What do you want from IE?

[francis]

Robert Scoble (http://scoble.weblogs.com/) works for Microsoft. He's recently had lunch with the head of MS's IE team (http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2004/01/14.html#a6183) and is looking for feedback on what users want to see in IE. Apparently the team are currently focusing on security patches (no real surprise there then). People are adding comment after comment about what they want to see. So far it's generally "Full CSS1, CSS2 and PNG support". Quite a few big-ish names from standards/coding environments have chipped in such as Tankek (http://tantek.com/log/) (of box model hack fame), members of WaSP and other names that seem to ring bells.

So - what would you like to see in IE? Pop-up blocking is coming in IE6.05, but what about those CSS standards? Tabbed browsing? Colour-coded source, some cool feature that no one else has thought of or are you happy with just the security patches?

There are 121 comments so far - care to add one?

Ooh -
the post after that one (http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2004/01/14.html#a6186) is good. It's a MS employee whining that "customers aren't interested in standards - they don't understand them". Cue many very valid comments.

See, it's not just me :P

[James]

I know it's not just you Francis, but I don't think you acknowledge that DEVELOPERS are different animals to USERS sometimes. You are both, but 99% of web surfers are just your average users and IE does the job and it's already on their Windows computers. I appreciate IE has its faults and Microsoft are difficult to influence.

And shall I tell the forum about the bug I found in Mozilla that you acknowledged WAS a problem???!!!

We'll always differ slightly on this one but you have changed me to some extent - as you know, I am making more use of Mozilla as a dev tool these days, BUT I'm also very happy with IE for my surfing.

:D :D :D

[francis]

I don't mind at all if you mention the Moz thing that's a problem - because it's an irritating one. As long as you link to the relavent Bugzilla pages to show that the beauty of open source software is that anyone can file "bugs" (which seem to be a mixture of genuine bugs and feature requests) and get replies from people high up in the organisation, and can actively track the progress of the issue.

It's interesting to go through the user comments on those pages - people are suggesting that if IE doesn't do something - anything - soon to prove that they are interested in developing IE to include CSS/PNG support then maybe we will see a return to the "best viewed in" era as more and more developers get fed up. One point that also stuck something along the lines of "there are a lot of 12 year olds out there starting to code XHTML + CSS documents - it's going to take them a long time to forgive MS for the state IE is in at the moment".

But we're all Micrtosoft's users and customers and it's the Web developers who can start slapping "best viewed..." all over their sites to influence and inform everyone else.

I was thinking after I posted this that IE only users may not know what features other browsers have and maybe should have said something along the lines of "what annoys you/spoils your enjoyment when surfing the web at the moment?" and see what came back.

One last thing - people are posting messages before 7AM today. Have I missed something (is something special happening at dawn today) or do you people need to get more comfortable beds?!

[Tom]

OK - I'm a freak - but rather pleased with myself for managing to stay in bed till 5.30 am at present. Also, I am very reluctant to use any other broweser but IE. In fact I am reluctant to look at ANY new piece of software. You are welcome to have a go at persuading me to use another browser but success is unlikely.

[James]

Mmm, but Francis doesn't your reply just confirm the "Developer V User" argument I made above. You are a developer. But Joe Public surfer doesn't care about standards compliant browsers no matter how loud you shout.

It is right to campaign for IE improvements, but you will not, I repeat not, get Joe Public to use Mozilla. Any commercial site that has a "Best viewed in Mozilla or Opera" notice is going to get a "Whatever does that mean?" reaction from Joe Average who doesn't know there are other browsers. They will simply walk away if the site doesn't work in IE. The developer will be sacked!

[David]

I'm afraid that James is right. There is no doubt that Mozilla is looking like a great development tool but my feeling is that in the future we may look back and conclude that Mozilla's greatest achievement was showing IE the way forward.

[francis]

I guess some of this is theoretical because the (previous?) browser wars came about when basically two companies (Netscape and MS) were fighting for market dominance for their product. Microsoft won that battle for several reasons, all of which are mentioned in the user comments on the Scoble blog. These include:

* At the time IE was the better browser
* IE was bundled with Windows meaning its distribution was far and away ahead of what NS could manage
* People are lazy and if they don't really have to do something, they usually won't.

