mozilla and other non-commercial browsers a serious competitor in my opinion are a couple of factors:

1. Attempting to adhere to web standards (W3C and crew). People don't want to spend hours trying to make their web page work and/or look right in a dozen different browsers. Don't provide functionality that isn't standard that will cause "Best viewed with ..." - petition the Consortium to adopt your great idea so that everyone can enjoy it.

2. Extensibility. I am not saying that this needs to be accomplished by being Open Source (though that's what I think), but having a regular joe smoe to "do it themself" is a G-R-E-A-T selling point.

3. Securi....now I won't go there

I am sure there are others but I am not a big advocate of holy wars.

Cheers
L~R

# The Next Internet Explorer @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 10:11 AM

A Microsoft employee happened to mention on his blog that he'll be going to work on the team building the...

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 7:25 AM

An interface that allows the user to drive any and all browser events from an external script would give IE a huge advantage over other browsers. This would make the browser testable, thus making it extremely attractive as a client not only for the web, but for other applications where a scriptable UI is desirable.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 7:28 AM

some of these have already been mentioned....

1) alpha PNGs
2) correct box model
3) :hover on anything
4) position: fixed;
5) CSS selectors a[href="http://"]
6) :before and :after
7) generated content
8) counters, maybe?

Jarek Piórkowski

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 7:56 AM

Here is some of my ideas. I am comming from an intranet perspective:

developer:
============
* full CSS 1,2 and 3 support (NO bugs).
* full XUL support (Mozilla).
* full XForms support (Mozilla).
* full ECMAscript 1,2,3 support (NO bugs).
* some ECMAscript 4 support.
* faster javascript (for loops)
* faster javascript create/delete tr/td nodes I would like to be able to sort a column with 50,000 rows by using javascript/dhtml. Must be done in 1/2 seconds on a +1.2 GHtz/256RAM PC
* must work with from WIN95 to XP/2000. If it isn't backward compatible, people will NOT use it

* First fix old-bugs (CSS 1,2,3 full support) before new ideas (XForms).

user:
========
* dragable tabbed windows / fixed tabs (Mozilla).
* copy other ideas from Mozilla.
* View/Text Size : zoom 1% - 500% (user defined )

Patrick Whittingham

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 8:02 AM

1) Drop down with Z orders
2) Javascript errors that help you find the error. Problems with the message such as wrong line number, vague mentions that an object is expected without telling any more.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 8:05 AM

I want popups the be cought inside the current browser window into an interface that allows me to view a thumbnail of the particular popup before I can click on it to open it. This could be in the shape of a sidebar which is closed by default and can be opened by clicking on it, where you will see the various popups available for that particular webpage.
Then some popups could be marked as "always show", and some as "always ignore".

As a webdeveloper I'm just interested in making things work with CSS2 (perhaps CSS3) and proper xHTML mime type stuff. No need to go in details, the x-number of replies above me already did ;)
Personally I suggest using the Gecko Engine and building your own features around it.
If Microsoft is not interested in such a thing then I'd suggest you build a new IE that allows the public to write updates for the browser that Microsoft merely has to publish into their Windows Update system. There are a lot of programmers out there willing to program new features in a browser if it makes it's way to millions of users - I know I am.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 8:07 AM

I'llsecond this too, how many times have we been asked if we would like to install the comet cursor?

Security, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE add a button to "never trust content from this publisher and ignore always" ...

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 9:06 AM

> 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.

I'd like to see a public database
for tracking bugs and feature
requests, a la Bugzilla. IMO,
this would lend itself very well
toward the sort of more specific
feedback you're looking for, and
also I credit Bugzilla with most
of the real advances we have seen
in the mozilla.org browsers. Due
to the larger number of people
interested in IE you probably
would have to have some kind of
moderation system wherein users
whom you've recognized as fairly
knowledgeable (maybe those who
have had some number of their
submitted requests accepted?)
could help prescreen the requests
and mark duplicates. Bugzilla
moved somewhat in this direction
in the 0.9.x era as the number of
people looking at it increased;
a similar database for IE would
probably garner even larger
interest, and so this would be
rather vital, I think. Still,
I think it's doable, and you
could harness the feedback of
your more knowledgeable users to
sort the comments according to
merit. (Perlmonks.org has a
system along these lines, where
users who have had their posts
upvoted many times get more
votes; something like that might
work very well. Your developers
then could look mostly at the
high-rated comments.)

As far as actual changes in IE
itself, the number one thing I
want as a web developer is the
PNG alpha channel. Make the
eagle/sun demo work like it works
in every other browser (Netscape,
Opera, Safari, Konqueror, Mozilla
of course, Firefox, they all get
it right these days). Support
for alternative stylesheets would
also be nice (and here you have
an opportunity to leapfrom the
other browsers, most of which do
not remember the user's choice
when going from page to page on
a site).

As a user, the two things that
prevent me from using IE on
Windows are the lack of tabbed
browsing (middle-click each link
to open it in a new tab; close
the current tab to go to the
next one in the queue) and the
lack of quick toolbar buttons for
common preferences like whether
to use the page colors or the
system colors, whether to load
plugins, and so on. Buttons for
these things on the toolbar would
be a really great option (though
they IMO should not be shown by
default; the user should have to
go into the preferences or into
a toolbar customization screen
and turn them on on a per-user
basis; otherwise end users who
don't know what they are could
get confused by toggling them by
mistake and not knowing what
happened or how to restore the
default behavior; Netscape 3 had
the load-images toggle on the
toolbar by default, and that was
a mistake).

There are many other things, of
course. If only there were a
public database or forum
dedicated to just this topic...

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 9:15 AM

I would love to see most of the above plus.

Additionally, please don't add more proprietry (x)html elements/attributes, css, dom methods etc.

Why not save yourselves the bother and distribute Firefox with Longhorn instead? It will save all the hardwork of writing a rendering engine to compete with Gecko, and would go a long way to redeem MS in the eyes of the prosecutors in the anti-competition lawsuits that have cost MS so much money over the last few years.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 9:24 AM

I use the IE control in a C# application that is used for testing. (The idea is to script user actions to truely test a web app, not just the back-end but the JavaScript and DHTML portions as well.) The API for interacting with IE is one of the more cluttered, complex, poorly documented APIs that I have used from Microsoft. Some basic focus on making a clean API would make a huge difference for embedding IE into 3rd party applications.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 9:30 AM

IE team please feel free to take
a look of the following sites,
they did much better and ms should
get some ideas from them and also please
also take care the unicode, doublebyte
fonts problems for the next IE Asia versions. thanks...

http://www.avantbrowser.com/
http://www.myie2.com/html_en/home.htm
http://www.crazybrowser.com/

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 10:22 AM

Dave,
Did you have any idea what you were getting into when you made this post? I can't believe that there are so many out there who have commented. They have already said everything that I needed to say and more. I think you've got quite a bit of work on your plate. Good luck catching up with Firefox! :)

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 11:47 AM

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/xul/

XUL Support

# Alpha PNG in style backgrounds @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 12:45 PM

I know that alpha PNG support has been beaten to death here and elsewhere, but it would really help. There are workarounds for image tags (and in some cases for style backgrounds), but not for when you want an alpha blended background that is positioned (say to the right bottom) since the alpha filter doesn't have a size of the image to do the right thing.

# Athentication PlugIns @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 12:47 PM

Oh yes, it can be done since IE already supports MS Passport, but it would be great to handle plugins for other 'single-signon' systems.

# TabS @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 12:53 PM

Can we please add Tabed Browsing, just like opera or firefox?

Another great idea would be to add Extension support or add ons to the browser from third parties

# Favicons: Persistence!!! @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 12:57 PM

It would great if Favicons didn't get flushed out with the cache. Like many users, i have huge folders of favorites.

For example, my blog folder has over a 100 organized by how regularly I visit (more common to the top, least visited to the bottom). It's much, much easier to search for a particular site knowing the Favicon than it is for the text.

Unfortunately, IE flushes away Favicons whenever my cache is cleared.

# Browser Upgrade @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 1:02 PM

Tabbed browsing is one of the only reasons I stopped using IE and went to Firefox. Firefox is a much better browser all around and until some major changes occur, IE will not win me back over.

Some of the features I feel that are need are:
- Tabbed browser
- Better management for favorites
- I would also like to see Athenication Plugins
- Better security! Even if it takes you ten years, do it right the first time!
- Give us more options during installation instead of defaults. (i.e. Instead of the Automatic Image Resizing turned on, ask us during installation)
- When going to a site that a lot of Plugins that automatically have IE ask the user to install, give us a feature to "Always Deny..." or "Never Trust..." as you have one that says "Always Trust..."

