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A new Microsoft browser?

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Re: A new Microsoft browser?

#101

Post by madeofpalk »

cmiller1 wrote: post #72
thomasfoster96 wrote: post #60

One of the things I really want to see is both IE and Safari move to the six weekly update cycle that Firefox and Chrome are using. IE still has a major slice of the browser market share and this probably ain't going to change soon. IE>9 have all been decent browsers for the time that they were released, although they do seem a bit out of date 6 months later. At the moment, if both Firefox and Chrome implement a new…

What about Safari's Webkit nightly releases?

Nightly WebKit release !== Safari release

Re: A new Microsoft browser?

#102

Post by Silhouette »

DougWebb wrote: post #98
Silhouette wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the things I really want to see is both IE and Safari move to the six weekly update cycle that Firefox and Chrome are using. Whereas I would really like IE not to do that, and ideally Firefox and Chrome to move to longer cycles (minimum 6 months, preferably annual) for their main public releases. One good reason for this is that there is no point in having browsers support new features within moments of someon…

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 cycles doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

If my project has an annual update cycle, I want to be certain that any new browser features I'd like to use are widely supported and have been tested in-the-wild for as long as possible before I commit to them.

That seems perfectly reasonable to me. Unfortunately, I think it's also reasonable to assume that lots of other people who might be interested in that same feature will behave the same way. It's therefore not reasonable to assume that those new features have in fact been thoroughly tested in-the-wild before you rely on them.

A related concern is that with the very rapid release cycles, you never really know when an implementation is "final". We've seen fundamental changes over recent years in everything from the syntax for new CSS features to the layout of controls on multimedia elements, sometimes more than once in the same browser within a few months of each other. At least if you ship functionality updates several months apart you offer a degree of definitive behaviour and stability.

also ensures that there will be blogs and StackOverflow questions providing useful documentation on the best ways to use the new features by the time I'm ready to learn about them.

It seems you've had better luck than me. I frequently find that when we run into issues with relatively recent developments in browsers, there are a handful of other people writing blog posts or writing SO questions that show we're not alone, but no-one actually has the answer.

It's also worth considering that just because the main production release of a browser only updates, say, annually, that doesn't necessarily mean that the browser can't also have developer releases going out more regularly for those who want to experiment with new features.

Re: A new Microsoft browser?

#103

Post by altcognito »

Silhouette wrote: post #85
thomasfoster96 wrote: post #60

One of the things I really want to see is both IE and Safari move to the six weekly update cycle that Firefox and Chrome are using. IE still has a major slice of the browser market share and this probably ain't going to change soon. IE>9 have all been decent browsers for the time that they were released, although they do seem a bit out of date 6 months later. At the moment, if both Firefox and Chrome implement a new…

One of the things I really want to see is both IE and Safari move to the six weekly update cycle that Firefox and Chrome are using. Whereas I would really like IE not to do that, and ideally Firefox and Chrome to move to longer cycles (minimum 6 months, preferably annual) for their main public releases. One good reason for this is that there is no point in having browsers support new features within moments of someon…

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/2014/08/stable-chan...

What argument could be made that longer release cycles would mean less bugs? Is there going to be better QA? More stringent testing? Why would shorter release cycles mean less testing?

No, longer release cycles would mean similar number of bugs, and security holes would just sit out there longer. Chrome and Firefox is an example of doing it right.

Re: A new Microsoft browser?

#104

Post by detaro »

sharkweek wrote: post #32
Encosia wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IE has been automatically updating for a while now.

Yes but... I used to work for a large financial institution that wouldn't let any of us do anything to our computers so we were all stuck with outdated IE that didn't update itself automatically

And if they used Firefox they wouldn't have disabled the update functionality?

Re: A new Microsoft browser?

#105

Post by scholia »

pjc50 wrote: post #88
venomsnake wrote: post #48

Does anyone have idea if the idiocy of integrating the IE browser so deep inside the os is finally solved, that version updates are possible? And will spartan be stand alone binary, like IE should have been at launch?

IE is to Windows as Webkit is to iOS; it's componentised HTML rendering. The whole browser choice lawsuit business was strange; it was far from the worst bit of anti-competitive behaviour, and has been superceded by closed platforms on phones. The "halloween" documents and funding of SCO were more objectionable to me.

There was a backstory. Janet Reno's DoJ forced Microsoft to sign a consent decree that forbade them from tieing products to Windows but allowed them to add functionality to Windows. Therefore, IE had to be a feature of Windows not a separate bundled product.

Otherwise, in the eventual anti-trust trial, Microsoft won the browser case 2-1 on appeal.

Re: A new Microsoft browser?

#106

Post by Silhouette »

altcognito wrote: post #103
Silhouette wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the things I really want to see is both IE and Safari move to the six weekly update cycle that Firefox and Chrome are using. Whereas I would really like IE not to do that, and ideally Firefox and Chrome to move to longer cycles (minimum 6 months, preferably annual) for their main public releases. One good reason for this is that there is no point in having browsers support new features within moments of someon…

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 made that longer release cycles would mean less bugs?

Well, for one thing, you can't regress something if you don't change it. Both Firefox and Chrome typically introduce a bunch of breaking changes every update. Sometimes these are unintentional bugs. Sometimes they are deliberate policy decisions, and in this case newer features are at far greater risk of backward-incompatible changes, as with the CSS syntax and multimedia controls examples I mentioned in another post to this thread.

The thing is, if your site/app used to work and it doesn't work any more after your customer updated their browser, and now you're getting paged in the early hours to be second/third tier support, it is highly unlikely that you care about niceties like whether the browser developers consider the change to be desirable. So if nothing else, every time every browser pushes out a major update, a lot of people building sites or apps need to be testing that their own projects still work, which is clearly a much greater overhead if you do it eight or nine times per browser per year than if you only have to do it once or twice.

Re: A new Microsoft browser?

#108

Post by hawleyal »

jn wrote: post #62
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

Absolutely agree. I cringe every time I see a long blog post with a self-effacing "tl;dr" block, especially when it's placed at the end of the article. Just follow this "journalistic" style instead and you'll be doing the reader a big favour.

tl;dr is the headline/title.

Re: A new Microsoft browser?

#109

Post by Silhouette »

contextfree wrote: post #90
wideroots wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Microsoft kills ActiveX in the new browser, it will force everyone to stop depending on ActiveX. You would be very surprised how many websites outside of the U.S. still depend on ActiveX, and these are critical websites like banking and government. Hence, killing ActiveX support is important to me.

"Metro" and Windows Phone IE already dumped ActiveX and extension support.

Given how unpopular both of those platforms are, I'm not sure you're making a very compelling argument there...

Re: A new Microsoft browser?

#110

Post by nickhalfasleep »

Silhouette wrote: post #85
thomasfoster96 wrote: post #60

One of the things I really want to see is both IE and Safari move to the six weekly update cycle that Firefox and Chrome are using. IE still has a major slice of the browser market share and this probably ain't going to change soon. IE>9 have all been decent browsers for the time that they were released, although they do seem a bit out of date 6 months later. At the moment, if both Firefox and Chrome implement a new…

One of the things I really want to see is both IE and Safari move to the six weekly update cycle that Firefox and Chrome are using. Whereas I would really like IE not to do that, and ideally Firefox and Chrome to move to longer cycles (minimum 6 months, preferably annual) for their main public releases. One good reason for this is that there is no point in having browsers support new features within moments of someon…

I think it shows the difference between Browsers that support Operating Systems and Browsers that have their own internet agendas.
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