While corporate users are worried about security holes, they often rely on internal apps and Web sites that only work within Microsoft’s dominant browser.
Enterprise Managers Wary of Dumping IE
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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..sadly. And a very sad state of affairs. I work for a publishing company that uses the Vignette StoryServer content management product. This only works from IE for no apparent reason. I build similar interfaces using php and javascript myself. Mind you I don’t claim to be able to clone Vignette’s backend functionality all by myself, but the user interface very much so. Conclusion: as a Linux and Mac user, I can’t work from home.. for no reason! annoying!! This is what I call vendor lock-in and monopoly-abuse..
agreed.
Vendor lock-in?
Uhm, dude, is it Microsofts fault that Vignette doesn’t support anything but IE?
So “embrace and extend” comes back to bite everyone in the ass. MS seems to be hemorraghing customer goodwill lately.
Bas, have you tried spoofing the User Agent string?
That’s what happens when you take something which should be based on standards and then “extend” them with proprietary features. Customers come to rely on such features and they find that they are locked in and can’t do anything about it. It’s both the fault of MS for using this as a monopolizing tactic, and the fault of the user for failing to see the potential consequences of getting locked into a single vendor in a space that is supposed to be cross-platform and dominated by standards. That’s the whole point of the web.
”
Uhm, dude, is it Microsofts fault that Vignette doesn’t support anything but IE?”
its because of proprietary stuff like activex and not be standards compliant that adds to the problem. they dont directly create the problem but very well contribute to it
That’s what happens when you take something which should be based on standards and then “extend” them with proprietary features. Customers come to rely on such features and they find that they are locked in and can’t do anything about it.
I don’t think vendor lock-in is really the issue. Let’s say they don’t want to use IE anymore. So what do they do? They rewrite their in-house stuff to use something else.
Now, let’s reverse this and say their app was built with wxWdigets, and they decided they wanted to use QT instead. So, how are they in any better shape this way? Same as if they were using Java and wanted to switch to .NET, or vice versa.
Yes, I call this vendor lock-in and it’s Microsoft’s fault as well as Vignette’s (they go hand in hand locking me and the rest of the company into Windows).
The issue: Vignette has a page navigation tree structure, which is rendered by a Java applet. No problem? Well.. yes.. actually there is a problem. This tree applet ONLY happens to work on IE with MS’s own JVM on Windows (IE for Mac doesn’t work either).. which isn’t even available anymore on Windows Update! Now either Vignette has to change their applet, the expense for this will be paid for by customers in the end.. or we all have to stick with obsolete and possibly insecure software.
It’s a sad state of affairs because the open source Typo3 CMS has a similar page tree that renders with no Java at all and equivalent in look and feel. It’s a choice between “quick, dirty and cheap up front” and “slightly more expensive, but future-proof”.
Yes, I spoofed the string.. and tried IE for Mac, and and IE running from Linux in CrossOver Office.. no go. It really does need Windows and the Microsoft JVM. It’s nasty.. especially since that JVM is obsolete..
I think the OP was trying to say that if the companies in the article had stuck to W3 Consortium standards, they could have switched to another browser without too much hassle. Instead of having just IE available, they would have had IE, Mozilla, FireFox, Opera, and maybe Konqueror, Galeon/Epiphany etc.
To be fair, if they are going to rely upon a single vendors product and that product has a reputation for bad security, I have no sympathy and would call into question the competance of whoever made these decisions.
I was just asked today to begin reviewing our Intranet as our IT department is considering switching to Firefox from our established standard of IE (IE v6 if it matters).
Out of hundreds of pages (perhaps thousands, but I just skimmed unfamiliar sites to get a feel for how they’ll display/handle in Firefox), I’ve got 24 questionable sites to look into (surprisingly low – I was expecting at least 5-60 issues!).
The biggest problem areas appear to be with JavaScript menus and dynamic pages, which isn’t that huge of a deal.
The 2nd biggest problem was CSS variations between IE & Mozilla, while the 3rd problem area is what this article is addressing: Customized apps which don’t work on non-IE browsers.
While problem apps are a very big problem for us, there’s so few that we should be able to migrate most of our user-oriented sites over to Firefox with no problem. But it is kind of scary which apps are impacted…
Webtrends, a very big name web-reporting package, will not let you login with a non-IE browser, for example.
Similarly, documents housed within Lotus notes aren’t displaying in non-IE browsers, but I’ve yet to look into whether it’s our handling of Domino, or Domino itself that’s the problem.
There’s others, but long story short is that our company appears to be in a much better position to migrate off IE than a lot of other companies out there (phew!), but it is rather eye-opening to find that a company who you’ve invested hundreds of thousands of dollars with, has built their entire product around the assumption that you’d be using IE.
It’s easy to blame MS for this problem as they’ve made it so easy to do RAD with all of Windows built in functionality, but I think it’s really the programmers to blame for taking the easy way out. Here’s the downside for programmers/companies who have chosen RAD over multi-platform compatibility: What to do when/if IE goes away down the road?
To my mind, it’s better to not take the easy way out, and instead assure that your code is not tied to any particular browser. This allows the company to change their desktop configs in many ways (OS, and/or browser) without breaking compatibility. I shudder to think what wouldn’t work if we were to test all of our “web-based apps” using a Linux box & Firefox, instead of just Windows.
How’s every one else’s code holding up to the new “No more bug-ridden IE” mandates that are now popping up? It seems like this is suddenly a hot topic since the Homeland security reccomendation last week.
“Now, let’s reverse this and say their app was built with wxWdigets, and they decided they wanted to use QT instead. So, how are they in any better shape this way? Same as if they were using Java and wanted to switch to .NET, or vice versa.
”
wrong. its about implementing the same stuff in a non standard way like taking a existing qt reference and creating a mess out of it
To be fair, if they are going to rely upon a single vendors product and that product has a reputation for bad security, I have no sympathy and would call into question the competance of whoever made these decisions.
You must understand that we live in a world where companies actually want to make a profit. So if you make a product for a browser, your best bet is to go with IE, because that way you create the best market with less costs then when you create versions for IE and Gecko and Opera and Khtml.
From the very first articles on Active X I read years ago, I knew immediately that it would be trouble. Active X gave to much control, without any protection what so ever. MS software is well known for being done to poor standards, and Active X would of been no different.