NS went through a serious period of stagnation around NS4.x (a truly poor series of browsers) around the same time that MS quickly released upgrades for IE. Users got good browers and developers were happy.

We're now in a situation where Netscape is dead. In its final days it was more of a brand name than a serious threat, so IE (for the PC at least) is by far and away the Goliath to be defeated. Whether that will happen is open for debate. Without question this will only happen if developers start to make noise - without us, as James B stated, Joe Public will be none the wiser about there being other browsers out there. The shift towards standards implementation for businesses has started (I've listed big names before somewhere) and those brave people have shown the way. The next step will be for developers to declare IE5 and 5.5 dead. The first people doing that will have to replace what Blackadder referred to as Baldrick's "soft dangly collection of objects" with those owned by this man (http://members.tripod.com/~rex_files/bionicman.gif). NS4 is slowly but surely slipping off the map (at least in terms of developers asking how they can get sites looking the same in NS4,6,7 and IE5,5.5,6), and good riddance to it.

We'll have to wait and see what happens, but I'm surprised by the amount of people that seem to be switching from IE to Firebird (http://www.mozilla.org/products/firebird/). The baby steps are happening and it's going to take some mighty evangelism from fans of Safari, Moz, Firebird, Opera et al to show others what they are missing.

So Tom - are you up for a challenge? Moz 1.6 and Firebird 0.7 have just been released, which means that my shiny new CD should be on the way from the states. To save you downloading it (even though you're on a fast connection), I'll bring the disc in when it turns up. I challenge you to install either browser and use it for seven days without sneaking back to IE at all and see which browser you prefer.

[James]

I just ran two Googles searches:

"best viewed +in internet explorer" returned 170,000 results.

"best viewed +in mozilla" returned 756 results.

"best viewed +in opera" returned 395 results.

These figures suggest the "best viewed in ..." revolution for Mozilla is yet to happen. Clicking through some of the links also revealed the sites were mainly for web developers (by web developers) and people with Microsoft grudges.

Francis, you state you are "surprised by the amount of people that seem to be switching from IE to Firebird". But again this is only happening in a devout group of web developers like you. This argument is simply not reaching, or of any interest to, Joe Public.

We always seem to be debating IE v Mozilla etc, but I wonder if we are at cross-purposes sometimes. To clarify, I agree Mozilla has better standards support and a great free dev tool. I just don't think that Joe Public is in the least bit interested and they don't have (and don't want) exposure to the argument.

:)

[francis]

Well, Firebird is only at version 0.7 - still a "technology preview" - not even a version 1.0. Everything has to start somewhere, so over the next few months/years we'll see how IE vs/ the opposition. Neither of us were working in this field when the original browser wars happened, so it's new to both of us. Can David/Tom/Terry/Stuart give an insight into this?

My question would be "how do Joe Public know what they want if they don't know what's out there"? Do many people just live with pop-ups or do they seek out things such as the Google tool bar? How many millions of people get fed-up with spam whilst ot realising that there are other mail clients out there that have spam filtering and some sweet security-minded features? (a change of emphasis, but it illustrates my point). I use Moz as my day to day browser. Not just because it's a development tool, but because it offers me pop-up blocking, tabbed browsing, integrated search facilities (pointing at a choice of several major search engines). Discounting all of the geek/nerd aspects of standards compliance development tool malarky, Safari, Opera, Firebird etc offer a much richer feature set than IE. I've gone on about this enough so won't repeat myself about the sheer delight of using tabs instead of new windows - IE just doesn't cut the mustard after 2.5 years of stagnation.

Anyhoo - back to my (nearly) original quiestion: what really annoys you about surfing the Web? What features would you like to see in a browser?

How about I extend the challenge I set Tom to everyone here. Download/install from CD a non-IE browser of your choice and use it without exception for seven days and see what it's like. After a week, would you go back?

[Tom]

Feeling less crusty than last night, I followed Francis' link and downloaded Mozilla Firebird. I like it - but 7 days? Be reasonable - it only took 6 days to make the world. Reading the current interview with Scott McNealy (Sun's founder) in PCW fills me with confidence about the open source future, though I know he's a stellar salesman.

