With Internet Explorer 8 out the door, Microsoft is trying to capitalise on its latest browser release with a marketing campaign outlining several benefits Internet Explorer 8 supposedly has over Chrome and Firefox. The campaign is titled “Get the facts“, so I guess most of you will know what will come.
The campaign is divided into three sections: reasons to install, browser comparison, and mythbusting. The reasons to install aren’t that crazy, it’s just that the features and benefits listed are offset against previous versions of Internet Explorer – and let’s face it, it’s not hard to best Internet Explorer 6 and 7. Still, it does have some features in there that are not common in every browser, such as isolated tabs, which Firefox, Safari, and Opera can’t offer you.
The comparison is more interesting. It takes Internet Explorer 8 and compares it to Firefox and Chrome (disregarding Opera and Safari), and claims that Internet Explorer beats both of them in 7 out of 10 areas.
It claims IE8 is more secure, because it has better phishing and malware protection. I’m not particularly versed in those two areas, but what I do see is that they ignore the fact that there are also security threats that do not come from phishing and malware. They also claim that IE8 has the better privacy features, which seems a bit weird to me as every browser has a “porn button” these days.
Web standards is an interesting one. Microsoft claims it’s a tie, stating that Internet Explorer 8 has the best CSS 2.1 compliance (which is true), but that Firefox has more support for “some evolving standards”. They don’t even mention Chrome in this regard. While IE8 may indeed be ahead when it comes to CSS 2.1, overall they’re still lacking behind the competition. Claiming this is a tie is pretty far-fetched. Related to this is the claim that IE8 is more compatible with more sites out there – they may even have a point on this one because IE-specific sites… Work in IE8.
According to Microsoft, Internet Explore 8 also wins when it comes to developer tools and manageability. They also claim IE8 is ahead in reliability because it has both tab isolation and recovery features, adding that Firefox and Chrome have one or the other. Customisability and performance are also ties, they claim, stating that while Firefox has a lot of extensions, IE8 comes with many of those already built-in.
The last section deals with myths around IE:
- Myth #1: Internet Explorer is much slower than Firefox and Chrome.
- Myth #2: Internet Explorer is less secure than Firefox.
- Myth #3: Firefox is a richer, more adaptable browser than Internet Explorer.
- Myth #4: Internet Explorer doesn’t play well with Web standards.
It’s an interesting campaign, but I’m sure it won’t nudge any of us into the direction of IE8. However, less knowledgeable people on this subject could still see it as a very valid marketing campaign.
A more appropriate name for this campaign would be “Get the viruses”.
that hasn’t really been an issue since ie6 on windows xp pre sp1. ie7 made things much better around security, and in vista ie is sandboxed more then almost any other program by the os.
Um, what are you talking about? My girlfriend’s dad, whose computer had XP SP2 and the newest version of IE 6, managed to contract a slew of viruses over the internet just last week. What did it take? The simple prompt from IE to run a program that promised to enhance his computer’s protection against viruses.
He said: IE7 improved things security-wise. If you’re still running IE6, you’re just asking for it, and I have no sympathy.
So, your girlfriend’s dad just installed some program from some dubious source on the internet, and now he has a slew of viruses? How surprising.
Why isn’t he running Internet Explorer 8? its a free upgrade – it has been available for quite some time and it a heck of alot more secure than IE 6. What it sounds like is you’re deliberately setting yourself up for failure as to justify what ever prejudice you have against Microsoft. Internet Explorer is crap but to use an ancient version as a anchor to your argument undermines any possible credibility that you might have had.
Regarding the virus issue; how is it Microsoft’s fault that your girlfriends father is clueless? what you seem to be doing is throwing personal responsibility out the window in favour of blaming a third party for stupidity on the part of the end user.
Edited 2009-06-19 11:22 UTC
Um, I was just refuting the statement that “catching viruses hasn’t been an issue since IE6 on XP SP1″….
Edited 2009-06-20 11:10 UTC
Heck, IE7 and SP3 got slayed by Conficker through local access and brute force. If that’s not “vulnerablility” enough, Drive by downloads are still going strong against IE7.
