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A new Microsoft browser?

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Re: A new Microsoft browser?

#111

Post by DougWebb »

Silhouette wrote: post #102
DougWebb wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll give you an upvote because I hear what you're saying; keeping up with new browser features is tough if you've got other things to do as well. But, you don't need to incorporate every new feature into your own web projects, and you don't need to follow the same rapid release cycle as the browsers. If my project has an annual update cycle, I want to be certain that any new browser features I'd like to use are wide…

But, you don't need to incorporate every new feature into your own web projects, and you don't need to follow the same rapid release cycle as the browsers. Sure, but then if the features aren't going to be incorporated into new projects almost immediately, browsers don't need to push out new releases (and the attendant risk of regressions) every few weeks either. The biggest claimed advantage of the rapid release cyc…

Valid points. I think each new feature will likely interest a different set of developers, so the feature can still get pretty wide testing even if a lot of developers choose to wait for it to mature, or choose not to use it at all.

I do agree with your points about the rapid release of browser bugs alongside the new features. I've had multiple occasions where clients have told me "You changed something and broke the site" on a project I haven't been working on, only to find out it's only broken in Chrome. My response to them that it's a bug in Chrome that's been reported, affects lots of websites, and will probably be fixed in a few days/weeks, and there's little or nothing I can do about it, is never satisfying.

Re: A new Microsoft browser?

#112

Post by spdustin »

They should go full-circle with FrontPage (which inspired many folks to get into web apps back in the day) and call it Vermeer.

(From Vermeer Technologies, Inc., the original FrontPage server extensions folks - fun random fact: it's why SharePoint service URLs have "_vti_bin" in their path)

Re: A new Microsoft browser?

#113

Post by Brakenshire »

jmduke wrote: post #42
ynniv wrote: post #26

Recently the news broke that Microsoft may be working on another browser instead of IE. After reviewing the available evidence I’ve come to the conclusion that, although Microsoft is making a few adjustments, and a name change for IE might be a good idea, the new browser will essentially be IE12. Still, I think we web developers should support the “new browser” narrative. This is how you start an article. I didn't re…

In case you weren't aware, this is referred to as the inverted pyramid (and of course I totally agree -- this is how you start an article): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid

It's probably one of the reasons why the BBC News website is popular. All articles were originally written so that the first three or four paragraphs could be cut off, and presented as full articles on teletext (a tv text service), so the whole story had to be summarized within that space. They still write their articles in that way, even though teletext is increasingly un-used.

I should say, though, that it does mean that the content of that summary, and of the headline, becomes extremely important. For instance, you could nominally cover a news story, but write a boring headline and summary, and very few people will trudge through that to find the really important details later on. You do sometimes find that occurring on the BBC site, especially when it's a story which might raise a lot of controversy within government.

Re: A new Microsoft browser?

#114

Post by Mahn »

Brakenshire wrote: post #113
jmduke wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In case you weren't aware, this is referred to as the inverted pyramid (and of course I totally agree -- this is how you start an article): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid

It's probably one of the reasons why the BBC News website is popular. All articles were originally written so that the first three or four paragraphs could be cut off, and presented as full articles on teletext (a tv text service), so the whole story had to be summarized within that space. They still write their articles in that way, even though teletext is increasingly un-used. I should say, though, that it does mea…

> teletext is increasingly un-used.

Was there a time when teletext was actually used? Honest question, I was under the impression that it just never managed to catch on.

Re: A new Microsoft browser?

#115

Post by MichaelGG »

kalleboo wrote: post #67
MichaelGG wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right but as I understand, it uses some binary hacking/undocumented APIs to go about it's job. I also use Vimperator, various tracking blockers, search redirectors (disconnect me for Google search), etc.

There are definitely supported APIs for extending IE (starting with IE 4.0 in 1997), but you do have to write native or .NET code, it's not "hack together some javascript and CSS" like Chrome/Safari/Firefox. First couple of Google results: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa744101(v=vs.85).as... http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5643819/developing-intern...

Fair enough. Though using COM seems like a terrible way to have to do this, which might explain why nearly no one (compared to FF/Chrome) bother.

Re: A new Microsoft browser?

#116

Post by _b8r0 »

Mahn wrote: post #114
Brakenshire wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably one of the reasons why the BBC News website is popular. All articles were originally written so that the first three or four paragraphs could be cut off, and presented as full articles on teletext (a tv text service), so the whole story had to be summarized within that space. They still write their articles in that way, even though teletext is increasingly un-used. I should say, though, that it does mea…

> teletext is increasingly un-used. Was there a time when teletext was actually used? Honest question, I was under the impression that it just never managed to catch on.

Teletext was pretty big in the 90s before broadband took off. It was easily accessible to a lot of people, including older viewers. Television was the primary source of media for a lot of people (followed by radio and newspaper), and Teletext was pretty much the only way to get near real-time updates of what was happening at any point in time.

Re: A new Microsoft browser?

#117

Post by gvr »

Mahn wrote: post #114
Brakenshire wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably one of the reasons why the BBC News website is popular. All articles were originally written so that the first three or four paragraphs could be cut off, and presented as full articles on teletext (a tv text service), so the whole story had to be summarized within that space. They still write their articles in that way, even though teletext is increasingly un-used. I should say, though, that it does mea…

> teletext is increasingly un-used. Was there a time when teletext was actually used? Honest question, I was under the impression that it just never managed to catch on.

I used it pretty much daily in Sweden back in the 80s and 90s to check news, broadcasting schedule, weather, etc. There were a few hundred "pages" and each page had a 3 digit number that you'd punch in to retrieve it.

Re: A new Microsoft browser?

#118

Post by Flimm »

Silhouette wrote: post #106
altcognito wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you asked: Most Chrome and Firefox releases (in my experience) have been relatively minor, and focused on security and bugs. Lets take a look at the last 4 releases of Chrome: http://googlechromereleases.blogspot.com/2014/11/stable-chan... http://googlechromereleases.blogspot.com/2014/10/stable-chan... http://googlechromereleases.blogspot.com/2014/09/stable-chan... http://googlechromereleases.blogspot.com/2014/…

Most Chrome and Firefox releases (in my experience) have been relatively minor, and focused on security and bugs. Serious security issues should be fixed as soon as possible anyway. This has absolutely nothing to do with a regular schedule for planned releases, and all of the major browser developers will already issue an immediate out-of-band update for a sufficiently dangerous vulnerability. What argument could be…

Is it not possible to run beta versions of these browsers to catch issues early?

Re: A new Microsoft browser?

#119

Post by ourmandave »

My initial thought was it will be a stand alone version that you can download and run next to IE6+ instead of Chrome, FF, et. al.

So instead of replacing IE6 with the competition, replace it with Spartan and MS gets to keep their browser market share and Corp IT can keep running IE6 apps.

Re: A new Microsoft browser?

#120

Post by mrbig4545 »

ben336 wrote: post #97
mrbig4545 wrote: post #86

lets hope they make it windows version agnostic, that way we can all start supporting ie12, instead of being shackled to ie9

Eh? IE9 isn't the latest version available for any version of Windows. 8 is the latest for XP/Vista 11 is the latest for 7/8/8.1 9 is still popular because not everybody upgrades browsers, but giving users who don't upgrade browsers a new option is unlikely to be helpful. Communicating to them that IE is going away and that they should upgrade to a modern browser, "Spartan" or otherwise, would possibly help this situ…

ie9 is available for vista. although in practice, ie8 is the minimum we have to support
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