In Addition To Project Spartan, Windows 10 Will Include Internet Explorer 99
An anonymous reader writes After unveiling its new Project Spartan browser for Windows 10, Microsoft is now offering more details. The company confirmed that Windows 10 will also include Internet Explorer for enterprise sites, though it didn't say how exactly this will work. Spartan comes with a new rendering engine, which doesn't rely on the versioned document modes the company has historically used. It also provides compatibility with the millions of existing enterprise websites specifically designed for Internet Explorer by loading the IE11 engine when needed. In this way, the browser uses the new rendering engine for modern websites and the old one for legacy purposes.
Internet Explorer (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Internet Explorer (Score:4, Funny)
ActiveX controls make SharePoint a pleasure to use. Yes, we're stuck on IE 6, and thus XP, at work, but it is a lot better than the alternatives. Also, our version of OWA (Outlook Web Access) doesn't work with newer than IE 6, but again, it's a nice product. Compared to Squirrel Mail that our competitor uses, OWA is great. That doesn't mean it is fragile. It's just built for a certain version of a certain browser. You're wrong.
Re:Internet Explorer (Score:5, Insightful)
"Requires you to use a 15-year-old OS that no longer gets security updates" is either the very definition of fragile, or something equally bad.
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How old is COBOL again? how many places are still using programs built on COBOL?
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You are equating an OS with a computer language? To paraphrase Pauli, that's not even wrong.
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Compared to Squirrel Mail that our competitor uses, OWA is great.
I call bullshit. SquirrelMail rocks. Especially compared to the craptastic load of mega ass crap that is the OWA of 2002.
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SquirrelMail manages to survive in tiny nooks, but it anything but "rocks". It's simply the lowest of low end web interfaces that people will still tolerate in some places.
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But it's easy to use and reliable. I'd like to have a webmail service that comes with it though ideally with switch-and-forth with roundcube.
I once looked for webmail other than the big ones (microsoft, yahoo etc.) but most require a yearly fee or the free ones have been closed to newcomers for a decade, or are for specific users.
I would like some no-bullshit webmail that works, even if it has squirrelmail, and pay one fee for lifetime use.
A web 1.0 javascript-less interface to keep a few text notes and fil
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Oh yay, let's all compare a 13 year old bit of software to an unknown version of SquirrelMail (but I'm sure it won't be a comparably old version...)
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Oh yay, let's all compare a 13 year old bit of software to an unknown version of SquirrelMail (but I'm sure it won't be a comparably old version...)
SquirrelMail has changed in the last 13 years?
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Yeah, I know, that's funny and yes, for a good three seconds, I had a moment of incoherent and dumbfounded shock at the idea someone could be seriously saying that. Then I saw the moderation and realized I'd been had. I paused for a second and realized I had some actual experience that wasn't so far off.
There was a time I liked VMWare. I used it until I discovered how much better Xen performed for me. I was a fan of XenSource until they were taken over by Citrix. When I took a job with Microsoft as the stan
Re: Internet Explorer (Score:2)
RDP is better than VNC though. Hyper V still isn't as good as VMWare though. Can't copy and paste text or drag and drop files from the host to the guest WTF? Even Dropbox can do that now.
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Yes, we're stuck on IE 6, and thus XP, at work, but it is a lot better than the alternatives.
How? The disadvantages here are enormous.
Compared to Squirrel Mail that our competitor uses, OWA is great.
Seriously? You're really arguing This product that I like uses a certain framework, therefore it is a good framework.
That doesn't mean it is fragile. It's just built for a certain version of a certain browser.
Errr.... poor browser support is a legitimate complaint when it comes to web apps.
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Having been dredged into that market by no choice of my own, I can tell you this.: Picking a solution that works well in every browser is damn hard, even if you try. IE6 was the worst, but it did't look right in Safari either. I'm pretty sure Firefox and Opera was correct, but it doesn't really matter to th end user. You use an obscure client, it's your problem. It's only quite recently it's become their problem.
Re:Internet Explorer (Score:4)
Thats right, dredged. First in buttermilk, then in flour, then one more time in the buttermilk, then in panko crumbs. Dredged.
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Corporations still use IE 5 quirks mode and ancient security TLS 1.0 which have problems in modern browsers as they are too secure.
Funny if it were not true as these insecure settings process HIPPA and credit card info. But IT is just a cost center right?
At work we disable all security for IE with no sandbox and put in ancient versions of Java with +100 security exploits. Our clients demand this as their cost accountants do not see a need to upgrade.
As a result even without MS specific CSS work arounds they
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But IT is just a cost center right?
And that sums it up perfectly.
It's easy for people to bitch about IE6 and old software, but try to get money to update, and see how far that gets us.
Don't worry though, when the shit hits the fan, those same people that won't fund it will find a way to blame you.