AS for SP2; five minutes of work or less for a pentest thanks to the good folks behind the Framework. I believe it’s an SMB vulnerability in that case.
From the article, my favorite bit is where they try to spin bundling as a benefit. Firefox allows the user to select and add what extra functions they like where we include those functions directly removing the user’s choice; we’re so much more user focused than that nasty other browser company. Eesh..
We’ll see how IE8 actually holds up under abuse as it hasn’t been out long enough to really be sure. That basis the results on actual testing rather than marketing spin though.
Totally agree
.
Security: Both chrome and firefox have phishing and malware protection too
Privacy: Chrome shipped incognito mode long before IE8
Ease of Use: Every browser out there has features the others don’t. What matters to you is completely subjective.
Web Standards: They pass the most css 2.1 tests because they wrote and passed them along. While IE8 is better then IE has been for ages at web standards, it is still a generation behind the competition who are supporting more and more of HTML 5 and CSS 3.
Developer Tools: While the dev toolkit is built in and is definately quite nice, firebug is the one and only real choice for web dev tools.
Reliability: Chrome has recovered my tabs after a crash several times now, and shipped process isolation before anyone else.
Customizability: If all you count is features out of the box, Opera beats everyone by miles. Opera’s marketshare shows just how irrelevant a metric this actually is to most people.
Compatibility: One of two points that are true. The only sites that are not compatible with IE8 are ones using other peoples vender specific extensions to the standards, or HTML5/CSS3 features.
Managability: The second point that is completely true. Neither firefox or chrome use the accepted standards in windows package management, and because of that are a bit of a nightmare to deploy and manage on a windows network.
Performance: The rendering engine is quite fast. However, the javascript engine is still a generation or so behind the competition.
This is obviously all marketing, but very little of it are flat out lies. Most have a kernel of truth, but only if you look at it in a specific way
There is at least one big bold barefaced lie.
The claim that the web standards which IE8 fails to meet are “evolving” is a flat out lie.
Firefox, Safari, Opera and Chrome all pass the majority of Acid3 tests. IE8 passes only about 20% of them.
The levels of the web standards that are tested by Acid3 have been stable for 5 years or more in most cases, and some of them have been the standard for over eight years and IE STILL doesn’t meet them.
It is not really a case that the web standards in question are “evolving” so much as it is the case that IE is a dinosaur when it comes to web standards compliance.
These are “the facts” that one needs to “get”.
Edited 2009-06-18 23:33 UTC
Actually, what they say – that IE8 is the best browser for CSS2.1, but that Firefox 3 has more support for some evolving standards – is entirely true.
That’s all they’re actually claiming – they don’t claim to implement all definitive standards. It’s just the usual story – if you do something well, shout it to the world. If your competitors do something better, downplay the importance of it. It’s not lying – it’s marketing.
It is lying all right, in that it utterly ignores 99% of the actual facts of the matter.
All that one needs to do is switch focus from CSS to any of these: DOM, SVG, ECMAscript, SMIL.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid3#Standards_tested
For all of those, IE fails to meet the standard that has been stable for over 5 years.
Stable <> evolving.
Not meet < meet.
However, lets be clear here, and note that when it comes to web standards that actually ARE evolving, such as HTML5 … IE doesn’t meet them either.
Edited 2009-06-19 00:17 UTC
But that’s not *actually* lying – everything they said was 100% true. Yes, it’s only a small part of the picture. Yes, it’s highly misleading. But it doesn’t change the fact that the claim they’re making is true.
It’s the same story with other claims. It’s quite true that IE8 comes with tools for web developers, while Firefox and others don’t. It doesn’t matter that there are free tools like Firebug that far exceed anything available for IE. Because the truth is, IE8 comes with better tools than it’s rivals. Irrelevant and misleading, sure. But still verifiably true.
Like I said, it’s all marketing. “Get the Facts” – not *all* the facts (that’d just confuse people, right?), but just the facts that reflect well on MS given the right context and interpretation…
Well, they claim that IE has a better implmentation of CSS 2.1, and they claim that Firefox has better implementation of other evolving standards. True in a limited way. But 100% true … come on, that is not even close.
