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IE8 Update Forces IE As Default Browser
Posted by
timothy
on Fri May 01, 2009 07:07 AM
from the how-awfullly-polite dept.
from the how-awfullly-polite dept.
We discussed Microsoft making IE8 a critical update a while back; but then the indication was that the update gave users a chance to choose whether or not to install it. Now I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes in with word that the update not only does not ask, but it makes IE the default browser. "Microsoft has a new tactic in the browser wars. They're having the 'critical' IE8 update make IE the default browser without asking. Yes, you can change it back, but it doesn't ask you if you want IE8 or if you want it as the default browser, it makes the decisions for you. Opera might have a few more complaints to make to the EU antitrust board after this, but Microsoft will probably be able to drag out the proceedings for years, only to end up paying a small fine. If you have anyone you've set up with a more secure alternative browser, you might want to help check their settings after this."
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IE8 Released As Critical Update For XP 409 comments
Binestar was one of several readers writing in to note that Microsoft is listing IE8 as a critical update to Windows XP. CNet reported a couple of weeks back that Microsoft would be rolling our IE8 to users in a gradual fashion, and requiring an opt-in before installing it. Opinion has been split as to whether IE8 is worth installing or not. Binestar notes delicately, "For those not interested in upgrading to IE8 at this time, the MSDN released information back in January on how to keep IE8 off your machine."
Submission: IE8 Update Forces IE As Default Browser by Anonymous Coward
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Death to IE6! (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's to the end of IE 6 and all the hacks needed for site to render correctly!
Re:Death to IE6! (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope... Many corporations built their intranet around IE6 and changing browser will break it. Rather than spend buckets of money revamping their intranet, they are just more likely to keep going with IE6...
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Re:Death to IE6! (Score:5, Insightful)
Granted, the fact that the HTML protocol could be interpreted two different ways indicates that it's not entirely Microsoft's fault... this time.
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Re:Death to IE6! (Score:5, Informative)
Validate! If you write valid (X)HTML and CSS, IE7 gets pretty close to the mark and IE8 seems to get it spot-on outside of some newer, often browser-specific CSS properties (text-shadow, -X-border-radius, etc). Hell, even IE6 seems to render more accurately if you have a doctype tag and code that validates against said doctype. Your code won't pass validation without a doctype tag.
Re: XHTML flash - if you MUST use it, http://validifier.com/ [validifier.com].
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Re:Death to IE6! (Score:5, Interesting)
You are correct, however this is true only in the short term. The whole argument of "We're saving money by not switching." will only hold water for so long. Eventually there will come a point at which their enforcement of IE6 will prevent them from being competitive. While everyone else is moving forward with new technologies that allow them to do more (and more securely) they'll still be stuck with applications that depend on ActiveX and open them up to attack. Also, if enough people are using IE8/Firefox outside of work (or more importantly enough management-types) their frustration with the older browser will eventually leak into the workplace, and there will be a push to upgrade intranet apps to get with the times. Change does happen in the corporate world, it just happens slowly.
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Re:Death to IE6! (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not just about having built their intranet around IE6. A lot of (really large) companies I have done contract work for are still using Windows 2000 as their OS and you can't run anything newer than IE6 with that. I think when XP came along, they decided not to upgrade, but just wait until the next version of the OS came out. Then Vista came along....
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is that they don't care if you warned them. They just want to keep making money.
Re:Death to IE6! (Score:5, Insightful)
They also won't remember that you warned them. They'll remember that somewhere along the line, IT oversaw this intranet for them. It worked for a while, then something broke. Even if they're aware that this is related to IE6 (probably not), nobody will remember who made that call, especially not the idiot who said "let's just go with that blue E internet thingie."
They'll just know that IT made it, and it broke after a few years.
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Re:Death to IE6! (Score:5, Interesting)
It amazes me how when firefox has a new version, everyone downloads it with a warm and fuzzy feeling that it is going to be an improvement. However, whenever IE has a new version, people are so reluctant to download it that MS now has to force the public to upgrade.
