A Mozilla Plugin to Help Overcome IE Rendering Flaw 270
least_weasel writes "An article on Ars Technica reveals Mozilla's intention to create and release a plugin for Internet Explorer that would allow the often-criticized IE to utilize some of the cooler rendering code developed for Firefox. The current WIP focuses on rendering using HTML5 standards, but the plans seem to be more ambitious than just fixing this one small piece of IE. The article covers some of the plans, hurdles, and potential benefits. It also spills the beans on the code name for the project: Screaming Monkey."
Er... (Score:5, Insightful)
What's the advantage over just installing Firefox? Do people who don't have permission to install software have permission to install plugins like this?
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Designers... (Score:3, Insightful)
can design on a sane model with sane tools, deploy the plugin when the users are IE.
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How sure are you? On a scale from one to ten.
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Link doesn't work. Please fix.
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And then that jock gets a job in the city rec department, and his bangin' cheerleader girlfriend is a professional beautician, between them making as much as you do by yourself with your programming experience.
Stupid, non-applicable analogy aside, nobody else cares about whether they use IE or Firefox, but they sure as hell notice when things don't work right. This plugin will let people develop sites to standards that still work with IE, so companies should be ok with allowing their webdevs to work forward properly, and it'll have the side effect of proper sites making people sit up and take notice of their broken browser.
Re:Er... (Score:5, Interesting)
Sigh, if life were fair this would be true. The jocks become corporate sales guys and upper management types. While I honed my programming skills they developed "leadership" skills on a football scholarship at State U. Now they drive nice cars, play golf on office time, and their cheerleader girlfriends have become hot moms.
I think I'm going to put Revenge of the Nerds on to feel better.
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Until some geek invents asexual reproduction in humans, it pretty much is.
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1) To improve user's experience - even if they are using IE
2) More importantly, to do their part in better standardization.
From TFA:"The Canvas element allows web developers to programmatically render interactive bitmap images in HTML content. It was invented by Apple to bring richer graphical capabilities to the company's WebKit renderer. The Canvas functionality eventually became part of the HTML5 standard and has been implemented in both Gecko and Presto. Canvas is used extensively in several popular web applications, including Google Maps, but it hasn't gained widespread acceptance because it isn't available in Internet Explorer. "
Re:Er... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd also like to believe Microsoft will get a bit arsey about it and be all "wut, we don't need ur bloody plugins, we'll make these features available ourselves!" and thus push them towards implementing more standards rather than just fixing the broken ones they have now.
Note: Not trying to troll on Microsoft here, just trying to point out that it would be helpful to everyone if IE supported more features that other browsers have.
Re:Er... (Score:5, Funny)
it makes MS and closed source look bad if Mozilla/open source fix their deficiencies.
Duuuude, that's the beauty of MS and closed source - they don't *need* Mozilla/open source to make them look bad!
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In addition, it caters to the IE diehards, or those who simply are familiar with the way IE does things, who would benefit from such a plugin and still feel comfortable using "IE" not caring what is really running under the covers to do the rendering/layout.
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It allows web developers to take advantage of this feature, but still have their sites be accessible by people using IE (out of ignorance or otherwise). Right now no web-developer can really target features not available on IE unless they want to alienate a large percentage of their user base.
Re:Er... (Score:5, Insightful)
It allows web developers to take advantage of this feature
Canvas is a strange pick though for something to extend IE with. There's excanvas, which does a reasonable job of emulating canvas on IE using VML. It's not a perfect emulation, ofcourse, but in my experience it's good enough once you learn its limitations. For stuff like dynamic charting canvas is the right choice even today.
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My guess is it's simply because canvas is a reasonably standalone feature to separate out of Gecko. Maybe they simply want to give it a go to see if it's feasible to do the same thing to other features later.
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Can you do excanvas on other browsers, though, or is it Yet Another IE-Specific Hack?
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From TFA: "Unfortunately, scripted manipulation of VML [with exCanvas] is too slow to be used for highly interactive web applications."
Still it does seem crazy to expect enough people to install the plugin to make it universal enough for developers, as Flash is now.
