but i don’t think ie7 will deliver on the promises everyone except microsoft has made. just look at the transparent png issue. “customers” have been asking for this for quite some time, yet the dev team has turned a deaf ear. actually, they acknowledge it, but say something to the effect of “aww, come on guys, that would be really hard”. too damn bad. if there really was this cracker-jack team working on ie, this (among many many other issues) would have been resolved a long time ago. why didn’t this show up in SP2 (at the latest)? how many sites are going to break if you support transparent PNGs?

i read an article from one of the devs a few months ago saying that they were hesitant about adding full CSS 2 and 2.1 support to ie because the specification was “not yet finalized”. does the w3c need to wipe your ass for you? how close to done does it need to be? WebCore and Gecko are already supporting CSS3. once again, how long does it take to support :hover on all elements, or fixed positioning, or generated content, and how many sites would break by supporting these things that it currently just ignores?

and now, you really expect us to believe that 1. this announcement is not prompted by Gecko browsers gobbling up to 20% of the web and 2. standards support is coming? maybe ie7 will include tabs, but they’ll be called tabz and ms will say “we’re the first browser with tabz”. and perhaps it will include RSS support, but will they use some slightly bastardized (and incompatible) form like they’re doing with SVG in longhorn and make sure to let asp.net generate this “MSS” crap for general consumption.

Standards compliance
Security (especially with regards to plugins)
Tabbed browsing
Modu…

Perception is Reality.

If IE7 is intended to win back Firefox users, and thinks the way to do this is to be standards-compliant, more secure, and have tabbed browsing, then it will fail. MS will appear to be copying Firefox, will be accused of copying Firefox, as you stated in your article.

What is IE’s “killer plug-in,” if you will? Some new rich multimedia content that is browser exclusive is a possible thought but will probably lead to a bigger online backlash from non-IE users. Also, how many companies will want to grant exclusivity for a brand losing market share?

I think MS might need to scrap the IE name. It’s too staid, too stigmatized in the minds of folks who have switched. It’s all well and good to have simple self-explanatory names for people who have never used computers before, but there aren’t many of them left, and Firefox gets plenty of media coverage (with obligatory references to the failings of IE) to make it’s name memorable.

Extensions will be key. The things I love best about Firefox is BugMeNot, JustBlogIt, Gmail Notifier, and Abe Vigoda Status. Extensions and Live Bookmarks aren’t just neat add-ins, they are massively useful features that make it easier for me to do the things that I do on a daily basis.

Opening up the source – at least opening up enough to allow users to create custom skins and themes. A huge reason why FF is so popular is the amount of interactivity a user can have with it. It’s not just a browser, it’s a product anyone can create content for, in the form of extensions and themes. That being said, those facets appeal primarily to computer-proficient web aficionados, and doesn’t mean much to a home user looking for weather reports. FF needs to innovate to snag the non-techy/geeky users, and IE needs to innovate to snag back the webheads. Whoever does it first and best will win.

First you start out with, as you admit yourself, a rant angainst the folks saying this announcement has to do with Firefox. Plainly MS has been positioning the next IE as part of Longhorn for some time. After continueing delays with that OS, and encroachement on their market share MS completely reverses that decision. I’m sorry, I’m not stupid enough to believe it was because “customers asked loud enough (and often enough)”.

Then you go on to indicate that IE7 will include standards improvements, though MS has given no clear indication of this, and you have no evidence of it (which you also state yourself). I, like many developers I know, will not be holding my breath for MS to support web standards at least untill I see serious evidence from MS that this is the case (Bills recent speech regarding supporting standards holds little wieght till I see some evidence).

It’s pretty obvious and that’s why I’ve “reprioritized” my choice in browser.

“ActiveX is valuable, and is inherently … fine. It’s no worse than XUL in that way. So, no, it’s not going away.”

In other words, Microsoft has learned nothing at all.