Way to go Microsoft!!! If your users are uncomfortable with upgrading, force them anyway.
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Re:Death to IE6! (Score:5, Insightful)
Real problem is they're forcing their browser to be default system browser, in place of Opera, Firefox, Chrome - whichever is your default. Y'know how aforementioned browsers (and older IE) ask you if you want them to be the default? The /. summary makes point of forcing IE8 as the default.
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By The Numbers (Score:4, Informative)
Browser Version Market Share [hitslink.com]
IE 7 44.5%
IE 6 17.5%
IE 8 4.3%
IE 5 0.04%
IE 5.5 0.03%
Firefox 3.0 20%
Firefox 2.0 1.8%
Firefox 3.1 0.18%
Firefox 1.5 0.15%
Firefox 1.0 0.06%
Firefox 3.5 0.01%
So call it 50% of the web for IE 7 and IE 8.
Net Applications tracks hits to e-commerce and other mass market websites.
It's not looking at techies. It's looking at guy who watches Fox News and does his shopping at K-Mart.
The geek lives in a bubble.
He believes what he wants to believe.
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You just proved his point! (Score:5, Insightful)
By those numbers, only 6.5% of IE users are running the latest version. Even if you include IE7 you get that only 73.5% of IE users have upgraded to a browser released in the last three years.
On the otherhand, 91.4% of Firefox users are running the latest stable version or a beta version. And if you include FF2 (released the same month as IE7) 99.5% of firefox users have upgraded to a browser released in the last three years.
Firefox users are far more likely to upgrade to the newest version than Internet Explorer users are, which is what he was claiming.
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Re:You just proved his point! (Score:4, Insightful)
It's been my experience that Firefox automatically downloads updates and installs them when I restart my browser. Firefox users are up to date because *they don't have a choice.*
Now, who was complaining about MS forcing an update?
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Re:Death to IE6! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3)
The humour in this has not gone unnoticed by me, but you're also right. A website that doesn't work is Lynx is not really a website at all.
Re:Death to IE6! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Death to IE6! (Score:5, Funny)
80%?
What's your website, an IE6 fan club?
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Re:Death to IE6! (Score:5, Funny)
Dude, he said 20K visitors. There is NO way that an IE6 fan club has that many visitors.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I help develop for a health care website, which is used internally by large clinics, etc, in Minnesota. With a strong, persistent insistence on clients switching from IE to Firefox, we've got from ~97% of users using IE to this month's stats showing 48.4% using IE, 50.8% using Firefox. We've also been pushing notices that IE6 has been EOL'd by Microsoft, and given links to upgrade to IE7. this has seen that 48.4% of IE users to be split with 20.3% of total users using IE7 and only 28.1% still using IE6.
I
Nothing changes (Score:4, Insightful)
IE remains the biggest security problem in Windows (besides user stupidity).
If webpages can override the render engine in IE8 then IE8 is only as secure as the worst render engine.
this wasn't my experience (Score:5, Informative)
i updated IE8 manually on like 20 machines yesterday. it asked every time. it didn't kill my default browser selection.
it there something i'm overlooking, like does automatic updates apply it and not ask you? am i missing something from TFA?
Re:this wasn't my experience (Score:5, Informative)
Well, there is one question during IE8 setup whether to use some (listed) default settings or the change those settings - maybe setting it as the default browser is one of those defaults?
It didn't override Firefox being the default browser in my XP installation, at any rate...
np: Can - Mother Upduff (Anthology (Disc 2))
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works on my computer (Score:5, Informative)
Not that I saw. I remember seeing an explicit "Make IE8 your default browser?" dialogue show up. I'm not sure about XP, but on Vista 64, it behaived exactly as I expected it to and did not change any settings that I didn't tell it explicitly to do.