There are a couple lies of omission here:
(1) CSS 2.1 is the current stable level of the CSS standard, but other browsers have by far the better implementation of (the evolving) CSS 3.
(2) Most of the current web standards that IE fails to conform to, but other browsers do conform to, are however not “evolving” standards at all. They have been standard and stable for over five years, some of them for eight years, and IE has failed to conform for all that time.
(3) Some of the web standards that have been the standard for many years, such as DOM, ECMAScript and SVG … when customers have submitted bug reports to Microsoft that IE does not conform to said standard, Microsoft have closed off the bug reports as not being implemented in IE “by design”. IE is then designed to be non-compliant to the standards … yet this marketing fluff has the chutzpah to try to claim that IE’s compliance to stable, current web standards is “a draw” with other browsers.
That is a flat out lie.
For another lie, read their spiel about mtyhbuster #1, then consider (aside from the fact that it is non-compliant) that the speed of ECMAScript in IE is glacial compared to either tracemonkey or squirrelfish.
Edited 2009-06-19 02:22 UTC
CSS 3 is an evolving standard. SVG is only referenced by HTML 5, which is an evolving standard. ECMAScript 4 is an evolving standard. And the only part where IE varies substancially from the W3C DOM standard is in its box model, and quite honestly the way they do it makes more sense then the way everyone else does it.
Now, does that matter in any way? Nope. Standards put out by consortiums tend to a) suck, and b) take forever to get out. Everyone else is a good generation ahead of what the W3C has published at this point. But when they say they support the current published standards, they are 100% correct.
Edited 2009-06-19 03:17 UTC
SVG is not an evolving standard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svg
This does not mean that it is evolving, since SVG 1.2 is a superset that includes all of SVG 1.1.
SVG 1.1 has therefore been the standard for scalable graphics on the web for over eight years now. IE is still totally unable to deal with it.
ECMAScript 4 is abandonned.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECMAScript
ECMAScript 3 is the current standard, and it has been the standard since December 1999, almost a decade ago.
ECMAScript 5 is not the recommended standard, and in any case it is largely a subset.
No one would expect compliance with a standard that isn’t out yet. Just ECMAScript 3 will do. IE has had a decade to be compliant, and doesn’t manage it.
DOM Level 2 was published in late 2000. IE is compliant only with DOM level 1, which was published in 1998.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document_Object_Model#Standardization
What would be the point in IE getting this wrong other than trying, through Windows dominance on the desktop, to make IE the only browser that would render some sites?
Oh yes it does. Ask the EU, and ask about a whopping fine that should be coming Microsoft’s way.
Excuse me? The standards in question were all published over 5 years ago, up to 10 years ago in some cases. Everyone else is compliant, and IE alone is a generation behind.
Please try to keep up.
No, au contraire, they are 100% incorrect. They outright lie.
Edited 2009-06-19 05:33 UTC
IE is compliant with ECMAScript 3, it is things from 4 (that are now in 5) that it doesn’t do so well with. For all practical reasons its compliant with DOM 2 as well. SVG has been around for ages, but html 5 is the first time it was referenced in the html spec.
The only people that care in the least about w3c web standards are web developers, and we don’t care if its an evolving standard or not, we care that it is something cool that can be used reliably across all the browsers. You are trying to make this about something else, which it is not. The EU cares about bundling, they dont care about w3c compliance.
I don’t really want to talk with you about this anymore, because talking with you about anything even remotely related to microsoft is an exercise in running in circles.
You are in denial. One would feel sorry for you if you didn’t keep trying to make excuses for Microsoft.
If you are finding it too hard to debate my points and you don’t wish to discuss it further with me, why don’t you try talking to some other web developers to see how they feel about Microsoft’s noncompliance?
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1274353&cid=28387843
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1274353&cid=28388225
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1274353&cid=28388225
Here is a hint: you probably won’t find a sympathetic ear there either.