# It's Alive!!!! @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 1:07 PM

I congratulate you for getting back on this horse. We all thought it was dead.

After reading through the suggestions posted here, I would say that most of them have been heard before and well understood by the community. I think you can get some great community participation that will be more valuable if:

First, you put out an invitation to a core set of Web developers who are actively participating in promoting important Web standards to participate in this discussion rather than this nightmare of an open forum, where trolling is the sport of choice.

Second, I think Microsoft should be free to extend IE's capablities BEYOND Web standards in order to truly innovate. However, this cannot be at the expense of full (AND timely) compliance to recognized Web Standards.

My Guitar Amp, has great features not found in any other Amp - love it, but I am happy that my Guitar plugs into any Amp on the market. You get my point.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 1:31 PM

(1) Please use the Content-type from the server. You should not perform "content sniffing" if the server explicitly returns the Content-type. Don't cache the value either. If it's returned in the header, please use that value. As a previous developer of a server product that dynamically generated content of different types, I found IE's behavior brain dead.

(2) Eliminate multiple trips to the server when the content requires a plug-in. I.E., an SVG document.

# PNG Documents/Smaller Footprint @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 1:36 PM

Add full PNG support. It sucks not having them look correctly.

One of the reasons I enjoy Firefox so much is it's nice small coding. Internet Explorer is considered to be very bloated code.

Subtract lines to fix bugs, do not add another 100.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 1:38 PM

Tabbed browsing PLEASE!

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 1:40 PM

TABS! CSS Compliant! Auto-Prompt on ANY webpage install from a non-trusted site. NO MATTER WHAT! 'Lockdown' so it can NOT be hijacked. period. Make it work right, work safe, work fast. in that order. it's not brain surgery.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 1:42 PM

I agree with the earlier calls for IE to save files where you ask it to, instead of IE downloading them into the temp directory and copying them to the destination directory. That's why I've still got a copy of Netscape Navigator 3 on my box - it works that way (but its javascript is way too old...)

# IE is not only a web browser @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 1:44 PM

IE is more and more use as a user interface for in the professional field for a lot of reasons, the support of XForms will help to enhance its feature and accelerate 3-tiers application developpement.
I think it is a big priority, paving the way for the future XHTML 2.0 support.

About XSLT 2.0, Microsoft had clearly declared it will not support it in order to promote XQuery instead, althought support for XSLT 2.0 will include support for XQuery.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 1:46 PM

NO! IE does not have to properly parse noncompliant code. Thats what standards are FOR. If 3/4 of the developers didn't count on IE to cover their mistakes, standards would count. So go by them. You dont think it'd be easier to have a single standard? PuhLEESE. You dont think that webdesigners would make a BIG BUCK out of rewriting non compliant pages? Again, sorry, that won't wash. The standards are there. Tabs are doable. Speed you have already with still a little room for improvment. Now lockdown security so the browser cannot be hijacked, and you're back at 90%+ of the market. Don't? Ha. Every alternative browser user is potentially a linux user. Think about it.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 1:57 PM

Standards compliant!
Faster load time.
Tabs.
Pop-up blocking.
Reduce CPU and memory usage.
Skinnable.
Download Manager.
Allow for setting default for saving file downloads.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 2:01 PM

As another web designer, please count my votes for:

- full inline alpha PNG support (having a majority of users supporting this will change the landscape of web design)

- a fully (or at leasy WAY closer to) standards compliant box model (please don't tell me the largest software maker in the world can't swing this)

- of course, more CSS2-3 property support.

- new defaults: ActiveX disabled (not prompt) for non-trusted sites. Frankly, the only place I've seen any useful ActiveX is at this one site called Windows Update.

I'd rather see these all put in place before I see one single tab.

Thanks!

# Too little too late.... However,. @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 2:11 PM

Although not even tabbed browsing, proper CSS, png transparency, or better security will ever undo the damage that has been done to IE's reputation, I have some suggestions that may not have been suggested. Aside from all the bizarre rendering bugs that are WELL documented all over the net:

Please do not remove or break HTA support. That is vital to some applications.

Please, PLEASE: Don't let web developers get away with sloppy code. If they do not close a tag, don't forgive them. That breaks other browsers that don't permit sloppy coders to exist. Render it as badly as they code it, or as beautifully as they code it. No closing tag? No cookie for you.

Add custom toolbar icons, theming, and keep all downloads in one window or a special status bar. Include built-in ad-blocking, better password management, so that sites remember multiple usernames and passwords, without ever having to enter them again.

Add web development tools, like this Firefox add-on: http://www.chrispederick.com/work/firefox/webdeveloper/

Add built-in image zooming; want to get a closer look at an image? Right-click, Zoom in/out.

Add full-page zooming, while keeping everything to scale (except the scrollbar. nobody needs a massive scrollbar). Give the option for bilinear or nearest neighbour smoothing (or lack-thereof). Bilinear would be better for surfuers; nearest neighbour would be better for developers.

Let users rearrange the toolbar buttons anywhere, like Firefox. I think I'm done now.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 2:12 PM

Please add:

- proper PNG support

- a proper downloaded messenger (or at least proper resume downloading

- perhaps something like tabbed browsing

Only that would already make me love IE again.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 2:33 PM

Aside from better standards support

please add
- mouse guestures *see oprah or better yet myie2
- Tabbed browsing
- when you close it/it crashes it will saves all of the pages you were viewing
- code filtering *see The Proxomitron
- download manager *see opera

# IE additions/improvements @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 2:43 PM

##################
##################

Microsoft needs to keep its lead in the browser market by improving IE.. these things would improve IE drastically and might get many people to switch back to IE:

* Popup blocking

* Less memory usage

* Disabling ActiveX dialogs

* Taskbar icon being the new style (wtf.. IE6 has been out forever now and the taskbar icon still looks like IE5's)

* Make downloading files save/be written directly to where they are supposed to go.. not the cache first (I CANT STAND THIS.. it takes me forever to download a large file (say 3gb).. and im itching to open it, but IE has to copy it to the desktop first!)

* The annoying Links folder in Favorites wont go away

* tabs.. i dont use them but some people swear by them

A note on standards: I couldnt care less that IE doesnt follow standards (being a web developer myself, i always check my pages in other browsers)

* The search bar should be gone.. its horrible. it has no place.

* ie always (even though it tells me it wont) asks to play a .wmv in the browser. i want the .wmv to play in windows media player.. not in the browser.

I see the following features that have been requested above not important, or less important:

* web page zooming (useless.. use magnifier or screenshot and go into paint and zoom in.. duh)

* development tools

* toolbar rearrangements

##################
##################

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 2:50 PM

Tabbed browsing makes the browser look cheap. Please don't even consider it!

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 3:06 PM

I would have to say that better CSS2 support would be a wonderful addition to IE. I hate to program a web page and have to make it work around the various browers.

SVG would be another great thing to have support for. It would make it easier to place vector stuff in.

Transparent PNG is great too. I am not a big fan of transparent gif any longer since seeing the png

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 3:43 PM

Why is everyone requesting features that are already available in other browsers? Why do you need to beg for the features in IE? Why not just use the other browsers?

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 3:45 PM

Tabbed Browsing is a must!
And a "resume" and "pause" button on download windows.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 3:46 PM

Microsoft team: Download Opera, Fire Fox, and Avant Browser then see what a next gen browser is supposed to be like.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 4:07 PM

-The ability to clear the previous entries in the Address bar without knowing how to go to
10 levels of Windows Taskbar settings to clear it.

- the ability to disable sound JUST within the browers. I'm getting tired of BLARING web
ads that start in the background as a web page loads - especially with media player or Java!

- the ability to disable Java for a site or set of sites. I don't want to have to turn it all the way off, some sites don't load if you do that.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 4:11 PM

MyIE2 is much of where IE6 should have been at this point at the very least. MyIE2 is great because of the many things it has brought to the IE6 engine like the ability to turn on and use the gecko engine and interface tweaks. I like the tab system far better then in Fire Fox and its very customizable with plugins skins and the like much like the other guys making browsers. IE should have something like the view page plug in in MyIE2. Grouping favorites, an undo button to return to closed tabs/sites, and a built in highlighting tool for serches, the ability to clean cache, history, coockies and so forth. Make it as fast as a Hennessey Venom Viper with Twin Turbos going down a hill with a rocket straped to it.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 4:15 PM

"the ability to clean cache, history, coockies and so forth" (From the menu. Not having to dig into properties)

# re: IE suggestions @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 4:18 PM

Make it for Windows 98.

