IEBlog

Great news! I'm very to see all the efforts your team has been making to engage the community, and I looking forward to hearing the latest on IE right from the source.

oops - that was "I'm very _happy_ to see all the efforts..."

Well, IIRC Microsoft announced that there will no longer be standalone IE, so all your work will not apply to anybody who doesn't upgrade to Longhorn, which is still years away - right?

Not quite. For example, the team is finishing up Windows XP SP2 now. We're also working on security updates that apply to all customers of currently supported Windows versions. We're not just about Longhorn.

This is a brave thing to do... Very much the "hard right" (blogging, community involvement, etc) than the "easy wrong"

I'm sure you guys must feel pretty darn bashed right now and opening up to more comments must have given you some thoughts. (lol I'm sure to say the least... :)

Personally I'd REALLY like to see IE given some TLC. Usual stuff, standards compliance, performance, security, etc, etc... all the stuff you've heard before.

Please don't let IE's market share keep it from being innovated and grown. I know, it's not your call, but tell the MS leaders that the customers want their IE back! The time when IE drove the industry. The IE that won round one of the browser war. The IE that was COOL.

Not the somewhat tired, old and used up thing we have today.

I like IE. It works for me and has for years. I just wish it were better...

Good luck with the blogging. It's great to see it.

Yeah, though you walk through the valley of the shadow of IE.

For those about to blog, we salute you.

Well, I really have to post something here, since now is my best chance to actually have someone influencial to IE read what I have to say.
Why I don't use IE
-It's heavy and slow
-Security problems
-No tabs (quite practical thing)
- I cant trust it. I don't know why, but whenever I use IE I get the feeling that I can't trust it. I don't know what it's doing, and why.
- It lacks innovation and improvements

The truth is, that IE has not developed much over the last few years, it has got nothing new, and nothing better. My current browser is Firefox 0.8.0+ and frankly firefox has been better from like version 0.5.0 or so.

Sorry guys.

In my opinion, IE doesn't stand a chance against Firefox and Opera.
Tab browsing, mouse gestures, pop-up stopping... you name it. Finnishstudent wrote he doesn't feel safe. I know I'm not safe. Using Opera I get a few spyware programs sometimes, but when I use IE... Wham! I have no reason whatsoever to use IE, it is old and leaky.

Subscribed. Good to see you guys blogging.

Darn, the trackback didn't work... :( Ah well...

Welcome to the blogosphere IE Team! :)

I've been using IE ever since 1.0, but I am not as browser centric today as I was a year ago. Feed readers and Smart Clients are playing an increasing role in my on-line experence.

IE slow? Firefox is faster? Not in my testing. I found Firefox/bird caused my mouse to hang here and there when ever I clicked on something. Quit using it because of this.

IE is XP SP2 has some great new stuff. Especially around security. If you are moving to another browser because you think it's more secure, just be careful. All software has its issues and for these other browsers, it's only a matter of time.

http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A//blogs.msdn.com/ie

:-P
Firefox is the best!

Although an avid FireFox user, I'm happy to see the debate over recent browser innovations has brought the IE team out of hibernation and into a mode of determining how their product can better serve the web community.

Competition is good for everyone and, perhaps, the huge community swirling around Mozilla development will rub off on future efforts at Microsoft and versions of IE.

Also, I apologize for anyone decending on this blog and doing nothing but flame you guys. We all work hard and try to do our best and I respect that.

Cheers! ~ Kevin

Something that has intrigued me for along time about IE is the use of HTML in its interface, a huge amount of its Dialogs are written using markup and JavaScript. For example the Find On this page, and About Dialogs.

Is their a reason so much of IE’s interface is built like this? It all smells a bit like there's some cross zone nastiness hiding somewhere in all that. and that’s a smell that makes me a bit uneasy.

While I’m at it, I’m enjoying IE XP SP2, it’s nice to see users have got a handle on those BHOs without resorting to registry hacks :)

Sam Greenhalgh

ZapTheDingbat
http://www.zapthedingbat.com/

IE had tabbed browsing long before Mozilla or Firefox (or whatever it's called now). Remember IE 4.x? Or was it 3.x that had tabs?

As for security - read something on XPI in Mozilla, it's just like ActiveX controls in IE, except you don't have to sign any code with a certificate, so anybody can claim to be you, updating your code (guess who is going to hear it from your users).

Great!
This is truely a step in the right direction! I'm excited to see how this goes. I've allways wished for a more direct way to communicate with developers of MS products. Before I've felt like I've stompted right into a huge iceberg.