Edited 2009-06-19 13:23 UTC
It appears you’re getting too much lost in technical details, which, though interesting and indicative of where IE8 really stands when it comes to standards compliance, don’t mean the statements were a lie. If, as the original article puts it, Microsoft only claimed that:
“… Internet Explorer 8 has the best CSS 2.1 compliance (which is true), but that Firefox has more support for “some evolving standards”. ”
– then these two statements are, indeed, true. Firefox, of course, has better support for evolving standards! The fact that Firefox (and other browsers, like Opera) also have better support for age-old standards that are long past the evolving stage doesn’t really play into it – in this context, that is – because no part of those statements denies that. Yes, putting it this way is leaving out what’s very important and is highly misleading, but I can’t see an outright lie here. Again, just stick to the two statements:
a) IE8 has better support for CSS 2.1 (true)
b) Firefox has better support for some evolving standards (true)
It appears you’re arguing about a statement c) that wasn’t actually made, namely that IE has/Firefox does not have better support for many other standards that are past the evoling stage. This part is just conveniently left out, but there’s no direct lie about it. Of course, one might argue that it’s an indirect lie due to being highly misleading as a reader might all too easily get the impression such a statement c was made – in fact, it appears you’re one of them. But that’s how marketing works, as was already mentioned earlier. It often attempts to create a wrong impression (a kind of lying, if you want) without resorting to outright lie.
The CSS2.1 question still is up to the tests, I assume regarding CSS 2.1 all the latest browsers and the browsers currently in RC status are up to the same, with really small variations on the bug level. We are finally there where we should have been 5 years ago!
As for other things, the biggest gripe most web designers/programmers currently have with IE8 is the complete lack of SVG and the really lousy javascript engine (which is as bad as ever)
SVG hurts way more than not having support for the already finalized html 5 features!
SVG is the roadblock which PNG transparency used to be a while ago!
Microsoft simply is a few years behind and still plays catch up!
Nup. They oughtright lie. No question about it.
Busting IE8’s Mythbusting
http://www.geektechnica.com/2009/06/busting-ie8s-mythbusting/
It is not just me saying so.
Edited 2009-06-20 15:48 UTC
DOM box model? I think you mean the CSS box model. DOM stands for Document Object Model.
Actually the second statement is plainly false SVG has been a W3C standard for 6-7 years now, enough time that Microsoft was able to fork it away and integrate it incompatible in silverlight!
What is coming in HTML5 is the canvas tag, which is completely different!
Some would claim that leaving out parts of the story that would put the parts included in correct context is lying. But, it is also marketing and no one should ever expect Microsoft to say “well, they do it much better but hey, we’re working on it”
Microsoft will use what ever excuse in their book to justify why they step up to provide support for at least some routine standards that the alternative browsers have supported since God was a teenager. The only way that I can see things ever improve is if the EU forces Microsoft to implement these standards fully and open up fully all their internet technologies (Silverlight etc) and dependent technologies (the CODEC’s etc used in Silverlight) for third parties to implement free of charge.
Until someone forces Microsoft to conform to the standards that exist already and put a due date for it, things will just keep either getting worse or Microsoft will use Silverlight to embrace and extend the internet in lieu of properly supporting the web standards.
There is no need at all for “all their internet technologies (Silverlight etc) and dependent technologies (the CODEC’s etc used in Silverlight) for third parties to implement free of charge” if Microsoft were simply required to “implement these standards fully”.
The W3C standards can easily do all that Silverlight can do, and they can be implemented on any and all internet-connected platforms.
http://blog.dailymotion.com/2009/05/27/watch-videowithout-flash/
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Dailymotion-Add-Support-for-HTML-5-1…
No flash (or Silverlight, or proprietary codecs) involved, just HTML5 + ECMAScript/CSS3 + SVG filters + animated PNG. W3C standards only.
Edited 2009-06-19 12:11 UTC
The problem is that it sucks. SVG scripting is very slow compared to RIAs, and ogg theora is about 3 generations behind what is considered the standards in codecs at the moment.
Use ECMAScripting in conjunction with CSS3 and a JIT compiler (e.g. tracemonkey or squirrelfish) on the client side. Use SVG only for SWF-style graphics. JSON will also help.
The Theora decoder (i.e. the bit that would go int the browser) is stable, but until recently the encoder was behind. The thusnelda project has a bit more tuning still to go to complete the effort, but in essence Theora has for all practical purposes caught up now.
http://noraisin.net/~jan/diary/?p=77
http://www.osnews.com/thread?362469
Perhaps it is you who are three generations behind the news.
