Comments on: IE 7 to take a cue from Firefox

Microsoft confirms next version of IE will include tabbed browsing, a feature made popular by Opera and Firefox users.

[Andrew J Glina]

Unstable

Personally once IE has tabbed browsing (natively, not with some add-on) I will change back from Firefox to IE. Why? Because aside from being a CPU hog it cannot run each window as a separate process. If one window is busy (as it often happens with PDF files) then all are. If one window crashes (yes I am using the newest version with no plugins) that all do. At least once a week it crashes on me, and I loose all of those wonderful tabs.

[JoeyGraham]

You do realize...

You do understand that you won't be able to display any standards-compliant page with IE, don't you?

Also, if Firefox keeps crashing, you have Windows problems. I have never had this version of Firefox crash.

Don't go back to IE; all the programmers out there forced to hack their code to support that crap browser will hate you.

[Andrew J Glina]

Unstable

Personally once IE has tabbed browsing (natively, not with some add-on) I will change back from Firefox to IE. Why? Because aside from being a CPU hog it cannot run each window as a separate process. If one window is busy (as it often happens with PDF files) then all are. If one window crashes (yes I am using the newest version with no plugins) that all do. At least once a week it crashes on me, and I loose all of those wonderful tabs.

[JoeyGraham]

You do realize...

You do understand that you won't be able to display any standards-compliant page with IE, don't you?

Also, if Firefox keeps crashing, you have Windows problems. I have never had this version of Firefox crash.

Don't go back to IE; all the programmers out there forced to hack their code to support that crap browser will hate you.

[bob blob]

i like ff better, but why are you ragging on MS?

look at it this way. MS doesn't make money off IE. it's simply a platform extension of the explorer shell. people use it because it feels familiar. because for a long time, it was freely available and offered built-in support for most web standards, something i find firefox is a little behind in. MS perhaps didn't feel like it needed to innovate IE b/c they had a dominant user share, there was almost no serious competition in browsers, and it provides no revenue. IE still holds 90%+ of the browser market. MS is not out to screw the users; they just got complacent. now firefox has momentum and is gaining in popularity and MS has been forced to take notice. now, they are beginning to make some changes. but do they absolutely NEED to? so what if firefox takes market share? does it hurt MS's balance sheet? perhaps just a little mind share.

on a tangent, with the web standards support, i do almost exclusively use firefox, but find that i still need to download java and flash extensions, etc. which don't always download properly. i also get a lot of pages that aren't displayed properly in firefox, but have never encountered this problem in IE. overall, i find the firefox experience is still much better than IE, which is why i use it. but i still keep IE around in case a form displayed in firefox is mangled beyond readability. that, plus the forced-acknowledge "cannot open" dialogue box that firefox pops up when it can't open a page kind of annoys me. i hope they eventually change it.

[JoeyGraham]

Actually...

While Microsoft may not be explicitly "out to get" their users, they've just an extremely good job of doing just that. Using IE, I've otten one virus and around ten spywares. Since switching to FF, oth of those numbers have dropped to zero.

Also, as any good web programmer will tell you, IE is not even a web browser. It has effectively no standards compliability. All of my DHTML is perfectly standard, and IE can't even display it.

Simple incompetency? At least the second word is correct.

[pcLoadLetter]

Microsoft may not directly make money off IE

But it is one of the reasons they have such a stranglehold on the desktop market.

Why do you think MS spent all that time, effort, and money to crush Netscape? For bragging rights? No, to help increase and defend its monopoly.

Microsoft does indeed make a lot of money because of IE.

[technewsjunkie]

People use IE because: it's bundled and the default

They don't use it because it's better. Haven't you figured that out?

You have no clue as to the business aspects of this battle.

Why do you think Microsoft thought Netscape was a propblem??
It was becasue developers were writing software for the browser
and this made hte Operatings System (Windows) secondary.

Got it now?

[bob blob]

i like ff better, but why are you ragging on MS?

look at it this way. MS doesn't make money off IE. it's simply a platform extension of the explorer shell. people use it because it feels familiar. because for a long time, it was freely available and offered built-in support for most web standards, something i find firefox is a little behind in. MS perhaps didn't feel like it needed to innovate IE b/c they had a dominant user share, there was almost no serious competition in browsers, and it provides no revenue. IE still holds 90%+ of the browser market. MS is not out to screw the users; they just got complacent. now firefox has momentum and is gaining in popularity and MS has been forced to take notice. now, they are beginning to make some changes. but do they absolutely NEED to? so what if firefox takes market share? does it hurt MS's balance sheet? perhaps just a little mind share.

on a tangent, with the web standards support, i do almost exclusively use firefox, but find that i still need to download java and flash extensions, etc. which don't always download properly. i also get a lot of pages that aren't displayed properly in firefox, but have never encountered this problem in IE. overall, i find the firefox experience is still much better than IE, which is why i use it. but i still keep IE around in case a form displayed in firefox is mangled beyond readability. that, plus the forced-acknowledge "cannot open" dialogue box that firefox pops up when it can't open a page kind of annoys me. i hope they eventually change it.