And 2000.

Add a download manager.

Give the user the ability to customize the icons depending on what visual style is used, on Win XP.

Add better CSS support.

Add better PNG support.

Add MNG support.

Improve cookiee handling.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 4:33 PM

Ability to remove specific entries from the address bar autocomplete.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 4:36 PM

Please see this link regarding various IE problems and workarounds and you will have a good start on understanding what to fix in IE.
http://www.mezzoblue.com/archives/2004/02/25/sidestepping/index.php
Please fix all the bugs and poor standards support in IE first, then add bells and whistles, etc.
Thank you,
Tom

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 5:35 PM

how about make it NOT suck.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 5:52 PM

IE should give the users more control:
1. the real address should always appear in the status bar when mousovering a link, websites should not be able to hide it with descriptions. this is important for the user's security. he need's to know what he is clicking on, for that same reason a user needs to have an option to prevent websites from blocking the right click and some other keys in the keyboard.
2. things like the color of the navigation bar, the side of it... users should have an option to prevent websites from changing it, to prevent websites from opening the search bar with their's site (like tripod do). users should also have an option to make all animation run only once, or not run at all, and to disable msg boxes, and have an option to always reject content from a specific publisher in those annoying script installation popups, not just always accept.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 6:35 PM

The main reason I switched from IE was pop-ups, and although I realize that it supposed to be fixed (somewhat) in SP2, I really can't stress how badly that was needed. Thanks a lot.
- I don't know how much sway you guys have, but if there was some way to standardize the rendering methods so that tables, pictures, etc. would all at least appear the same way, that'd be great. I know that when you talk about rendering you get into some competition problems, but there has to be some way to fix this.
- Also the aggravating bug with the address bar; when a page loads you're either put back to the begginnig of the text, or kicked out of it completely, CTRL+O just doesn't cut it.
- Tabbed browsing would be nice, but don't do it unless you also get some better ways of opening the windows. I use MyIE2, and. for instance, Launch.com's music player doesn't display properly because the window is designed to be a certain size. The one thing I miss while using tabbed browsing is that some windows just need to be separate, so then I use IE. What I'm saying is, don't force us to always use tabbed browsing for every window.
- Super Drag and drop, the single greatest feature in MyIE2. I know that all kinds of people will be mad, but it's so awesome, and frankly I won't switch back if it doesn't have it.
- A better way to manage installed plugins. I manage computers at a school, and once certain toolbars get installed, the effort involved to remove them just can't be justified. Forgive me if this is already in SP2.

One final word: thanks for making an effort on this. I just hope that you guys will have the manpower and funding to do more than a halfway job here.

Joseph T. Bradley

# Spell Check @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 7:52 PM

Spell check from within the browser al la Safari!

# "Explorer Bar contains an Internet Scrapbook tab that takes snapshots of Web pages for future reference" @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 7:59 PM

a scrapbook just link on the Mac version of IE...

"Whether you're searching for information, tracking online auctions, or browsing Web pages, Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 for Mac OS 8.1 to 9.x makes it easy to make the most of the Web. With Mac-first innovations — such as Internet Scrapbook, which lets you collect pictures, receipts, and more — Internet Explorer makes the Web easy and fun."

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, June 22, 2004 10:49 PM

Wow. Thanks everyone for giving great copy and paste ideas. There are other ways to improve IE without ripping off the competition.

INNOVATE, Microsoft. That's what you're good at. Don't follow in the footsteps of these other browsers. Don't follow these friggin stupid "standards". The web can be a better place, the W3C isn't doing it.

Innovate.

# Upgrade DHTMLEdit, merge with mozilla @ Wednesday, June 23, 2004 12:27 AM

Bold suggestion: use the same engine as mozilla, but merge in all good ideas from current IE and share the result with others.
And - of course - make it 100% standard, no less.

THAT would be something, 4 us, developers.

And, please, upgrade that DHTMLEdit component, it is getting old. We could use some better manipulation of selected text in jscript, like adding custom tag in the way 'bold' or 'italic' works.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, June 23, 2004 12:28 AM

>Don't follow in the footsteps of these other browsers.

I can't agree. Have a look at Opera and Mozilla (and its derivatives) and you know what you have to do. This ain't "vague".

There's no such thing as a "vague request for better standards support". The standards are right there. Have a look at them.

>INNOVATE, Microsoft. That's what you're good at.
Right. They were the first ones to support CSS (IE3). Now, only a few years later, please get it right.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, June 23, 2004 12:59 AM

Better SOCKS support. SOCKS5. Authenticated, preferably with the ability to do it securely, and server-side hostname resolution.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, June 23, 2004 1:26 AM

1.- Download manager, IE has this on the Mac since more than 5 years, why are Windows users threated as 2nd class citizens by the IE team ?
2.- Fix the download stuff, how many times does it find out the size of the download, then download only half of the expected size and still pretend the download have been fine ?!
3.- PNG support
4.- Zoom replacing large fonts, that actually works even with sites using CSS (yes there are several of these) to get larger text without having to use accessibility settings to ignore CSS !

Now if you really want to work, why don't we see improvements like we used to in the IE4 days ? it seems you're eighter scared of having a good browser (which might make Web apps as good as Windows apps), or just get into standby when the competition isn't too dangerous (only MS team I know that does this, remember how your competitors ends up when they play it that way).

Philippe Majerus

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, June 23, 2004 1:48 AM

You make a comment about IE having to display pages that are "not technically valid HTML".

How many of these pages are in "MS-HTML" and sport the "Best Viewed in Internet Explorer" icon?

There are well published and documented standards for HTML etc. Mozilla and Opera manage to display "not technically valid HTML" pages without issue - why are the ones with IE specific functionality an issue??

Because of IE specific functionality!

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, June 23, 2004 2:49 AM

I'm sure the guys who posted b4 me said every thing especially bugs and under the hood improvement ... but me need more imagination ... like for example "css AV" .. that make more exciting effects like giving text and pictures cinematic effects ... with Avalon I thing its possible and Giving a user a "movie like" experiance not "video game like" experiance.

samy "samy@sadeem.net"

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, June 23, 2004 4:56 AM

Pop-up stopper? Yes, but by-pass by pushing the control key. I want to allow some pop-ups

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, June 23, 2004 5:13 AM

I would rather not have to create a screenshot, paste into MS paint, then zoom into it, like some idiot suggested here. I asked for the full-page zooming not just for myelf, but for people with poor vision that want to see something closer in an instant, via a hotkey or toolbar button. It's for developers that are constantly editing and refreshing the page. The person who said that implementing features already in other browsers is "ripping off the competition" is AFRAID of competition. Afraid that IE will get good?

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, June 23, 2004 5:38 AM

balise <sex> or <adult> SVP :-)

option in explorer hidden adult content

<sex><img src=sex.jpg></sex> no visible
<sex> blablablabla </sex> no visible

please integre this balise html for all

thk :-)

PAP

# IE - Regurgitated? @ Wednesday, June 23, 2004 8:45 AM

Looks as if Microsoft hasn't forgotten about IE after all; they've appointed a new evangelist to the project, Dave Massy. Do you have suggestions for improvements? I know you do. To give them an ear full just mosey over to...

drowning at 2 feet sea level

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, June 23, 2004 6:21 AM

proper support for:
- application/xhtml+xml
- xhtml 1.0/1.1 (fix abbr for instance)
- css 2.1 (fix position:fixed, background-image on html, margin:auto, height relative to viewport)
- png alpha-transparency
- mng
- svg

fix double-margin bug, peekaboo bug

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, June 23, 2004 6:31 AM

Biggest Blog Evar!

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, June 23, 2004 6:46 AM

Please better Favorites Managment & add a funcionality to sync favorites with different computers

# IE Development not so dead after all @ Wednesday, June 23, 2004 10:28 AM

Although it has been common knownledge for a while that Microsoft are going to release an update to Internet Explorer this summer, it seems that the possibility of development beyond that is on the cards (via Nick Bradbury’s Blog)...

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, June 23, 2004 7:45 AM

How about making it so that when you have script de-bugging turned on, when you close the debugger, IE does not close too. It's great that I can find the problem, but when I close the debugger, why do I need to launch IE again?

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, June 23, 2004 8:01 AM

I think it needs a much better Download manager...one that allows you to pause, and restart downloads, and control the bandwidth they use. I also like many of the other suggestions such as tabbed browsing etc.

