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That post from before about darwin...

I was posting some feedback to comments made on that previous post of mine where I went a little crazy. It ended up being so long that I think a second post is in order - maybe not to you guys, but for me it's helpful :)

Hey guys.

Thanks for all your responses.

Frans: My apologies for offending you. I really don't like to offend anyone. I was quite mad last night however. All I was trying to say was that I'm sick of everyone acting like babies when it comes to browser arguments, but, me being me, I couldn't help throw some digs in at people. I know that all I'm doing is being a baby myself. However, I was mostly just stirring the pot to see the sort of reaction that came back - I was quite sure that the pot would get stirred, and I'm pretty sure it worked - i've never been linked to from slash-dot before! Being linked to from slash-dot is not something I'm proud of, however. Your general slash-dot user/participator is not someone I want to meet - I have absolutely no time for that website.

MattyT: Two things you said that I want to reply to.
1) "people get passionate about it because it's bitten them in the ass": I've never had trouble with IE as far as security vulnerabilities are concerned. Seriously. The only time I've seen them in action is when i've deliberately let myself get hit so i can see what happens :) As for other people, I don't see the need to switch less technical users to a different browser. When I set up a machine for them, I install what every user should have, no matter the browser. A virus checker, and pop-up blocker, a firewall, and adaware. I switch off stupid things like HTML email. No ones ever come back to me with problems either - well, except Dad, but he installs everything he can find to see what it's like, no matter what it is or how trustworthy it is. And even his biggest problem lately was with a fairly crappy ad/spy-ware removal tool that thought a system file was a trojan (when it wasn't) and just deleted it.
2)"most people use IE and are living in ignorance that a better alternative exists. That's what us FF advocates are trying to change." That's fine. But leave it at 'I think it's a better browser'. Do you like it when you have Jesus Freaks showing up at your door preaching? Especially when they won't go away? So far in my experience, most Firefox advocates I've come across are just the same. Same with die-hard Linux heads. or open source heads. Matty, I know you said you don't try to ram it down peoples throats - I'm talking the general public in this bit, not just you :)

And perhaps that's my biggest fault. Part of the reason I'm so anti-Linux and anti-open source and anti-mozilla is because the majority of contact I've had with these products is via the geek version of the Jesus Freak. It's why I have no time for slashdotters. It's why I have no time for pure ignorance. It's not I have no time for people who disagree with me, it's that I have no time for assholes. I used to run Linux at home on my desktop. I only ever wrote programs for Linux and any other platform that could run gcc. I preferred Apache. I preferred vi. I preferred Netscape. I gave them all a fair go, and enjoyed them for a while. Then I moved back to windows and discovered that I liked it more. I stopped writing as much C and stared writing more VB. I was happier. To me, it was a better platform and a better environment. In fact, IE was that last of the conversions. Even after I was a happy windows user and windows programmer, it took a long time for me to switch to IE - I couldn't trust it, it didn't render properly, etc etc etc. I eventually decided to give it a fair go, just like I'd given Linux a fair go, and Open Office, and the rest. And I discovered that it was ok. The problems weren't nearly as big as all the anti-microsofties were saying. I've also tried Firefox. I gave it a fair go. And I don't like it. There's other programs written by MS that I won't touch, or don't enjoy using, and try to find alternatives (winamp over media player for example. or gmail over outlook. or the Google toolbar over over MSN. Or any text editor except notepad. I don't know how to use Word very well. I detest power-point.) - but it's certainly not ignorance on my part that stops me from switching browsers or operating systems or whatever. But so many people belittle me (and mean it) for preferring something that they don't. And these peoples are assholes, as far as I'm concerned. :)

Which leads me to....

Hakan: I don't do crack. But I'm sorry if i used the word 'the' too much.

Scott: I agree with you that the next version of IE really needs to come out before longhorn. The sooner the better. The biggest mistake that MS have made, i think, is taking so long between IE versions.

I'm also looking forward to it for another reason too, one that's a little selfish and a little petty, I have to admit. If, in the next version of IE, they can get it 'right' as far as you Firefox guys consider it, what happens to Firefox then? Everyones computer gets updated from windows up date with the new IE, (which is a definite commercial advantage that MS have over everyone else) and advertise it as better than Firefox and boom! Firefox is gone except for die-hard wannabes :)

Sure, that could be a big IF, especially since they still have to support backwards compatibility as much as possible (See here, for example, and I agree with them BTW), but I think it's possible. However, putting the IE team on hiatus for so long until they started work on SP2 doesn't give me much hope until longhorn.