Anybody who couldn’t see those holes in the begining isn’t very intelligent. Now I didn’t see this whole mess that IE is in now, but I knew it would be possible to download and run viruses right off the web.
Java is better, .Net I haven’t loked at closely enough. Windows by nature isn’t designed for the Internet, it’s designed as a stand alone system. You can’t put the two together and not have problems.
Also if you set-up and design your software to be dependant on one piece of software, and that software either fails or gets obsoleted, you are stuck. I would never recommend one total solution, but several smaller solutions that work well together. Easy to port to something else in case of failure.
“You must understand that we live in a world where companies actually want to make a profit. So if you make a product for a browser, your best bet is to go with IE, because that way you create the best market with less costs then when you create versions for IE and Gecko and Opera and Khtml.”
simply stick to good standards and a little bit of precaution. no big deal
I think a lot of the time businesses choose to code for IE because it has proprietary built in functions that let you do stuff that you can’t do in other browsers.
As an example, a website I’m currently logged into, Yahoo Mail. In IE when you go to the compose new message page you have a toolbar located on the page for changing font, bolding, italic, stationary, etc (I know geeks could care less about this stuff, yet a lot of people like it), you come in with any other browser and you can only make ugly courier font e-mails. Also you have the option to download an application that allows you to have address auto complete, again the requirements are Windows and IE. I see lots of other sites that offer menus or other things that only work in IE. Some will say the people should follow standards, I agree, but most of these sites want these cool features, while a lot of sites that follow standards can be boring. With the help of CSS and javascript a lot of the stuff you used to only be able to do in IE with DHTML are now more easily done in other browsers; but there’s still stuff that people want to do that it’s easiest to do in other browsers.
but there’s still stuff that people want to do that it’s easiest to do in other browsers.
Sorry, meant “easiest to do in IE”; previewed the message and everything
Almost every corporate IT Project I have worked on, or have been associated with over the past six or seven years has required a “WEB” interface. These IT “Professionals” setting the corporate IT policy regurgitate the marketing and trade magazine crap spewed to them without doing any thinking for themselves. I have created web versions of highly interactive desktop applications while trying to support both IE and Netscape. The only way to support some of the functionality – which was inexplicability
tied to the desktop OS – was by using ActiveX. The IT “Professionals” would demand a fully functional web application while the underlying technology didn’t fit the requirements (stateless, high-latency) or they were still immature. I continually warn these “Professionals” that certain applications should not be implemented as web-applications (specifically low-latency, highly interactive systems), but some CTO moron only accepts the laughable crap spewed to him by his favourite vendor’s rep who has probably never created any kind of software system, but is good at saying things like “It’s gotta be WEB/XML/SOAP/etc to maximize your ROI”. Have any of these idiots ever actually defined what problem(s) the use of web technology for application development will solve? The only two I can think of are: Easier and cheaper deployment and remote access. SMS, Active Directory, NDS solve the deployment problem. Citrix/Terminal Services solve the remote access problem. Web technology provides a good application development platform for simple applications, but as soon as you require an ActiveX control or plugin, using web technologies becomes questionable. I’m not saying don’t use, just ask the yourself if it makes sense. IE became the dominate browser because Microsoft made it easier to for the corporate developer to build these silly web-enabled applications. I’m now starting to see some IT “professionals” demand that ALL inter-application communication be done via web-services (SOAP). The problem isn’t necessarily Microsoft/IBM/SUN or any of the technologies/tools that the build. It’s that a very large number of the IT decision makers are quite clueless. Until that changes…the more things change, the more they stay the same.
I would personally like to know why I need to have a web-browser installed my server to perform an OS update. Performing an HTTP GET can be done without a browser Bill and Steve!! I wonder if Cutler and the boys that work on the NT kernel cringe at some of the decisions made by the higher ups.
“Sorry, meant “easiest to do in IE”; previewed the message and everything
”
its interesting that you mention yahoo mail while ignoring gmail which implements many nice stuff in a browser independant manner. thats the way to do it
I have a gmail account, and while it is nice people I know that have both gmail and a yahoo account still will say yahoo has a nicer interface and I’ll agree with them. I personally don’t really care for gmail. not a fan of the lack of folders, having to archive and label my messages just to get them out of my inbox sucks. plus, since i’ve had a paid Yahoo account forever I have a 2GB account with no ads at all, so currently my gmail account just kind of sits there; I’m just not a geek that’s in awe of Google I guess.
Like other posters in this thread, I’m a network helpdesk/admin who “owns” about 150 machines running Windows 2000/XP and Internet Explorer 6.0 SP1
Some vendor sites, specifically log-in access sites for downloading sales orders over the web, make heavy use of JavaScript and Microsoft Java and are either buggy or non-operational in FireFox for this reason.
These sites are of customers of ours and are their standard way of issuing orders for our stock and that of other companies. Until we can convince them to go over to EDI, which uses a Win32 application and a direct modem connection, those computers must continue to use IE.
Other issues involve applications which use IE internally. Ideally we’d lock down IE if transferring to another browser to prevent staff from “keeping with the browser they know” but thats not possible on many of our computers as apps require it.
Thirdly and finally, it’s often possible to make a good case for use of GPL/OSS software in a business environment, for example I recently gained approval for use of Cygwin to run an X-server on Windows. However FireFox is still at a 0.x release (0.91 at present). It would be hard to recommend a version below 1.0 over a 6.0 browser, as many senior non-technical staff would query it.
I’m waiting on FireFox 1.0
“I personally don’t really care for gmail. not a fan of the lack of folders, having to archive and label my messages just to get them out of my inbox sucks”
you should start using it heavily to appreciate it
“You must understand that we live in a world where companies actually want to make a profit. So if you make a product for a browser, your best bet is to go with IE, because that way you create the best market with less costs then when you create versions for IE and Gecko and Opera and Khtml.”
That used to be the case 6 months ago, but not anymore. I doubt that in light of recent events there is going to be a lot of new development in IE only apps. Standards compliace for multi-browser compatibility will be a requirement, not a nice extra, since it’s now very possible that your browser of choice will become worthless in a couple of weeks, like the earth caving in underneath your feet. Now people with IE only apps are screwed, because they’re not only forced to run a browser that is widely known to be too insecure to be used, but also all the legal repercusions that come with that.