It beats me why no one has customized Linux for the PC as convincingly as OSX has done for the Mac. As soon as this happens, I would expect Linux to make the kind of inroads in the PC market that it has done in server market. When this happens, Mozilla will have its day in the sun (pun intended). Organisations, and then home users, will like the idea of cutting slices off their software bills (pun intended). IBM's support for open source is significant. They know about the decline and fall of all-powerful technologies and patents. I've got a golfball from one of their typewriters on my desk.

Microsoft could then move on to its next big thing, whatever that may be. Bill's real advantage over his competitors is his tripple grasp of technical, business and customer issues. You can't hold down talent of that order. We ants should aspire to the same breadth of vision.

For 2004, I put the odds against my shifting to Mozilla at 1/5 and to Linux at 1/100. My son uses Linux (to run Houdini) and tells me about its advantages (speed/reliability) and disadvantages (a bloody fiddle - no decent file manager etc).

[francis]

Cool - nice to see you're giving Firebird a try. I can't remember if things like pop-up blocking are enabled by default, but it's all fairly easy to configure. How's the "right click > open in new tab" habit going?

Paste And Go (http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info.php/pasteandgo) is a rather fine extension that gets used a lot around my part.

There's a load of documentation and help (http://texturizer.net/firebird/) available online (I don't think there's too much with the browser, but that will come with time).

I chose seven days only because, after hearing so much about other browsers, I couldn't make my mind up between IE, NS, Opera or Moz. I tried the NS 6.x and 7.x, Opera 5.x and 6.x and didn't really like them so stuck with IE. It was only after I downloaded Moz that I found a really good browser and it took about a week for me to stop using IE. But, don't feel that you should stop after a week :)

IBM and patents (http://www.ibm.com/news/us/2003/01/131.html) has been in the news a lot recently. Weren't they also embroiled in some kind of UNIX/open source case lsat year? It doesn't take long to find articles on IBM's patent policy (http://www.forbes.com/asap/2002/0624/044.html).

WINE (http://www.winehq.com/) seems to be the only inroad to Windows for UNIX systems, although it's apparently not too hot.

[James]

My comments about Joe Public are based on my experience.

My parents, my brother, my friends, my colleagues - all average computer users who do not use a computer (or the web) on a daily basis. They are still using the Windows version that came with their computers, be it 98, ME, XP. They have no urge to update their computers, operating system or browser. Why should they?

They are canny enough to buy stuff from Amazon, play.com, CD-wow. They are canny enough to book easyJet flights. They communicate with friends via e-mail. They use Word, Excel, Powerpoint. They play the odd game. Some even use digital cameras. But that's it.

They are simply not aware or interested in computers in the way we are.

I think we should always take time out from our computer-addicted lives and appreciate that to a large extent, this is our HOBBY and/or LIVELIHOOD. People have different interests and priorities. And trying to impart what we see as essential knowledge is like a train-spotter trying to get me interested in his latest sightings on platform 1. I don't care. Each to his own!

:)

[David]

Again I find myself agreeing with James B. It is easy to forget that we have an entirely different perspective on the whole computer/web thing. I can confidently predict that someone out there would be willing to spend quite a lot of their spare time enlightening us about their particular area of expertise. I suspect we all listen to music. Is your CD player up to the job? Did you consider cost/performance/aesthetics/future-proofing/quality/functionality before you made your purchase? Or did you just go to Richer Sounds (http://www.richersounds.co.uk) and see what was on offer? Someone out there could give you chapter-and-verse but the effort for us is just not worth the return. The general public will have a similar feeling about browsers. Imagine your house/flat came with a decent CD player that worked and fulfilled all your immediate requirements. How much effort would you put into finding a better one?

