Dave Massy's Blog

# RE: Investment in IE is NOT a Stop-Gap @ Wednesday, June 23, 2004 11:53 PM

First of all, I'm very happy to hear about the "renewed effort". It's a lot better than what we had before, which was just that IE had been frozen until Longhorn, with the exception of some security enhancements in XP SP2.

However, as you describe it, it sounds exactly like a stopgap. From what you've said, there are going to be security enhancements to IE 6, and eventually when Longhorn comes out (in 3 or 4 years), it'll have a great browser. I'm trying to read something more encouraging than stopgap into this, but having some trouble.

More here - [http://weblogs.asp.net/jgalloway/archive/2004/06/23/163393.aspx]

jon_galloway@yahoo.com (Jon Galloway)

# re: Investment in IE is NOT a Stop-Gap @ Thursday, June 24, 2004 12:11 AM

When will Microsoft announce in public they support standards, or not? And more importantly, which?

Some IE people claimed they can't support new standards because of backwards compatibility, but a solution to that has been provided in the form of switching based on the content-type (where application/xhtml+xml would trigger full, real standards mode in the new IE).

I think a lot of developer want to hear something about this.

Anne

# re: Investment in IE is NOT a Stop-Gap @ Thursday, June 24, 2004 2:52 AM

Dave,

what you are saying is that actually nothing new will happen with ie for the next 2 (3? 4?) years.

what about all that 'we are listening' stuff on c9? to me, this looks like you guys might be listening, but you are not actually doing something.

WM_NOTGOOD
thomas woelfer

thomas woelfer

# re: Investment in IE is NOT a Stop-Gap @ Thursday, June 24, 2004 6:12 AM

So does this mean - no bugfixes for IE outside of 'security enhancements'. This really does make a mockery of all the people giving feedback on Channel9 - oh, we'll implement the buffixes but you'll have to wait until at least 2006 - and you'll probably have to buy a new OS.

Scott Galloway

# re: Investment in IE is NOT a Stop-Gap @ Thursday, June 24, 2004 8:09 AM

hi,
I have to say that i totally agree that a pronouncement from MS that states support for standards based on content-type as suggested above would, in my opinion, be absolutely great both for MS and for us developers. Can i ask why this is not possible/desirable thing to do? The ASP.NET team have over the last few months suggested that ASP.NET server controls will output stndards compliant XHTML which created a buzz.

Keith Patton

# re: Investment in IE is NOT a Stop-Gap @ Thursday, June 24, 2004 8:44 AM

Thomas,
There's lots to do and while it might seem like Longhorn means we have all the time in the world this is not the case. With a beta of Longhorn expected next year we are actually going to have a short amount of time available. That's why we are looking so carefully at the feedback here, on channel 9 and other websites on what we should undertake. It's pretty obvious already that we will not be able to undertake everything being requested.

Thanks
-Dave

Dave Massy

# re: Investment in IE is NOT a Stop-Gap @ Thursday, June 24, 2004 1:25 PM

I honestly don't know where all this speculation for far out dates of the Longhorn release come from. The only real dates I've seen from MS point to a 2006 target, and the IE7 beta next year fits in with that. That's not that far away...

It's actually not enough time in my opinion. What I really want to know is if standalone feature releases are a possibility post-Longhorn.

null

# re: Investment in IE is NOT a Stop-Gap @ Thursday, June 24, 2004 3:06 PM

Too bad I use Win98 - so no SP2 for IE for me. Do I have to change OPERATING SYSTEM to get better, secure browser? No, I don't have to. Because I don't use IE.

Loyal

# re: Investment in IE is NOT a Stop-Gap @ Friday, June 25, 2004 2:54 AM

Until IE gets updated for (at the very least) Win2K as well, to at least the XPSP2 level (and preferably beyond, to IE7 or whathaveyou), I fail to see how this can be seen as anything other than a stopgap.

Providing a browser component with the OS is fine; essential, even. Making parts of the OS depend on that component is fine too.

But let's be honest. The browser component is just that; a component. It's got no specific dependence on the OS (there's no really good reason for IE6SP2 to contain code that won't work on 2K), and the OS has no specific dependence on the component (updating from IE 5 to 6 SP1 doesn't break Win2K, after all).

As such restricting updates of this component is meritless. It doesn't strengthen the "integrated" argument any; the integration is there by virtue of the use of the browser component in HTAs and Explorer and everywhere else it's used.

Dr Pizza

# re: Investment in IE is NOT a Stop-Gap @ Friday, June 25, 2004 5:59 AM

I'm sorry but that's not good enough. By the time Longhorn hits, IE6 will have been the vastly dominant browser for a full third of the web's life with no rendering engine updates. Microsoft is stifling web development.

Robin

# Can't win for loosing... @ Friday, June 25, 2004 12:54 PM

Keep up the good work Dave.

Scott Cadillac

# re: just fix it NOW, why don't you? @ Friday, June 25, 2004 4:47 PM

Mr. Massy,

There's more to this battle than rendering standards, and I wonder why Microsoft is taking security so lightly. You guys went to all this trouble to win the browser war and for what? So that you could have millions and millions of r00table boxes on the Internet? Because things are really bad now for IE, and you don't seem to care at all.