And sure, a major rewrite of the code may be in order. I don't consider that to be dumping IE and starting again, it's just versioning. And it'd be needed anyway, not because IE is so bad (quiet you guys!) but because longhorn will be so different (I hope) that to get the integration to happen it'll need to be radically changed. And the level to which it's embedded in the OS is part of why I like the damn thing so much :)

Yeah, your gumby users are just that - gumbies. We can't escape this fact. And code signing certainly isn't the be-all and end-all of it all. But running Firefox isn't going to instantly make them smart. No matter what browser they run, nothing will stop them doing something wrong, if they really try (and they do try :)

Aaron: I see your point, and agree mostly. But why is a different way of rendering that big a deal? It only becomes an obvious difference when yo have a really flashy web site. The problem here is not having to cater for all the browsers, but 90% of websites that are 'flashy' shouldn't be. The web enabled so many people to become at-home graphic designers, and they have no talent. I include in that the people who designed the 'big' sites - Ebay, amazon, yahoo, etc - they're all ugly looking sites. In the cases where you supposedly need the advanced features that cause so many incompatibilities, they should be intranet sites, not internet. And the intranet is whole different kettle of fish, where there's generally only one browser around anyway. (My explicit opinion here, but don't prove me wrong, please :)

I'm sure waffling tonight. But this time I'm not deliberately trying to piss anyone off. But fair's fair, I should respond.

But seriously, if you disagree with me, that's fine. I'm willing to listen to your side of the story. Just remember: my opinions, mostly, are based on reason and preference, not just blind unwillingness. Please don't try to convert me to your view simply because you disagree with me. And don't be an asshole :) (I'm not claining that I'm not one)

Posted: Wednesday, December 22, 2004 6:31 PM by Geoff Appleby

Comments

Scott Galloway said:

Great post Geoff. My 'dumping IE' point was actually an attepmt at a solution (too much mulled wine obviously obfuscated my point :-)). The argument I always see over the lack of IE upgrades is the problem with supporting the wide number of apps which use the existing rendering engine. We all know what that's like and the problems versioning can cause in such scenarios. So my argument is that is might be easier to start from a new product - not having to worry about breaking existing ones by using the legacy engine to retain support (you know in the Win16 versus Win32 way :-)). Oh and as for MS overtaking Firefox...nothing like healthy competition to keep stuff moving :-)

# December 22, 2004 1:56 PM

Geoff Appleby said:

But the backwards compatibility needs to be there. This is the biggest hurdle in my mind, as far as the coding of a new IE is concerned, but a necessary one.

The problem with the compatibility thing is that it's a whole new religious war. And i really don't have the energy to get into it :) And the IETeam blog has certainly started in the right direction of explaining their point of view.

I don't think it'll take that long to sort out, anyway. IE6 is by far the vast majority of the IE's out there (I checked here: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp), which means that it supports a much more complete set of standards than any of the previous versions. As web pages get rewritten, if they can include the right doctype (and if they're so concerned with standards they will anyway, right?) then most of the differences in the standards support will be insignificant.

So the biggest fight is not so much for browsers that support al the complete set of standards as it is that web authors need to also stop writing crap. :)

# December 22, 2004 2:12 PM

Darrell said:

What most developers are asking for from IE, standards compliance, etc., are changes to the IE core dll, which isn't all that big. Tabbed browsing is a change to the UI, and I would think that would be relatively easy. Hell, Maxthon adds an entire UI on top of the IE engine and tabbed browsing wasn't that big a deal for them.

IE is properly modular, it's just not as new-fangled as Firefox and it's NOT open-source. :) I like Firefox, but it took them until v. 0.9 to get it right for me. I tried Maxthon and it didn't do it. Maybe a future version of IE or Maxthon will, though. Who can say?

# December 22, 2004 3:53 PM

Bruce Morgan [MSFT] said:

"And sure, a major rewrite of the code may be in order. I don't consider that to be dumping IE and starting again, it's just versioning. And it'd be needed anyway, not because IE is so bad (quiet you guys!) but because longhorn will be so different (I hope) that to get the integration to happen it'll need to be radically changed."

The next IE isn't a ground up rewrite at all, for several reasons.

1) The IE codebase is actually quite large, including the MSHTML rendering engine (aka Trident). It took a large team of developers (100+, IIRC) and several years to write Trident in the first place for IE3, 4, 5, and 6. Nobody wants to wait for us to do that again.

2) We take compatibility seriously, as the post Geoff linked to describes. Keeping appcompat with a rewrite is a brain transplant. That may be easy in a crappy episode of Star Trek, but I think it would highly difficult in the real world.