-Rick
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possibly this was by-design (Score:3, Insightful)
It's conceivable that it only makes itself the default under certain circumstances. Maybe if you have auto-updates "fully" turned on (where it doesn't even ask, it just installs), it'll make it the default.
I don't want to sound troll-ish but it's likely that people who have auto-update set to "download-and-install-automatically" aren't the more savvy set, and therefor MS thought they could get away with it (I almost added "and I don't want to sound like a conspiracy-theorist", but this is MS, it's *expected
Re:this wasn't my experience (Score:5, Informative)
Wasn't my experience either. I upgraded my home machines and my office computer to IE8 and do not recall that it became my default browser.
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Same here (Score:5, Insightful)
Installed on Vista 64.
I think what TFA actually means to say is:
"I got really click happy and just blindly clicked my way through the IE8 install without looking and it made itself my default browser, how dare it!"
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Didn't override FF3.5 being the default. (Score:5, Informative)
On a WinXP SP3 box here at work.
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More secure alternative browser? (Score:5, Informative)
If you have anyone you've set up with a more secure alternative browser
Is it not a bit early to be deciding which browsers are more secure than IE8?
Re:More secure alternative browser? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it not a bit early to be deciding which browsers are more secure than IE8?
No it isn't, unless you believe in miracles. This isn't really Microsoft's fault but for every hacker who says "lets target Firefox and try to capture bank details" there are 100 trying to do it for IE.
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Re:More secure alternative browser? (Score:5, Insightful)
How was this modded troll? It's a fact of life, and he even added "This isn't really Microsoft's fault" which most slashdotters wouldn't have bothered with.
IE is the primary target for browser hacking, and will remain so as long as its market share is anywhere in the vicinity that it is now.
The best thing you can do at the moment is install Firefox *and* Chrome *and* Opera and try to dedicate types of sites to each browser.
I usually assign Google properties to Chrome, highly compliant sites to Opera, and everything else to Firefox.
(This may sound paranoid, or just overkill, but I have to develop/test on multiple browsers anyway so for me it's also a way to get to know them better.)
I'm not suggesting that everyone should install every browser, but at the very least install Firefox and make it the default, because they patch it early and often, and it's very good at maintaining itself (updating when you restart, checking for plugin updates, etc.)
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Does anyone fact check here? (Score:5, Informative)
If you check the "Custom Settings" it doesn't. (Score:5, Informative)
If you let the IE install do it's thing automatically then it sets itself as default.
Anyone not choosing to customize IE's install deserves to have it supplant their settings.
IE8 on Vista, not the default (Score:5, Informative)
Is this an XP thing? TFA didn't say which OS he was running.
FUD (Score:5, Informative)
I have several machines, all running several versions of Windows (XP & Vista in both 32- and 64-bit varieties) and I have not seen IE8 automagically installed through Windows Update on them. I have Windows Update set to automatically install updates without asking and the result is exactly what happens with IE7 when you get it off of Windows Update: An installer screen pops up asking if you'd like to install IE8 now, would like to wait, or don't want to install it at all, ever. All have updated to Office 2007 SP2, which was released to Windows Update the same day.
However, I can't speak to what happens when you have IE6 installed on your XP machine and this update comes across the wire. I dropped IE6 over a year ago. Still, I doubt such an upgrade would be forced like this. Also, when I did choose to install IE8 on a machine that has Firefox as the default browser, after the restart, Firefox was still the default. This article is simply FUD. Furthermore, what's wrong with replacing a less standards compliant browser with a more standards compliant browser? Provided you don't change the default browser of course.
SOP for all Microsoft products (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft has a long history of forcibly breaking your operating environment.
Re:SOP for all Microsoft products (Score:5, Insightful)
What do you mean "your" operating environment? Windows is theirs!
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a reason why I hate Microsoft at times, and Visual Studio installs are definitely one of them. First it goes and update your entire system, restarts a couple of hundred times and then it messes up your file associations. And of course you can be assured additional fun if you work at a company that does not have internet connections on their development PC's.