# re: IE Market Share... and Why It Matters @ Wednesday, June 23, 2004 12:22 PM

JonGalloway.ToString()

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, June 23, 2004 11:10 AM

My pet bug:

Steps to repro:
1) Navigate to http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/005353.html#005353
2) After it finishes loading, scroll to the bottom. Notice that the bottom matches the height of the sidebar on the left.
3) Click Tools:Internet Options.
4) Click OK.

Observed behavior:

The rest of the page is rendered.

Expected behavior:

The page renders fully without needing to use the Options dialog.

More information:

This is not the only site I've seen this happen on.

Garrett Fitzgerald

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, June 23, 2004 12:15 PM

My personal wish list since it would take quite a lot of features to switch back from Firefox:

- Tabbed browsing
- No more inventing tags and methods, stick to the W3C spec.
- Vague CSS Support :) (CSS3 too!)
- Download Manager
- Colour-coded Source Code
- A higher frequency of updates and an auto-updater
- Transparent Pngs
- SVG support
- An optional DOM inspector would be nice
- Page zooming ala Firefox and Opera
- Support for :hover in css in elements other than <A />
- Support for alternate stylesheets like firefox and mozilla
- Faster rendering

# MIME handling @ Wednesday, June 23, 2004 12:32 PM

As some have already noted on channel9 and here, MIME handling has always been a kludge in IE.

Take the "Content-Disposition" MIME header (RFC 1806 - june 1995) for instance:
* it did not work at all in IE4
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;182315
* it was a security issue in IE 5.5, 5.5 SP1, 5.5 SP2 and 6.0 (File Name Spoofing Vulnerability)
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS01-058.mspx">http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS01-058.mspx
* it did not work as intended in IE 5.5 SP1
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;281119
* it was a critical security issue in IE 6.0 (File Execution vulnerability)
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS01-058.mspx">http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS01-058.mspx
* it did not work in IE 6 SP1 with some UTF-8 encoding
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=F687AA7F-E6DA-4990-A63A-A162822A5C0E&displaylang=en

and on and on and on...

So could you please check that twice before releasing IE 7 (the only real solution being probably to solve that stupid "file name extension .vs. MIME instructions" precedence problem... good luck!).

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, June 23, 2004 12:33 PM

Oh and can we stop paragraphs and stuff "breaking out of the box"? If i tell the browser a certain div is 100px high then thats the size i want it. It shouldnt grow to accomodate the content unless i specify "min-height" (another css attribute not yet supported) instead of height, or even just height:auto;

# MIME handling @ Wednesday, June 23, 2004 1:01 PM

Sorry, I forgot that gaping vulnerability related to the improper handling of the "Content-Disposition" MIME header :
http://www.safecenter.net/UMBRELLAWEBV4/threadid10008/threadid10008-Content.htm

It is still unpatched even in the last released version (I haven't seen the latest RC)

# dave massy's the new IE evangelist @ Wednesday, June 23, 2004 5:11 PM

http://blogs.msdn.com/dmassy/archive/2004/06/16/157263.aspx...

anil dash's daily links

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, June 23, 2004 3:47 PM

Here's what I'd like:

1) Don't break existing HTML.

2) Support XHTML properly. IE 6 goes into quirks mode if you insert a proper xml declaration in a file!!

3) SVG inside a page. Transparent PNG's.

4) Proper XHTML editor. Trident/MSHTML is showing it's age. It also consumes thousands of hours of programmer time fixing the horrible mess that it makes.

5) Build on the frames idea. How 'bout this. I put in a reference to a toolbar at page top or side or both on a page. They appear, almost like part of the browser UI. No frameset but they have names and I can communicate to them and from them using client side code.

6) Give us decent controls in the browser. Toolbar, Heirachical Treeview, Squarified list...

7) Fix the weirnesses we get when using CSS. (The containment heirarchy introduces some weird and unpredictable side effects!) Then give us the missing features. You're the guys who fixed the scripting code model, you're the guys who had well structured source code, you can do this.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, June 23, 2004 4:29 PM

proper support Expectation for IE Next!

>XHTML:Support up to 2.0

>CSS:Support up to 3.0

>PNG:Full support

>MNG

>Tabbed browsing

>Download Manager

>The further performance and the further safety, brief UI

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, June 23, 2004 9:37 PM

Someone questioned the need for tabbed browsing by saying that you can simply "Alt+Tab" through the various windows just as easily. That may be so but when running a dozen apps and having 4-5 open browser wiindows at the same time, it just seems cluttered. XP's grouping of the windows on the Windows toolbar is helpful but I'd have to agree that tabbed browsing would be a must for me. Many of the standards related items are great but if you're asking what would make me use IE over FireFox or Apple Safari, you won't even get a second look from me if tabbed browsing isn't included. I'm a huge fan of the Safari interface which is plain and simple as opposed to the "mission control" approach of having as many options as possible crammed into the top half of the window.

# Yet another <button> bug @ Thursday, June 24, 2004 12:51 AM

In HTML code:
<button id="mybutton" value="myvalue">foo foo foo</button>

In JS/DOM code:
document.getElementById("mybutton".getAttribute("value")
Returns: "foo foo foo"
Should return: "myvalue".

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Thursday, June 24, 2004 2:54 AM

no order :

SVG,
good PNG support,
XUL compatible with mozilla,

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Thursday, June 24, 2004 6:37 AM

These things are MUSTS for the next version:

Full PNG support.
Better content-type detection, too many pages occasionally show as SJIS rather than iso-8859-1. (only seems to recognize correctly when specified as http-equiv with META)
Better standard compliance, so *nix users will never be forced to make special things just to make IE work (which doesn't run on their system). I've seen several sites forced to do this.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Thursday, June 24, 2004 6:53 AM

Fix the print capabilities in IE. Have you ever tried to print from this program? Headings are printed on one page, frames are broken into separate pages, etc....not pretty site!

forgotten_request

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Thursday, June 24, 2004 6:54 AM

"There isn't much to add"? What. The. Hell.

Internet Explorer is the worst web browser on the market. It's the big bad roadblock that prevents any significant progress from happening in regards to web standards.

# Here's a start @ Thursday, June 24, 2004 7:14 AM

IE's support for standards is so bad that a third party developer has tried to implement a DHTML solution in his spare time to save web developers everywhere from continuously jumping through hoops.

Here's his test suite:
http://dean.edwards.name/IE7/compatibility/

While the test pages will render correctly with IE6, they should do so *without* the hacks and DHTML workarounds provided through IE behaviours.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Thursday, June 24, 2004 7:49 AM

As a user, I wouldn't even think about using IE again until it has at least tabbed browsing and session management. No more will I clutter my screen with window upon window only to have them all crash and my entire session in the drain. Dave if I were you I would spend hours upon hours studying Firefox and Opera, reading forms and blogs, and understanding what folks needs are on both the user and developer side. Then prioritize.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Thursday, June 24, 2004 9:06 AM

I'd really like to see the end of Internet Explorer's dll error pages..

My computer always hangs for ages, and now days since windows updates, it just wont even load the proper error pages being called from a dll file. just keep it simple, custom html error files in the directory would be great too..

Something else I thaught would be good is a translator, either within the browser to translate forgin language text or refers us to a website translation page.

# Give us control and don't force-feed us @ Thursday, June 24, 2004 12:36 PM

I would like to have control over the sites I browse:

1) I do not want to be force-fed ads. I want control over what I want to see and what I do not want to see. For example, if an ad annoys me I want an option to permanently block the server that sent that ad to me.

2) I want to be able to stop the EXTREMELY IRRITATING and UNWELCOME Flash ads from the sites I visit. IE options currently available for controlling Flash are extremely unhelpful and frustrating. On the other hand, I want an option that lets me activate Flash again to see say a presentation I want to see.

3) I want to see gestures and rich kinematics like those used by Opera.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Thursday, June 24, 2004 8:44 PM

If you really want to improve how about allowing users to voto on bug fixes and features this will spee IE to being the browser useres and developer want not what MS thinks they want.
I vote for full w3c DOM compliance thta would save me hours each week and my clients thousands of dollars on the web sites I build for them.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Friday, June 25, 2004 3:19 AM

take a look at crazybrowser if you want some good ideas, it's an IE plugin browser.

# re: Return of the xxxx? Mmmm wait and see! @ Friday, June 25, 2004 4:01 AM

It would be an idea to dump all of the proprietry nonsense. One of the things that's killing the web is MS's previous insistance in coming up with proprietry code that only works in IE. Now that the market share is starting to swing the other way there really has to be a change of tack.

Obviously there will be a need to keep in support for the IE only junk that already exists but perhaps there could be an option for users to turn this off. Preferably this would be the default!!!

