Microsoft Research Showcases New Browser Prototype, "Gazelle" 125
Ars Technica reports that Microsoft has opened up about "Gazelle," a new browser prototype of theirs that is modeled after the underlying concepts of operating system design. "A research team led by Microsoft's Helen Wang recently published a report about an experimental browser prototype called 'Gazelle' that uses processes to isolate page content elements originating from different domains. It builds on the concept of multiprocess browsing but uses more fine-grained isolation to expand on the security advantages that are already delivered by existing multiprocess browsing models. But is it an operating system, Microsoft Research's analogue to Google's Chrome OS? Not quite."
Standards (Score:2, Insightful)
Wait, they did WHAT for HOW MANY COOKIES? (Score:3, Insightful)
It builds on the concept of multiprocess browsing but uses more fine-grained isolation to expand on the security advantages that are already delivered by existing multiprocess browsing models.
That's a new definition of security of which I was previously unaware. Just about anyone who's spent five minutes trying to do multi-process, multi-thread, unsyncronized accesses, cloud, spin-locks, etc., will tell you that no, there are no inherent security advantages. It'll be less secure unless you make a dedicated effort from project start just to keep it on par with single-threaded. The only "advantage" it has is that when it fails it'll crash more slowly, with a wider variety of obscure error messages, hammering the operating system as it tanks with the extra overhead as it does so. Yes, it might be slightly harder to develop an exploit because it's not using a generic flaw, but some complicated and obscure flaw -- but that's not more secure; Only badly designed.
Perhaps those technologies need to be broken. (Score:5, Insightful)
Trident? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's largely a .NET application that uses Internet Explorer's "Trident" rendering engine.
Granted, it has made significant improvements but I still haven't been that impressed by the Trident engine. Sometimes I wish they'd use someone else's engine so that they'd be kept up-to-date on standards AND you'd have the same browsing experience on multiple browsers.
I guess I can understand why they don't though... they'd be up a creek without a paddle if they used Webkit and people stopped developing for it or licensed Gecko from Firefox and they went under or yanked Microsoft's license.
Gazelle? How about Tree Sloth? (Score:3, Insightful)
Since this browser runs at half the speed of the not exactly quick IE 7, shouldn't it be given a code name more in keeping with it's actual speed? I've always thought Ubuntu had a cute naming scheme going. I hereby dub this software Turgid Tortoise
Not new (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless if by new you mean:
From february at least, seems older to me: http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=79655 [microsoft.com]
Has already appeared on slashdot and a hundred other tech sites.
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/22/1724244 [slashdot.org]
Its hard to google before you run to try and get a story submitted isn't it?
Re:Color me less excited :/ (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Next Must-Have Browser Feature (Score:1, Insightful)
What I want in a new browser is one that, if I tell it to go to http://www.domain_1.com/ then that's where it goes, and it makes no attempts to download anything from any other domains. No cookies sent to doubleclick.net, nothing to googleanalytics.com, etc etc. Does the new MS browser do that? If so, great. If not, then I have no incentive to look at it because firefox is adequate.
Enjoy having website developers pumping all this stuff back to the server, then dynamically creating the page for you with the ads, because it will happen. (and has happened with advertising at the moment, which is why Adblock and the like exist as they do, instead of simple blocks)
Nice tinfoil hat by the way.