Edited 2009-06-19 13:37 UTC
I know what SVG is dude. Scripting SVG is not as easy, powerful, or performant as what is available on other platforms (such as flash or silverlight) Maybe it will one day, it sure isn’t now.
And nobody uses x264 anymore on the web, it is almost all vp7 (for anything serious anyways). MS uses VC-1 (also the format found in blu-rays), which is widely considered to be a generation ahead of x264. So saying theora almost has the quality/size of x264 is saying they are almost a generation behind everyone else.
The vast majority of video on the web uses flv.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flv
Theora recently has surpassed this (h.263 and VP6).
There is no reason any more not to use HTML5 and Theora codecs for video on the web. This would currently outperform the vast amount of current video on the web.
Thusnelda has not yet finished its optimization tuning. There is a reasonable chance that when it has, Theora will outperform any other video on the web.
Edited 2009-06-19 14:15 UTC
Unfortunately people try to avoid those realities – ogg and theora aren’t up the scratch, dirac is still in development and not ready, and Sun at one point was trying to create a free and open video codec as well. Even if there are CODEC’s, then there is the issue of DRM and the paranoia behind many of the current media companies business models. I think it is a lot more complicated than what lemur2 is trying to make it.
Its not complicated at all.
The Theora decoder is fine. This is the thing that needs to go into millions of browsers, and it is already ready. Has been so for some time.
The Theora encoder used to have issues, but they are all but sorted. Alpha versions of a vastly improved encoder for Theora are already available right now. This impacts only the encoding of video, and a large video hosting site in Dailymotion has no problem with it anyway. Why should any other site?
Ogg is just a container format … nothing at all wrong with it. If you don’t like Ogg, use Matroska.
I think you must have meant the audio codec though, which is Vorbis. Nothing wrong with Vorbis either, it performs better than mp3.
DRM is simply encryption. Use the SSL layer if you want encrypted data across the net. As for what happens on the client machine … the client machine has to be able to decrypt the video stream in order to be able to render it, so no amount of DRM within the codecs will be able to prevent a plaintext copy of the video data having to be present on the client machine.
Edited 2009-06-19 14:01 UTC
You are right, OGG is the container format, I should have been more specific. You talk about optimisation – you pointed out it is still in alpha. If it is still in Alpha, it is useless to the end user; it is as useless to the end user as the Microsoft advocate who in response to criticisms of Windows Vista talking about how Windows 7 is in beta testing – it doesn’t matter. Until it is out of beta/alpha, and is still in real life product – its all but parlour games; we might as well be playing, “if I had a million dollars what would I do”.
DRM is more than just SSL – DRM is about managing who gets it and how they can use that video stream; whether they can intercept it in the case of Real Downloader and save it to the users hard disk. As I said, if you took the time to research it is a lot more complex than just throwing acronyms at the problem; until you’ve actually used Silverlight, I think you need to educate yourself on the matter.
The end user doesn’t have to use the encoder. There is no need for an encoder in a web browser.
The decoder isn’t in alpha.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theora#Current_status
I’m sorry, but it is you who has misunderstood. In order to render via a Video card, there MUST be a plaintext copy of the video data stream present on the client machine, no matter how much DRM is attempted to be applied.
This means that a determined, knowledgeable person can “get at” the plaintext video data for any video sent over the web, no matter how determined the sender to dictate otherwise.
Edited 2009-06-19 14:30 UTC
It is less the scripting but the vector graphics capabilities why everyone wants svg, it would mean finally resolution independence for images.
The main issue is, Microsoft wont adapt it and it is questionable if the canvas tag which is very similar in its functionalty will be adapted!
We have vector graphics on the IE but as usual it is Microsoft only and no open standard, and Silverlight has adopted SVG bit in a forked incompatible manner, while everyone tried to integrate SVG!
The scripting in SVG is nice but it is more an afterthought and not really optimized yet, and it is not the reason why everyone screams for SVG on the IE!