[JoeyGraham]

Actually...

While Microsoft may not be explicitly "out to get" their users, they've just an extremely good job of doing just that. Using IE, I've otten one virus and around ten spywares. Since switching to FF, oth of those numbers have dropped to zero.

Also, as any good web programmer will tell you, IE is not even a web browser. It has effectively no standards compliability. All of my DHTML is perfectly standard, and IE can't even display it.

Simple incompetency? At least the second word is correct.

[pcLoadLetter]

Microsoft may not directly make money off IE

But it is one of the reasons they have such a stranglehold on the desktop market.

Why do you think MS spent all that time, effort, and money to crush Netscape? For bragging rights? No, to help increase and defend its monopoly.

Microsoft does indeed make a lot of money because of IE.

[technewsjunkie]

People use IE because: it's bundled and the default

They don't use it because it's better. Haven't you figured that out?

You have no clue as to the business aspects of this battle.

Why do you think Microsoft thought Netscape was a propblem??
It was becasue developers were writing software for the browser
and this made hte Operatings System (Windows) secondary.

Got it now?

[yellowjester]

No Greasemonkey

one word for not using IE, Greasemonkey.

[nrlz]

GreaseMonkIE

The "GreaseMonkey" version for IE is called "GreaseMonkIE". Google it.

[yellowjester]

No Greasemonkey

one word for not using IE, Greasemonkey.

[nrlz]

GreaseMonkIE

The "GreaseMonkey" version for IE is called "GreaseMonkIE". Google it.

Keep the bloat out

I hate the direction IE 7 is going. I don't need tabbed browsers. Ie will end up being bloated like other applications from MS.

Hope that this tabbed browing can be turned off at the bare minimum.

[pcLoadLetter]

Too late

IE is already bloated. With too many useless 'features' that slow it down and make it vulnerable. It is also bloated with a ton of extra code to help it render poorly written, unstandard HTML.

Keep the bloat out

I hate the direction IE 7 is going. I don't need tabbed browsers. Ie will end up being bloated like other applications from MS.

Hope that this tabbed browing can be turned off at the bare minimum.

[pcLoadLetter]

Too late

IE is already bloated. With too many useless 'features' that slow it down and make it vulnerable. It is also bloated with a ton of extra code to help it render poorly written, unstandard HTML.

[System Tyrant]

Standard

IE is standard fully standard compliant. Well, Microsoft standard compliant. As for the "recomendation" laid out by W3C. Not so much.

The more I think about it the more I realize that Microsoft inovates and copies software just like most every other software company. Their biggest problems is they never take it all the way. Everything they produce seams to me to be done half a-sed.

Microsoft got/getting rich of the Golden Terd.

As far as IE7 goes. I don't care if Microsoft adds tabbed browsing or makes it skinnable or add even more proprietary extention. What I do care about is they support the standards set down by the W3C and other organizations. I write standard compliant web pages that conform to at least three of the major browsers. If it doesn't work in IE, I really don't care. If people want to continue to believe that IE is the best we've got then that is thier right. But they might want to stay away from my sites with IE 6.

I think that it's pathetic that you should have to rewrite a web page to match a browser, any of them. I follow the W3C standards and try to keep them simple. I try to make them compatable with all browser, but I'm not going to create a browser specific version of any of my pages. Browsers should conform to one set of standards and that should be that.

[System Tyrant]

Standard

IE is standard fully standard compliant. Well, Microsoft standard compliant. As for the "recomendation" laid out by W3C. Not so much.

The more I think about it the more I realize that Microsoft inovates and copies software just like most every other software company. Their biggest problems is they never take it all the way. Everything they produce seams to me to be done half a-sed.

Microsoft got/getting rich of the Golden Terd.

As far as IE7 goes. I don't care if Microsoft adds tabbed browsing or makes it skinnable or add even more proprietary extention. What I do care about is they support the standards set down by the W3C and other organizations. I write standard compliant web pages that conform to at least three of the major browsers. If it doesn't work in IE, I really don't care. If people want to continue to believe that IE is the best we've got then that is thier right. But they might want to stay away from my sites with IE 6.

I think that it's pathetic that you should have to rewrite a web page to match a browser, any of them. I follow the W3C standards and try to keep them simple. I try to make them compatable with all browser, but I'm not going to create a browser specific version of any of my pages. Browsers should conform to one set of standards and that should be that.