Stuart Colville

# A swift kick? @ Friday, June 25, 2004 1:18 PM

With Firefox 1.0 fast on its way to release, Microsoft has mysteriously woken and began speculating IE development. I say...

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Friday, June 25, 2004 4:06 PM

I say just abandon IE all together. I mean, kill the whole project and use Firefox instead. If you don't do that, discard all of the old IE stuff, and start over. IE is screwed as it is. I mean, if the next version of IE is as crappy as this one is, I can guarentee that you'll lose more customers to Mozilla, more than ever. Get rid of all that fake-html stuff that doesn't work in all browsers. Go by the books, don't just make up "filters" and junk.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Friday, June 25, 2004 5:15 PM

IE sucks big time

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Friday, June 25, 2004 5:22 PM

Internet Explorer as work great for me. I love it and will never switch. Myself and other have used it for years without any difficulty.

# IE Testing Tipps @ Friday, June 25, 2004 7:23 PM

I see several comments about needing the ability to script website tests in IE.

One tip that I would like to mention is the use of .HTA

Create a html page with a single frame and save it localy as main.hta. You can then write JavaScript code in it to interact with whatever page you show in that frame. The contained page is unaware of the outer shell. The hta page is not limited by cross site restrictions.

# BUGBUG @ Friday, June 25, 2004 7:30 PM

One problem that I have ran into a few times that would have made hta development for me easier.

If have a page that is well xml formated and I capture the element.innerHTML, the text is not correct xml. most attributes loose their encapsulating quotes. grr...

I spend extra time with regexpr reformating the text.

# Seriously, though - Gecko @ Friday, June 25, 2004 10:22 PM

You should give serious thought to scrapping Trident (like what happened to Netscape 4) and starting again. IE/Mac might be a good place to start. If not, just borrow any available openly-licensed layout engine - it can't be worse than Trident.

Greg K Nicholson

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Saturday, June 26, 2004 9:45 AM

1) proper PNG support (alpha channel)
2) support for MathML rendering
3) SVG
4) FOLLOW THE STANDARDS, even if they crash some some web pages!
5) Managed API
6) Developer extensions (like in FireFox), eg. DOM inspector, etc.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, June 27, 2004 11:28 PM

I've been using Opera for about a year now. Probably one of its best features is mouse gestures. Firefox has implemented it as well. It's something you can't do without once you get used to it. Please considering supporting that in the next version.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 28, 2004 4:58 AM

I see that a lot of other people have listed it already but I'll add my voice: SVG 1.2 native (ie mixed with other vocabularies simply by fiat of using the namespace) would truly be a very, very desirable feature And by that I mean SVG proper, not the small subset imitated in XAML -- it needs to also work on other browsers, on mobile devices, etc. Browsers need features that play well with the rest of the world, see how VML failed to achieve any traction.

Now I guess you might not want to do XForms because of Infopath, but SVG+XForms intertwined (with some XHTML) is the killer browser.

# xml @ Monday, June 28, 2004 5:43 AM

Please please make "view source" work on text/xml content also. That would be very nice for debugging.

And, again, 100% standard, 100% at least css1&2, ...

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 28, 2004 3:58 PM

I am very happy with IE6. I produce arcade style dhtml games. They run very fast on IE6 (much better than any other browsers). My hope is that the team doesn't mess too much with the rendering engine, since it seems very efficient.

I agree that tabbed browsing is a good idea. One thing I would NOT like to see implemented is "search as you type" feature. Since dhtml games use the keyboard, the "search as you type" feature can be a real pain for game players.

Keep up the good work IE team :)

Brent Silby

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, June 28, 2004 7:30 PM

I aggree Microsoft has done a very good job with IE6. Tabbed browsing might be good for some, but they should have a way to disable it.
A suggestion I would make is to add the ability to orginize autions like e-bay, etc. Someone I know who has a mac uses it on their IE for the make. I believe that would be a good feature to add.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, June 29, 2004 8:02 AM

1. Fix the support for printing background images when defined in CSS. i.e. Currently, if I want to use an image as the background of an element via CSS, the image does not get printed.

2. Fix the asynchronous nature of the HTML rendering while loading external resources. i.e Render a table, halt rendering while you fetch an external resource (JavaScript, image, CSS, etc..) until it is fully loaded, then continue rendering the remaining code in the page.

3. Add the ability to create ActiveX objects using the standard css/dom object creation methodology. i.e. Creating the xmldom object (for comm between client and server without page refresh). This is great for loading and manipulating specific data within the page.

4. Remove support for nonstandard elements, such as the event DOM object;

5. Refine the onbeforeunload event (it appears to be on the verge of adoption by other browsers) so that it isn't triggered by everything under the sun.

6. Correct the width calculation of blocks and boxes. The reported value should include padding and margins.

7. JavaScript error reporting should include file name and real line number for included files (for that matter, a full-fledged JS debugger wouldn't hurt). Currently, the error mewesages that do display, are so bogus in the information they report, it is laughable and more akin to a 2nd rate software class project.

There are my specific requests....

Thanks for listening. :)

-B. Cortez

# IE Development @ Wednesday, June 30, 2004 2:21 AM

Dave Massy has started work with the reconstituted Internet Explorer team at Microsoft. There is something in the neighborhood of a billion comments on his weblog with suggestions for what they should be working on. Not really that hard since there are so many things that need fixing in IE. However, rather than slam MS for IE's failings I'd rather congratulate them for their renewed efforts to solicit feedback from developers and restart development on IE. Microsoft is dedicating resources to solicit an overwhelming amount of feedback and put developers back into the browser race and I applaud their effort. I hope that we will start to see some real results in the near future....

Proselytizing for the Users

# How IE lost me long ago. @ Wednesday, June 30, 2004 12:37 AM

As much as you want to avoid "vague" requests and look only at specifics, I can't give that to you. In fact, short of Windows Update, I haven't used Internet Explorer in four years. First, let me give you some background:

I'm an application developer as well as a web developer. I have two XP machines, one of them a Tablet PC, and I use Visual Studio .NET almost daily. I administer two Linux/Apache web servers to host my sites and run my PHP web applications. In my spare time, I help maintain five MacOS X machines in a small university lab. In short, I'm not a "zealot" for one platform or the other because of what I'm used to or what I started on -- I've used them all -- I use the platform that's best suited to the task.

In the same sense, I use the browser that works the best for me. That browser happens to be Mozilla Firefox, and it's installed on every machine that I mentioned above except for one of the Linux boxes that has no GUI. Cross-platform compatibility is a nice thing, but I'll concede that it's not going to convince your average user (who only uses one platform) to switch.

Yet, I'd like to reiterate that I switched to the Mozilla Suite -- long before Phoenix/Fire[bird]fox was around -- when the Suite was around the 0.6 stage. It had plenty of bugs then, and even Firefox has its share now, but both of these "beta" browsers...

- Rendered BETTER, and to published W3C STANDARDS
- Permitted FEWER POP-UPS
- Were more SECURE, not suceptible to ActiveX exploits and other spyware
- Innovated optional TAB BROWSING
- Allowed better USER CONFIGURABILITY
- Integrated SEARCH (Google) with the OPTION of OTHER search engines

And it/they did it all without requiring other 3rd-party plugins. And don't get me started on how easily you can add features or change the look of the applications by installing any of a number of extensions -- but only those you want or need.

I switched to Mozilla's products and the Gecko rendering engine in 2000; I don't even think IE 5.5 was out at the time.

I'm not going to tell you to drop IE development, because I don't think Microsoft would want to admit "defeat" in the browser wars, as the fabled Hare that slept while the Tortoise crawled past to win the race. And there's always the chance that the "next IE" could be fabulous. I don't underestimate Microsoft's abilities and resources to develop what could again be considered a Good Browser.

However, if I were in your position, I would seriously consider the task ahead of me. IE has a *long* way to go before it can claim to be on par with the current "alternative" browsers. How long will that take? What innovations will Opera, Mozilla, and Apple come up with in the meantime? By the time you release, how many more will be converted to one of the alternatives?

If IE were developed by any company BUT Microsoft, I would seriously recommend that you adopt the Gecko engine, write your own UI, make other feature enhancements, invest a little cash in the Mozilla Foundation, and call IE "done."

But... IE *is* a Microsoft product, so you have enough resources to not go that route. I wish you luck. I'd like to not feel the need to criticize IE any time someone brings up web browsers, web development, or web standards.

To tell you the truth, though, it's going to take more than IE catching up to Mozilla/Opera/etc. to make me switch back. You not only have to catch up, you must surpass, and you must surpass without being viewed as a proprietary strong-arm.