I’d dare to dream about an Internet without flash. It’s better now that Adobe finally kicked out a 64bit Linux platform native viewer (some three or more years late). But I’ve seen Joomla based websites you’d swear where Flash based except for not having Flash installed on the viewing machine.
You can stop worrying about silverlight, it is pretty much DOA for public facing sites. Nobody is using it except for the people microsoft paid to use it, and even they have mostly dropped it now.
Its a shame too, because it is a joy to develop for compared to flash. But developers are the only people that really seem to like it. As things stand now, it is going to be one of those things that lives in LoB intranet webapps and nowhere else.
I’m not worried about Silverlight, on the contrary, I want to see it kill off Flash because Flash is so horrible; if we must have a piece of technology to deliver RIA, I’d sooner it be Silverlight. Use Flash on Mac OS X in terms of the browser plugin and you’ll know what I mean; I’ve never seen such a horrible POS that is so poorly written and bloated.
The only way I would ever want Flash is if it were in the form of being full open source, fully documented in every facet and became the official Adobe plugin so that there was an incentive for Adobe to actually continue to maintain it for the long term – and not the partially half baked attempt they’re trying right now with all the glitz but no real code appearing in the CVS for people to download, compile and use in their browsers today.
Edited 2009-06-19 13:30 UTC
This is so true, the biggest lack of standards IE8 has is SVG support, there is none, zilch, nada, and SVG is not evolving anymore it is a robust standard and has been for the last 8 years!
The funny thing is that Microsoft basically forked SVG for silverlight and called it XAML, it was that good, but yet they do not provide a standards compliant implementation!
SVG support alone is one of the reasons why Microsoft lost around 30 points on ACID3. The rest is tests for other finalized things Microsoft has not provided.
Note ACID3 does not test for HTML5 elements where the argument would be valid, but only existing standards, and Javascript compliance and IE8 got around 30%!
Out of curiosity, exactly what is the “accepted standard in Windows package management”? I can see why Google doesn’t support whatever it is (what with installing in the profile and such) but Firefox?
MSI. It doesn’t matter too much for home users, but in corporate windows environments it is a very big deal. MoFo has repeatedly refused to publish MSIs, which is part of the reason that IE rules in many corporate environments. There is a company called frontmotion that repackages, but they usually take awhile to get to new builds, and personally I have run into issues using them in the past.
To be honest, I don’t see what MSI has over executables. At least you can use “Run As…” with executables.
Frontmotion’s packages are neat for another reason though, they support group policy.
its basically that, MSI has GPO events in them. If you are managing software on windows network, chances are you are using group policy. Windows installer also has a WMI provider, which provides a very easy way to plug into it from most other MS technologies (like powershell for example) Where I work, if an app absolutely must get deployed and it is NSIS or InstallShield, our IT guys will actually wrap it in an MSI first. Our IT guys actually like their jobs, I have worked in other environments where an MSI is a pre-requisite for software getting vetted in the first place.
Assuming you work for Google, explain to me why Google doesn’t allow end users to download the whole software package as a giant msi? why can’t I install it to “Program Files” and share it amongst all end users instead of the current setup which plonks the executables in the users directory?
It seems you’re happy to validly criticise Mozilla for what they do but you hold Google to a different standard.
They seem to be excluded Safari from the comparison…
Seriously, what a big amount of crap. Microsoft has many good products, but IE is certainly not one of them, in fact IMO it is one of their worst products. They have catched up in many ways, but it’s SO behind in many areas, specially in standards support and javascript performance…the shadow of IE6 is still there. Stagnating the development of their implementation of the most important program of a modern computer for many years has a price…
That is strange as Safari is by far the least secure of them. That would be an easy point for IE.
The jury is still out for IE 8 with me. Not the best, but better than ie 5,6 or 7. I think this get the facts has actually caused me to like it less. Its making up its own definitions of things so it can get a check mark. When its clearly bested by the other browsers in a non twistible category, it uses weasel words to diminish the importance of the category, and still gives itself a check mark.
If I were more anti-Microsoft, I might say that using Vista on any computer is like watching the browsers in slow motion. But of course that would be a joke, I’m still on XP. I’m sure there are some computers with the correct specs for Vista. I mean I once complained that win 95 was a slow and bloated OS ( it used almost 110 Megs of space!! The horror!).