BTW I have a Philips CD753 - I bought it because it has a headphone jack with a volume knob. That's the sort of reasoning that would give a true Hi-Fi buff sleepless nights. :)

[Tom]

While agreeing with David and James about the likely consequences of inertia, I think their argument rests on a premise relating to 'the Windows version that came with their computers'. If the open source movement gains ground then IE will stop arriving in the box. I read an interesting article on this topic today (Fortune. Feb04 p 68). Microsoft's market capitalisation has halved since the boom days and 'the company is facing its biggest competitive challenge ever' - from open source software. Bill's solution is to achieve a fabulous level of integration between all his applications. He thinks the open source rabble cannot rival him on this score. He may be right, in which case MS will just do unto Mozilla as they did unto Netscape, and adopt any Mozilla features they fancy. If he is wrong, Mozilla and all the other illas will have their day in the sun. [See comment on The Key, under content management].

[francis]

Originally posted by: James Barker
My parents, my brother, my friends, my colleagues - all average computer users who do not use a computer (or the web) on a daily basis. They are still using the Windows version that came with their computers, be it 98, ME, XP. They have no urge to update their computers, operating system or browser. Why should they?

Maybe this boils down a few things. The whole computer/internet thing is still new - it's not as ingrained in people as, for example, cars are. People are always thinking "it needs servicing, MOTing, the next model up would be cool and really make me look cool, I'll need to replace this in 5 years or it'll be really expensive when it goes wrong". PCs are, compared with a new car, cheap, so maybe people will just replace old with new instead upgrading as they go along.

A lot of this is down to ignorance on the part of the people out there. That's "ignorance" in "not aware" as opposed to "that ignorance knuckle-scraping fule". A case in point: I was queueing up in the Post Office this morning (as usual, not enough staff on) and a woman near me was bemoaning the fact that when she was searching for something online last night she had to close 18 pop-ups before she could actually use the page. Why did she have to do this? I'd bet a pound to a penny she was using IE. Now she could have installed something like the Google toolbar to block this or, if she was made aware by someone that there were other browsers out there than IE, she could use something else.

Another example: I saw one of my brothers at Christmas. He's a Mac user but completely non-tech - not interested in computers and doesn't want to understand them. He uses his sweet Mac laptop for writing, storing photos and iTunes. I asked him about Safari - he'd never heard of it and didn't seem interested, until I mentioned it had pop-up blocking. Next thing I knew the laptop was out, fired up and he'd discovered he actually had Safari installed on his machine. He's used it ever since.

It's down to education

As to David's question on CD players - at the moment it's down to budget. However when the current one dies, which will probably be a couple of years away, I'm off to T Audio in Tunbridge Wells to sign a fat finance agreement.

I was interested in Tom's comments above. I'd actually started looking up documents on Microsoft in this area this morning. From memory, I remember a story about the German government wanting to go open source as they didn't want to pay the extortionate licence fees for Windows, Office et al in their schools, hospitals and corridors of power. Again from memory, Gates was so worried that he sent his number two out to Germany to try and stop the situation. A few minutes more research showed that many goverments, including our own, are demanding to see the source code for Windows.

But all of this hasn't answered my question: What would you like to see in IE?!

[James]

Francis, your analogy with servicing or replacing a car is valid up to a point, however, I'm not totally convinced - a car is the second biggest investment people generally make, and therefore most people educate themselves as to the potential costs and options. However, a computer is one of many consumer durables in the home. The web browser is just one component of that consumer durable, and only heavy internet users are the ones that you could argue it is worth educating. Still not worth it for my friends and family I'm afraid.

In reality, I think the best thing to do is for developers to lobby and influence Microsoft into releasing compliant versions of IE in the future. I know Microsoft is stubborn, but I think that is easier than trying to influence the user to go for Mozilla or Opera. I think we need to accept IE's total dominance for the foreseeable.

Which leads me nicely to your question - what would I like to see in IE?

- pop-up blocking has got to be standard now
- full compliance with the most up to date CSS and standards ( I don't imagine MS feel at all threatened by Mozilla, but one sure way of killing it is to comply themselves, as Tom says)
- ongoing updates to IE (new standards, CSS etc) via Windows Update - more people are likely to run updates than download a completely new browser release? The delay between releases of IE is a bit of a joke. Perhaps it's because it's free - they update money-spinning Office etc one a year.

As for tabbed browsing, it's not something I personally am crying out for, but I accept it is useful.