Make people WANT to use IE, instead of making them think or feel that they have no other choice. That's what I suggest the IE team should do.

Good luck.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Thursday, July 01, 2004 3:37 AM

As an amateur webdeveloper, I can only hope MS will finally provide full support for open webstandards. I am sick and tired of having to tweak perfectly standards-compliant websites just to make them look good in IE (whereas modern browsers simply do it right the first time).

For sake of the Internet as a whole, please ditch the proprietary IE-only techniques. Even today we are still suffering from the negative consequences of the browser wars of the 1990's; please don't make that same mistake again.

(I know this is probably idle hope, given Microsofts horrible track-record of mutilating standards for the sake of Microsoft alone. Just yesterday, Mozilla, Adobe, Macromedia, Opera, Apple, and Sun announced to start working together on improving browser plug-ins. If Microsoft is serious about restarting IE development and listening to its customers, why isn't it participating in this group? Well, I can understand how working together with competitors goes against everything Microsoft stands for, but the Internet would be much better off if Microsoft would realize that the world is bigger than Redmond.)

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Thursday, July 01, 2004 12:52 PM

I'm a Mozilla user. Not going to rant. I'll just try to be specific.

Support of the TextRange object closer to the way it works in Mozilla. While IE's support of "innerHTML" for ranges is nice, Mozilla's implementation is more versatile.

Support for ALL of CSS2. "hover" "active" "before" and "after" pseudoclasses for ALL elements they can apply to.

Built in text-to-speech while supporting the aspects of CSS2 meant for aural media. Everything from volume control to voice-families.

Support for CSS closer to the standard. Borders around in-line elements should be rendered differently than borders around block elements. Absolute positioning is quirky. (It's quirky in Mozilla, too). Support for z-index seeems quirky too. Maybe it's me.

contentWindow object for IFRAMES.

The HTML generated by DesignMode/ContentEditable sucks. We depend on it where I work. This is also the same as HTML generated by DHTML methods. It shouldn't even use the FONT tag. It should use SPAN tags or CSS or something. Lower case tags, quotes around attributes, more readability. Thank you very much for the added line breaks, though. Mozilla's Midas and DHTML methods don't add line breaks where it would be nice. IE definitely got that part right.

No tooltips for alt attributes. Sometimes I really want it to be alternate text and NOT a tooltip.

Support for XPI extensions or something similar to the extensions in Firefox. Surely that's possible for IE even though it's not open source.

Better popup blocker built in.

Or heck... just make an IE with a Gecko engine... (with fixes for backwards compatibility)

Thanks for reading. Great job.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Thursday, July 01, 2004 2:46 PM

As a physician/web application developer who has spent the last 4 years building a commercial electronic medical record product with IE6, I would suggest the following (realizing that these topics have been discussed above):

1. Native SVG support: we use SVG throughout our product for anatomical drawings and graphing. Though the Adobe SVG plug-in is impressive, it does have significant performance and memory-usage problems which limit our ability to use this technology.

2. Compiled JavaScript for improved client-side performance. Some of the more complex components of our application (i.e. medication prescription writer) contain as many as 8-10K lines of client side script. Obviously, this adversely affects page load time and, consequently, the overall user experience is diminished.

Dr. Robert Taylor

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Thursday, July 01, 2004 4:44 PM

Standards compliance same as Gecko/Opera.

Dr. Maxton Pusher

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Thursday, July 01, 2004 8:18 PM

I keep hearing people complaining that they have to tweak their standard code to fit with IE. I see it the otherway around. Since over 90% of my audience use IE, I code for that and then tweak my code for the standards based browsers. I definitely wouldn't design a site to look perfect in 3% of browsers and then try to tweak to make it look good in the other 90-97%. Its the wrong way around.

A few comments ago, someone stated that gecko rendering engine is better then IE's. I have to disagree. All the bench mark tests I've looked at show Mozilla to be a lot slower than IE with dhtml animation.

Run any of my games in IE6, then look at them in the latest firefox (www.def-logic.com). You'll see firefox struggling with anymore than 3 moving elements on the screen, while IE races along with more than 20.

Cheers,
Brent.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Thursday, July 01, 2004 8:49 PM

"I definitely wouldn't design a site to look perfect in 3% of browsers and then try to tweak to make it look good in the other 90-97%. Its the wrong way around."

Then you continue to aim for those who don't know any better or care. The rest of us don't need what you have to offer.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Thursday, July 01, 2004 10:30 PM

To the comments posted above...

Who regulary uses a web browser to play video games (using dhtml)? Sorry dude, that's not the intended function of a web browser.

IE tried to do everything for everyone, and 9/10 times anyone tries to create a super-widget, it is below-average in everything it does. And that's the problem that's plagueing IE. If you're reading this (and know anything about web tech.), you already know this.

As for coding for 90% vs. 10%: A friend of mine is a photographer, and she'll do wedding because it pays the bills. 90% of her customers just want the standard black & white photos. They think everything "looks pretty" because they don't know any better! She can't ignore that audience, because it pays the bills. Buy she strives to impress the 10% of people out there with a trained eye for photography. That's what makes her happy, and that's what motivates her to do her best.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Thursday, July 01, 2004 10:57 PM

Bryan wrote: "Who regulary uses a web browser to play video games (using dhtml)? Sorry dude, that's not the intended function of a web browser. "

Sounds like a comment from someone who uses web browsers that are incapable of efficiently rendering such content.

The purpose of a web browser is to deliver a range of different content to a world-wide audience. No-one ever said that games were not permitted. Dhtml and javascript *can( be used to implement games, and they run very well in a decent browser. So why not?

On my site, my dhtml games are played in excess of 15000 per day, and on the sites I license them to the collective audience is about 500000 per month. Fortunately 97% of the audience is using IE.

Jean-Claude wrote: "Then you continue to aim for those who don't know any better or care. The rest of us don't need what you have to offer."

I'm aiming for the majority. This is simple common sense. Why would I aim at 3% and then hack to make it available to the other 97%. Its far more rational to go the other way around. Aim at 97%, and then build in some way to accommodate the minority.

I do ensure that my stuff will run on Moz, but unfortunately Moz can't handle it. It's too slow.

Brent.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Friday, July 02, 2004 3:44 AM

Standards? Schmandards - what you're hearing here is the sound of a hundred or so people engaging in a circle-jerk of righteousness about how [insert *their* choice of browser here] has implemented the inane ramblings of the W3C more closely than [all other browsers]. Since many of the musings of the W3C (especially the CSS-related ones) bear about as much resemblance to a *real* standard document as the gibberish above bears to coherent thought, I wouldn't sweat it.

The number one thing to fix IMNSHO is the printing. The fact that IE isn't capable of printing a page without chopping the right hand edge off is ridiculous and "cannot print without running off the page" should be a top severity bug.

Look at it this way. The number of "web developers" (more properly "HTML monkeys") out there getting all annoyed and flinging dung around is certainly several orders of magnitude lower than the number of users who hit Print on their browser toolbar, discover that once again they've lost the RH edge and then just copy the page and paste it into Word to print. Who do you want to please first ;-)

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Friday, July 02, 2004 2:38 PM

Just had to comment on something said in here...

You mentioned the concern for making ALL web pages work on IE and then follow up by explaining that many are not good html. Well if you think about what you said the answer is clear... Let the bad pages break! By letting them work you are only condoning bad markup and worse, you're promoting future bad markup.
Stick to common standards don't create your own.

# bottom of the page, or the viewport, or wherever IE decides to render it... @ Friday, July 02, 2004 3:54 PM

Not withstanding the supreme enlightenment of El Pragmatist, IE still needs to fix and expand CSS. If it were so worthless, then none of the browsers would be implementing it.

My specific request is that IE improve positioning and dimensions. There should be a way to place a footer at the absolute bottom of your content but IE places a bottom:0px div at the base of the viewport regardless of the fact that the containing box might be 200px taller than the screen. More properties should be inheritable (clip, etc.), and there should be specific control over individual scrollbars on individual elements (overflow-x and -y are a nice start but they don't go far enough, even though this is beyond the scope of current CSS specs). Of course there are wild new features in CSS3 that would be great, but lets work on getting CSS2 working 100% bug free first...

# Standards & Security @ Friday, July 02, 2004 5:39 PM

The two big ones are adherence to and complete implementation of the major, ratified standards like CSS and DHTML. I am all for embrace and extend - but start with the common base first.

More important is security. You have coverage tools to find and completely eliminate buffer overflows in IE and throughout Windows. Not sure if you have the same for things like cross-frame scripting, but regardless, this is the top priority.