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As much as I've been bashing Microsoft lately for their major screwups, I've tested IE11 in the Windows 10 tech preview, and it seems even more standards compliant than the webkit/blink web browsers as far as the Acid3 test goes. Chrome for example has three distinct pauses on the acid3 test, whereas IE11 on Windows 10 has only one much shorter pause. For comparison, IE11 on Windows 7/8 fails the test at 92/100.
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More standards compliant based on what? Chrome is 100% acid 3 compliant and has one tiny pause. Chrome has kicked IE's ass in standards compliance for years and continues to do so.
Re: Internet Explorer (Score:4, Informative)
Chrome uses Webkit specific css and not W3C. It claims it supports more standards but like IE 6 it is not standardized.
It is like IE 4 in many ways as websites need to use Webkit specific hacks.
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More standards compliant based on what? Chrome is 100% acid 3 compliant and has one tiny pause. Chrome has kicked IE's ass in standards compliance for years and continues to do so.
Opera up to 12+ always passed the acid tests, even acid test #1 when they shouldn't of been prepared for it. I don't think any other browser can make this claim. Opera 26 passes #3 100/100 (no pause and one tab edit from default) but it's chrome with a different skin. While not actually Chrome they are stepping in it's foot prints. About Opera 26: made possible by http://www.chromium.org/ [chromium.org] it will import bookmarks but not Opera's :)
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shouldn't of been
It's "shouldn't have".
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It's very much up to date and I still get that result. This is even running chrome on a bare metal system, with Windows 10 running inside of a VM.
By the way, when I say pause, I more or less mean distinctly slowing down and then speeding up, as opposed to being a fluid motion.
What about the destruction of Firefox? (Score:1, Interesting)
What you describe was only a "shit show" for end users. For Microsoft, it was likely very beneficial when it came to helping entrench Windows.
The "greatest shit show" when it comes to web browsers is, without a doubt, the destruction of Firefox by Mozilla. Not only did end users lose, but Mozilla has been losing, too.
A few years ago, Firefox held about 35% of the browser market. It was a well-respected browser that end users enjoyed using. It made their lives better.
Then Firefox 4 and later versions happene
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I hate to break it to you but despite a few failures its still a better browser than Chrome, IE, and Opera. The part that was bad was Firefox copied Chrome and Microsoft in various ways in regards to the UI. However you can't solve that by switching to other browsers that are just as bad or worse. Firefox still has several privacy and security advantages over the other browsers and whatever crashing / memory leaks were eventually solved. Plus there were measures put in place to make crashing less irritating
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most of these apps were written when there was no standard, there was 3 or 4 standards, if you wanted to stick purely to standards were destined to be highly restricted in what you do. This isn't the case anymore but the reasons back then for doing this stuff were far less obvious than they are today.
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Obligatory XKCD:
http://xkcd.com/927/ [xkcd.com]
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Buy which I think you mean: standards were ignored, we chose to use extensions.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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I had these arguments many times back then. It was laziness more than anything else. We were writing cross-platform web applications without problems at that time. We were trying to convince other developers to follow the same route, b
Re:Internet Explorer (Score:5, Insightful)
That was it. That was why corporations went with it.
That's a big part of it, but you do have to factor in activeX. While it was always a bit of a boondoggle on the consumer internet; it did provide some much needed glue that those old browsers didn't have.
Wanted your cool new enterprise intranet application to be able to print to the receipt printer? Or upload local files with an elegant interface? Or (and a long list of other stuff.) There simply was no cross-platform way to do it. Netscape Plugsins OR ActiveX... and if the enterprise had the luxury of controlling what people were using so it could pick just one... and IE in addition to everything else you said ALSO was easy to manage via AD group policy etc. So it just made sense to use it.
And once they'd gone down the activeX road, and became dependent on it... well the whole planet has suffered for that mistake. :)
Re: So what? (Score:1)
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft
For those of us who were around for it...
Microsoft says lots of things (Score:1)
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This is MS-Dos, old school, bitches.
So MS do you _finally_ support WebGL now? (Score:2)
Maybe if MS actually supported *gasp* older OS's with IE11 we might take it seriously.
No one gives a crap about IE11.
Chrome is the performance king, Firefox was the add-on king.
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Firefox still is the add-on king.
Chrome addons still don't allow certain modifications of the user interface. Tree Style Tabs is fabulous, especially now we're all using widescreen resolutions:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/
Chrome still can't match this. They try, but it's clearly trying to work around the limitations Google has put into their product:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sidewise-tree-style-tabs/biiammgklaefagjclmnlialkmaemifgo
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Completely agree. For a brief time, Chrome had vertical tabs built-in as a beta feature. They killed it, and so too they killed my use of Chrome.
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Maybe if MS actually supported *gasp* older OS's with IE11 we might take it seriously.
Huh? IE 11 is available for Windows 7 and 8. You're seriously going to cry about IE 11 not being available Vista and XP?
