Microsoft will soon start encouraging users running old versions of Internet Explorer to upgrade to the latest edition of its browser. People running IE 6 and 7 on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 will in the third week of April receive a notification through the Automate Update service that encourages them to upgrade their system to IE 8, Microsoft has said. This is not a hard sell, though. IE 8, released last month, won’t start automatically installing itself on your machine – you’ll have to opt in, by clicking the install button itself on the update message’s accompanying screen.
I’d rather see them encourage organizations to upgrade internal websites so that they don’t rely on IE6. Because aside from that, I can’t think of a single reason why anyone would keep IE6/7 over 8 (not even going to bring other browsers into this).
I suppose it’s better than nothing.
if adblock+ and flashblock would be available for ie6 i’d happily use it over failfox3
ie6 is smaller, faster and has better rendering-behaviour than ff (i’m not talking about compliance but the jumping-around of content while ff works through the css)
In all due respect – what the hell are you going on about? “jumping-around of content”? good lord, you really sound like you’re grasping at straws when you need criticise Firefox based on that. Heck, you might as well say that you don’t like the picture of the fox used in the icon.
Calling it failfox3? troll much? IE 6 and 7 need to be burnt and all support for it to be removed immediately. Software vendors have known for over 18 months that IE 8 will have standards compliance – executives at these software companies instead spent money on private jets and expensive dinner parties instead of making the necessary investments into their product line up.
Unfortunate for Microsoft – the weakest link in moving forward is the slowest largest software vendor. If hatred is to be spewed against the problems, it should be spewed against third parties who don’t get their act together.
“Heck, you might as well say that you don’t like the picture of the fox used in the icon.”
Finally! Someone else who has an irrational hatred of foxes!
I agree fully you can blame Microsoft for a load of things, regarding their browsers, but you cannot blame them that their customers sit on their lazy buttocks and do not upgrade their browsers and make the rest of us suffer for their lazyness by forcing us to support all this in software!
Microsoft is not at fault here, but incompetent lazy companies who do not upgrade. Most users already have privately many companies haven´t!
Yeah, he’s dredging up complaints from about six years ago, which basically amount to “it’s different – I don’t like it”.
On pages that use table-based layouts, Firefox will attempt to render the page as it’s downloading, while IE will wait for the entire table to be ready before drawing anything. On dial-up, that means that Firefox renders something quicker (but jumps around a bit, especially if the page author was trying to be clever), while IE sits there apparently doing nothing, and then suddenly loads all in one go.
It’s irrelevant anyway. It relies on web pages using table-based layouts (which they don’t anymore), and downloading the page using something as slow as dial-up (which nobody cares about anymore).
For pages that use CSS, all browsers have the same behaviour – generally, nothing is displayed until the CSS has been loaded and parsed. A CSS “flash of unstyled content” problem doesn’t look like jumping around, so there’s no chance our troll was talking about those. Besides, they affect all web browsers, and are usually fixed by the website author.
Sigh… Maybe it’s something like Stockholm Syndrome. I certainly can’t think of any other reason that someone would actually defend IE 6.
-12 for not praising ff
what a great community ^^
i have to disapoint you: i’m using ff3, and not some 6 year old release
and there’s a big difference between being different and being annoying
annoying is:
-having only one row of tabs when 2+ are needed
-feeling clunky when using it without tabs
-drawing the dotted box around a link when klicking it, but not opening the link
-showing the hand-curser when there is nothing to click at
-scrolling a not selected tab in conjunction with the active on
-accessing the dvd-drive when clicking a menu-item
-reloading a tab when it is draged onto itselfe
-having to click on a tab before you can close it (happens when the tabs get to small)
i have more than enough to complain over failfox, but i’m still using it
how is that worse than having multiple tabless windows open – like you would with your beloved IE6?
Edit the toolbars and/or download a new skin then. FF is very customizable.
You don’t even need the tab bar to show when you only have 1 tab open.
These sound like either a broken FF install or your computer acting up. I’m yet to experience these issues on any of the multiple Windows and Linux installs I’ve used.
then don’t drag a tab onto itself. There’s no reason on earth that you should need to do this.
You can get plugins to add the [X] to each tab to close it.
Failing that, just middle click the tab. (i trust you do have more than 1 mouse button?)
So far I’m yet to hear you post a compelling reason to dislike FF.
All you’ve posted is details of borked installs and annoyances that are easily turned off after as little as 5 minutes of customisation.
By the way: what platform you using FF on? And what version of FF3 is it? (I trust you’re not using an alpha/beta copy?)
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; de; rv:1.9.0.8) Gecko/2009032609 Firefox/3.0.8 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
and thx for the tip with the middle mousbutton
THIS
and also having to click the center of a button, no clicking the edge, even though it depresses the button, but does nothing.
That’s easily the dumbest thing I’ve read all month.
Countless benchmarks have proven FF is quicker at rendering than IE and the “jumping about” only happens when surfing poorly coded web pages on dial up (something you can hardly blame Mozilla for)
You can’t even argue the point that iexplore.exe loads quicker than firefox.exe because, while application starts up quicker, you loose you every time you have to open a new instance for each new web page rather than a single tab.
Plus half the reason iexplore.exe loads quicker is because there’s no plug in support (something you already said you needed). So add that and tabbed browsing and you’re half way to creating the monster that is IE7.
In fact, the only thing IE6 does more efficiently is infecting the host machine with countless malware.
Edited 2009-04-14 18:42 UTC
At least FF actually supports real CSS, unlike IE6. IE6 is fine for people who use sites designed in the mid-90’s, but it doesn’t cut it in the 21st century.
