Chris123NT's Blog

So I came across THIS article today that pretty much states that Opera’s CEO is not happy with Microsoft making Internet Explorer 8 a removable component in Windows 7.  So that got me to thinking, what exactly DOES this guy want?  And then it hit me.  He wants to see Microsoft integrate his browser, and possibly others into Windows.

I can say right now that the above would NEVER happen.  Microsoft would rather withdraw from the EU market then include competitor’s products in Windows.  And there are many valid reasons for this, a couple of which I will outline below:

Support Issues

This is perhaps the single biggest issue.  The fact is, Microsoft has a responsibility to support everything that they include in box with Windows.  If Microsoft were to box Opera or any other browser with Windows, and said browser causes crashes or other unforseen issues, users will hold MICROSOFT responsible because it “came with Windows, so it must be Microsoft’s fault”.  The only way around this would be to sub out the support to the browser developers, but that is complex and puts an unfair burden on Microsoft because they will still have to field calls from users who don’t know any better.

Confusion

This point could be argued but I believe that if the OS were to come pre-boxed with multiple web browsers, users would become confused.  In my experiences in the field most users access the internet with “the blue e”.  No, I’m not making that up, people actually have said that to me.  If there are more choices one of two things could happen.  Either people will continue to use IE, or some may become confused and ask why there is more than one Internet on their computer (yes they will probably ask it like that too).

The bottom line though, is that the reasons for not integrating competing browsers into Internet explorer are plentiful and range the whole spectrum, from technical issues right down to legality and support issues.  I would recommend that competing browser companies bide their time and accept that IE is removable as a good thing.  Most users will switch away from IE once they see how bad IE8 is and just how badly it breaks the web.  This will be a good thing for people like Mozilla, Google, and hey, maybe some people will use Opera too.

Anyway just wanted to write a little blurb about this.  Feel free to comment with your opinions and/or questions.

I couldn’t believe this when I saw it, but it’s true.  Internet Explorer 8 is fully removable in Windows 7 build 7048.  I believe this fully squashes the case that the EU has against Microsoft?

As you can see in the above screenshot there is a new entry for Internet Explorer 8, if you uncheck it, IE8 will be removed from the operating system.  Want proof?  Try it for yourself:

Here are some instructions courtesy of Bryant

1. Enter the Control Panel and look at “All Control Panel Options”
2. Click “Programs and Features”
3. In the left sidebar, click “Turn Windows Features On or Off” (you will be thrown a UAC prompt if you elevated UAC)
4. Wait for the list to load.
5. Look for Internet Explorer 8 in the list and uncheck it.
6. Click OK. You will see a prompt notifying you of a reboot.
7. The machine will reboot once, configure things, and reboot again.

As you can see above, currently it just deletes iexplore.exe, which I hope will be revised in future builds, but all references to IE are removed from the OS (see second shot), so my bet is that deleting these files would not harm anything, but then again I could be wrong.

So there you have it, step in the right direction for Microsoft?  And a quick solution to the EU’s argument against them?  Time will tell.

So this is a question that’s been bouncing around in my mind for quite a while now.  The fact is, that while Internet Explorer 8 does include some very innovative features, one has to ask themselves, will the browser be successful in today’s market?

The market for web browsers these days is all about creating a rich user experience on the web.  And part of achieving that vision is achieving true unification across different browser platforms.  How is this achieved you may ask?  Well the easiest way is to accomplish that goal is to achieve true standards compliance, something the IE team was touting at the beginning of the beta cycle.  But the fact remains that IE8 has fallen quite a bit short in achieving the goal of standards compliance.  Sure, it passes the acid2 test, but the result on acid3 is absolutely abyssmal, and the real world results leave a bit to be desired as well.

To this day, IE8 will not render aspects of an invision board correctly (specifically the reply and new topic pages, the text box is rendered incorrectly).  It also mangles other sites, including Microsoft’s own connect site (try hovering over a feedback item and watch the popup flicker as if it’s trying to trigger an epyleptic seizure).  Yes, IE8 does have a compatibility mode, but in most cases it doesn’t fix the rendering issues.  But more than that, the compatibility mode can be seen by some as an admission of partial failure in their goal.  Yes it’s there primarily for sites written for IE6/7, but they have a list on their end that IE looks at periodically that includes some sites that render fine in Firefox, Chrome and Opera, which are all standards complaint browsers these days.

Is there time to fix IE8?  Of course, but Microsoft has to be willing to commit to fixing some of these rendering bugs before release.  And I honestly hope they do.  I may not be a user of Internet Explorer, but I realize that if they do not fix these issues and people use IE8 and their sites don’t work, they will start to look for alternatives that will render their sites correctly.  At the end of the day this could mean a reduced userbase for IE and a pretty decent impact to Microsoft’s marketshare.

I personally don’t hold out much hope for IE8, let’s just hope IE9 will be the version of IE that finally conforms to the true standards.  Hell, maybe they will scrap trident altogether and use an engine that is standards compliant already.

Like many others, when Microsoft announced at MIX08 that Internet Explorer 8 would be standards compliant, I was extremely pleased that they made a decision to finally conform to the standards that have been around for years.  Bottom line is, this was what we all wanted Microsoft to do years ago.

So all is good in IE8 land right?  Wrong.  Internet Explorer 8’s ideas of compliance is breaking websites that ARE standards compliant.  How exactly is this possible?  It’s simple, IE8 is NOT standards compliant.  The simple fact that the browser passed the acid2 test does not mean that it is compliant.  This can be confirmed by putting IE8 through the Acid3 test.  The abysmal score of 12/100 leaves a LOT to be desired.

So, what should Microsoft do at this point?  Well they will tell you that they are working on the problem and working towards a compliant model, and that IE8 will indeed not be fully compliant.  But I have an alternate solution to offer up.  How about ditching the Trident engine altogether?  By doing this, Microsoft would be getting rid of the largest thorn in the side of web developers all over the world.  So my solution is simple, use another engine, preferably Webkit.  By doing this the hard work is already done for them, the browser will be fully standards compliant, and Microsoft can focus on adding real features and innovation to the browser, instead of wasting all their time on an obviously broken engine.

What are your thoughts about this?  I’m curious to see how the community feels about the current state of Internet Explorer 8.

Just wanted to inform everyone reading this blog with IE8 in the default standards mode that there seems to be a weird scroll jumping issue occuring if the mouse hovers over any links while scrolling.  I have pinned this down to a block of CSS on the skin and am working to resolve the specific issue as we speak.  So just hang tight, I’ll have it fixed soon .

 Edit: the issue seems fixed now.  For anyone interested in the cause, it seemed to be my custom a:hover settings for links etc…  As soon as I did away with the a:hover events the issue cleared up.

Today at the MIX conference in Las Vegas, Microsoft announced the first beta of Internet Explorer 8.  This release of IE targets web standards in the agressive way the IE team should have done this years ago.  While beta 1 is a release mainly targeted at the developer sector, some of you may want to check it out.  One thing I will say though, the new rendering engine is still rather buggy and “IE7 Emulation” mode is almost a necessity on some sites.

Just a few notes though, since I noticed people complaining that IE8 doesn’t pass Acid2.  First off, it does pass, you guys are just using a knockoff of the original, here’s a better explanation from the IE team themselves:

IE Team Blog post about Acid2

This version also includes a slew of new features that many users should enjoy, including Activities and Web Slices.  You can find out more about all of this over at the IE8 Start Page.

Enjoy!  And feel free to comment with your feedback.