There is a few nifty features. I like how they implemented accelerators, and I like color coding tabs based on what they were opened from.
Its certainly not a disgrace any more, and there are some mildly innovative stuff going on in the UI. Personally I use firefox for development (because of firebug), and chrome for browsing (because for me it is everything I want from a browser and nothing else)
Um, excuse me, Clippy is FAR worse than IE8.
Well from suckyness point of view here is my list:
5) IE8
4) Clippy
3) IE7
2) BOB
1) IE6
I prefer even clippy and Bob over IE6!
They are less annoying!
Does Internet Explorer run on Mac OSX? I didn’t think Safari counted for much on Microsoft OS’s.
ie5.2 does work with MacOS X, I’ve just found a copy that can run on my copy of Tiger, dunno about Leopard.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106503
And as you can tell it’s typical MicroSoft’s conviences before security again! Ah, bless their trusting little cotton socks!
News at 11.
I’m naturally skeptical, but might be willing to give IE8 a try. Here’s what I’ll be looking for:
1) Tabs or similar
2) Faster loading pages
3) Add-on selection, especially ad-blockers
try runing rich web application (like http://280slides.com/Editor/) on all browsers, you’ll see how slow IE8 really is.
Draw the long bow guys.. if IE8 had many of the hundreds if not thousands of add-ons, it’d take a week just to load the browser. Bit of a stupid comment.
“The campaign is titled “Get the facts”, so I guess most of you will know what will come.”
Marketing drivel, er, uh… I mean facts? Surely there won’t be much truth to these “facts.”
Edited 2009-06-18 22:13 UTC
They also claim that IE8 has the better privacy features, which seems a bit weird to me as every browser has a “porn button” these days.
Well actually, no – Firefox doesn’t. The feature will be present in 3.5 when it comes out, but all 3.0 has is a button for clearing the history, not an actual privacy mode.
Edited 2009-06-18 22:20 UTC
This is true enough, but it does also mean that Microsoft’s claims about firefox will be totally out of date in a few weeks at most.
What is the bet that there is no retraction made on Microsoft’s “get mislead about the facts” site?
Edited 2009-06-19 03:08 UTC
Notice that the information is available on their global website; I had a look at the local parts which are maintained by the local divisions of Microsoft – you’ll find that the ‘get the facts’ when it comes to Internet Explorer or Windows versus Linux is conspicuously absent from these local websites.
You won’t see them on these local sites because in most countries Microsoft would be held up for deceptive marketing – in other words, lying. Reminds me of link from the New Zealand site which I reported to the Commerce Commission which was nothing short of a blatant lie regarding GPL. Interesting how it was quickly removed.
Firefox is even available for SCO OpenServer 6. IE8? Forget it.
I don’t think Microsoft really cares about cross-platform availibility. They would be happy were everyone locked to Windows, their platform, after all. The only real cross-platform app, if you can call it that, is Office as it runs on Windows and OS X… but the OS X version is so different from the Windows version it might as well be a different product altogether in some areas.
I don’t think MS is going to shed any tears about IE8 not running on other platforms, somehow.
Agreed 100%. Unfortunately for Microsoft, that position is actually against the law … namely competition law.
This is the precise reason why Microsoft is liable to cop huge fines over IE.
No it isn’t. Wanting customers locked to your platform is not against the law.
There are certain things a company can do in order to accomplish this that are against the law but far from all are.
It most certainly is not a legal requirement to care about cross-platform availability.
Example: If one is a TV station in the business of broadcasting TV signals into a public arena, it most certainly is a legal requirement to ensure that your emitted signals are fully compliant to official standards so that television sets made by ANY manufacturer are able to correctly and fully render your signal.
If there is no corresponding requirement in the US for content sent via the internet instead, then that is clearly a failing of US competition law. In general, the same principle should apply. It should be strictly illegal to require customers to buy from a sole source supplier when there is a perfectly viable means, and willing providers, to supply the same services from multiple, competing suppliers.