IE6 hogs memory just as bad when using Flash or Java too, is just as slow sometimes and breaks rendering of anything more complicated than “Hello world!” LOL
FTA:
What I find amazing about this article is the apparent meek acceptance of the idea that a mere software vendor might have made a product of theirs a “hard sell” and forced it on to user’s machines, but instead have decided to make it “opt in”.
How is it in any way acceptable that Microsoft might have instead decided to make it non-optional, or even “opt-out”?
This is an outright admission that Microsoft have a back door into user’s Windows machines.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backdoor_(computing)
Whose machine is it, anyway?
Edited 2009-04-14 10:27 UTC
Whose machine is it, anyway?
In the case of proprietary software, it is almost analogous to audio on a CD. You own the CD, but the content is, apart from a limited right to listen, not yours.
(Of course, the same can be said for FOSS. The authors own it, but since they only put limits on distribution, the use of it is practically unfettered.)
Given that the machine is my property, I would expect the right to determine what content I want to go on it. This seems to me to be a natural consequence of my property rights regarding the machine itself.
I don’t expect to own rights to that content, since I didn’t make the content, but I do however fully and rightfully expect to hold full authority over exactly what content I deem to have on the machine.
The appropriate analogy would be: I own the plastic of the CDs I purchase, I have purchased a right to listen to the content on those CDs, and I have an absolute right as a consumer and property owner myself (my equipment, remember) to decide exactly which CDs I do and do not purchase for my use with my equipment.
By the way … I also expect an absolute right of ownership over any of my own original content that I may create using my machine. I do not waive any part of that right in the sense that it is unacceptable to me that the machine should keep my content locked up in obscured proprietary formats, thereby constraining my ongoing purchase decisions with respect to my own property.
Edited 2009-04-14 12:09 UTC
Good troll, you got a few people worked up.
MS could only force IE8 onto those people who have automatic updates enabled. If these are switched off then you will never be bothered by the update message or the IE8 install.
That is true of the way that MS have decided to deploy IE8.
It is not, however, true in general. There was one occasion where an update from Microsoft installed itself via Windows Update silently (ie. without asking the local administrator), and despite whatever settings that the local administrator had selected for updates.
In the ensuing investigation, Microsoft admitted that it was the design of Windows Update to allow this for “updates to Windows Update”. That is to say, anything that Microsoft tags as an “update to Windows Update” can be pushed on to your Windows system, by Microsoft, without your say so, and regardless of your selected options for updates.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=779
Now if Microsoft can push an “update to Windows Update” on to your machine, then it transpires that they can also push a sequence of updates such as this:
(1) A silent update to Windows Update.
(2) Whatever Microsoft wants, silently, as allowed by the new Windows Update installed at (1)
then
(3) Another silent update to Windows Update, which restores the original Windows Update behaviour.
So using such a sequence, Microsoft have the ability to silently install whatever they want on your Windows machine, without your knowledge or permission, and without Microsoft having to know any password of your choosing.
This then is a classic case of a computing backdoor.
Edited 2009-04-14 14:16 UTC
I think you might be stumbling over the line to paranoia there! Certainly had me reaching for my tin foil hat 🙂
Anyhow, I actually agree that auto updates are getting a bit out of hand, but you can’t really point the finger solely at MS.
Practically everything you install these days comes with it’s own auto-update software. Apple’s is the worst because it actually installs new software as well as updating your existing software! Not cool.
I’m actually writing an auto-update routine for my company’s software suite at the moment…
Please, no hate mail 🙂
Well, it is indeed paranoid thinking in the sense that Microsoft have never used that capability as far as anyone is aware. I certainly make no claim that they have.
The one incident that highlighted this aspect of Windows Update behaviour was actually an accident on Microsoft’s part. Unintentional. But it did demonstrate that a silent update from Microsoft was possible.
However, it is not paranoid at all to point out that the backdoor certainly exists, especially in light of the fact that the Microsoft EULA for Windows specifically reserves the right for Microsoft to change the Windows software on your machine.
Remember, despite the fact that you pay for it, Microsoft believe that the Windows software on your machine is still their property, and they have reserved for themselves the right, and the means, to change it at their own discretion, not yours.
This mechanism, BTW, even allows Microsoft a “kill switch” on your Windows machine.
Interesting, isn’t it?
Even more interesting is the fact that millions upon millions of people either: will not believe that this is the case; or do not know or care (or both) that this is the case; or are aware that this is the case but still actively try to discredit or drown out any voices that point it out to the general public.
My own post on this OSNews thread which describes the mechanism of this potential backdoor was modded down, apparently by someone that “can’t handle the truth”.
Edited 2009-04-14 23:41 UTC
Indeed. MS has never used the function that allows Windows Update to update itself, to piggyback something else on it. Only an idiot would think otherwise.
Personally, given how many Windows PC’s are turned into bot nets because of the P that EBKAC, I kinda wish updates were forced. It’s not MS fault that a user doesn’t install updates because they are too stupid or lazy to spend 5 minutes to do so.
An earlier poster blamed tough updating on the “fat & lazy buttocks” of end user corporations.
I say MS should thank their luck dollar signs for those fat & lazy buttocks. Anybody who has more sense than God gave a goose knows that among OS’s, Windows is the mainstreamed short bus rider who is having his self esteem turbocharged by supermom (nuclear marketing and monopolistic business practices) but underperforms nonetheless.
Offended by that language? Think about the awful lounge singer who has a job only because she’s the club owner’s current main squeeze.
Either way, I don’t think that MS would be smart to alienate the a$$es of the world, for that is the part of the body that feeds them. Bon appetite.
Paul Podbielski