3) Finally, there's no real need to rewrite. Despite a bunch of assumptions made by people who haven't seen the code, the IE codebase is not incomprehensible, obtuse, difficult to work on, or unmaintainable. Quite the opposite. It's large and complex, sure. We've been making corporate hotfixes, security patches, and then the XPSP2 upgrades for a number of years while maintaining a high degree of appcompat. We can do it again for the next IE.

The reality of IE's "integration with the OS" is highly overstated. It's not like it's kernel mode code. IE provides the Windows platform with DLLs like SHDOCVW, MSHTML, URLMON, and WININET collectively known as the WebBrowser OLE Control or WebOC. Apps like Maxthon or AOL or iRider host the WebOC. Lots of bits that come with Windows (like OE or Help) also use the WebOC. IE itself is essentially a docobject hosted by a shell window.

BTW, the difficulty with tabbed browsing is maintaining compat with 3rd party toolbars, BHOs, etc written for a single window world. Adding tabs while breaking everything would be trivial.

# December 22, 2004 9:43 PM

Floogle said:

I don't care if you like IE or not (I don't like IE or Firefox, personally), but I do have one question: Why on Earth do you say you hate tabbed browsing? I can't understand this at all. Do you hate the ability to have multiple documents open in Office apps too?

# December 23, 2004 12:04 AM

Scott Galloway said:

Bruce, ok, slightly confusing - so you want to improve IE but can't because you need to retain compatability - by improve I am specifically referring to such things as CSS improvements, standards adherence, tabbed browsing, presumably skinning etc... This compatability both refers to 3rd party toolbars / tools and compat with legacy apps. That may therefore suggest a new non-legacy app would be in order (fair enough this is something which MS can't do and Apple can..which is a shame...)

But, you can't rewrite IE (the end result of which would be this non-legacy app) because it would take too long (longer than the 7+ years between the last major version and Longhorn's supposed release I presume - Firefox / Mozilla took 4-5 years with a fraction of the resources) - remembering that this is probably the most used application for Microsoft and for many the most reviled? Is it possible that there's no cost benefit in a rewrite and that's the primary motivator for stagnation (ala Joel Spolsky's position)There does seem to be no problem in allocating hundreds of developers and several years to build a new OS (ok, so it's a modification rather than a rewrite for the most part - apart from Win32 - WinFX) - presunably again because there's a real cash benefit in doing this. Why not just say - it would cost too much and we don't need to do it - our market share is good enough and there's no real competition (Firefox being a fringe browser)

THe Integration may be overstated, however there's no getting away from this simple fact - when Firefox crashes it only affects itself, IE has a greater impact.

So is the end result that IE will never ever improve - apart from bug-fixes / things which the press loves to write about; e.g., anti-phishing, anti-popup - which incidentally broke / significantly affected many websites which are in themselves 3rd party apps depending on a certain feature-set. The fact is that IE does not enable developers to use the standards which all other browsers enable the use of, the only time significant improvements were made was when there was credible competition (oddly compatability didn't seem like such a huge deal then, compare HTML rendering in IE3 - IE6...)

# December 23, 2004 12:51 AM

Scott Galloway said:

Notice I didn't use the ultimate weapon agains an MS developer - "Maybe you guys just aren't smart enough to support the new standards whilst retaining compatability" :-). This is absolutely, positively my last post on this topic - Geoff sorry for hijacking your blog.

# December 23, 2004 12:53 AM

Geoff Appleby said:

Floogle: See, this sort of question is the sort of thing that annoys me. It's fair fo you to ask, but it's the way you ask it. I can have multiple web pages open at once right now, can't I? The task bar gives me what i need, and _everything_ that i need all at once. If i want this web page, that web page, this word document, it doesn't matter - I move the mouse to the bottom of my screen and pick the one i need. Or, I alt-tab. Having multiple word documents open doesn't change the fact that their all in the task bar.

Visual studio and my preferred non-code-editror, ultraedit, are the only things i use that have tabs, which is useful for interrelated peices of code, but annoying to me for eveything else. Web pages are distinct standalone items, and as such i want them seperate.

For the same reason, I turn off the 'group similar task bar buttons' feature - i cna't stand that damn thing!!! :)

# December 23, 2004 1:14 AM

Geoff Appleby said:

Scott: Keep going, I don't mind :)

# December 23, 2004 1:14 AM

MattyT said:

Heya Geoff,

If you haven't been bitten by IE then you're pretty lucky or - possibly - are fortunate enough to be able to be working under service pack 2. I'm not able to install SP2 because of some issues we have with our work environment. However, I'm updated to the wazoo if you exclude SP2. And I've had a number of exploits hit me over the past few months - ever since I have had broadband and leave the computer on. Am I practising secure habits? Let me see:

o Firewall - check. Both hardware (Netgear DG834G) and software (Zone Alarm). The only open inbound ports are for Remote Desktop and HTTP (I host an IIS web server, which is an admitted potential security hole).
o Virus checker - AVG. It's free and may not be good enough but I want to give it a good try before forking out money.