Say your bank forces you to use IE for their online banking system. Now that even Homeland Security has deemed IE as too insecure to use, what’s to stop a customer from suing the bank under the allegation that it is knowingly not doing enough to protect his or her financial data? That kind of scenario is not too far off.
you should start using it heavily to appreciate it
Don’t want to turn this into a thread about GMail, but one of my other gripes was I used my gmail account to sign up for a bunch of newsletters but never was receiving anything. I clicked on my Spam box one day and had 64 messages, many of them confirmation emails from the newsletters I signed up for. There was nothing telling me I had any messages in my Spam box. Could at least have an indicator out to the side like Spam (64), to let me know.
>You must understand that we live in a world where
>companies actually want to make a profit. So if you make a
> product for a browser, your best bet is to go with IE
Its not hard to make a desent application that works in:
Ie, Mozilla, Netscape, Firefox Opera Konqueror etc.
Must of there developers are or just lazy or are developing with MS tools, and thats what the other Bas prob. ment
with vendor lock. Microsoft will do anything to make sure applications developed with their tools only run on their crappy,buggy and unsecure IE.
What about the security risks for the company, are they that blind/ignorent or just dumb? Tjeee..
If you’ve ever tried to build a web application with sophisticated styles and client side scripts more complex than “alert(‘Hello world!’);” you’d notice that IE is the only way to do it. All this much hyped “web standard compliance” is not worth $%^& because those so-called “standards” are limited to the point of being completely worthless.
“Could at least have an indicator out to the side like Spam (64), to let me know.”
its a beta
“f you’ve ever tried to build a web application with sophisticated styles and client side scripts more complex than “alert(‘Hello world!’);” you’d notice that IE is the only way to do it.”
completely wrong. firefox with webdeveloper plugin does it much better with full standards complaince. its very easy and effective. dont stick with that lousy browser anymore. there is simply no excuse
“we have that we deserve”
Sad but true…
What we need is a open project that run like IE+ActiveX, but restricted to what ONLY WE NEED. No candies, no “for your convenience stuff” this convenience are the bugs that we have today.
Micros*ck need give the code, the documentation, to the open comunity that have the b…rains to put their hand on this mess. I think that this will be a really good chance to micro$ to save his *rse, but, ¿really they do that.. naaah?.
I live every day with this problem, sure, the 50% of my problems are bad design-programming for my provider (they use VBasic, Activex, and no much brain). But the other % is microsoft baddies errr goodies. Incredible product sql server 2000… some security issues.. but wow! maybe is not a M$ product
.
BTW ¿Someone trust M$ to patch a Small business server 2000 SP3 with ALL the freaking patches? .. Im scared thinking on doin… but I think that I need.. if Bill came here to give the click to the “install” and put his millions to save my …ss when my boss see BSOD in the server… but Billy dont know me, dont care for me, and maybe for nobody.
Yes im mad, but you will feel the same if every weekend you have especting for a call telling you “hey came here! the server is down… and put on your knees and say -Ahhhh-”
arrrrrgh…
sorry, but this is too much, I prefer buy a franchisse of taco bell to avoid this way of live.
End of Line.
No flames here, only my brain is flamed…
Dump Windows and M$ craps like ActiveX and you will get ride of viruses, trojans and other bad things.
You have many options
******
Apple
Linux
*BSD
Java
******
“What we need is a open project that run like IE+ActiveX, but restricted to what ONLY WE NEED”
You mean this
http://www.iol.ie/~locka/mozilla/plugin.htm
I’m suggesting that to most of my clients after the recent issues with Spyware and the fact that Microsoft has no intention of releasing a fixed IE for non-XP operating systems (Windows 2000, NT, 98, etc).
I’m marketing Mozilla as a more safer alternative to IE. With IE you get spyware, viruses, adware, and more. Atleast with Mozilla, you get none of that.
maybe some year, maybe m$ give away his code… maybe another big “leak”.
Anonymous (IP: —.glfd.dial.virgin.net)
I think the OP was trying to say that if the companies in the article had stuck to W3 Consortium standards, they could have switched to another browser without too much hassle. Instead of having just IE available, they would have had IE, Mozilla, FireFox, Opera, and maybe Konqueror, Galeon/Epiphany etc.
To the point where we’re talking about HTML and things that all browsers can do, you are right. But what if you are building a web app and need to extend the functionality beyond what HTML can do, such as a decked-out dynamic treeview control? Now, you tell me something that offers Active-X like functionality that:
a) Works across all major browsers (IE, Mozilla-based, Konquerer, Opera, etc) and
b) Is not tied to a single vendor
Let’s take Flash for instance. It pretty much works with every browser under the sun, but still some people avoid using it. Why? Vendor lock-in. In this case, you’re not locked in by the browser, but you are locked-in by the technology, at least under the narrow definition of ‘lock-in’ offered by open source pundits. I hear the OSS crowd is coming out with something called SVG (or something similar) that is supposed to compete with Flash. So, let’s say this technology is widely adopted and becomes an open standard, and so you decide to use it. Now you’re not tied to a single browser or a single vendor. But two years later, Flash comes up with some killer feature that SVG doesn’t offer, so you decide to switch to Flash. So now you’ve gotta rewrite your stuff to go from SVG->Flash. So the question is, how are you any better off this way than if you were going from Flash->SVG. Whether you are going from proprietary to open-source (or vice versa), these things you wrote don’t rewrite themselves, so you’re really no worse off going one way or the other if you should someday decide to switch.
No, the only way you can TRULY get locked into something software-related is if:
1)You sign a long-term contract with a single vendor that you can’t get out of (speaking of which, anybody here own a cell phone? HUH???)
2)You use an application to enter data that won’t let you export it back out (which pretty much excludes every Microsoft app I use)
3)You stick with a single vendor because they offer functionality that you absolutely can’t get anywhere else.
