IE7 Details Emerge 946
Varg Vikernes writes "Microsoft Watch has a story about new features we can expect in IE7 (code named 'Rincon') which they gathered through Microsoft's key partners. Apparently we can expect 32 bit PNG support, native IDN support, new functionality that will simplify printing from inside IE and, of course, tabbed browsing. The new browser also will likely include a built-in news aggregator. Apparently an important factor is security."
Interesting Codename... (Score:5, Interesting)
It will be interesting to see what else (other than tabbed browsing & RSS aggregation) will be "inspired" by Firefox and other browers, say perhaps, easy plugins and themes?
Tabbed Browsing? (Score:1, Interesting)
Looks like Slashdot editors missed one again.
Name change for IE7 (Score:3, Interesting)
And about MS's product: I just hope they fix all their CSS issues and add support for CSS 3.
Re:Interesting Codename... (Score:2, Interesting)
Of course, we all know that will never happen.
Re:Interesting Codename... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:printing (Score:2, Interesting)
Factor this... (Score:3, Interesting)
xp/2003 only? (Score:3, Interesting)
Users that cant upgrade unless they get newer hardware. Users that know what they have now does the job and have resisted the 'upgrade scam'.
Re:I thought... (Score:3, Interesting)
From the Article:
"English reiterated that features such as tabbed browsing are not important to IE users."
Entire damn thread is Redundant. (Score:2, Interesting)
Microsoft seems to be having trouble lately with new products actually doing something new. Longhorn for example - what exactly is supposed to be new in that again? They had three things they were hyping, none of which was terribly revolutionary to start with, and all of which have since been dropped or will be available (eventually) as an upgrade to existing OSes.
Innovate??? (Score:5, Interesting)
Rincon? (Score:3, Interesting)
What one should be scared of is the "IE 7.0 will feature international domain name (IDN) support" part -- can an IE user disable it like Firefox has [linuxinsider.com] (should he desire to use IE of course) before someone *ahem*rincóns them with a bad IDN?
Re:Interesting Codename... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Interesting Codename... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Microsoft has finally been forced to innovate (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you RTFA? Tabbed browsing, IDN support, RSS news aggregator all available in Firefox in some form. So, where exactly is the innovation? Possibly anti-spyware integration??? That's like a mouse setting a mouse trap for itself.
Additionally, Microsoft's "improvement" is really their way of saying that they are now in "catch up" mode.
I don't mean to flame you, but customers should not look forward to the next version of IE in six months or so, when they can get virtually the same features today with Firefox.
All I need to say is "Why Even Bother".
Re:security (Score:5, Interesting)
For instance, if the extended characters were displayed in purple, but the normal characters remained black, then you could continue using it, and KNOW that its a mixed domain.
Infact, just typing that gives another solution, have mixed domains (std and extended) come up in a totally different size/style.
That way, all normal domains look normal, and all extended domains also look normal, but those using a combination are glagged as such.
just a thought.
Re:So, basically... (Score:3, Interesting)
Firefox becomes a research and development team for Microsoft. And since the open source community won't patent their stuff, MS is free to steal the ideas that worked.
When it arrives, IE7 will be praised by the press as a step into the future.
Re:Security (Score:3, Interesting)
For the sake of accuracy, its ActiveX and Javascript, not Java, that were blocked by default. Any removal [microsoft.com] of Java from IE is going to come years in the future and is due to a court decision and a very relaxed attitude to the timescale by Sun. Getting back on topic, i don't think a simple browser should even have to worry about a thing like permissions. This should be done at a higher level closer to the OS. If security is an issue with IE they need to strip any security handling from IE and put it where its most effective.
Redmond, start your photocopiers! (Score:2, Interesting)
The RSS news aggregator was announced at WWDC nine months ago.
Re:security (Score:4, Interesting)
it's kind of funny, though, how it is essentially our (as in the mostly-north-american-and-western-european readership of slashdot)'s lack of familiarity with the writing systems of the rest of the world that are getting us into this particular pickle.
add that to bad eyes from gazing into a CRT for too many hours, and designers with predelictions for ever-smaller fonts, and you have quite the character set predicament.