Then the rest of the article is about Adobe. "This is purely speculation, but If Adobe decided to ship [the new Moz plugin] as part of the next major iteration of the Flash plugin, it would rapidly accelerate adoption and get it onto lots of computers."
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Re:Er... (Score:5, Insightful)
It allows web developers to take advantage of this feature, but still have their sites be accessible by people using IE (out of ignorance or otherwise). Right now no web-developer can really target features not available on IE unless they want to alienate a large percentage of their user base.
As a professional web developer I can say that is complete rubbish. We can not rely on most IE users to have this plugin so we can not take advantage of any new features. The fact is that while IE is as prevalent as it currently still is we have to develop primarily for that platform. In the corporate world a great many people still use IE6 so we have to test under that very thoroughly too.
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I can't speak for him, but I do, and I'll endorse that statement.
Develop to standards first. Target Firefox first, Safari second, then worry about IE. Put IE-specific hacks in separate stylesheets, and don't even let non-IE browsers see them.
And throw "GetFirefox" links around where you're allowed to.
Idealistic (Score:3, Informative)
You missed the key word there...professional. It means one who makes money from their profession. Developing to standards is great but it doesn't necessarily put food on the table. Idealism is nice, but it can cause one to starve. My guess is you are still in school and haven't had to pay any bills?
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I don't know about the parent, but I do work professionally as a web developer and code to standards. It doesn't hurt me at all, in fact I've had clients come to me specifically because of the high quality of standards based work that I churn out.
Granted, not all clients are going to be aware of standards and their affect on accessibility and search engine optimization, but it doesn't make standards based web development the veritable money-pit that some make it out to be.
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Rubbish? If this plug-in is as easy to install as Flash is today ("You seem to be missing a required plugin, install it?"), I would have no problems taking advantage of it. (Yes, I'm a web-developer as well.) Not everyone has to cater for the corporate dinosaurs with every project they do.
Just because you may not be able to use it, doesn't mean no one can.
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I think that people who don't have permission to install the plugins just won't be able to do so, but they wouldn't be able to install FF anyway.
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This means developers
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IE can be configured to allow plugin installs by the current user, but if you meant on a totally locked down PC, then no.
I see this being useful -- plenty of companies or websites block FireFox. Banks are especially notorious about pushing IE -- they'll tell you to upgrade FireFox to Netscape 4.74.
It was only THIS MONTH that Bank of America began claiming FireFox Support. There are still sections of their website that block you if you use FireFox on Linux.
(Everything works, mind you... you just have to futz
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Because people simply won't do it.
For example I sell web based school software. Recently I set a new school up with this software. The IT director assured me that they were running IE7 which we support as well as Firefox.
When I arrived on campus however, all of the computers had IE6. I explained that many features were disabled in IE6 and they just need to update. They didn't want to do it because they were worried about security.
So I suggested Firefox. This person had never heard of it and was worried that
I'm a bit skeptical (Score:5, Insightful)
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I assume you can have the browser display a "download plugin" button for those people, just like it does it you're missing flash or shockwave.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:HTML5 is a standard now? (Score:5, Interesting)
HTML 5: have DOM storage (session and local) and database storage. These should all be SameOrigin. Meant to block userâ(TM)s deleting of tracking cookies. Use of database storage, there can be SQL injection against the local database. Some browsers support GlobalStorage that donâ(TM)t have SameOrigin control. Lots of new attack surface in FF3. Websites can be protocol handlers (support spyware!!). Installation of protocol handler is one click. WebKit is a big supporter of HTML5 and supports these issues.
HTML5 has limited storage (~ 15 Mbytes total) allowing easy exhaustion attacks and there is no UI to manage this. DOS is easy. Can easily plant arbitrary evidence on a system. HTML 5: Security âoeneed to write this sectionâ.
We now have web developers making desktop apps without any security or privacy expertise. The Web is becoming more heterogeneous and far far more dangerous.
Re:HTML5 is a standard now? (Score:5, Interesting)
We now have web developers making desktop apps without any security or privacy expertise. The Web is becoming more heterogeneous and far far more dangerous.