I challenge anybody to come up with a senario of true vendor lock-in that doesn’t involve the above three. Point being, if you can export it or rewrite it with something else, you’re not truely locked in
As for #2, one could argue that with an app that uses data revolved around open standards, it would be easier to import your stuff into another program. But this is true only if the app you’re switching to has the ability to import data from whatever app you’re coming from. For example, if I were using KWord as my main browser but needed to import KWord documents in their native format into MS Word for work (or whatever), does MS Word give me the ability to import KWord documents?
Reason #3 is the reason why a lot of us are locked in to Windows, because the apps we use are better on this platform than anywhere else. Sure, we could switch, but for what we use computers for, trying to achieve the same level of functionality on a different platform would be like trying to walk after having our legs cut off at the knees. Out of everything I’ve said here, this is absolutely the hardest thing for anti-MS zealots to comprehend – that their platform of choice, even if it’s open source, is not always the best fit for everyone.
Anonymous (IP: 61.95.184.—)
“Now, let’s reverse this and say their app was built with wxWdigets, and they decided they wanted to use QT instead. So, how are they in any better shape this way? Same as if they were using Java and wanted to switch to .NET, or vice versa.”
–
wrong. its about implementing the same stuff in a non standard way like taking a existing qt reference and creating a mess out of it
Ok, let’s go with your example and say I decided to go with the ‘messy’ version of QT. Now let’s say that a year later, I decide to port all my QT apps over to wxWidgets. Now, in this senario, what difference does it make whether I’m using the ‘clean’ version of QT or the ‘messy’ version? Does using the clean version make my job of porting any easier?
Our IT department is being outsourced (don’t get me started) I asked the project manager if the company could install FireFox as IE sucks. He didn’t know what FireFox was….
“o now you’ve gotta rewrite your stuff to go from SVG->Flash. So the question is, how are you any better off this way than if you were going from Flash->SVG. ”
the switch is much easier because the svg implementation isnt proprietary. you dont need to reverse engineer the specification. you dont need to worry about patents. you dont need to worry about licensing that prevents you from implementing stuff on a different operating system. there is no company actively trying to prevent the switch from happening from non technical means.
If you need to go beyond html XPI from mozilla is a much better technology. it doesnt depend on the lousy zones implementation of IE. you can just use xul and write hundreds of new stuff like firefox extensions. there is a proof of concept amazon browser to demonstrate its capability.
http://www.infodraft.com/~faser/mab/
“o now you’ve gotta rewrite your stuff to go from SVG->Flash. So the question is, how are you any better off this way than if you were going from Flash->SVG. ”
the switch is much easier because the svg implementation isnt proprietary. you dont need to reverse engineer the specification. you dont need to worry about patents.
So you’re saying that I have to reverse engineer and worry about patents if I want to add Flash to my webpages?
If you need to go beyond html XPI from mozilla is a much better technology. it doesnt depend on the lousy zones implementation of IE. you can just use xul and write hundreds of new stuff like firefox extensions.
But if I do this, am I then making stuff that only works in Mozilla-based browsers, thus being tied to Mozilla’s stuff? Granted, this is probably the lesser of two evils, but from a technical standpoint, if I need to rewrite it at some point in the future for some other toolkit, I am not really any worse off using this than ActiveX or Java. At least with Java I’ve got compatability on more than just the Mozilla family of browsers.
There is no real reason why companies cannot develop web-based products to work with different browsers like IE, Mozilla-based (Netscape, Firefox, etc…), Opera, and more. Novell has braced open-standards and have products that have web-based interfaces that work with different browsers. NetStorage, iManager, GroupWise WebAccess, Virtual Office and more, work with multiple browsers (though IE complains sometimes but works) due to using standards compatable Java (and Java script) that does not rely on M$ JVM. If a company like Novell which has done it for years can do it, others have no excuse not to…
If you want a real file server with a REAL Directory services, you would Novell NetWare not M$ Windows server…
So if I decide to switch to SVG when that comes out, if I already have a website full of Flash apps (or whatever they’re called), then I’ve got to rewrite all the Flash stuff in SVG.
Now, let’s pretend that we live in a parallel universe and Flash was open source, and I wanted to switch to SVG. Since I still have to rewrite everything, am I really any better off than I was when Flash was proprietary?
In the same manner, if I had a website full of SVG stuff and wanted to switch to Flash, it’s the same difference.
Novell has braced open-standards and have products that have web-based interfaces that work with different browsers. NetStorage, iManager, GroupWise WebAccess, Virtual Office and more, work with multiple browsers (though IE complains sometimes but works) due to using standards compatable Java (and Java script) that does not rely on M$ JVM. If a company like Novell which has done it for years can do it, others have no excuse not to…
Ok, so now you’re using Java and you’ve got compatability across all browsers. Let’s say that Sun goes belly up at the end of this year and in a couple of years, all the major browsers decide to drop support for Java in favor of some whiz-bang technology that comes out in 2005. So, now what? You’ve still got the same problem as people do now – you’ve got a lot of crap which you will now have to rewrite.
if you are using SVG that’s open source and there’s a feature in Flash that you want, you don’t need to dump SVG. Just hire someone to add the feature to SVG and you can keep using it without rewriting anything. If a lot of people want the same feature, then the cost ratio of hiring to add new feature vs dumping everything and rewriting from scratch becomes even better.
”
So you’re saying that I have to reverse engineer and worry about patents if I want to add Flash to my webpages? ”
i meant you dont need to worry about the migration problems because svg is open stand and thus doesnt prevent you from moving smoothly into flash.
its not the same. moving from a proprietary stuff is always harder than moving from open standards.
for example ms office -> openoffice is harder than open office -> ms office if you consider just the format. Microsoft can just implement the openoffice fileformat easily because the specification is open unlike ms fileformats which you need to reverse engineer. do you understand my point now or do you require further explanation.
“For example, if I were using KWord as my main browser but needed to import KWord documents in their native format into MS Word for work (or whatever), does MS Word give me the ability to import KWord documents? ”
taking your example MS office can easily implement kword filters while koffice is having a hard due to non availability of specifications of ms formats. this is the vendor lock in stuff. they purposefully do not reveal the specs to prevent people from easily switching from MS office. your data is locked in MS formats which can only be read properly with MS specs which only MS knows.
understood?
Darius,
Always the troll. Always the last man standing to defend the indefensible. When every security research group and the Dept. of Homeland Security have deemed IE to risky to use, you keep on telling us, but there is no other way to do it.