This is fundamental to having a free market economy. I’m surprised that you would infer that the US, of all places, is somehow trying to suppress capitalism and fail to have a free market. Aren’t you people supposed to be all for that kind of stuff?
This has absolutely no bearing at all on what we’re discussing.
Should is not the same as is.
I’m not american (thankfully)
Oh yes it does. Very much so. Microsoft are desperately trying to make it necessary for people to have to use a Windows desktop in order to be able to have what Microsoft would describe as “a full Internet experience”.
The web standards that Microsoft are refusing to implement can equally well deliver “a full Internet experience” … except that they can deliver it to any platform at all.
My previous post has details:
http://www.osnews.com/permalink?369352
Edited 2009-06-19 12:23 UTC
I used IE in the first place.
i run Firefox all day. I dont run IE for anything. I uninstall it and remove the icons and shortcuts everywhere on my system.
The pure fact: I developped a site, pretty heavy on Javascript.
Works perfectly on Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera (and anything that uses Gecko and WebKit) – on any platform you can imagine that has an implementation of Gecko, WebKit (even KHTML) or Opera.
Fails in a ridiculous way under any version of IE. I know IE’s DOM is different from the others. I could make it work on IE. It would take me two months to do so, cluttering my code, with browser checks.
The fact: IE still can’t talk the same language as the other browsers.
Happily it’s an academic project and the “bosses” don’t give a shit about IE. Nobody uses it in the lab.
Funny, I had exactly the same problem some time ago but my teachers were not so kind. Despite showing every evidence that I could dig to prove that it was IE’s damn fault that the site rendered poorly in it and that every other mainstream browser in existence could render the page just fine, I had to workaround the problem by making different style sheets and everything and in the end, broke the layout of the web page in IE and it doesn’t even render the same between different versions of IE itself. That thing is disgusting!
I obviously understand the business reasons for having different style sheets and everything for that monstrosity but I can’t for the life of me understand how can people in academic environments, supposedly “educated about IT”, be so in love with it, as is the case of one of my teachers that simply refuses to listen to reason nor use anything else.
Edited 2009-06-19 13:57 UTC
Well, if they call that a myth, then I’m not even willing to read the rest of it.
Acid 3 test:
Safari
100/100
Opera
100/100
Firefox 3.5RC1
93/100 (come on, guys!)
Internet Explorer 8
20/100
EPIC FAIL.
get the facts 😉
Using http://validator.w3.org/
Target URL: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/get-the-facts/br…
The result: 94 Errors, 93 warning(s)
Microsoft can’t even create a web page, so what are they thinking when they try and create a web browser!
Faster than ever and safer than ever does not mean fast enough or safe enough.
Extremely lame attempt from Microsoft.
http://www.microsoft.com/australia/ie8/competition/default.aspx
This is outright insane propaganda! (mind you, going to the site with Safari 4.0 with the IE 8.0 user agent seems to work well enough 😉
Looking at it again – I’m sure they’ve toned it down. Originally it claimed that Firefox etc couldn’t see the “clues”, except they could if you set the user agent. It looks like the clues now load in FF too (as they didn’t come up to begin with!) Egg on face?
This is what was originally happening:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeresig/sets/72157619870137650/detail/
Edited 2009-06-19 09:29 UTC
Try reading the page with an Australian accent.
Crocodile IE:
“You call that a browser? Now THIS is a browser!”
Once the browser tests are confirmed by a truly independent researcher, we can talk further. Until then, it’s just the regular marketing spin from Microsoft; it is what they do best second only to litigation after all.
Where it Google or Mozilla’s list, I’d suggest the same; confirmation by independent peer review.
It remains me this comparison http://saveie6.com/compare.php
Microsoft recently launched a campaign promoting its Internet Explorer 8 browser, making some bold claims about IE8’s capabilities.
This site makes some redline corrections of Microsoft’s lies.
http://www.webmonkey.com/blog/Taking_Microsoft_to_Task_Over_IE8__My…
Seems to me like MS is targetting the masses with their campaign. When it comes to tech savvy users their arguments get put in perspective pretty quickly as is the case here on OSnews. Unfortunately for us if they convince the masses we end up having to follow the wake of the hype like lemmings as per usual.