What bothers me is how security is somehow pushed to the forefront as the most important issue, even more important than functionality.
The most secure system is one that is turned off. This new stuff they're adding increases the attack surface, sure, but it's also necessary to build stuff that actually works (like a web app that doesn't die when your wifi does).
But even aside from the issue of functionality vs. security, there's the issue of security somehow being way more important in the browser, which I think is nonsense. Client-server apps have always had lousy security, and were easily hijacked. Just because they now run in a browser, the threat level hasn't changed. A hacker that is determined can break in sure, but they've always been able to break in. Nothing has truly changed, except for the perception of the threat level.
All in all I think the web stack is pretty secure by default, when comparing it to the alternatives.
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All in all I think the web stack is pretty secure by default, when comparing it to the alternatives.
Really? My opinion is that the "web stack" (not sure which stack you mean here; MSIE-Windows, FF-Windows, Safari-MacOSX, Konq-Linux, etc) has by far the worst record so far. MSIE-Windows has to be the #1 vector for infection now, and has been for at least the last 6-7 years. Which alternative are you thinking of? Because the "web stack" is, in my opinion, the premier virus runtime environment.
My opinion is that web designers made a HUGE mistake in not treating network input cautiously. The emphasis
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That's the attitude that made IE what it is today.
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What bothers me is how security is somehow pushed to the forefront as the most important issue, even more important than functionality.
You shouldn't be bothered, since it isn't. Which is a problem.
The most secure system is one that is turned off. This new stuff they're adding increases the attack surface, sure, but it's also necessary to build stuff that actually works (like a web app that doesn't die when your wifi does).
That's not the issue, at all. This new stuff could be excellent, yes. But if it is developed without keeping security in mind, it is worthless -- worse than worthless, it is harmful -- in the context of the web. If you don't tackle these (some rather obvious, some somewhat tricky) problems now, rest assured, attackers will tackle them. Successfully.
But even aside from the issue of functionality vs. security, there's the issue of security somehow being way more important in the browser, which I think is nonsense. Client-server apps have always had lousy security, and were easily hijacked. Just because they now run in a browser, the threat level hasn't changed. A hacker that is determined can break in sure, but they've always been able to break in. Nothing has truly changed, except for the perception of the threat level.
All in all I think the web stack is pretty secure by default, when comparing it to the alternatives.
Interesting analysis. I don't agree with it. Security being important in the browser does not stem
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But even aside from the issue of functionality vs. security, there's the issue of security somehow being way more important in the browser, which I think is nonsense. Client-server apps have always had lousy security, and were easily hijacked. Just because they now run in a browser, the threat level hasn't changed. A hacker that is determined can break in sure, but they've always been able to break in. Nothing has truly changed, except for the perception of the threat level.
There are reasons why browsers are different from other client/server applications:
Part of the point of HTML5 is to make it easier to do things like implement a desktop
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Developers as a whole have been programming without security and privacy expertise, web developers just happen to have a p
Re:HTML5 is a standard now? (Score:5, Funny)
Well i'll be darned, I guess someone should call the XHTML2 camp and tell them they lost the war!
Nah, don't bother them. They're busy working on the HD-DVD website.
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HTML5 comes in two flavours [w3.org]. One is straight HTML5 which is based off HTML4 (same parsing rules), the other is XHTML5 which is strict XML and requires the application/xml content type. None of them are really related to XHTML2 [w3.org] which is mostly dead at this point.
Sad or happy day in Redmond? (Score:5, Funny)
Is it a sad or happy day for Microsoft, when their competitors get bored with beating them, and instead try to improve the Microsoft products to make them competitive - for free?
Re:Sad or happy day in Redmond? (Score:5, Interesting)
The new plan for Mozilla:
What could possibly go wrong?
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The part I don't understand is why you would go with IE in the first place. If you have problems with IE, or need rendering support that Firefox has, why not just download the whole Firefox in the first place?
Re:Sad or happy day in Redmond? (Score:5, Funny)
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*checks under the bed for IE installs every night*
Re: Installs (Score:2)
Child
"Mommy! That mean man tricked me into installing IE again. Make it go away!"