"Initially, we had some concerns around complexity..."

In other words, MS doesn't have a clue.

[sreynolds_2]

No, in other words

they think that all IE users are too stupid to understand how to use tabs. I find it offensive and it makes me glad I moved away from IE a long time ago.

"Initially, we had some concerns around complexity..."

In other words, MS doesn't have a clue.

[sreynolds_2]

No, in other words

they think that all IE users are too stupid to understand how to use tabs. I find it offensive and it makes me glad I moved away from IE a long time ago.

[sreynolds_2]

How about a link?

I have been using Maxthon (tabbed browser that uses IE Kernel) for a couple of years now and I believe it is far superior to Firefox from a functionality standpoint. This is probably due to the fact that it is a more mature product. Don't get me wrong, I also have Firefox loaded on my desktop and use it for certain applications. With the right plug-ins, it is very functional as well

Onto my subject line - With Maxthon - and other tabbed IE based browsers like Slimbrowser - along with tabbed IE competitors like Opera having been out for a few years now, why all the hoopla about Firefox. I have an educated guess, exposure / marketing. So it really irks me when I read an article about Maxthon on my favorite website & they fail to link the word "Maxthon" in the article to the Maxthon site. You guys link everything else in your stories, so why not Maxthon?

[pcLoadLetter]

Why is Firefox getting a lot of press?

Because it is the first, free, browser to come out in quite awhile for windows. It is the first browser to make a splash, it is slowing taking away market share from IE.

Opera is not free. You have to pay or deal with ads. It has also not made much of a splash in the market.

Maxthon and its ilk or not browsers, just an attempt to polish up the turd known as IE.

[sreynolds_2]

How about a link?

I have been using Maxthon (tabbed browser that uses IE Kernel) for a couple of years now and I believe it is far superior to Firefox from a functionality standpoint. This is probably due to the fact that it is a more mature product. Don't get me wrong, I also have Firefox loaded on my desktop and use it for certain applications. With the right plug-ins, it is very functional as well

Onto my subject line - With Maxthon - and other tabbed IE based browsers like Slimbrowser - along with tabbed IE competitors like Opera having been out for a few years now, why all the hoopla about Firefox. I have an educated guess, exposure / marketing. So it really irks me when I read an article about Maxthon on my favorite website & they fail to link the word "Maxthon" in the article to the Maxthon site. You guys link everything else in your stories, so why not Maxthon?

[pcLoadLetter]

Why is Firefox getting a lot of press?

Because it is the first, free, browser to come out in quite awhile for windows. It is the first browser to make a splash, it is slowing taking away market share from IE.

Opera is not free. You have to pay or deal with ads. It has also not made much of a splash in the market.

Maxthon and its ilk or not browsers, just an attempt to polish up the turd known as IE.

browsing tabbed.

Crazy Browser is still the easiest and best tabbed browser to use. With less than O.62MB it has done well for many years. With regular AV have no security probs.

browsing tabbed.

Crazy Browser is still the easiest and best tabbed browser to use. With less than O.62MB it has done well for many years. With regular AV have no security probs.

[noodle32]

Avant had tabbed browsing betore Firefox

Not that this is anything new but the reason I switched from Firefox to Avant was because it has already integrated tabbed browsing into their software (which it also saves the tabbed sites and even allows you to choose which ones you would like to open each session - no matter how the window is closed) - people act like this is something new - I don't know when Firefox finally decided to integrate this feature into their browser but to hear them get credit for something like they thought of it in the first place is no better than Microsoft jumping the bandwagon themselves - hail Firefox - despite all the times that it's browser has frozen up on in all of my experiances using the program - (which led me to use Avant after hearing about it awhile back) I just wish more people would take a closer look at Avant's browser - it's (in my opinion) the best I've ever used - so all of this hype about Firefox and IE 7 is really pointless.

[noodle32]

Avant had tabbed browsing betore Firefox

Not that this is anything new but the reason I switched from Firefox to Avant was because it has already integrated tabbed browsing into their software (which it also saves the tabbed sites and even allows you to choose which ones you would like to open each session - no matter how the window is closed) - people act like this is something new - I don't know when Firefox finally decided to integrate this feature into their browser but to hear them get credit for something like they thought of it in the first place is no better than Microsoft jumping the bandwagon themselves - hail Firefox - despite all the times that it's browser has frozen up on in all of my experiances using the program - (which led me to use Avant after hearing about it awhile back) I just wish more people would take a closer look at Avant's browser - it's (in my opinion) the best I've ever used - so all of this hype about Firefox and IE 7 is really pointless.