Now, whenever I've used IE in the past for any extended period of time my system has been compromised. I run AdAware and SpyBot regularly (every week or three) and - when I was using IE consistently - they often found stuff on my system. Since shifting to Firefox I've had no issues whatsoever.

Maybe I was unlucky. Maybe SP2 changes the landscape dramatically. Maybe.

Anyways, I keep my system pretty tight, and as updated as I can, and I've still had stuff creep in. For computer users with less nouse than me they simply won't go to those precautions. It's far easier for me to tell them that they should use Firefox. Apart from the fact that I think it's a better browser they'll likely have less security issues with it. That may change as it gains popularity and malware and virus writers start targetting it. Time will tell.

My big hope is that the popularity of Firefox will cause IE to get some development - it seriously needs it. And please break backward compatibility in this case (sorry to the Chen camp whom I usually side with!). It won't take long for people to update their code - certainly less time than web developers have to waste having to work around IE's quirks...

I do agree that most Firefox advocates should just calm down - they're a little outta control! Me, I like the browser because it considerably improves my online experience. So I suggest to others that it might work for them. If they try it and go back then that's cool. I usually have trouble understanding it but it's OK... ;D

Anyway, I've rambled enough - sorry for such a long post. Hope you're doing well mate! :)

# December 23, 2004 2:58 AM

Floogle said:

Thanks for the reply, and I'm sorry that you thought there was something wrong with the way I asked - I was doing my best NOT to be offensive (I guess it just comes naturally to some of us :P)

"Having multiple word documents open doesn't change the fact that their all in the task bar."

Is this something new in later versions of Office, or an option somewhere? The reason I asked the original question this way is because I still use Office 97, and when I open two word documents, they open in MDI mode - definitely not accessible via the taskbar (but switchable via ctrl-tab or F6, like tabs). To me, tabbed browsing (actually, Opera's MDI version, which I find preferable) is the logical extension of this same idea - my web pages are all grouped within the same container, like all my excel docs and word docs). Also, I tend to open many web pages simultaneously, which makes the taskbar selection method a lot more unwieldy... it's hard to choose between twenty identical looking "e" icons ;)
It's probably down to the way we work on our computers.

# December 23, 2004 3:16 AM

Geoff Appleby said:

Floogle: That's my fault then. It's been so long since I used office 97 that I don't even remember it anymore. So I'm sorry, I don't remember office do it the way you describe - and i'm not much of an office user anyway. I only open word when someone sends me a word document, and i've stopped using outlook at home in favour of gmail (i use outlook at work however, with the domino connector - it's a lot better than using lotus notes :)

I've go windows 2003 running here at home. ctrl-tab doesn't work for me, but three word documents open means three things in the taskbar. They are all accessible via the window menu to switch between documents, so there's bound to be some shortcut key that will let you switch via that...but alt-tab is fine with me :)

I also run many IE's at once quite often. But i run multiple monitors and use UltraMon, which extends the taskbar over the second monitor. It's very rare i need to pick between one of many 'e's :)

The biggest thing is the screen real estate, i think. I want all the space i can get. I run at a high res (1280x1024 on 17 inch monitors) but i hate maximising windows, so i push all i can out of ie to give me space. The address bar goes on the same row as the menu bar and i get rid of the go button. The toolbar has back, forward, stop, refresh and home. Then the favorites button, and then the google toolbar takes up the rest of that row. Tabs means i need yet another row, and i don't want to lose the space :) The taskbar is already there no matter what, so i use it happily.

# December 23, 2004 3:33 AM

Geoff Appleby said:

MattyT:
SP2 has nothing to do with it. I guess i dont' go to places that inflict damage :) When i know something might happen, i disable javascript first, then i'm happy.

I think i'm just lucky, and it probably has a lot to do with having a clue (i'm not saying you don't!) Hell, i only run adaware and spybot about once every 4 months, and it's found nothing in the last couple of years.

I'm not trying to negate your points at all. People that don't know what they're doing are very susceptible to all the bad stuff. I think tho, that no matter what browser you run, you're still susceptible. I don't think we're ever going to escape that problem. shit happens :)

PS - yup, doing well. I'm on my first day of leave today, not back at work until the 10th of Jan. Is nice. Sorta nice. Very busy actually, gotta get the place cleaned up for all the relatives that are arriving on the weekend. I think i need a holiday!

# December 23, 2004 3:39 AM