/ Child
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What could possibly go wrong?
Syphilis? Gonorrhea? Herpes?
Re: Meaning (Score:2)
I think it's Korea with tons of IE6 dependent pages. If a plugin like this works for them, it has value.
Can we go the other way? Make a weird plugin that can fake IE6 behavior so that we can let them escape from the rusty tyrannosaurus trap?
FireFox (Score:3, Insightful)
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Screaming Monkey.... (Score:5, Funny)
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"Damn that Lizard cabal ... I will bury them!"
Spill the beans? (Score:5, Informative)
I've been reading about this for months. Its not exactly top secret.
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Tamarin:ScreamingMonkey [mozilla.org]
Interesting, but difficult (Score:5, Interesting)
FYI, Screaming Monkey was already discussed in an earlier story [slashdot.org].
The only problem is getting people to install the plugin. My own solution was to use the market penetration of Java Applets to develop a shunt [dnsalias.com] that would render Canvas using Java APIs. (Note that the events system has not been completed in that demo. Make sure you click outside the block falling area so that the browser receives the keyboard commands.)
The same sort of shunt could be done with Flash 9 or Silverlight. Which would do a nice end-run around the problem of getting plugins installed.
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Re:Interesting, but difficult (Score:4, Informative)
Java is already installed on most OEM computers. And as I mentioned in the last sentence, Flash can be used to create a similar shunt. Flash has even greater market penetration [zdnet.com] than Java. It's not 100%, but it's about as close as you can get. As a bonus, most users without Flash would be savvy enough to be using FireFox anyway. (Given that one has to actively AVOID having Flash installed these days.)
Internet explorer... (Score:4, Funny)
Look to the beam in your own eye (Score:5, Interesting)
Hey, that's great. Do they also have plans to fix the flaws in Firefox?
Off the top of my head, could we finally have support for SVG as a native image format? Or even just SVG rendering that isn't slower than a stone cow?
Don't want to sound like the grumpy old man, I just want most of my web shit to work in *one* browser before I worry about how it works in every browser.
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What is not native about the SVG handling in recent versions of Firefox?
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You can't use <img src="foo.svg" alt="..."> yet.
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If it doesn't work the same in every browser, nobody's going to implement it. For the most part, the days of making new IE-only sites are gone; any web developer worth his (or her?) salt will not be tying things down to a specific rendering environment. Which means that, with SVG per your example, people aren't going to use it until it works well in all reasonably-current browsers, or until it can
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If only your statement were relevant. Yes, most GOOD sites are cross-browser and cross-platform. But there are TONS of sites that are IE only and/or MS-Windows only. It is killing us all the time trying to be a Linux-only environment. It is not so much b
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you can't even center a div consistently across IE (#yourdivsparent{text-align:center;}#yourdiv{text-align:left;}) and non-IE (#yourdiv{margin:0 auto;}).
CSS centering (margin: auto) works properly even in IE 6.0 but only if you use a Strict doctype. This is particularly annoying on auction sites where you can type your own HTML but are usually forced to use the Transitional doctype of the site.
Re:Look to the beam in your own eye (Score:4, Informative)
You want SVG as background-image? Here you go [mozillazine.org]. Fast enough to do this [mozillazine.org] in realtime? I honestly couldn't say, I'm more excited that their CSS3 support is finally catching up to Konqueror 3.5.
Why does the title sound like a low-blow? (Score:2, Interesting)
Should it not read: A Mozilla Plugin to add Enhanced IE Rendering?
Come on. This old fight between browsers is becoming stale. IE included many things now in the HTML specs that were not available in any other browser, such as CSS Style for shadow effects, etc. Why is it that when something new comes out for IE that it is automatically described as a "bug" fix or a workaround to a "flaw"?
Please people, I like FF and IE for different reasons. A
Exactly backwards (Score:5, Interesting)
Where are my mod points... (Score:2)
...when I need them. You hit the nail on the head, pal.