I'm sure you've seen the continuously-running articles on all the news sites about the latest IE vulnerabilities. Now, IE vulnerabilities are part of daily life, run Windows Update and if it's really bad reformat'n'reinstall, life goes on. It'd be better if people didn't have to do this, but if they do that's just the way it is. But now, there's a couple really bad remote holes in IE and MS seems to have declared them 'won't fix'. Why?

Instead, all that MS.com has is a smarmy document advising people to set their security settings to high, to set up "trusted" sites when there are problems (as if your average user has any idea who can be trusted - especially as your server exploits are still around) - so I guess that if we get hacked it's just our own fault! Worse, there's no automatic Windows Update to do anything, so most people are unaware and just getting blasted! And you're telling us that you'll fix IE for "Longhorn", whenever it comes out - yeah, I hear you are giving MSDN people builds of it, but I've never seen one and don't really want to run it until it's actually for sale as a working product - and you're saying that you'll fix IE for Windows XP - but seriously, what about everyone who bought Win2K? Or people who are still on 98? Or ME? There are lots of people running those systems, millions, and just why is it okay to let them slide? Oh yeah, it provides an incentive to buy a whole new OS - but that's just being a jerk. "Yeah, you got rooted because you didn't upgrade, the next OS will be much better" - no, jerks, people are getting rooted because you have made a business decision to let them, and it stinks!

Look, I know and you know and everybody knows that IE is just a program, and that in general a program that runs on XP will usually run on 2K or even 98 just fine. So you could give everyone the same browser that doesn't completely allow just anyone to take over your computer - but you won't, because it's your business decision. You guys won't even provide a proper patch, after all the time you've spent urging people to use Windows Update you aren't actually giving them the help they need through it.... is it just to provide a false illusion of security? Is MS deliberately trying to fill the Internet with r00ted PCs to spew spam, to spew viruses, to keep illegal files in circulation and stick innocent passers-by with the technical and legal consequences? Because I can't imagine a better way to do this, even if you had planned to do it.

IE is a nice program. It's much faster and prettier than NS4 was, it still rivals the Mozilla family for friendly interface and it runs a lot more quickly and smoothly on many computers. Why are you letting it be ruined? When Longhorn comes out, it just might be too late to save IE.

And all you need to do is get a couple guys to write a couple patches. Why didn't you do it already? Think about it. If IE matters, it should be safe - but if you keep distributing hazardous products, tomorrow's release plans just might not matter to anyone.

Morris

# re: Investment in IE is NOT a Stop-Gap @ Friday, June 25, 2004 8:59 PM

Morris,

While I can definitely (certainly better than chronic narcissism...) appreciate the passion you exhibit, but I can't really agree with the sentiment, nor the name calling.

I use Firefox for all my browsing currently, and develop for it first currently. I know there are unpatched security issues in IE, but I also know that although there are some serious ways in which Firefox is less secure than IE. I'll give a specific example. Let's take Livejournal.com, probably the most popular community uberblog thing today. It's also about as locked down as a web app can be locked down (if 1+ million teenage users isn't trial by fire nothing is :P).
Given the task of hijacking a Livejournal account though, as of today it's doable via an xss attack on all major browsers, _even if javascript is off_. There are even exploit vectors that haven't even been really explored yet simply because there has always been lower hanging fruit.

Whether it's the stalled (over a technicallity) HTTPOnly support in Mozilla that IE has had for years now, or exploiting one of the extremely obscure IE bugs, security problems are not sole domain of Microsoft. Many security problems can probably be laid at the W3C's feet. Take a wild guess as to how many times the word secure appears in the xhtml spec...

The only way to keep your computer 100% secure is to unplug it., and as PC's get more complex it's only going to get worse no matter how much we scream or how many billion of simoleans MS spends on it.

null

# re: Investment in IE is NOT a Stop-Gap @ Friday, July 02, 2004 10:53 AM

This is, however you try to put it, indeed a stop-gap. Internet Explorer won't be updated (apart from the security patches in SP2 which I don't really care about -- I'm a developer, and don't use IE myself) until Longhorn ships. That's the fact. This means that Internet Explorer will have had a virtually untouched rendering engine for over five years when IE 7 is released. FIVE YEARS!

Five years in the internet industry is an unbearable huge heap of time. How many specification do you think W3C have released until 2006 that Internet Explorer surely won't support? It has also been said that IE won't support XHTML because it's so hard to implement and there's all too little test cases. Well, here's thousands of test cases for you: http://www.hixie.ch/tests/

How can it be that a company that literally have their employees eat XML for breakfast can't make a solid XHTML implementation? You already have a browser that supports an HTML DOM. How difficult could it possibly be to de-serialize XHTML into this exact DOM? XHTML isn't so different from HTML after all.