Re:Redmond, start your photocopiers! (Score:2, Interesting)
It's not surprising that Safari 2.0 (in the developer builds) crashes even more than Safari 1.2 does. I'd like to see them fix the horrible reliability of Safari before bolting on useless features.
Re:Interesting Codename... (Score:2, Interesting)
2000 professional NOT supported? (Score:1, Interesting)
The school I go to is run completely by Windows 2000, negating the Macs.
There is NO WAY, they could afford coppies for XP much less run it on the ancient hardware which is strained under the excessive crap in 2000.
98 ran fast, WTF happened?!
Re:xp/2003 only? (Score:3, Interesting)
To be fair to MS, 98 and NT are already past their mainstream support phases if you look at their support site Linky [microsoft.com]. However, in the case of 2000, you're dead-on; it's really taken the shaft compared to XP, even though it's still in its mainstream support phase until the end of June. No back-port of any of the XP security changes made for SP2, and of course no back-port for this either. Puts the lie to that "mainstream support" claim, doesn't it?
Can they at least support HTML special characters? (Score:1, Interesting)
Can Windows ever be secure? (Score:3, Interesting)
For example, look at the standard Windows update procedure for Windows XP. First, you have to go to a website to download software that you then allow to run on your system looking for updates. Then, you have to let the software download a sometimes long list of self-installing 'updates' from some location that the Microsoft software selects for you. The download procedure gives the user very little supervisory control over the process and doesn't even do very simple things such as display checksum data to let the user verify the integrity of the downloads. There is also little, if any, indication of what the downloads will do or replace. Yet Microsoft considers this inherently insecure process to be their standard procedure for updating their flagship operating system.
Microsoft needs to change their entire philosophy wherein they think that they should be able to anything they want with your computer at any time while the bad guys are not supposed to use the same mechanisms to steal your data and your cycles.
Re:Um...WTFN? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:security (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:security (Score:1, Interesting)
Where'd you think the talking paperclip comes from?
Too bad it's more annoying and offensive than any other piece of software in existance, but it's still innovation.
http://www.vcnet.com/bms/departments/innovation.s
Re:Um...WTFN? (Score:3, Interesting)
Like it'll make a difference...
Why not fill out the Microsoft Suggestion Box Form at http://register.microsoft.com/mswish/suggestion.as p?from=cu&fu=/isapi/gomscom.asp?target=/mswish/tha nks.htm [microsoft.com]
What do ya have to lose? Ask for everything.
Re:security (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:security (Score:2, Interesting)
IE? Security? Does this mean they are ripping ActiveX from the browser/engine?
How long before a Mozilla-based browser gives me the ability to rip out MSHTML from the OS!?!?
That's what I'm talking about! Security through OS modification!
Now, if we can only get the Mozilla folks to abandon the idiotic name "SeaMonkey" and call it something cool, like OpenMozilla.org.
Hell, while they're at it, why not make composer into a fully fledged Word Processor. We need another of those, right? no?
I digress. I seriously don't see how MSIE v.whatever can ever be considered secure, so long as they retain ActiveX and non-standard rendering.
Re:security -- Not just anglaphones (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually no. The problem is really just that UTF-8 is too powerful. There are half a dozen ways to encode something that looks like an 'a'. It can actually get worse for people who are multilingual -- A Frenchman who expects a site encoded with an accented A (ä) might then be sent a URL where a similar looking character (ä) is encoded out of some other page. In this case, both ä's will be marked as extended UTF characters, so there may be no easy way for a user to distinguish between the 'legitimate' site and the phish monger. You tell me which one is legitimate! (and, yes, they are different encodings in this posting).
Standards support improvements? Half-assed (Score:3, Interesting)
MS is doing as little as it can for its users. XP+SP2 and 2k3 only? Come on, they're just creating another excuse to keep the upgrade carousel turning.
It surprises me that they're going to improve PNG and CSS support at all. But being MS, we know there's going to be a catch.
Call me a pessimist, but look at their track record. I don't see anyone at MS advocating putting a time warp in IE to bring its users (victims) from the 2001 web to the 2005 web in one fell swoop.
