IE9 Released, Media Has Opinions 378
Yesterday Microsoft released IE9 and since
then we've been getting tons of submissions about it: It's hard to tell if it is
a threat to web development or
the fastest thing on the web
or even a waste of time. You'll just have to decide for yourself... if you are one of the 9% of Slashdot readers who actually uses IE.
Internet Exploder (Score:0, Insightful)
It's still Internet Exploder
Re:91% (Score:4, Insightful)
No, we all hate IE, it's just 9% of us are at work, libraries, etc. where they force us to use IE.
Re:91% (Score:5, Insightful)
I am part of the majority. Me and 91% of the Slashdoters think that this story is irrelevant and IE is a piece of ... :-)
Anyone else with me ?
...
here we go again...
IE isn't irrelevant at all.
It's a major part of why the web works and looks like it does today, and IE affects how web sites work for you with Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Opera. You don't even have to use IE - these news still matter to you! Both as a developer, or an end-user.
The web is usually designed after the weakest link (usually IE, standards-wise), so of course this story is irrelevant.
The browser forming the weakest link is still the weakest, but today got a whole lot stronger than with IE 8.
We can finally start developing for some aspects of HTML5 without having to restort to relying on updates in some sort of cross-browser third party "compatibility library" where it's easier to just not use those features at all. So the features aren't used at all. So even if you aren't a developer, it still matters, since web sites will start working better.
Authors will now at least start being able to take the step to exploit the potential of Chrome 10 or Firefox 4 better while not having to worry about ~50% not able to be supported well.
IE 9 still has flaws, and is still not there with the competition, but it's miles ahead of IE 8.
Re: Won't run on XP (Score:4, Insightful)
I feel this is a bigger issue than might seem at first glance.
We have a powerful plateau situation in desktop tech. Cite "The Economy", social changes and more; the first two generations of former active experimenters are starting to become satiated now that modestly significant progress has been made. If you merge all the disparate threads of "we can't figure out the next quantum leap in OS", the Age of Good Enough, and the hidden walled up cost of moving Enterprise off of XP, for Microsoft to start to pit a browser as a hardware-based deliberate fragmentation will cause a pressure-cooker situation of a type that will simmer slowly until some further factor sets it off.
Let's coin a word: "Rhetorical Luddite". I thought ahead and built a custom quad core XP machine in 2006 that is still middle of the line now. Now it's MS's job to "prove" why XP absolutely must go to make way for the upgrade they'd like me to make. To do that, I currently guess it would take another Killer App of some kind. These little deliberate fragmentations instead are irritating.
My approximate current plan is that Windows 8 in 2013 will be the switch point, if at the same time both a hardware and application super-breakthrough shows up.
Windows XP is the weakest link. (Score:4, Insightful)
The browser forming the weakest link is still the weakest, but today got a whole lot stronger than with IE 8.
At this point, the weakest link is the wide remaining deployment of the nearly decade-old Windows XP operating system. IE 7 required Windows XP, which kept businesses that stuck with Windows 2000 on IE 6. Likewise, IE 9 requires Windows Vista, which will keep a lot of businesses on IE <= 8 for a while.
Re:My fox is on fire (Score:4, Insightful)
I think that the people who really care about IE's development are always those who, at some point, have struggled to get a commercial webpage with creative/nifty features to work cross browser.