Haha, I love the way Toltek posted the w3c link. (http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2004/07/21/190687.aspx#191218).

I hope you guys actually learn something from what the web developers have to say. They know what they're talking about, and from what I've seen, they haven't made any false claims as yet about IE's poor support of CSS (2 and 3). As [insert-forgotten-name-here] said in response to "I Love This Browser", it's not an anti-MS thing. If Internet Explorer was even half as functional as Firefox (which - by the way - hasn't even reached v1.0) I would maybe be less bothered by it.

"We’ve heard loud and clear that many people want a better connection with the IE Team. We’re happy to do something about it."

A better connection? Stop with the touchy feely crap. You could be sucking my dick, and that wouldn't make IE better.

Get Gates to retract embedding IE into Longhorn, release standalone updates to IE, start developing new features, get more standards compliant, improve security.

We don't care about your "connection" to us.

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. ...

I can't even post a simple reaction in Opera, this site sux

I'm very curious, what will happen here.

Marco

Btw, Mr "WTF" - posted via Opera.

IE is ok. But the Active-X is security horror. Therefore i use Mozilla/Firefox. And i dont trust Microsoft. My opinion is, they kill many Innovations and acting unfair. And therefore i avoid MS Products. AND, IE doesnt run on LINUX.... ;-)
Sorry for my english, Greetings from Austria!

i've been using IE for years, but i changed to firefox lately, not because of security issues, just because of comfort and great features. IE is a great browser, but it lacks so much, what could be called standart feature these days... tabbed browsing, mouse gestures, popup blocking...
by the way, what the hell is going on with outlook express??? have all coders of that pice of software died recently or what? it never changed since win98. OMG you are Microsoft... just do something for your software! develope it! :) could you please just do this?

As a browser, IE is nicely integrated in windows. Its tie into the OS offers an up and a down side. I think, and I may be wrong, that inside microsoft, its developers, and its developers whom work outside Microsoft fundamentally do not understand the critical state of the browser.

If I were running a company with a full AD, Full infrastructure, SMS, SUS, then maybe we would be able to set things up to patch and cover our asses, but we don't. And we won't any time soon. And EVEN if we did, the consession that that is the state we are in is a defeatist, apologist, disaster of an ideal.

How a leading tester of IE can make the comments made at the top of this page show the level of astonishing lack of understanding about the issues surrounding IE outside of Microsoft. How can you really laugh of a state where a company is only offering a fix for its product by an unavailable (read non beta) SP2 package?

Right now, IE is the biggest hole in Windows. I can't recommend it to friends, family or business. If I do, I know I'm going to be right there installing patching to any such machine forever. Its taken over from Outlook (a product now nicknamed Lookout by many) as the current security and operational nightmare.

Its built into your systems guys, its not easily removed, its not easily maintained, its not secure, its a bloody night mare?

Can you think of another browser that has to have the follwoing installed JUST to have any semblence of hoping to protect the machine?:
A pop-up blocker
BHOdemon1/2
Ad-Aware
Full AntiVirus

And thats before we cover wether people will ever absorb the constant stream of windows updates. The fact that the core is so riddled, and the numbers of updates required by say, dial up users, is now guaranteed to limit take up of your updates.

I'm not anti-microsoft, BUT dammit, sometimes you guys are your own worst nightmare. In recent months MS has re-iterated that its serious about security. Right now, IE needs to come with a heath warning. It needs major work in education of end users so they can protect themselves. Most users outside of a development or IT enviroment simply are not aware of how bad IE is, and they make assumptions about an application in regard to IE that will lead to their machines being taken. But all of that is because IE is *REALLY* that bad. Its really that riddled, open, bugged.

Right now, in my company, from the cleaners, the users, right through to Management, there is not a soul who has faith in IE, and thus microsoft. Blithly chalking things down to 'We suggest you get SP2' when SP2 is still merely a realease candidate is a wind up.

Every day of my life is now taken up with windows updates for IE to a large degree, its taken up with removing the junk, backdoors, spyware, adware, browser helper objects, ADODB.stream infestations, keyloggers, and you know what, the consensus is always thats its our fault, the end users fault, a lack of security, firewalls, policy, staff behaviour, or that we should change our whole structure by implementing an SP2 that is still only a 'release candidate'. Thats me, on the arse end of you guys and your 'development' between a rock and a hard place.

Guys, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE UNDERSTAND that I can't remove IE. Thats your doing. I can't goddamn continue to commit workaround after workaround on such a core, broken, bugged component. Is your intention to drive all end users who have any semblence of intelligence away? You do know anyone with a shredd of background info is moving off IE, even if they can't remove it. People are running to the hills. The browser is just another component like office or otherwise that if you lose on, you lose on it big. People can use Linux from browsing the net, do you want that?