If IE got proper XHTML and CSS2 support, and got it before Longhorn was released, I would be a happy developer. Until then, I will loose a lot of hair trying to get the web pages I develop working good enough in Internet Explorer despite all of its horrific bugs. *Sigh*

Asbjørn Ulsberg

# re: Investment in IE is NOT a Stop-Gap @ Sunday, July 18, 2004 2:33 PM

From dictionary.reference.com:
stopgap (n) : something contrived to meet an urgent need or emergency [syn: makeshift]

Seems like the IE updates are exactly that.

Vinnie Garcia

# re: Investment in IE is NOT a Stop-Gap @ Tuesday, July 20, 2004 3:04 PM

The bigger question is: "Why doesn't MS breath 'real' new life into IE (standards compliancy, security, ...)?". My guess is that browser based apps will not sell a Windows desktop OS, meaning that making IE standards compliant is a waste of money(because by then you will be able to run your browser-based apps on any platform without any change, and they don't want that). Another reason could be that they still see declarative UI as the way to go, but not in its current incarnation (HTML, ...). They see XAML and AVALON as the way to go ...
Ah well, this is a management decision we'll never know the details of ...

Yves Reynhout

# re: Investment in IE is NOT a Stop-Gap @ Thursday, July 22, 2004 4:51 PM

I think the real reason that IE isn't developed actively is because Microsoft wants to slow down web application development outside of the MS toolchain.

Web Applications are the practical cost-effective cross-platform environment that Java never was (and .Net is competing with). Web Apps are influxed with Open Source development tools and delivery platforms. Microsoft is clearly threatened by this. They will have greater support for rich and poor web applications but, they want to tell developers,'Wait until Longhorn'. Wait until Longhorn is the offical motto of Channel 9 it seems. Everything good and useful will come in longhorn, every thing that you need will be in Longhorn. Just hold out 3 or 4 more years.

Web Applications need to be written today. Websites need to work for the internet today. What other business says wait 3 or 4 years for us to change our product.

Ultimately, it's a futile effort. MS is going to change when it wants to change and though Steve Balmer might yell 'Developers, Developers, Developers' at conferences, web developers will have to wait until Microsoft wants them to. The only real way to make Microsoft put in web standards in its browsers is if Firefox jumped in market share.

This past month alone, Firefox marketshare jumped 1.1%. That's tiny for microsoft but, 40% for Firefox. IE drops 1.1% and Firefox bumps up %40. Everyone I've recommended Firefox to has liked it. Firefox is by no means perfect but, the best thing one could do to improve IE is to get people to use Firefox.

Emmanuel Mwangi

# L'quipe d'IE blogue @ Friday, July 23, 2004 2:06 AM

Asa Dotzler rapporte que l'équipe de développement d'Internet Explorer a mis en place un blog collaboratif sur MSDN. Dean le Product Unit Manager d'IE présente les buts de l'IEBlog :

Our goal in this blog is to be a good place, direct from the source, for information about IE. What are we working on? How do we make decisions? Why does some part of IE work the way it does? What keeps us up late at night? What are we thinking of around security, extensibility, and other key areas? Hey, any good tips and tricks?
Some people on the team have already been doing this on their own (see the links to the left), and I expect them to continue. We'll do our best to round up information from other sites as well as providing original content. We'll also do our best to make this useful and enjoyable. At any time, please tell us how we're doing.
p.s. we promise an explanation of Microsoft titles, roles, and responsibilities in a future post.

Scott Stearns, Test Manager d'IE, renouvelle sa profession de foi pour IE (l'emphase est de lui) :

I am :Scott Stearns, the test manager for the Microsoft Internet Explorer team (as Dean says we will be pulling together full bios of people later). The IE team as we usually say. Some of us have our individual blogs today, but we also wanted to have one that was focused on what we do every day at work – make Internet Explorer the best way for browsing the web. ...

BlogZiNet

# re: Investment in IE is NOT a Stop-Gap @ Tuesday, August 10, 2004 1:26 PM

Love the tagline:
Internet Explorer moving forward!

Of course, a snail moves forward, too, and I think one just zipped past Internet Explorer....

B. Good

# IE needs to follow standards @ Tuesday, August 10, 2004 3:10 PM

Why is it that web sites look the same in safari, firefox, and opera, but not in ie? When is ie going to play with the rest of the browsers. Personally, I develop for the others and then only fix something if it looks like a complete joke in ie. And yes, I don't use windows os.

Scott

# re: Investment in IE is NOT a Stop-Gap @ Tuesday, August 10, 2004 9:19 PM

Dear Dave,

Drink beer. Lots of beer. I have discovered it make those creative juices flow in a rushing torrent. Wish you best, and lotsa lotsa beer.

Most sincerely,

Gomer

Gomer Sneezedale

# Better Late Than Never @ Wednesday, August 11, 2004 12:21 PM

Just caught Dave Massey's response to some comments of mine from a CNET/ZDNet story back in June. I got linked to the entry from another CNET story here. The original comment I made was: "Longhorn isn't going to be delivered...

tecosystems

# Basil's Blog » Internet Explorer 7 @ Sunday, October 15, 2006 12:53 PM

PingBack from http://basilsblog.net/2005/02/16/internet-explorer-7/

Basil's Blog » Internet Explorer 7