Internet Explorer 7

[na_th_an]

heh Nathan,

Good point... but IE is still lightyears behind Firefox. Just look at the array of extentions and themes available. Extentions especially, as you can extend the functionality of firefox all the way to the moon: RSS readers, weather reports, ftp clients.. all embedded in the browsing environment.

And the community based aspect of Firefox is something Microsoft will never be able to get their head around. Anyone can go and write their own extentions and themes, or even build their own versions of the entire browser.

So Im afraid no matter how many things they finally put in... even correct rendering of webpages, IE could never possibly be a threat to, or even entice users from Firefox.

I'm not saying that IE7 is better than FF or whatever. I'm saying that the only reason I had to switch to FF temporally was the couple of sites out there that don't render right in IE. If now IE7 renders stuff correctly, I will have absolutely no need to switch, and that will happen to many people.

Note that FF users are, most of the time, "techy" users. The average user will use IE7. In fact, most of "non computer" people call the IE icon "the internet". "Double click on the internet"... :lol: funny, but helps you get the picture.

I'm always so "acid" about the "get Firefox" policy 'cause I just don't understand it . One can love a proggie he uses, and he can recommend it to others. That's perfectly common and that's what I do in those Photoshop vs. GIMP polls But most of you FF users behave like some kind of 'leet society, even offering FREE advertising to FF putting those icons everywhere. You know, the FF developers don't work for free. Why do you?

[whitetiger0990]

But most of you FF users behave like some kind of 'leet society, even offering FREE advertising to FF putting those icons everywhere. You know, the FF developers don't work for free. Why do you?

I don't know what you are talking about... *glances quickly at his sig*

[barok]

just fyi, no, so far ie7 hasn't fixed it's rendering problems. (at least, on a few sites i visited.) give me a link to a few sites that don't render properly in ie6 and i'll see if they work in ie7.

the thing is, if ie7 becomes more secure and has a bunch of new features (like tabbed browsing and rss, which it does) then the average user would have no need to go to firefox. IE7 also has anti-phishing, but popup blockign still sucks.

[na_th_an]

Just to fight my ignorance, what's that RSS thingo? I've seen it in my blog. I click on it and it pops out a XML file. What's it for?

And what's phishing?

FF is an awesome piece of software. Now let's hope that IE7 is, at least, secure. If it is, I think it is a good thing. Even if evil micro$oft is behind, most non-techy users that don't even know what's a browser and that there are several available will take advantage. And that's a good thing.

[barok]

RSS is some kind of realtime news feed thingy. Apparently you get news headlines from sites that support RSS as soon as they are put up. But, I have no idea how to work it either. So, say your site has RSS. You post up a new entry. I have the RSS of your journal. My feed would tell me right away that you updated it.

Phishing is a type of scam. Basically people build imitation websites, like fake ebay login sites or paypal login sites. Then they try to lure people into those sites by sending them emails telling them that their ebay or paypal or bank account has been compromised. They give the user a link to their fake webpage, telling them to log in to secure their account, or otherwise their account will be deleted, frozen or something similiar to get the user worked up. The user is fooled by the fake paypal site, enter in their username and password and bingo! The phisher has access to that person's account to do as they please. IE has several ways to prevent this. First, if it detects what it thinks is a phishing site, it will warn the user that the site may not be what it seems. It'll even block the site at first with a page telling the user that the site may be a phishing site, then provide them with a link to the site if they wish to proceed. IE7's antiphishing technique is built upon the same communitynet they use for their antispyware product. If someone knows a site is a phishing site, they can report it to Microsoft. Microsoft will then add that site to their phishing list, and anyone visiting that site will be warned

[LooseCaboose]

if ie7 becomes more secure and has a bunch of new features (like tabbed browsing and rss, which it does) then the average user would have no need to go to firefox.

The average user has no need for features such as tabbed browsing and rss. I have tried to show my girlfriend and my parents how tabbed browsing works. Neither can understand why you would need several tabs open at once and prefer to work in a single window using the back and forward controls to navigate. If they really want to look at two things at once they will just open up a second window, because they are already familiar with finding applications on the taskbar. There was an article on slashdot a while ago saying that RSS has a very low usage rate, even among the tech-savvy crowd.

The rendering problems are again, not a big deal to the average user, who probably doesn't even know that a page hasn't been rendered correctly (especially when there are so many pages that are rendering correctly and still look like garbage ;-)). I think IE will dominate the market for sometime yet simply because the average user sees it as being, like na_th_an said, the "the Internet". This is no major reason for the average user to give up on IE and install Firefox yet.

[Sterling Christensen]

Just to fight my ignorance, what's that RSS thingo? I've seen it in my blog. I click on it and it pops out a XML file. What's it for?

Example of RSS:
In FF I click Bookmarks, and there's a folder titled Slashdot. I hover over it or click it, and it opens showing the latest Slashdot news headlines as if I had bookmarked them. FF updates them periodically (like every 15 min I think).

How to try it:
1. Go to a site that has an RSS feed like cnn.com or slashdot.org
2. Click the orange icon on the far right of the address bar
3. You'll get a menu or a popup confirming and asking where in your bookmarks to put it

[whitetiger0990]

RSS is very handy. I use it a lot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_%28file_format%29

Phishing is not handy. I tend to ignore the attempts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing

[na_th_an]

Thanks for the explanations. I've seen the icon right now in this FF (I use Linux ar work), and I'll add my blog so I notice when my bandmates write something

[KiZ]

RSS is sweeet.

RSS strangely enough stands for Really Simple Syndication, and is a branch of XML used for news feeds and such.

For example make a "Live bookmark" in firefox pointing to an RSS XML file and you get a nice little dropdown bookmark like this:




RSS is of course used in many places apart from firefox, in dedicated RSS readers. XBMC for xbox scrolls the latest xbox scene news at the bottom when it is on :D