For me, this means going further with the warnings on downloads of ActiveX, Java and regular EXE. At work, we can use Global Policy in AD and tools like SMS to enforce security settings - but I really can't figure out how to do the same at home. Even with my daughters user accounts only in Users in XP, not Power Users, they have still managed to install Kazza and get infected by viruses where IE was the conduit. This should not be. With my home machine's admin account, I need to be able to set Content Advisor, Privacy and Security settings for them. (yes, I can log into their accounts, but I would rather they weren't aware of that and that I could change it anytime I like without having to log into their accounts.) My kids are generally good - I don't worry about porn and stuff, but they do go to chat and teen sites where all the download infection stuff lives. We've had the chats - human factors are part of security and grounding is part of the family policy for violators - but I've watched them show me what happened and I can't say it is *always* their fault.

Finally, I seem to get IE "hung" or at least very slow to respond frequently when using Java or other embedded components. It is like IE doesn't manage or detect when these things go awry. Maybe a model more like ASP.NET which detects non-responsive threads and kills them. As a further story about this, I had to call MS Premier Support (at work) because we had written some ASP.NET that was able to cause a memory error in IE6 and kill the browser. (IE5 didn't crash which only makes me wonder what exploits we could have done.) Well, that wasn't the intent of our registration system so we called, got escalated to someone on the product team (I was told) and were told by this person, "That isn't really a problem with Internet Explorer, but with a COMPONENT of Internet Explorer!" Needless to say our site users didn't really make the distiction. Plus, it was clearly an MS Component, not some 3rd party - MSHTML if I remember right - Has no one on the team ever heard of exception trapping? This attitude clearly has to change if it represents the attitude of the team.

One final note - in my mind, the "not IE, but a component" attitude and the "vauge standards" comments are cousins. It seems to me that IE - perhaps rightfully so up to IE 4 - has been market driven, especially time-to-market and beat-the-competition drivers. It is probably time to seriously look inside and refocus on technical excellence in some of the traditional areas such as engineering standards, security and reliability. Then work on features. Honestly, while there are some cool new features I might like as a user, reliability and ease-of-use top the list. My success as a developer of general audience websites is directly proportional to the size of my audience and as long as my dad or my nursing staff find the browser too hard or too unreliable I am limited in the amount of success I can have.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Sunday, July 04, 2004 5:41 PM

I believe IE could really do with an extension manager, where you can see what extensions are installed. Much spyware is installed as IE extensions, and being able to see & delete them would be advantageous I believe.

At the moment it seems you have to trust vendors to uninstall extensions properly. Spyware extensions tend to be invisible on the UI.

Andrew Clements

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, July 05, 2004 5:52 PM

I'll just reiterate what everyone else has said in the order I think is most important.

1) Security
2) Correct adherence to the w3c box model
3) Full DOM level 2 support

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, July 05, 2004 10:07 PM

How about better handling of printing, i can never get printing to work in ie, always cuts things off, yes you can change font size, but its a pain, and still doesnt work with complex layouts,
firefox seems to do a very good job of this, added with tab support, and i switched over.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, July 06, 2004 12:42 AM

i want to be happy, i want more security features

# Better HTML 4.01 support in IE7; better compliance to standards and more security @ Tuesday, July 06, 2004 6:11 AM

HTML 4.01 Support absent in MSIE 6:

- <abbr>
- <label> associated with contained control (also known as implicit version of label)
- accesskey for <label>
- attribute cite on blockquote, q, ins and del
- option disabled
- rel, rev, hreflang, charset <a> attributes : useful for internationalization of a webpage
- <object>: OBJECT tag and IE. "IE/win's handling of <object> is severely broken."
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/2002AprJun/0865.html
Jukka Korpela: More on OBJECT tag and IE.
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/2002AprJun/0868.html
- <object> type and codebase not supported
- nested objects are not supported
- table summary not supported
- rules="cols,rows,rowgroups" should only apply when in border-collapse: collapse model:
"In this model [border-collapse: separate model], (...) Rows, columns, row groups, and column groups cannot have borders (i.e., user agents must ignore the border properties for those elements). (...) In the collapsing border model, it is possible to specify borders that surround all or part of a cell, row, row group, column, and column group. Borders for HTML's 'rules' attribute can be specified this way."
Section 17.6.1 of CSS2 and CSS2.1
- Support for scrollable tbody
http://www.w3.org/WAI/UA/TS/html401/cp1001/1001-THEAD-TBODY-TFOOT-OVERFLOW.html

Many years ago, Microsoft used to have this commitment at its website:
"Microsoft is committed to working with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to implement W3C-approved HTML standards, and has confirmed its pledge to work through W3C and other standards bodies on enhancements to HTML and other key Web technologies."
http://www.microsoft.com/standards/intro.asp

Why was that page removed?

Absence of security in MSIE 6:

"I have seen stats saying that the average Windows PC used to surf the Net for a few years has something like 28 spyware packages attaching to the IE browsing pipeline, mostly via ActiveX controls. (...)"
http://www.pctechtalk.com/view.php?opt=printable&id=2908"

DU

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, July 06, 2004 7:02 AM

Dear Dave,

Thanks for your commitment, and cheers' to your team. I do not take sides of people who are talking aggressively, i will try to politely suggest some ideas to you ;)

1. As close resemblement to this HTML 4.01 specification w3.org/TR/html4. I know that some of the decisions will be banned by the higher powers, because there are numerous caveats involved (proprietary legacy IE support etc.) but then YOU can fork the IE design, and make sure pages designed for HTML 4.01 look and act as specification tells. More precise, the <?xml instruction and <!DOCTYPE make sure that is possible.

2. CSS 2.1 support as close as possible to the following w3 specification w3.org/TR/CSS21. I know you know how good these sites look. Those sites overloaded with esthetic tags like FONT and CENTER have to go. It is a practical thing, it is so much easier and more comprehensible to design with CSS, i will not bother explaining.

3. As close as possible resemblence of the DOM model to this w3 specification http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/REC-DOM-Level-2-HTML-20030109/
Forking JavaScript and whatever DOM controlling script is actually much worse than forking the HTML and CSS... Again, if you want to keep the existing Microsoft DHTML, keep it, but can we please have stop all that browser detection, it is time consuming and is easy to bypass which leads to site tricked to believed it shows on IE, when it is not, and things look ugly and there is no promised interactivity.

4. Please implement as much PNG support as you can. With transparent PNG support there will be more richer sites, because several alpha-enabled images will be put on top of eachother, and less design hours will be spent on breaking the original graphic layout into the ugly 256color opaque substitutes. Menus with shadow, layered design port - all this will be possible, and already is on Mozilla.

5. Disable ActiveX, browser technology has evolved far enough to survive on mime-types only, without those ActiveX CLSIDs.

6. Repeating the pitch about HTML and CSS, they allow what is known as client side instant author CSS style switching, which currently to my knowledge only Opera does. This is not far important but well, it is a suggestion ;)

7. Browser page tabbing with Ctrl+Tab or something.

I wrote this so that evaluating whole picture , you can see what we actualy want, and those are my two cents.

Have a nice day,
Armen.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, July 06, 2004 7:02 AM

Use gecko as the layout engine! more advantages than disadvantages, better security, constantly updated includes a lot more(don't have time to explain). Using gecko doesn't mean IE has to be open source, it just means the layout engine is open source. You can revolve the browser around gecko and it will still look the same + extensions would work well if you get some code from fx.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, July 07, 2004 8:10 AM

I think one thing other than all the standard you need to improve on is Language Selection.

IE has been EXTREMELY poor with language selection. The Auto Select feature is virtually useless.

And please release IE 6.5 before longhorn, because IE currently is just simply not up to standard........

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, July 07, 2004 8:21 AM

Maybe just use Moz and get rid of IE? ;-)

# Bring back WYSIWYR and accessibility! @ Thursday, July 08, 2004 2:05 AM

Please support What You See is What You Rendered philosophy.

More and more people need accessibility features:

1) minimum font size for all font/css types (serif, sans, monospaced, etc.)

2) More fine grained control of font size increasing/decreasing by the user (i.e. pixel at a time and FORCE it to override both hardcoded sizes, Css sizes and everything that the designer intended), but in a more finer grained manner than the current (Ignore font sizes/styles) in the Accessibility section.

3) built-in accessibility CSS file for font styles/types/sizes and text spacing

4) circumvent hard coded table (and css placing) widths for pages. I.e. Enable re-liquidfying pages

5) highlighting links for improved link visibility (i.e. a feature that highlight links with a selectable color, works at least with linked images and text pieces). This is not the same as link color! Highlighting is AREA based highlight, with improved contrast/detection accuracy.