I no longer give a rats ass about new function in IE. I really mean that. I'm not interested in IE adding more for developers. I want a damned browser that is not the new Outlook. I want it simple, secure, solid. And if your answer is what I am seeing so far, I'm going to take my whole company IT structure, and I swear I'll get rid of this myself. I don't care that I may be a small customer, I don't care wether you read this blog, or take notice of what I have said, I don't care if no one at MS cares, either you guys get damned serious, right now, or you're going bye bye.

stewart@gci.ac.uk

Hello,
is there also such a forum in German?

Some things:
1. Eliminate ALL KNOWN bugs!
2. Create an Internet-conform (W3C etc.) browser.
3. In the german menu -> Datei -> Seite einrichten ...
a) Possibility to create a 'Standard' is missing
b) Kopf-/Fußzeilen ... selection of font & font-size is missing
c) Integrate a %-selection like in Word, so that you can display AND print a website (or all) with for example 87 % or on the german format 'A4'.
4. Create a possibility, to export ALL (registry-) settings (incl. zones, advanced internetoptions etc.), so that you can import them on a new installation (and/or for a new user).
5. Newsreader OE: Eliminate the bug, that a thread from today with the subject 'xyz' will be find under another thread with the same subject, which is posted earlier.

hello there,
I also need to ask if there is a german forum.

1. I want the possibility to uninstall the IE, because popup stuff always uses the IE!
according to this I decided to use Opera, my favorite browser.
But this did not solve my problems with popups, because the IE is still there and even as not primary browser it popups sometimes. so i tried to delete the IE myself, but this caused my system to crash, because many functions of the system, such as minimize all windows( desktop anzeigen), are built in features of the IE.

So I want to option to uninstall the IE or to disable the IE if uninstalling is not possible.

I think it is quite useless to discuss about shortcomings of the IE and any required improvements for the future because you will know your software and your competitors better than everybody else.

Close all the intentional and internally known backdoors and leaks ... which are reserved for push techniques, maker´s influence on users, spying consumer activities and pleasing the editors of many websites with the same aims.

Just act fair in the market and in supplying products and service and you will end up with a better product and more satisfied customers.

Judging from MS´s history this seems to be an irrational wish but you now have the choice to convince me of the contrary or loose against OpenSource soon...

Hi,

nice to see that you picked up work again on the IE. Honestly, I can't see it become "the best browser in the world", but you could do a lot to make it better than it is. My major gripe with IE is its less-than-useful implementation of standards, especially

- the features it claims to but actually does not implement (correctly)
- the incorrect or missing fallback mechanisms for features it does not implement

This makes it really hard to create rich standard-compliant web pages which gracefully degrade on the IE. From past experiences I do not actually expect M$ to fully and correctly implement standards they did not create or "improve" themselves, but I do wish you would at least fix the fallback mechanisms.

Everyone switch to MAC! And use Safari :)

> Something that has intrigued me for along time about IE is the use of HTML in its interface, a huge amount of its Dialogs are written using markup and JavaScript. For example the Find On this page, and About Dialogs.

> Is their a reason so much of IE’s interface is built like this? It all smells a bit like there's some cross zone nastiness hiding somewhere in all that. and that’s a smell that makes me a bit uneasy.

I wouldn't read too much into that if I were you. The majority of Mozilla's interface is written using markup and Javascript too.

Jim: When was the last time you tried Firefox? It sounds like it's been a while.

Jerry Pisk: XPI pacakges are nothing like ActiveX. XPI is closer to a Browser Helper Object, except that it prompts the user before installation. And authenticode signing hasn't done much to slow malware. As for tabs in IE, the reason it is so hard to remember exactly what version it was is because it was a *dream*.

The Stop button in IE has never worked right. It has always seemed to a more like an advisory than a command: "Would you mind stopping, if it is quite convenient?"

An effort to win the hearts and minds of computer users around the world! "Weve heard loud and clear that many people want a better connection with the IE Team. Were happy to do something about it. Our goal in...

CSS-Technik-News

Its nice to have the IE development team back. But ..

I was blissfully surfing the web with IE for many years. It was good.
It was so good I even worked for Microsoft Tech Support in Tucson!

But then I started teaching myself HTML, javascript, CSS and DOM. I stumbled across sites like Mozilla.org, W3.org and Webstandards.org, among others. I found out how far behind the times IE6 is.