You are so clueless as to not merit a response, but here’s your response. A complex app that does all kinds of cool things by only using php, javascript, css and html:
Egroupware. (Open Source too)
You want another one:
Plone.
It works in all browsers. If you were truly inquisitive and not the troll that you are, I would create a test account on my servers so that you could test both, but why bother when you will continue to spew the same venom ad nauseam, despite any evidence offered to counter your arguments.
f you are using SVG that’s open source and there’s a feature in Flash that you want, you don’t need to dump SVG. Just hire someone to add the feature to SVG and you can keep using it without rewriting anything.
Ahh yeah … just hold on a second while I pull the amount of money needed to hire a programmer out of my ass
If a lot of people want the same feature, then the cost ratio of hiring to add new feature vs dumping everything and rewriting from scratch becomes even better.
If this is the case, then why hasn’t the open source community banded together and hired someone to create worthy open source clones of apps like Dreamweaver, instead of trying to run it in Crossover or trying to convince Macromedia to port it to Linux?
taking your example MS office can easily implement kword filters while koffice is having a hard due to non availability of specifications of ms formats.
But they haven’t, have they? Let’s say that right now, today .. you’ve got Person A who has 1,000 MS Word documents and wants to convert to KWord, and then you have person B who has 1,000 KWord documents and wants to convert them to MS Office. Who’s going to have the easiest time of it? The fact is that even though they have a harder time of it, there’s a much higher chance that whatever closed source app a particular open source offering is trying to clone will import the proprietary formats than the other way around.
this is the vendor lock in stuff. they purposefully do not reveal the specs to prevent people from easily switching from MS office. your data is locked in MS formats which can only be read properly with MS specs which only MS knows.
Ok, in my copy of MS Word, I have the option of saving in doc, xml, or html formats. True I may have to do some re-formatting if I switch from MS Word to something else, but my data isn’t really ‘locked’, is it? You send me ANY document in MS Word format, and as long as I can open it in Word, I’d be willing to bet you $1,000 that I could send it back to you in OO.org format, or anything you wanted. That, my friends, is NOT ‘vendor lock-in.’
Always the troll. Always the last man standing to defend the indefensible. When every security research group and the Dept. of Homeland Security have deemed IE to risky to use, you keep on telling us, but there is no other way to do it.
Dude, check my User Agent if you have access to do so. I don’t even use IE, except for work where they make me use it. Personally, I think IE is a P.O.S. I just don’t think it’s a very good example of vendor lock-in.
You are so clueless as to not merit a response, but here’s your response. A complex app that does all kinds of cool things by only using php, javascript, css and html:
Egroupware. (Open Source too)
Ok Sherlock, if I understand you right, what you’re telling me is that if I have php, javascript, css, and html at my disposal, then I could rewrite any website or web application using Java, Active-X, Flash, Shockwave, XUL, etc without any major loss in functionality?
You want another one:
Plone.
Everything that I have mentioned here has been client-side stuff. I could write a browser-independent server-side app in ASP, so what’s your point?
but why bother when you will continue to spew the same venom ad nauseam, despite any evidence offered to counter your arguments.
Whatever.
My point is that you said that it was impossible to implement a complex application -without using ActiveX -that works in all browsers. I proved you wrong.
Re-read your posts as you seem a bit absent-minded.
My point is that you said that it was impossible to implement a complex application -without using ActiveX -that works in all browsers. I proved you wrong.
No, what I said was this …
But what if you are building a web app and need to extend the functionality beyond what HTML can do, such as a decked-out dynamic treeview control? Now, you tell me something that offers Active-X like functionality that:
a) Works across all major browsers (IE, Mozilla-based, Konquerer, Opera, etc) and
b) Is not tied to a single vendor
The reason why I mentioned the treeview control is because our intranet has one with certain functionality that you couldn’t build with HTML, CSS, Javascript, or all of the above.
“Ok, in my copy of MS Word, I have the option of saving in doc, xml, or html formats. True I may have to do some re-formatting if I switch from MS Word to something else, but my data isn’t really ‘locked’, is it? You send me ANY document in MS Word format, and as long as I can open it in Word, I’d be willing to bet you $1,000 that I could send it back to you in OO.org format, or anything you wanted. That, my friends, is NOT ‘vendor lock-in.’ ”
suppose you have only the data saved in a proprietary format which no other software has implemented. you lose the software then your data is locked. for open standards you can write the software much better than proprietary software.
open standards are easier to migrate away from. its is silly to argue about that
”
Ahh yeah … just hold on a second while I pull the amount of money needed to hire a programmer out of my ass
”
its a possibility which only exists in free software. there is NO such option for proprietary stuff.
“If this is the case, then why hasn’t the open source community banded together and hired someone to create worthy open source clones of apps like Dreamweaver, instead of trying to run it in Crossover or trying to convince Macromedia to port it to Linux? ”
very simple. the amount of effort and skills required doesnt match the need. not every system lends itself to the cooperative development model. there always will be niche markets which people wont bother to reimplement. this has nothing to do with standards. so lets not talk about that here
Bottom Line
IE is the worst browser that exists in the mainstream now.
I work for a large IT company, and we run IE as our approved and supported browser. However all of our internal apps do not require IE, the last one we had that relied on the Microsoft VM was converted a couple of months ago.
However we now have a 3rd party provided web app for travel booking that is all Active-X. It is the only site internal or external where I load IE on my corporate desktop.
I understand why developers used/use Active-X, if they write there code correctly their thick and thin clients (under windows) would share large chunks of code. Of course there are other solutions, Java for example.
<rant>
What I really hate however is the sites ( like factiva ) that provide a warning, or even block you, when using something other than IE when they do not require any specific IE features.
The only reason to block other browsers from you site is if you use Active-X or Microsofts DOM for DHTML!!!
</rant>
“The reason why I mentioned the treeview control is because our intranet has one with certain functionality that you couldn’t build with HTML, CSS, Javascript, or all of the above.”
are you sure that there is no server or client side crossplatform technology that can take care of a treeview?
suppose you have only the data saved in a proprietary format which no other software has implemented. you lose the software then your data is locked. for open standards you can write the software much better than proprietary software.
