IE’s big leap forward; CSS3 selectors fully supported
quirksmode.org
quirksmode.org
I think MS made a smart call. They saw that the standards web was taking over. They couldn't stop it. So how do you sell Windows licenses in this new world? Be the best platform for the standards web. So now they're throwing all their eggs in this basket. It's the right move and I look forward to a new world when people actually say, "Use IE... no, seriously, use IE".
I am not suggesting that mozilla/Opera/Chrome developers don't care about money; but making the best browser for them was not a reactionary motivation to their low browser market share. At least for Opera, they have been right up there, or as long as I can remember, as the most standard compatible browser. Yet their browser market share never went above 1% (statcounter). And they are still making it better, recently developed the fastest JS engine.
My point being. I can't trust a company/developer who is reactionary to the market share and their profit line as opposed to doing their job good in the first place. AFAI am concerned, as long as I have the choice, I will never use IE.
For example, Opera makes its money from the browser. Plain and simple they need to sell their browser. And really they have no other product.
Google is a very different story. Let me give you an example, do you think Google would ever release a version of Chrome that allowed you to block all advertising? Even if that was the best user experience possible, they want to sell you ads. There plan to do it is to make the rest of the experience so good that you stay on the web and click ads. But they won't do anything, regardless of how beneficial to the user, where there's a reasonable possibility that they'd drastically reduce their profit.
I personally don't buy the whole "good company" "bad company" thing. But I do look for companies whose profit is aligned with my interest. That changes over time (both my interests and the company's), but I simple don't have this belief that some companies are "gooder". That died with my belief in Santa Claus.
*The Mozilla Foundation is essentially funded by Google. Yes it could be any other tech company but for now it's Google.
This is excellent advice for building a business (especially in the B2B space). Thanks!
If you mean it, Firefox should have supported H.264.
Mozilla/Opera aren't so innovating in the old days. I remember there was a HUGE ad in the toolbar area of Opera when it's still a shareware. I have to use a no-ad patch/crack.
Tons of innovating features exists before Mozilla, there were lots of thirdparty IE shell browsers like MyIE.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Internet_Explorer_shel...
They were quiet because there weren't so many buzzword or hype nor any marketing campaign backed by Google.
They did a damn good job in the first place. IE 5.5 was such a tremendous step forward in reliability and consistency that web apps stampeded towards it and away from the alternative, the hideous Netscape 4.72. Before anybody could plan for it, tens of billions of dollars of activity had moved to IE, and Netscape's market capitalization was a smoking crater.
The catch was that the web apps of that time were brittle, something like Perl or PHP code with HTML snippets hard-coded into it. The brittleness of these apps prematurely standardized the quirks of IE 5.5/6. Microsoft had no choice but to put the product line on long-term support. Consequently, a lot of app authors sensibly decided to target IE 6's carved-in-stone quirks rather than emerging standards. At that point IE 6 was there to stay for the long haul; trying to migrate away would have been tilting at windmills.
What we are seeing today is that (1) the emerging standards of 1998 have finally been carved into stone, (2) the web app frameworks have finally gotten good enough at separating logic from presentation to make rewrites worthwhile, and (3) IE challengers finally accumulated enough development to compete. This is not because Microsoft was evil, but because you have to climb a tall hill to replace a pretty good solution with an ideal solution.
And now I hope that era won't repeat.
Now if we could have a working IE without hardware acceleration that runs under XP, that would be wonderful.
I do have some hopes for Google Chrome Frame's MSI installer though - to support a barcode scanner, we already have to force our users to install Java, so there's at least some hope with GCF.
As it stands now, 20% of our development time is wasted on making stuff work on IE 5.5 (!) and 6
Why should they? New features and updates only available to newer operating systems, drive upgrades! Makes perfect sense to me, especially considering XP support won't be around forever.
As it stands now, 20% of our development time is wasted on making stuff work on IE 5.5 (!) and 6
I'm not following... If it's a waste of time, why are you doing it? Drop support for those browsers in that case. Unless, of course, customers using those browsers make up a significant percentage of use, it doesn't sound like much of a waste to me.
You're not kidding.
Windows 7 SP1 is currently in beta. Once it ships, you will no longer be able to downgrade Win 7 to XP, which is going to make it extremely difficult to legally buy a new XP license.
In the end other end users with better browsers suffer in that they cannot get the full amount of theoretically possible features (we are a small company with limited resources) and our customers suffer because the have to pay more and wait longer because their customers (our end users) in turn are stuck in the past.
Maybe not in an economic sense, but many people consider it frustrating to spend hours and hours on something that wouldn't need to be done if just someone else would act.
Which someone would that be? Microsoft or the Corporate IT folks reluctant to upgrade* ?
* Due to some internal app that only works on IE6.
I like it.
But yeah. Google Chrome frame is really interesting once the MSI installation becomes possible or they find a way around requiring admin rights for the installation (unlikely)
OS X, on the other hand -- virtually everyone is on Snow Leopard or Leopard by now, with a few stragglers on 10.4 Tiger. No one is on 10.1, or even 10.3, anymore. [1]
Part of the difference in the upgrade curves can be attributed to the legendary way Windows bloats and requires beefier hardware with each release (possibly excepting Vista → 7), the fact that Apple only needs to release OSes for its own hardware, the much cheaper and simpler (one version) OS upgrades on the Mac side of the fence, and frankly the anti-consumer DRM/validation tactics of Microsoft that make people fear updates. Apple makes no attempt to stop end users "sharing" or outright pirating OS updates — in part because everyone already bought hardware, but mostly, I suspect, because it's extremely beneficial to the (developer) ecosystem.
[1]: http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-shar...
It's just that a significant share of our end users are running outdated software, so our customers and thus we have to support it.
After all, not many people are left on 10.4, and 10.5 runs on all the hardware that 10.4 does (not so with 7 and XP).
edit: says it here - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/17/ie9_no_windows_xp/
wow, that stinks!
MS needs all the moral support and encouragement it can get. Really, we should treat MS like a recovering addict who declines a free hit and goes to bed early. They're doing their best and they're improving.
Well done!
But good job for Microsoft (finally), perhaps it will motivate my boys in Norway to step it up.
Now if they would just couple it with an aggressive upgrade program, we'd really be in business. Lack of XP support certainly doesn't help.
In reality, experience has taught me that they could easily destroy these standards by doing it their own way. Only if there is finally a reconciliation to full standards (or little deviance like other browsers), would these press releases even be worth it.
If they "implement" canvas and CSS3, and basically the new web, and we still have to go "that's a great idea, but does it work in IE?" they have still failed.
Crosses fingers Here's to hope!
I hate that no matter what it's called. For God's sake, don't use the hyperlink cursor for buttons!
Buttons already have quite good affordance.
But the web != your OS. Many things that work and are expected on the desktop, such as double-clicking, right-clicking, and dragging, are considerably more rare online, where there are a different set of expectations and, as you mention, affordances.
And the sad thing is that desktop applications are starting to do this too. The new Symantec Antivirus interface is all webby and slow (something else I don't like), and uses the hand for buttons. This makes me a sad panda.
It irritates me when people learn a concept and then illogically apply it to other domains. That's why I'm making a fuss, it seems like everybody is not using their brains and saying "EVERYTHING you click must use the hand because links do!".