But they've been rich for a decade... (Score:3, Interesting)
IDN solution (Score:5, Interesting)
Who cares if the site says it is www.bank.com if you can easily see it is registered to Boris at his mom's basement in Russia?
Re:Um...WTFN? (Score:5, Interesting)
For example, in a .Net web app, you can add validators. So if you have a text input, you can validate that it is not empty when a form is submitted. This is _very_ simple JavaScript. However, with .Net, if you are using an IE browser, you will get an error message without going to the server. If it is a non-IE browser, it requires a round-trip to the server. How crappy is that? Like the people at MS could not write some simple standards compliant JavaScript to check if a freaking field is empty or not before a form post.
That is just one example. There are tons of others with the "built-in" web controls with the .Net framework that have all been made to work well in IE and have limited functionality in non-IE browser.
Because of crap like MS does with .Net, it has made me use Java/JSP for web apps. At least then I can control how well my applications can work with different clients and not be subjected to MS trying to make the world MS-only.
I really don't know what is wrong with MS. I mean, not all of their products are bad, and I really like some of MS's products. If they would just _compete_ and stop listening to their marketing/business @ssholes MS probably would not be too bad. All MS needs to do is compete and allow others to try to compete. MS needs to stop _all_ of their lock-in crap.
Seriously, look at the amount of dedication that OSS programmers show. MS could have that same loyalty if they just gave a _little_ back to the community. I am not talking about their crap "shared" source license or the wimpy XML setup wizard they released. I am talking a few major contributions of their code that they let a _community_ improve could make a world of difference to MS and their reputation.
Re:security (Score:3, Interesting)
You see, MS knows that if their browser contains all of the same features as a third part browser, they will regain market share, and fast. Their browser is already included in the operating system. Why should someone like my father go out of his way to download and install a peice of software when it's already included in his OS?
MS wants to be the underdog in this deal. They don't care about losing web browser market share. They are confident that when they finally release a browser that contains similar features to the leading third party browser that they will win over the market again (like with Netscape).
Right now, they are slowly becoming the underdog in the web browser market. Just think of the headlines they will make as their new IE7 begins to redominate the web browser market. Think of the happy investors that see MS gaining ground again.
MS is making a bold move; they just might pull this off. If they do, it's win/win for them.
Re:security (Score:3, Interesting)
As a side note, I wouldnt use the word "empire" when not referring to government. The MS situation isn't pretty, but its hardly geopolitics regardless of how strongly geeks identify with the issue.
Bill Gates tried to talk Brazil president Lula into changing his government decisions.
Of course, he didn't even agree to a meeting, but that has some resemblance of someone seeking world domination.
Re:security (Score:3, Interesting)
You really should look a word up before criticizing someone else's use thereof. The word empire has nothing to do with government. The word empire, from emperor, from old french empéror, from latin imperatorium's nominative imperiator, is not a governmental title at all. The word means "commander," and was adopted only after conferred by a vote of the Roman military onto a successful general. There could be more than one imperator at once, until Julius and then Augustus adopted the title as a show of solidarity with the military, presumably to secure loyalties. Note that Tiberius and Claudius rejected the title after Julius and Augustus had taken it on; as military they felt it needed to be earned.
The title "emperor" was applied to Asian monarchs by the West during the middle ages specifically because it was not a royal title, but rather a military one; the issue was to suggest that the Asian monarchs did not have the royal blood which at the time was seen as a semi-holy thing in Europe (qv. divine right, etc;) it was in essence a way to exclude Asian monarchs from "royalty" by word use.
With respect, the word "empire" does not apply to most countries. An empire is not a large country, but something acquired and held by conquest. The United States is arguably an empire thanks to the Spanish American war, but the term is typically applied to territory acuired mostly through conquest instead of in small part, such as was the case with Russia (the original nation) and the USSR, with Britain and Portugal and the European colonial powers, with ancient Egypt and Rome and Macedon, with feudal Japan and ancient China and Mongolia, the Aztec empire, and so forth. By contrast, you would not apply these terms to Canada, to the Inca, to non-WW2 Germany, etc.
With that observation, it becomes quite clear that the word "empire" does in fact apply quite well to some financial institutions - particularly those characterized by hostile takeover, marginalizations, and so forth.