Compare that with an Eclipse inst^H^H^Hunzip.
Anyway, the whole idea that a single source file should open in an IDE is flawed. Let IDE's open wo
Making it a critical update was a favor (Score:4, Insightful)
IE6 is a plague on the internet development world. If it gets rid of that, wonderful. Making it the default browser, that's classic Microsoft. Actually, that's the new, desperate to hang on to market share in the face of shrinking revenue Microsoft.
You fucking suck... Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm yet another person who installed IE 8 via Windows Update and it did NOT forcibly set itself as the default browser.
Seriously Slashdot, do you even bother to vet your troll articles anymore? Do you realize how embarrassingly pathetic this one significant site in the tech world has become?
How much difference would it actually make? (Score:3, Insightful)
Vista/IE8 bug (Score:4, Informative)
FUD (Score:4, Insightful)
While I agree that making it default _without asking_ is a shady move on Microsoft's part, I'm sure what the payoff is for them versus the negative response many people will have. Those users who have a non-IE browser as default will notice the switch and will switch it back, these are the users who are actively choosing which browser to use anyway. The people who don't care what browser they are using, are probably already using IE. So what do they accomplish, other than reaffirming to the non-IE people the rightness of their choice?
As Machiavellian as this seems... (Score:4, Insightful)
...we know that most people (sadly) are using some version of IE currently; ergo, if they install IE8 and it makes itself the default, this is good for a variety of reasons entirely related to security (and good for the rest of us as the last thing I need is more zombies out there spamming me night and day.)
Now, most people who have an alternative browser installed do so because they are 'aware' of the realities of modern web surfing and make an intelligent choice accordingly. These people are being inconvenienced by this because they've got to set their browser back to being the default (often this is simply a case, using Mozilla as an example, of starting up their favorite browser and it saying "Hey, don't you want to use me all the time" and they choose "yes, make yourself my default browser." Inconvenient, annoying, suspicious, yes - a real problem for these people? No...
The last group are the (imho) very small minority of web users who've been lucky enough to have an informed web user install an IE alternative for them, but they themselves do not know what the fuss is about. These are the people actually getting screwed by this. They may end up with IE8 until their good Samaritan revisits them to right this terrible wrong.
Ignoring whatever the actual motives for this decision at Micro$oft was, I personally think the good outweighs the bad. It would still be nice to smack the guy who green lighted this in the face though, wouldn't it? :)
Bollocks (Score:3, Insightful)
When I looked at my XP box the other day, there was a bubble notifying me of available updates. I checked to see what it was and all there was was IE8. So I unchecked the box, told it never to ask again, and that was the end of that. So why the FUD ? Can't you even configure windows properly ? Please stay away from Linux.
Not a problem here (Score:4, Informative)
I just allowed a handful of computer at work to install the update. All of them asked before installing and none of them changed the default away from Firefox.
Somebody needs to explain this.
Bullshit (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, you can change it back, but it doesn't ask you if you want IE8 or if you want it as the default browser, it makes the decisions for you.
This is not entirely true. When you install IE8, it asks you whether you'd like to do an Easy install or if you'd rather do a custom install. The Easy install does indeed set IE8 as the system's default browser, without asking. However, if you do the custom install, it does ask, and it honors what you tell the installer to do.
Even if your default browser setting does get hijacked, the very next time you launch Firefox, it'll let you know it's not set as your default browser, and it's one click to change it back. Not a big deal at all, other than if you're running unattended installs on critical systems which require Firefox to be the default browser for some reason.
FUD (Score:5, Informative)
I allowed the install of IE8 on 2 of my personal machines yesterday. Both of the still have Firefox as the default browser. Vista and XP. Who is complaining that its switching their default browser? What's the setup?
IE 8 didn't force itself on me but... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Whooooooooosh! (Score:5, Funny)
Firefox makes IE 8 your default browser in Linux? That's kinda odd.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sure it was accidental. Nobody at Microsoft would notice this because they all use IE (by law).