Tag: internet_explorer

Microsoft! Open Source Internet Explorer

I mentioned previously John C. Dvorak’s PC Magazine article where he calls on Microsoft to abandon development of Internet Explorer because:

All of Microsoft’s Internet-era public-relations and legal problems (in some way or another) stem from Internet Explorer.

He advised them to:

pull the browser out of the OS and discontinue all IE development immediately…. Then, Microsoft can worry about security issues that are OS-only in nature, rather than problems compounded by Internet Explorer.

I was thinking about that article again recently and John is absolutely correct to say that most of Microsoft’s negative image is due to internet Explorer (and how they abused their monopoly to gain it market share).

However, while I think it is extremely unlikely that Microsoft will abandon Internet Explorer, an even better idea might be for them to Open Source Internet Explorer. Think about it. It isn’t like they’d lose any revenue – they already give Internet Explorer away.

If Internet Explorer were Open Source, security holes would be found and patched far quicker. A developer community would quickly emerge and Add-ins/extensions would suddenly abound.

Of course, this would all be very beneficial to Microsoft’s image as well.

In order to do this, they’d also have to de-couple it from the Operating System, but they should have done that years ago anyway.

Are Microsoft at the Web 2.0 races?

I have been asked to give a presentation, on Microsoft’s relevance in the Web 2.0 arena.

What do people think, are Microsoft a player in this sphere? They have Office Live, Windows Live Mail, MSN Spaces and they are a big supporter of RSS – it will be baked into the next versions of Internet Explorer (IE7), Office and Windows Vista.

Hell, Microsoft even have Atlas, a free framework for developing Ajaxy Web 2.0 applications!

New Safari (released version) now passes the Acid2 test

The latest release of Safari (v2.02) – released in Mac OS X 10.4.3 today, now passes the Acid2 test – wohoo!

Safari's rendering of the Acid 2 test

Acid2 is a test page, written by the Web Standards Project, to help browser vendors ensure proper support for web standards in their products.

Safari is now ahead of every major browser in its support for web standards – Firefox, Flock, Opera all fail to render the Acid2 image correctly and don’t even mention Microsoft Internet Explorer!

The next version of Internet Explorer (IE7) will be released soon and what do you think are the chances that it will pass the Acid2 test?