Umm … exactly how often do you ‘lose’ your software? Anyway, assuming you have an app that doesn’t have an export feature and no other app has implemented the format, that is vendor lock-in. Fortunately, that is not the case with any Microsoft-specific programs that I use.
open standards are easier to migrate away from. its is silly to argue about that
You are right in some cases, but I say it depends on the senario. For example, I contend that it’s easier to move from MS Word to KWord than the other way around. Sure, MS could implement KWord’s native document format …. but they haven’t yet. However, to be fair, if you’re using OO.org and are saving documents in MS Word format, then the transition from open source to propietary could be trivial. But so far, nobody has given me any specific example of vendor lock-in as related to Internet Explorer or other MS technologies.
are you sure that there is no server or client side crossplatform technology that can take care of a treeview?
Only if we assume it can’t be done with HTML/CSS/Javascript, I don’t know of any. Well, there’s Java, but that one isn’t vendor-neutral so in the context of what you guys consider to be lock-in, Java doesn’t count.
@Darius
Ok, let’s go with your example and say I decided to go with the ‘messy’ version of QT. Now let’s say that a year later, I decide to port all my QT apps over to wxWidgets. Now, in this senario, what difference does it make whether I’m using the ‘clean’ version of QT or the ‘messy’ version? Does using the clean version make my job of porting any easier?
You’re missing the point. To take the Qt analogy (which I don’t really like), it’s like having a base Qt, which EVERYTHING is compatible with (or at least SHOULD be), but one company extends Qt to be ‘messy’ but has some extra stuff. Your company uses the ‘messy’ version decides it’s insecure and has to go back to standard Qt. If it started with standard Qt there would be no reason to change.
wxWidgets don’t come into it. The equivalent of changing from Qt to wxWidgets would be like changing from a web based app to gopher (I know not gopher because it’s old and crap – but something completely different from www based anyway).
“But so far, nobody has given me any specific example of vendor lock-in as related to Internet Explorer or other MS technologies. ”
its called activex and proprietary implement of DOM in dhtml. if you dont get this point there is nothing further to discuss
You’re missing the point. To take the Qt analogy (which I don’t really like), it’s like having a base Qt, which EVERYTHING is compatible with (or at least SHOULD be), but one company extends Qt to be ‘messy’ but has some extra stuff.
Well, yeah. The reason why they usually do that is because somebody needed some extra functionality that wasn’t in standard QT.
Your company uses the ‘messy’ version decides it’s insecure and has to go back to standard Qt. If it started with standard Qt there would be no reason to change.
Well, assuming there was no other product on the market that duplicated the functionality of the extended ‘messy’ QT, then this would be vendor lock-in, but of the ‘good’ kind. But if you want to apply this to Microsoft, then you would have to concede that they have better technology that isn’t duplicated by anyone else.
wxWidgets don’t come into it.
Why not? They’re both toolkits, aren’t they? I would think that porting apps from one toolkit to another is something that’s not all too uncommon to do.
The equivalent of changing from Qt to wxWidgets would be like changing from a web based app to gopher (I know not gopher because it’s old and crap – but something completely different from www based anyway).
In the case that you have to switch to something completely different, then what difference does it make if what you were using before is based on open standards or not?
ts called activex and proprietary implement of DOM in dhtml. if you dont get this point there is nothing further to discuss
Alright, so tell me … how does MS use ActiveX to lock me in in such a way that I couldn’t take an ActiveX web app and rewrite it in Java or XUL?
Darius, I think that you have the crap to think about…
Java is not disappearing anytime soon (unlike you believe) with support of IBM, Novell and the Open Source community at large (as SUN is mumbling about releasing it under open source license). Java platform support and new features are still being developed and will continue. SUN is not going belly-up anytime soon no matter how stupid some of their mistake are…
The point of the orginal post was that there is no excuse for web-based interfaces to be IE only. There is technology (other than ActiveX) that is usable and supported by large portion of web browsers.
Grow up Darius…
The point of the orginal post was that there is no excuse for web-based interfaces to be IE only. There is technology (other than ActiveX) that is usable and supported by large portion of web browsers.
Well, you’re right, and I don’t disagree with you. Of course, this probably wasn’t the case several years ago when a lot of these IE-only interfaces were first created (not sure how far along Java was back then), but certainly true today.
Now, what I have a problem with are these people who keep thorwing the term ‘vendor lock-in’ into the mix as a nice catch phrase to refer to anything proprietary, especially when it comes to MS. There sure as hell ain’t nothing you can write for IE that couldn’t be re-implemented elsewhere, so there is no lock-in.
In fact, I’m starting to think that ‘vendor lock-in’ was a term invented by OSS/FSF zealots in order to make their religion sound more appealing.
“Now, what I have a problem with are these people who keep thorwing the term ‘vendor lock-in’ into the mix as a nice catch phrase to refer to anything proprietary, especially when it comes to MS. There sure as hell ain’t nothing you can write for IE that couldn’t be re-implemented elsewhere, so there is no lock-in.
In fact, I’m starting to think that ‘vendor lock-in’ was a term invented by OSS/FSF zealots in order to make their religion sound more appealing.”
not all proprietary products are lock ins but in case of Activex they clear are there to prevent effective migration. you are arguing that anything that can be reimplemented in not a lock in. thats a bad argument. whats important is how easy it is which is clearly in favor of open standards.
vendor lock in isnt a newly invented term. you clearly dont have an understanding of the issue. OSS isnt a religion.call it politics if you want to. calling it religion is extremely silly.
“Alright, so tell me … how does MS use ActiveX to lock me in in such a way that I couldn’t take an ActiveX web app and rewrite it in Java or XUL?”
if this is your argument then nothing called be a lock in. get a clue.
I do believe that M$ did attempt lock-in customers with ActiveX (as well as M$ JVM) by the fact that web application written with ActiveX with M$ tools require a Windows/IIS server and Internet Explorer/Windows client. The term vendor lock-in does get misunderstood and misused. Now, ActiveX itself locks-in the application only to Windows/Intel based system, but if ther Application is rewritten with Java (or other technology), then is not as limited as before. You can still use the Windows/IIS server but you can use Linux/Unix, Mac and Windows on the client reguardless of the browser.