Good thing I scrolled to the bottom of the page before I posted and avoided the dreaded "Redundant".
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>>This is exactly backwards to what most of us need. We need a [multiplatform] plugin
>IEtab? I know it's not perfect, but it's something...
In what way is "IEtab" multiplatform? Sounds MS-Windows-only to me
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>>This is exactly backwards to what most of us need. We need a [multiplatform] plugin
>IEtab is the plug-in you're looking for.
>It basically allows you to use the IE rendering engine inside of Firefox
In what way is "IEtab" multiplatform? Sounds MS-Windows-only to me
random idea for IEs final destruction... (Score:3, Interesting)
Have Mozilla send come checks to all major software companies (Adobe wink wink) - perhaps Google can through in a few $100 million in the pot too to distribute. Goal: install Firefox (if not installed yet) and make Firefox the default browser. A little taste of Microsoft's own medicine.
*nawcom sips from his glass of kool-aid*
HTML5? (Score:2)
From reading the article, it's not clear to me exactly what this will do, aside from make some HTML5 elements available. Will this fix IE's numerous CSS flaws? To me, that is *vastly* more important than adding HTML5 stuff.
UA Breaking plugin? (Score:2)
And for thoes who say this plugin is somehow for devs: an
Improve Firefox, not monkey code! (Score:2)
One - The project should not be called Screaming Monkey. It should be called Airborne Chair.
Two - This seems like a complete waste of the Mozilla team's time, in my opinion. I don't want to diss their hard work, but Firefox is an exceptional piece of software, so it would make more sense to concentrate on making it even better/faster/smaller, rather than waste the time fixing monkey code (or rather making an add-on that fixes functionality in monkey code).
Three - In addition to concentrating the technical a
Hilarious. (Score:2)
Ha. Ha ha. Ha ha ha.
Make it detectible or we'll fscking kill you (Score:3, Insightful)
There had better be an easy way for web designers to tell if IE has that plugin installed or I'm going to be really pissed.
It's hard enough dealing with IE's crappy rendering... it will be so much more painful if the rendering engine in IE isn't *consistently* broken and we have no way to tell the difference in our code.
NOT Screaming Monkey (Score:3, Informative)
ScreamingMonkey is a project that aimed at providing IE with a JS runtime able to run EcmaScript 4 programs.
Since ES4 is apparently dead, I'm not sure where that leaves ScreamingMonkey.
The canvas stuff is a different project that follows the same general approach, but on a different browser component.
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it will be used by ie developers to test ff compatibility ... rofl
You mean they're gonna test their websites in IE to see if they work correctly in FF? Firefox already has the superior webdeveloper add-ons. I'd like a firefox plugin that allows me to debug IE CSS with those FF add-ons.
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It's like the ex who keeps you as a friend on facebook and makes sure you see all those new pictures with her new bf. Except with IE you just can't defriend it.
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This is entirely correct; the market leading browser is non-standard in many ways, and that breaks standards as a concept, or might have. But that is just a tactic towards a strategic goal, and it was the strategic goal to which I alluded in my post. Standards largely won out, so today we say IE is borken rather than saying it is the One True Way. Nice play, MS.
Standards are like the white blood cells of the Internet, and are the chief way that the system is able to work at all given the complexity and chao
Re:Will not succeed on the field (Score:5, Insightful)
Any person "clever" enough to click Yes on an activeX installation prompt, you mean?
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Looks like someone hasn't upgraded to 3 yet.
(24 opened tabs, 8 extensions, been running 5 hours and gone through hundreds of now-closed tabs - barely 200 MB RAM usage; not that I really care, since that's about 6% of my total memory)
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I wonder why people think that "high" memory usage is related to leaks. Old firefox leaked memory. It's the same ignorance that sees "5 MB Free" in Vista and thinks it's really using up 2 Gigs (it's not, go read up on "SuperFetch", and caching, among other things). Three questions for you:
1) What version of Firefox are you running?
2) Does your memory usage change if you open a bunch more tabs? My guess would be "not much", which means it's hardly a leak (it's how it works, mhmm).
My copy of Firefox has been