And I stopped using it as my default browser. And I will not use it untill it supports HTML 4.01 (1999), CSS2 (1998), and DOM2 (xml 2000,html 2003).

If yall want to add cool extensions and fancy DHTML, well good. But at least support the basics.

just found this blog - good luck with your blog

reinhard

I am very curious about the upcoming content. it is good to see that you want feedback :) good luck

LOL at the W3C validation ;-)

no doubt your servers logged that im on a mac running safari, but im interested to know how the worlds largest software corp owned by one of the worlds richest men and whoms software runs on 95%+ of the worlds computers will redress the balance with the abysmal security in IE.

Come on, Bills got the money you lot just seem to have got too lax with your marketshare being what it is and any old rubbish you release people have to swallow because half of them arent aware of alternatives and half of them are too tied in to MS to be able to change.

Serously, MS <b>IS</b> a monopoly and needs to respect its consumers give back more to them in the privileged position it finds itself. Any other industry would not allow any one company to have the market dominance MS does with out some kind of out side checks and balances, but for some reason this is allowed to continue in this industry.

Sorry, this is becoming too much of a rant but I feel ol' Billy Gates needs a serious wake up call to the damage his leaking browsers doing to the internet and companies but the multitude of viri and spyware exploiting these holes and costing individuals time and money doesnt seem to make any difference.

Anyway, Good Luck and I hope youve got your photocopiers warmed up for when Tiger comes out ;-)

Well, I've used IE since version 4 and I've always been content with it. Since I'm a relatively careful user (using an AV program, a firewall, installing all available patches and so on) I've never suffered from the many bugs and security problems IE contains.

A few months ago (when reinstalling my system) I gave Firefox a chance. What convinced my to continue using it were not security reasons but features/extensions like tabbed browsing, mouse gestures or the pop-up blocker. I didn't know what I miss before I tried it myself. Whenever I use IE now, I find myself making mouse-gestures (which of course do not work).

I'm not one of these Windows vs. Linux or IE vs. Mozilla/Opera/whatever guys, I simply use the products that fit my needs best.

For other (especially more or less unexperienced) users, browser security may be more important - not everyone keeps his/her computer updated. That's why I will probably install Firefox/Thunderbird on my familiy's / friends' computers to protect them from problems.

From my point of view, improving the underlying security concept of IE is the most important thing to do. But - please !- look at the roots not the leaves, even if this means rewriting things from scratch. This definitely means a lot of work. But it's possible. You can do it - give it a try! :-)

Henning

There actually IS an Internet Explorer Development Team?!?
...
[stunned silence as I pick my jaw up off the ground]

*cough* http://www.hicksdesign.co.uk/journal/542/hold-the-front-page

and

*cough* http://smh.com.au/articles/2004/07/26/1090693888524.html?oneclick=true

I'm *soooo* with <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2004/07/21/190687.aspx#195303">Rick W's comment</a>. Couldn't say it better.

I'll be watching this blog. Kinda interesting what it will grow to.

Regards, <a href="http://www.maxt.dk">MaxT</a>

*cough* ok... I shouldn't have waited that IE blog supports basic html tags... lol... sorry for mess up.

It's a nice idea but to be honest an even better start would have been a page with valid (x)HTML :-)

Security aside, W3C Standards are what it's all about...until IE (developed by Microsoft, which has the most resources on Earth and, I believe, is a member of that standards-development body) will accept that developers want standards for valid, everyday life reasons (and not just to bash Microsoft), then developers will indeed bash MS.

Adobe and Macromedia are just two examples of companies that have excellent relations with their customers: Photoshop artists are respected, Dreamweaver developers are courted, etc. - none of us outside of Microsoft need Bill Gates to come do our dishes for us (we're not asking MS to do *everything*), but the year-after-year, arrogant disregard for what *actual* CUSTOMERS want is beginning to reap its proper rewards.

A Wish-List for IE?:

1 - FULL native support for CSS 1, 2, and as much of 3 as possible

2 - FULL native support for MathML (yes, real people actually do want, and *need*, this) - think scientists, mathematicians, researchers, statisticians, etc.