Any product that requires a specific OS (e.g. only Linux or Windows) that requires specific client/server application (e.g. IE or Mozilla) to work, then that application can be specified as a lock-in product regardless of License (closed or open source).
Linux can lock-in you to Xwindows to use it as a desktop, as there is no other windowing system available…
“Linux can lock-in you to Xwindows to use it as a desktop, as there is no other windowing system available…”
x windows is there in almost every unix system. its specifications are available and well documented. there are several implementations even for Windows from cygwin to what not.
it is very much a open standard. in fact it can be called as example of a standard which is against lock in
Anonymous
“x windows is there in almost every unix system. its specifications are available and well documented. there are several implementations even for Windows from cygwin to what not.
it is very much a open standard. in fact it can be called as example of a standard which is against lock in”
It is true that Xwindows does not lock you to one OS, but to use UnixLinux as a desktop, you are locked into one windowing system, Xwindows. It is still lock-in and Linux is one product, but to use it as a Desktop, you have to use Xwindows. Now Xwindows does not lock you to a desktop manager, but you are still locked-in to using Xwindows.
The MS DOM was the first widely adopted and well liked DOM. Netscape’s equivalent was widely considered to be more complex and less flexible. Users and DHTML programmers adopted a DOM, but now OSS advocates and “standards” bodies create one with differences, and complain that it’s not being used. What a hide! Standards are made by widespread adoption – not by decree from some OSS guru or “after the horse has bolted” standard.
I’m afraid OSS borders on religion for *some* people – needless rituals (text file config instead of gui, compiling from source), reinforcing chants (“M$”, “Micro$haft”, “Winblows” etc) and immediate rejection without considered thought of alternatives (IIS, Visual Basic). OSS advocates need to swallow their pride and learn some lessons from MS – particularly that ease of use and backwards/crosswards compatibility with competitors is important. MS won several markets by supporting and improving competing standards, not by whining that their competitors breached this RFC, that W3C document or open standards best practise.
“MS won several markets by supporting and improving competing standards, not by whining that their competitors breached this RFC, that W3C document or open standards best practise.”
MS created a mess out of every standard and put proprietary stuff on top of that. if thats the way to improvement we dont need it.
“It is still lock-in and Linux is one product, but to use it as a Desktop, you have to use Xwindows. Now Xwindows does not lock you to a desktop manager, but you are still locked-in to using Xwindows.’
thats like saying that every api is a lock in. you dont even understand the concept. x windows isnt the only graphics system either. heard of directfb or snap
“MS created a mess out of every standard and put proprietary stuff on top of that. if thats the way to improvement we dont need it.”
That’s an overly sweeping statement. MS was no worse than it’s main competitor – Netscape – when it comes to the main standard related to this thread – HTML. It did HTML a great service by deprecating BLINK and providing superior CSS support in it’s early days.
Some OSS advocates argue that extending or improving standards is alright as long as it’s done through open standards. I’d agree with them and it doesn’t contradict my argument that OSS needs to support and improve competing standards/implementations instead of whining that they’re not open or fully compliant.
Whining that the Word document specification is closed is easier than reverse engineering it, but OSS will only benefit from the harder option of reverse engineering. Same goes for the MS DOM – it’s out there, in use and won’t disappear for years. Supporting it will do more for OSS than all the whining its advocates can muster on all the Web.
Microsoft won several markets and now those markets are finally realizing how screwed they are. I don’t think there is something fundamentally insecure with MS Dom but since IE is insecure and the only one that can use it, people are screwed. Sticking to standards means that if everyone is using Opera and they fall apart we can easily switch to mozilla or khtml (when they port to Windows http://khtml-win32.sourceforge.net/). Or perhaps a browser in Palm PDA or Nokia phone or popular game consoles such as PS2 or gamecube that will never run Windows (I wonder how MS will get Windows on Xbox2 if it is going to use PPC instead of intel)
“That’s an overly sweeping statement. MS was no worse than it’s main competitor – Netscape ”
ya right. so everyone is so bad thats its fine and dandy?. come on. we need to have better technology than a browser thats dead in the water as soon as it has managed to kill netscape
you are arguing that anything that can be reimplemented (is) not a lock in. thats a bad argument.
Why? Isn’t that what ‘lock-in’ means? To have your data locked into a certain vendor or application which you can’t get out without kissing said vendor’s ass?
whats important is how easy it is which is clearly in favor of open standards
Even if you’re right, this is not the same thing as lock-in, and therefore the term should not be used.
OSS isnt a religion.call it politics if you want to. calling it religion is extremely silly.
I don’t consider politics and religion as being two sperate entities, as it is usually one’s religion that influences his/her voting patterns anyway.
“Alright, so tell me … how does MS use ActiveX to lock me in in such a way that I couldn’t take an ActiveX web app and rewrite it in Java or XUL?”
if this is your argument then nothing called be a lock in. get a clue.
Actually, there is. I work in the automotive industry and unless you’ve seen some of the systems that these dealers use to store their sales/service/inventory/parts data, you probably have absolutely no clue about what true vendor lock-in really is. Imagine having to pay the vendor every time you needed to run a custom report to get data off the system or let somebody else dial in …
I do believe that M$ did attempt lock-in customers with ActiveX (as well as M$ JVM) by the fact that web application written with ActiveX with M$ tools require a Windows/IIS server and Internet
By this definition, using XUL would also be a form of vendor lock-in, since (AFAIK) you can’t use that in IE, Opera, Konquerer, Safari, etc.
“By this definition, using XUL would also be a form of vendor lock-in, since (AFAIK) you can’t use that in IE, Opera, Konquerer, Safari, etc.
”
no because its well documented and open standard.
I’m reminded why I’ll never go back to WebDev.
“By this definition, using XUL would also be a form of vendor lock-in, since (AFAIK) you can’t use that in IE, Opera, Konquerer, Safari, etc.”
no because its well documented and open standard.
Ok, so I guess even though it only works in Mozilla-based browsers, it’s not lock-in because it’s an open standard and well documented? How exactly does this being an open standard if I decide 6 months from now that I need my XUL application to work in Internet Explorer and/or Opera? Am I then supposed to pay somebody to make that happen?
