Why dont Microsoft release a proper web browser?

[Nodrog]

It doesnt make sense to me. IE6 is what, 2 years old, and hasnt received a major update in this time. It seems obvious that it has fallen massively behind competing browsers, and feels positively out of date compared to them. I cant understand why Microsoft don't just produce IE7 - its not like theyre lacking resources or anything. Hobbyists have managed to improve IE6 (avant browser and suchlike), so you'd think microsoft would be able to knock off something semi-decent. Are they saving an updated browser for use in some future OS? Or have they just lost interest in the browser market?

This isnt meant to be a browser advocacy thread, I just really dont get Microsoft's strategy here.

[Proteus]

They realised it wasn't worth trying any longer when Bill Gates started using Opera.

[Stew]

Maybe they dont feel they have a lot to gain financially.
They'll always be ppl who wont use IE whatever, so they dont care about these.

Those who use it now will be content.

Plus, you know, its free, surely they cant get much $ out of it anyway?!

[Nodrog]

And on a completely unrelated note concering computer industry things I dont fully understand, why have CPU clock speeds apparently frozen?

[pablissimo]

I was under the impression the next iteration of IE is to come out with XP SP2

Edit: apparently not. Have to wait till Longhorn. Woopy doo.

[Leshy]

Microsoft has decided not to develop Internet Explorer any further at this point, but release their next browser with Windows Longhorn. What their intended strategy is - I'm not sure of. Likely they are counting on the browser market not shifting dramatically in an Opera/Mozilla direction.

As long as MSIE keeps a large majority of the market - and until Windows Longhorn comes out, it will - any features not supported by MSIE, such as most of CSS2, will not gain popularity or be used. If new techniques are not used due to lack of mass support, even newer techniques will not be developed, or at least at a much slower pace.

If MSIE 7 with proper standards support were to be released now, XHTML and CSS2, CSS3 would gain popularity very quickly, giving the W3C more power. In the current situation, the W3C is relatively powerless, because no one will use standards or techniques that 80% of the Internet won't be able to see or use. I reckon Microsoft has little problems with that.

[NEWSBOT3]

Originally Posted by Nodrog

And on a completely unrelated note concering computer industry things I dont fully understand, why have CPU clock speeds apparently frozen?

what the bollocks are you on about gordon ?

[Leshy]

Originally Posted by NEWSBOT3

what the bollocks are you on about gordon ?

Presumably about the fact that we've been at around the 3GHz and 3000+ mark in CPU speeds for a while now, and newer models aren't coming out as fast as they used to.

[Deffeh]

Originally Posted by Nodrog

It doesnt make sense to me. IE6 is what, 2 years old, and hasnt received a major update in this time. It seems obvious that it has fallen massively behind competing browsers, and feels positively out of date compared to them. I cant understand why Microsoft don't just produce IE7 - its not like theyre lacking resources or anything. Hobbyists have managed to improve IE6 (avant browser and suchlike), so you'd think microsoft would be able to knock off something semi-decent. Are they saving an updated browser for use in some future OS? Or have they just lost interest in the browser market?

This isnt meant to be a browser advocacy thread, I just really dont get Microsoft's strategy here.

I don't see what your getting at. IE is perfectly fine. What more could i want? Its the page content thats shit or good, not the tool. Opera was a piece of crap that lasted less time on my computer than Gator.

[Dante Hicks]

Perfectly fine at what?

[queball]

MS probably wants to destroy the idea of having a "browser" at some later point in favour of some more transparent interface schema.

[Leshy]

Originally Posted by Deffeh

IE is perfectly fine.

There is one simple reason why MSIE survives, and this quote demonstrates it.

Ignorance is bliss.

That's not a personal dig at you, Deffeh - the simple fact is that 90% of users simply do not know what is available beyond what they have, and thus they are content.

[Deffeh]

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

Perfectly fine at what?

Letting me use the internet without annoying features and buttons

[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by Deffeh

Letting me use the internet without annoying features and buttons

Ah, k. That's cool then. But some people (mainly designers) want to move the technology behind sites forward. IE not developing restricts this. Whether IE is better than Opera is irrelevent (for this thread), Nod is asking why IE don't simply improve their browser.

Do you think that every single feature that web pages could ever have has been done?

[Deffeh]

Originally Posted by Leshy

There is one simple reason why MSIE survives, and this quote demonstrates it.

Ignorance is bliss.

That's not a personal dig at you, Deffeh - the simple fact is that 90% of users simply do not know what is available beyond what they have, and thus they are content.

I tried opera and didnt like it. You can throw any explorer at me and i probably wont like it. IE survives because its simple, easy, and because some people like me are more concerned with Page content than the way its displayed.

[Leshy]

Originally Posted by Deffeh

Letting me use the internet without annoying features and buttons

My Opera interface contains less buttons than my MSIE one.

Originally Posted by Deffeh

IE survives because its simple, easy, and because some people like me are more concerned with Page content than the way its displayed.

If people were primarily concerned with content, then the browser of choice would be Mosaic 1.0.

[Leshy]

Originally Posted by Flavius

Honestly, at the rate we're going with heat dissipation problems

One major issue why we're not pushing the 4GHz barrier yet.

[Nodrog]

my friend just bought a plasma screen tv and I was all like 'wtf why dont you just use your old 14 inch portable do you think having a better tv is going to make the programs better?"

[Sandsnake]

Microsoft intends to fully integrate future OS's. In essence, they're not making a new browser because they intend to destroy the concept of a browser as we know it. Full integration of the internet into the 'windows experience' or whatever. Longhorn is supposed to be the endall, which might explain the completely insane system requirements believed to be needed to run it.