Chrome is the performance king, Firefox was the add-on king.
I hadn't used Chrome is years, but I took it for a spin last month. It's very slow starting up, even from cache, and didn't really provide any noticeable speed benefits nor were the benchmarks that impressive.
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No one gives a crap about IE11.
My company has a pilot project to upgrade computers from IE9 to IE11. Although the intranet websites run great on IE9, external websites are horribly broken. Corporate IT doesn't allow other browsers on the network.
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IE 9 is not a bad browser compared to its past horrible abominations. I started using it in 2011 after Firefox 4.0 abomination came out for several months. It was a little behind in HTML 5 support but was a much better browser than Firefox at the time and was very quick. I ended up with Chrome mostly. However, IE 9 was the first browser I used from MS in a very long time. I hated IE so much I would download firefox via the command prompt last decade as I didn't want to pollute my cpu with such trash :-)
Soun
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Yes since IE 10.
Yes people who do not know what a browser even is give a damn not to mention web developers.
Windows 7 is pretty old and a half a decade now and it is still supported. XP? Well it is ancient. You do not expect to see MacOS 9 be usable in 2015.
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IE11 finally support WebGL and they even improved the implementation with cumulative updates.
All very confusing (Score:2)
OK, a couple of questions TFA doesn't really detail enough:
When they talk about a different rendering engine, they make it sound like a completely seperate program. Historically MS has just tacked on compatiblity layers as a sort of "personality" to their existing rendering engine, and TFA indicates they are not doing this here. But how then? Which are they really doing? What is it based on?
They make it sound like they aren't even going to keep the Internet Explorer brand. Is that actually what is happening
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MS forked Trident with different .dlls.
Problem is the rendering engine goes through a crap ton of if/else statements for specific workarounds and compatibility even without the legacy modes. It is crusty. Remove it for better performance and websites which detect IE and feed ancient code break and corporations freaks out.
So Spartan is like Firefox. It removes crap from Netscape/Mozilla. So if a site is in trusted zone like an intranet page it loads the older trident .dlls for compatibility. Other than that
Dear Microsoft (Score:1)
Ditch IE, don't give people a reason to continue to cling to older web technologies. It's time to clean up the mess that is dated and insecure software. Stop supporting it so these places have to update and clean up their own acts. They've had plenty of versions of IE to do this and if they aren't ready now, they never will be. Let them go and fall on their own faces.
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Spartan is to IE, as Firefox was to Netscape/Mozil (Score:2)
Mozilla was terrible with Netscape quirks (worse than IE 6 if you can believe that) back in 2001. It gradually became better but was slow and not as quick or standards compliant as IE 6.
Then firefox came as a purge of old shit. It was fast, stable, extensible, and a new beginning to build upon and finally was the best browser around for many many years last decade.
IE 11 is not bad. Just like the last Mozilla Seamonkey builds in 2003 were improved. But it has legacy garbage and many if/else for specific work
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Interestingly I think firefox is almost at the same state as IE (just a few less years of cruft) with a desperate need of a good purging to get rid of the bloat and cruft, maybe if Spartan is successful Mozilla will realize the sorry state of firefox and we will see a similar improvement from when we went netscape->firefox. IE 11 is a decent browser, but has its performance hamstrung by its backwards compatibility though I do find it acceptable to use on a machine (still swap browsers if it is my own mac
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I believe this is Mozilla Servo - it just takes awhile to start from scratch.
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I can only conclude that you and I must be using totally different browsers despite both being called Firefox, because the one I'm using isn't in a "sorry state". Then again, I'm a weirdo who doesn't think a fullscreen start menu is a crime against humanity either :-)
Consent Decrees and Bundling (Score:2)
This harkens back to when the Consent Decree was put into place, then it wasn't, then it was watered down and now it's expired (as of 2011). The EU on the other hand at least forced MSFT to give users a choice when it came to browser selection. It still seems as though we still have to have IE and this new Spartan presumably. I guess I'll need to download the preview and see if I can get rid of both.
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I guess I'll need to download the preview and see if I can get rid of both.
You know, you won't have to get rid of both if you don't download the preview.
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I make a living on Linux and Windows. So, a strategy for removing both will need to be ironed out because I have customers who won't use IE at all and they will be migrating to Windows 10 sooner than later.
I get it (Score:1)
Excellent! (Score:3)
by loading the IE11 engine when needed
Does this mean I may be able to exploit the new browser using vulnerabilities found in IE11 by calling the old engine via whatever method they'll use? After all, I'm guessing it doesn't use a white-list, at least by default. Maybe that will be an option, though.
And no, I didn't RTFA this time.
What do you mean, "for enterprise sites"? (Score:1)
The company confirmed that Windows 10 will also include Internet Explorer for enterprise sites
Are they including it to support outdated sites that require older versions of IE? Because that's not limited to "enterprise" sites, nor are all "enterprise" sites out of date.