Well well well, looks like mozilla.org has routed Micro$oft in the browser wars. Firefox has gained a tremendous user base in the short time since its release (25 million downloads in 99 days!). Micro$oft announced yesterday that Internet Exploder 7 is at long last in the works, and many are speculating that it's a desperate move on the part of M$ prompted by Firefox's tremendous popularity. Beta versions are scheduled to be out this summer.
Only a hundred-and-one things wrong with this, but I'll confine myself to two here.
Firstly, IE7 will only be available for Windows XP. This leaves millions of pre-XP users out in the cold.
Secondly, Bill Gates said in his speech that the new release will add security while "maintaining the level of extensibility and compatibility that customers have come to expect". Well, most of us know all too well what to expect from Internet Explorer. While increased security was hyped, not a word was said about bringing IE's rendering engine into compliance with the current technologies and standards: XHTML, CSS2, full support for PNG, and DOM2.
Internet Explorer has long been and will continue to be the browser (I'd say 'of choice', but that's a little inaccurate) for those who don't know any better, are forced to use it on the job, or are just too lazy to download and install Firefox (I have seen/heard many people actually say this of themselves). Oh, and for web page authors to check their pages in so they can continue wasting considerable amounts of time contorting code for those still using IE.
If you'd like to read about the dangers of using IE and and its defiance of web standards, I refer you to a previous post of mine, IE considered harmful. If you haven't already, I advise you to switch to the Mozilla suite (browser, e-mail and newsgroup client, and IRC chat client) or to Mozilla's Firefox/Thunderbird (browser and e-mail client combo). I personally do not know of anyone who gave one of these two browsers a chance that ever looked back.
Mozilla for IE users: Though it has been around for some time and refers to an older version of Mozilla, the page 101 things that the Mozilla browser can do that IE cannot should give you a better understanding of Mozilla's browsers and 101 reasons why you'd want to switch.
I am not sure at all how this new version of IE is going to gain M$ much ground anyway. Too many users and standards ignored. Too little too late.
Only a hundred-and-one things wrong with this, but I'll confine myself to two here.
Firstly, IE7 will only be available for Windows XP. This leaves millions of pre-XP users out in the cold.
Secondly, Bill Gates said in his speech that the new release will add security while "maintaining the level of extensibility and compatibility that customers have come to expect". Well, most of us know all too well what to expect from Internet Explorer. While increased security was hyped, not a word was said about bringing IE's rendering engine into compliance with the current technologies and standards: XHTML, CSS2, full support for PNG, and DOM2.
Internet Explorer has long been and will continue to be the browser (I'd say 'of choice', but that's a little inaccurate) for those who don't know any better, are forced to use it on the job, or are just too lazy to download and install Firefox (I have seen/heard many people actually say this of themselves). Oh, and for web page authors to check their pages in so they can continue wasting considerable amounts of time contorting code for those still using IE.
If you'd like to read about the dangers of using IE and and its defiance of web standards, I refer you to a previous post of mine, IE considered harmful. If you haven't already, I advise you to switch to the Mozilla suite (browser, e-mail and newsgroup client, and IRC chat client) or to Mozilla's Firefox/Thunderbird (browser and e-mail client combo). I personally do not know of anyone who gave one of these two browsers a chance that ever looked back.
Mozilla for IE users: Though it has been around for some time and refers to an older version of Mozilla, the page 101 things that the Mozilla browser can do that IE cannot should give you a better understanding of Mozilla's browsers and 101 reasons why you'd want to switch.
I am not sure at all how this new version of IE is going to gain M$ much ground anyway. Too many users and standards ignored. Too little too late.
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