3 - FULL native support for PNG

4 - FULL native support for SVG

5 - FULL native support for XML *and* XHTML (delivered either as html or xml)

6 - Tabbed Browsing

7 - pop-up blocking (customizeable by site)

8 - NO ActiveX, Smart Tags integration or dependencies

9 - NO integration with the OS

10 - NO integration with other Office products

11 - SMALL Core Footprint, with the ability for plug-in/extension development to provide for more specific features

12 - DROP Alexa: it's spyware

13 - FIX IE's printing bug, where it prints something like "file://C:\DOCUME~1\(name)\LOCALS`1\Temp\NNL02KNO.htm" instead of simply printing a web page's actual URL


Until such time as IE sports some of these *basic*, *necessary* features, here are a few resources that are more useful than the way-out-of-date marketing...opps, sorry, technical, info provided by Microsoft:


http://www.google.com/search?q=IE%27s+shortcomings&sourceid=firefox&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=CategoryBrowserBug

http://www.positioniseverything.net/index.php

http://www.blooberry.com/indexdot/css/supportkey/syntax.htm

http://www.quirksmode.org/css/contents.html

http://westciv.com/style_master/academy/browser_support/index.html

http://nemesis1.f2o.org/bugs

http://www.stopdesign.com/log/2004/01/26/ie-factor.html

http://www.galaxygoo.org/blogs/archives/000528.html

http://geocities.com/csssite/index.xml

http://www.mozilla.org/start/1.0/guide/product.html#standards

http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/why/

http://texturizer.net/firefox/extensions/


Sorry, but you'll need Mozilla, Firefox, Netscape 7.1, or other Gecko-based browser to see some of these sites properly, since IE doesn't fully support standards such as MathML, SVG, PNG, CSS, etc.

PLEASE, listen to us...some of us actually DO like IE...but it has caused more trouble than any other single piece of software is many of our lives...and I'm not saying that to be mean or make you feel bad.

I would LOVE to see an IE with incredible standards support and tough-as-nails security...wouldn't happy developers constitute a small (or maybe not-so-small) army of marketers eager to tout the benefits of such an IE to all *their* customers, if they had a reliable browser from you?

That just seems like good business.

Hi,

Can you tell me why the IE doesn't scale the letters as we show on http://webmaster.gulli.com/webtechnik/css/variablefonts.html ?

it would be a much needed feature...

Could you please let me know how I can prevent ie 6.0 from sending two GET requests to a server. I have pdfs that are passed as a stream to a browser. NOTE: contype didn't help.

<!--[if IE]><a href="http://getfirefox.com/" title="Get Firefox - Take Back the Web"><img src="http://adampoulemanos.com/kubrick/kubrickfirefox.jpg" class="firefoxpr" alt="Internet Explorer is bad for your health" /></a><![endif]-->

firefox

The truth is that Microsoft has a habit of producing bad software - probably due to being closed sourced and the limited minds can't produce anything else. It "looks" pretty on the outside, but, that's as far as the beauty goes.
Linux is a wonderful product, which is winning the OS war, by the way, despite what you want to believe, because practically the entire world is working on it in some way - it's open source. The source code for Microsoft products is kept secret and hidden, thus, severly limiting the amount of people who can work on it and, therefore, limiting its quality.

My suggestions is thus. Open ALL the source code for Microsoft products, thereby allowing more folks to improve it. Or keep it closed and continue to wane until such time as Microsoft products are no longer wanted by the public at all.

Microsoft Corp. is going to lose the revenue generated by it's Microsoft Windows OS's. Either by opening the source code to the public, or by the public demand for the products dying out. Revenue generated by MS Windows OS's is going to be lost, one way or another.

Hi,

I recently read a topic on internetnews.com saying the IE team (or at least someone called Robert Iliad, I think) has doubts on implementing full CSS-specs (and full PNG-support) in Internet Explorer because he thinks people are not interested in what developers can/should do, but more in their own features they like. Well, here's the thing:

I agree that a user probably doesn't have any concerns about wether the page they are looking at is layed out in CSS or a table layout, but wouldn't it be nice if the page they are looking at was half the size? Wouldn't it be great if they could visit twice as much internet websites with the volume they get from their internet provider? I think so. That was the first argument.

More and more website developers now have a button on their website which saids: 'Get FireFox'. I like those buttons, but don't want to place them on my own websites because it doesn't look professional. I still have to create my websites so my users have the best experience they can get. In all browsers.

What I do take care of, is to make sure I allways have a FAQ on my sites. If the site they are visiting at that time, doesn't display well, I advise them to get Firefox or Mozilla. A user starts thinking about the 'good' functionality of IE.

Well, I have a ton of other reasons to sum up, but here are my advices:

fix the box model
fix the css-positioning
get tabbed browsing
(get mouse gestures)

Best regards,
Koen

Please no next version of IE, it will be step 2 back. Here is several alternate web browsers, which are much better, so why new horrible, dangerous and not valid IE?

Смотрите, какой блог. Яко чудово названне, гы-гы, гы-гы, гы-гы!
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