6) Many of us have to use a local proxy to modify the HTML/CSS of the pages we view on the fly to make pages viewable/accessible. Sometimes this proxy has to be bypassed for some odd pages to work. Make a simple Proxy ON /OFF button on the toolbar. It is VERY cumbersome to go into Tools/Internet Options/connections, etc to constantly disable/enable this proxy.

7) Enable the disabling many annoying javascript tricks that mage pages really inaccessible:

- DISABLE: change status bar text
- DISABLE: removal of right click
- DISABLE: move & resize windows
- DISABLE: removal of window controls on newly created (javascript) windows

It is already getting really hard to browse many of the web sites due to very poor web site design. And I'm talking about sites that NEED to be used (banking, governmental sources, etc.)

Also, you're main using population is getting older and older (proportionally) as we speak, having more and more problems browsing due too poor eyesight, reduced motoric accuracy, etc.

This is NOT a minor side feature, it is a major concern.

These problems can be circumvented if more control is given back to the viewer: let me render things in MY browser so that I can USE the pages MYSELF.

That's what is the purpose of the pages in the first place.

And please don't tell me to educate web page designers, I gave up on that several years ago...

Thank you for listening.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Thursday, July 08, 2004 5:23 AM

Except all endless security problems in IE is quite fast and good. BUT like probably some have said before, make type="select" work correctly! I don't know how many visions and ideas this have spoiled for a long time because it mess up the z-indexes and other things. Full PNG-support is also important. Of some reason when having a lot of IE windows in my w2k workstation, when a popup is created, it freezes the original window in like 20 seconds.

My IE have been hi-jacked and do very scary things. Can you do something that make this easy to control? Simple reinstall of IE? Better access of configurations, plugins etc?

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Thursday, July 08, 2004 2:00 PM

I believe web designers should have the ability to to disable right click. We also should have the ability to change what is in the status bar as we do now.

Plus a agree that web page designers should be educated with righting website code I was. I code for IE 6 which is very easy to do. IE as alot of nice features which some other browsers do not have. Scrolling text is one of many items I like.

One thing I would like to see in IE is a repair feature, in case IE files get damaged.

# Hell no! @ Friday, July 09, 2004 5:12 AM

JoeM,

As web designers have the right click, then the users should have the right to enable it back.

I am a web designer myself, and see no reason for disabling right click. Disable right leg, anyone ? or right hand ? Whats the point. HTML is not a copyright code, it is just Hyper Text.

Those freaky pages telling me "Right Click Disabled, Copyright!" or something, just before Mozilla STILL displays my popup menu (coz i told it to) - they drive me nuts. Please dont be one of those smartasses who think they make the world better by disabling the popup menu, we dont always use it to View Source. There are useful shortcuts there, and hell yes we are using them.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Friday, July 09, 2004 6:33 AM

The #1 thing I want from IE is predictability.

I like features; I like correct rendering, but when making a web page / css file / js-lib, I all too frequently find myself spendinf far too much time working around surprising and subtle bugs in IE.

Hand in hand with this: If necessary, please mildly break rendering of old pages if this means consistency; Don't support every feature and w3c spec in the world; but those that you do - support to the letter (I'ld rather CSS1 correctly and 0% CSS2 that what we have now...)

Instead of Active-X; perhaps rather a sandboxed .NET VM that has access to the browsers DOM tree; i.e. a real replacement for JS that doesn't try to live in some semi-functionally embedded rectangle on the page ALA java.

Make any non-intuitive browser-"smartness" that you really cannot remove as explicit as possible and make this information cetrally and easily accessible via MSDN (i.e. don't merely explain a quirk on the page with related functionality)

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Friday, July 09, 2004 10:31 AM

Armen
Then when people sue you for still your code, which has already happened to be. Then I Want YOU to PAY THE LAWYER Bill

# Improved XML /XSLT handling @ Tuesday, July 13, 2004 6:00 PM

Fix some of those annoying bugs when dealing with client side XML / XSLT, e.g.

* Why is a scheme change redirect a security risk? (i.e. the URL is the same but we are sending a 302 to tell the browser to request again in HTTPS instead of HTTP (or vice-versa)). It's not a different bloody URL so it's not a security risk!!

* Process the mime type properly with each new request - don't try to cache it against the URL. Clicking back and forward a few times in IE6 often breaks client XSLT and it tries to treat the page as HTML.

* Why oh why does view source suddenly decide not to work anymore on XML pages? (Still can't get it to work despite numerous registry hacks, file association changes, cache empties etc. etc).

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, July 13, 2004 7:27 PM

Let me uninstall it.

Greg K Nicholson

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, July 14, 2004 8:08 AM

For starters, don't remove MS Java and make us use the slow Sun Java. I have always liked MS's Java loading right on up. But another thing should be a way to lock the browser size settings; preventing web sites from changing the size of browsers. That is a huge pet peeve of mine when a website makes my non-fullscreen setting larger than full screen. Also, when visiting pages like www.msn.com or www.yahoo.com, there should be a way to prevent the cursor from going to the search box. I have been on peoples machines with those sites as home pages, try to type something into the address bar, and end up typing it into the search bar, which is extremely frustrating too.

# Geek Girl 4 God » Get A Better Browser @ Thursday, July 15, 2004 2:23 PM

Geek Girl 4 God » Get A Better Browser

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Thursday, July 15, 2004 2:03 PM

happy birthday! buuuaaaargh ;-)

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Friday, July 16, 2004 7:45 AM

Haha, Microsoft will buy Mozilla Foundation for a billion dollars, so they'll get their users back...

Marcel Hansemann

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Monday, July 19, 2004 12:57 PM

MANAGE FAVORITES
MANAGE FAVORITES
MANAGE FAVORITES

I don't know why the most important tool in a browser (for use in creating community/marketing cohesiveness) has not been improved upon since 1995!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Do a search for 'favorite' on this log and see how many times that pops up.

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, July 21, 2004 10:05 AM

Fewer bugs would be hella nice. Fewer random crashes would be a godsend. A fully commented, tested, and *correct* codebase would be a stroke of genius. The complete lack of discipline at Microsoft is what makes hackers hate them so much.

New Firefox User

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Friday, July 23, 2004 5:50 AM

I would like to see a feature wherein I can dictate how I want the page and the elements to be presented to me. What I am asking for is a second rendering controlled by "users". For example, I might decide to change all "Courier" fonts to "Verdana". As part of Tools-->Internet Options-->Advanced, I should be able to enable/disable this feature, so that I can selectively use this for certain sites.

If input for this second rendering is accepted as XSL, then it could be used by developers, as one way of implementing personalisation. From users of non-programming background, you can accept the input from a GUI based front-end (and in-turn store the information as XSL).

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Wednesday, July 28, 2004 5:20 PM

1. As Roy mentioned I'd like to be able to scroll the body of a table and keeping the header/footer static.

2. Virtual databound tables (for scrolling long recordsets), able to connect them to server-side cursors which would pull data from the server on-demand, as the user scrolls it.
Not related directly to IE, but I'd like to see an OLEDB provider and protocol to connect large datasets over the web to IE (table <- datasource <- oledb (like RDS) <- open protocol, xml <- HTTP <- server technology for paging rows.

3. Similarily, fragments on demand
Technologies to deliver fragments for very large pages as the user scrolls the page.

Can you say big?

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Thursday, July 29, 2004 2:19 PM

What would be nice is have the input button as the default action for a form submit and post the vars properly..(i dont know if that makes sense -.-)

example: i make a php script that loads specific webpages based on the postalcode entered.. Works fine if you press the submit button with the mouse, or use the tab key to navigate to the submit button then press enter, but if you press enter while the focus is any other field, it does not post the postalcode properly, and the scripts barfs -.-

..I have only experienced this issue in IE btw..

SO my feature request is Correct Enter Key functionality on a form!

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Friday, July 30, 2004 6:17 AM

TO clarify, it does perform the Form action(if i attach a javascript to onSubmit() it fires)
but any data on the forms are not posted.. as i stated before, the only browser that i have encountered this in is the current vs of IE
(havn't tried testing older versions)

# surfboard archive @ Tuesday, August 03, 2004 3:56 AM

i thought it would be a nice move to keep a copy of the "surfboard" links i used to have on the right hand site of the old design. in this post, you will find some 125 links to some...

evilabmonkey.org

# re: Return of the xxxx? @ Tuesday, August 03, 2004 10:21 AM

standards support, you poofs!
You make every web developer's job a living hell, and you hold back the web from advancing with your POS browser.