On the CPU note, there was an article a while back that said they're moving away from clockspeeds because they're no longer really all that relevant and it's starting to be a detriment as not all same mHz chips were created equal. They intend to communicate the power of the chip with a new naming convention that isn't a raw number.

Of note, AMD is starting to make most of it's chips unoverclockable because of resellers altering the chips and then selling them as the faster chips which is somewhat deceptive. HOWEVER, they're making a new chip series that will remain overclockable with a new designation so that OC junkies will still love them to bits. I can't find the article though atmo.

[Dead_Meat]

[19:43] <nodrog> **** SAKE I ****ING HATE OPERA
[19:43] <nodrog> what a piece of shitly designed shit
[19:47] <nodrog> im using intenet explorer
[19:47] <nodrog> this is a ****ing joke
[19:48] <nodrog> opera crashes every 5 minutes now
[19:48] <nodrog> its a heap of shit

LOLIRONYLOLMFG

[Deathjam|wee]

Originally Posted by Sandsnake

HOWEVER, they're making a new chip series that will remain overclockable with a new designation so that OC junkies will still love them to bits. I can't find the article though atmo.

that will be the athlon xp-m ( xp-mobile for the retards) then, its all ready out

[Tactitus]

Originally Posted by Flavius

Honestly, at the rate we're going with heat dissipation problems, fans and stuff like that, I'd prefer having a 2Ghz Pentium M that performs the same as a <insert pentium 4 analogy> and consumes less, thus giving out less heat, than have my room heated just because of 1 processor.

If you don't have major heat dissipation problems then you're not pushing the envelope. Perhaps a bit of liquid immersion?

[Deffeh]

Opera isnt a bigger screen. Its a same sized screen with about 50,000 more options for changing brightness, contrast, etc.

[Deepflow]

if processors get better too fast my new computer will become shit at an unnaceptable rate

[djbass]

I thought it was due to hitting yet another limit of the lithographic process used to create the chip wafers?

[Radical Edward]

apparently there will be a functioning 10 bit quantum computer by 2012 or so, so perhaps the chip makers are worrying about that. Just to note, the fastest computer in the world can emulate an 8 bit QC. currently we wre only on 2 bits

[Nodrog]

I still dont think I buy quantum computing at all, and I'm taking a very strong "I'll believe it when it happens" approach to the whole thing.

[Dead_Meat]

Originally Posted by Nodrog

I still dont think I buy quantum computing at all, and I'm taking a very strong "I'll believe it when it happens" approach to the whole thing.

640KB of RAM should be enough for anyone, right?

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by Nodrog

And on a completely unrelated note concering computer industry things I dont fully understand, why have CPU clock speeds apparently frozen?

There are unexpected quantum effects taking place at the 70-90nm region which weren't taking place in the 90-130nm region meaning that IBM have had some problems getting their chip manufacturing plants to work reliably*. This means that instead of just packing more transistors in the same volume, they have to find ways of making them more efficient. The MP chips are an example of this, but the market's going to be for 64 bit chips for the moment (although AMD are dominating it after Intel's hideous Itanium), especially when Longhorn is released.

*Just have a look at the yield for the new GeForce cards.

[General Martok]

Originally Posted by Leshy

My Opera interface contains less buttons than my MSIE one.

when I installed Opera a while ago (wanted to know if my web-creations worked on Opera too), it was flooded with buttons and menu's, so only 70% of the bidth/height of the screen was used form the actual content. Now a Opera junkie like you can disable them rather quickly, I couldn't find where to disable it within 5min... The average user has by then already closed Opera and started IE...

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by General Martok

I couldn't find where to disable it within 5min...

The 'View' menu.

Methinks you're a moron.

[sayonara]

Originally Posted by MrL_JaKiri

The 'View' menu.

Methinks you're a moron.

Or simply right-click on the offending object and choose one of the many display options.

[sayonara]

Originally Posted by Deffeh

I don't see what your getting at. IE is perfectly fine. What more could i want? Its the page content thats shit or good, not the tool. Opera was a piece of crap that lasted less time on my computer than Gator.

The problems with IE are:

- It doesn't implement CSS properly, forcing designers to come up with elaborate ways (e.g. dynamic values) to get IE to display pages the same as all the other browsers that are rendering them correctly.

- It only implements about 90% of the previous HTML specification, never mind the new standard. As an example, beyond resources like CSS, [link] is a foreign concept to IE.

- It implements non-standard objects and scripts, such as VB script or Microsoft's own take on dynamic CSS, which other browsers don't support (because there's no reason why they should, or a standard that handles the same function in a simpler fashion that everyone else understands already exists).

Now while a lot of this is fairly transparent to the end user, it can easily result in inaccessible or non-rendered content. It also results in inaccessible pages for non-IE users when developers don't test thoroughly in different browsers.

[sayonara]

Originally Posted by Nodrog

This isnt meant to be a browser advocacy thread, I just really dont get Microsoft's strategy here.

In business terms it's a good one.

If they release IE7 now, with full CSS support, tabbed browsing etc, then move on to their "integrated experience" product with Longhorn, it will look as if their new technology mainly owes its existence to Mozilla development, W3C standards and (slightly) the open source community.

By missing out what we (being clued-up users, which tbh don't feature prominently in Microsoft's non-corporate customer base) see as the natural middle step, they make it appear that their proprietary and insular approach has suddenly revolutionised browsing technology, when in reality all they've done is driven the wedge further in and tightened their hold on their market share.

[pablissimo]

Originally Posted by Nodrog

I still dont think I buy quantum computing at all, and I'm taking a very strong "I'll believe it when it happens" approach to the whole thing.

Reversible computing for the win!

With the possible exception that the only programming languages designed for the whole concept are ugly as sin.