How exactly does this being an open standard help me if I decide 6 months from now that I need my XUL application to work in Internet Explorer and/or Opera? Am I then supposed to pay somebody to make that happen?
>but you are still locked-in to using Xwindows.
You could always use Xouvert FreeDesktop etc..in Linux you always have a choice. Even the kernel.
Oh shit i forgot about the damn penguin you cannot erase him.
VENDOR LOCK IN!
while the file format of Flash the application is closed and owned by Macromedia the file format of Flash the plugin was opened and released some years ago http://www.openswf.org/ . Hence why many vector programs can output it, Adobe even had an application that competed with Flash http://www.adobe.com/products/livemotion/main.html (and could also output SVG) in addition to Illustrator , this is how the Ming project http://ming.sourceforge.net/ got the specs for making that program.
Javascript and the W3C DOM would be a good solution, where it not for the 95% market share of IE (despite being such a bad browser) and hence having to create two versions (one for IE the other for everything else). The real poblem is that Microsoft have not updated the rendering engine of IE in years as they have no real competition having (illegally) used their monopoly leverage to kill it off.
what do you mean locked in to Xwindows? There is Y-Windows, Fiassco. Qube. MicroWindows. and DirectFB the list go’s on and on.
Stop feeding the troll. I told him of two apps that implement treeviews and work across all modern browsers.
He is now redefining what vendor-lock-in means to suit his arguments. Vendor lock-in means that you are chained to that vendor because there is no body that can legally implement the same technology. It also means that you as a customer cannot take the code and reuse it for your purposes. To take your silly example, if you wanted to implement XUL in IE, at least you have the sources for it and huge portions of it would just work.
Can you point me to the source code for IE and ActiveX? Did you ever pass Philosophy 101 where they give you a grounding in logic?
“You must understand that we live in a world where companies actually want to make a profit. So if you make a product for a browser, your best bet is to go with IE, because that way you create the best market with less costs then when you create versions for IE and Gecko and Opera and Khtml.”
Not really a valid argument. If the designs were done to W3C defined standards the app would work in all browsers and not be an issue at all.
This seems to just be bad software practices from microsoft.
I’ve been using mostly firefox for web browsing and safari at home, but I have to say, some sites you just can’t get to, especially the bank and internal websites at work, what a crock, internet explorer is the most deplorable browser on the market.
If microsoft made decent products in terms of security, it wouldn’t be an issue. Their stability issues are getting better or have been getting better since win2k, but security is something they’re in the midst of addressing. I hate stupid vendors that build on ms, cheap bastards.
I told him of two apps that implement treeviews and work across all modern browsers.
Yeah, and the treeviews look and work nothing like what I’m talking about either. This kind of f**ked up logic is the same as ‘Who needs Dreamweaver when you have vi?’
He is now redefining what vendor-lock-in means to suit his arguments. Vendor lock-in means that you are chained to that vendor because there is no body that can legally implement the same technology.
Alright, and I guess the smart thing for companies to do is to spend an enormous amout of time, money, and resources coming up with a technology, and then release all the specs and source code so that your competitors can implement the same technologies in their products as well *PFFFFFFTTT* I guess this philosophy works for people who are doing it for religious reasons, but it doesn’t make a whole lot of business sense.
It also means that you as a customer cannot take the code and reuse it for your purposes.
In this case, anything proprietary would be considered vendor lock-in, would it not?
To take your silly example, if you wanted to implement XUL in IE, at least you have the sources for it and huge portions of it would just work.
Alright, using your logic, let’s pretend I’m Joe Developer and using XUL for whatever. If it ever gets to a point where I gotta get my stuff working in IE or Opera, realistically, what am I gonna do? Try to port XUL to IE and Opera (and hope that end users are going to download whatever it takes to make XUL work in both browsers, which will PROBABLY include ActiveX in Internet Explorer), or try to implement some other technology that already works in both browsers? Since it would probably be easier to switch technologies than trying to make XUL work in other browsers, XUL really offers me no significant advantages over ActiveX and Java, since nobody (AFAIK) has attempted to port it yet – I sure as hell ain’t gonna do it either.
Can you point me to the source code for IE and ActiveX? Did you ever pass Philosophy 101 where they give you a grounding in logic?
Agan, your logic is flawed, as you assume that if the source code were actually available, it would be easier for a company to port ActiveX to other platforms (including Linux) and browsers than it would be to rewrite their ActiveX stuff in Java. I guess to the degree that you’re using a certain technology that only works on certain platforms, you are tied to that platform. But being tied and being literally locked-in are two different things. Being locked in to something (as being locked in a jail cell) means there is no way to get out, which is clearly not true in this instance.
I told him of two apps that implement treeviews and work across all modern browsers.
Yeah, and the treeviews look and work nothing like what I’m talking about either. This kind of f**ked up logic is the same as ‘Who needs Dreamweaver when you have vi?’
Well, you have not described in detail what you are talking about. Given that you have not used egroupware, because if you had you would not have said that activeX was needed, and givent that I doubt that you have gotten around to trying the felamimail component of egroupware in the short span of time between the moment that this discussion started and when you posted your response, your best answer is to come up with a a shallow dreamweaver-to-vi analogy.
Finally, considering that egroupware is in the process of implementing drag and drop on a web application that works on all browser and does not need active X, this being an example of fairly complex coding, your points are moot. Case dismissed.
Given that you have not used egroupware, because if you had you would not have said that activeX was needed
I didn’t say ActiveX was needed to implement egroupware’s treeview. I said egroupware’s treeview doesn’t do all the things that ours does. And yes, I have seen egroupware’s treeview – you’re talking about the one that houses the mailbox folders, no? Honestly, I don’t know if you could do ours with only HTML/Javascript or not. Assuming you could expand a node and have the branches load dynamically from an Oracle database without refreshing the tree, it might be possible. But then you have the thing about all those dialogs ….
Finally, considering that egroupware is in the process of implementing drag and drop on a web application that works on all browser and does not need active X
Why are you limiting this discussion to only ActiveX? As I said, if you’ve got some technology that can replace ActiveX, Java, Flash, Shockwave, and all these other plugins that is both browser independent and fully open, then let’s hear it. I’d sure as hell like to see you build an arcade emulator using only HTML, CSS, and Javascript