> I think Firefox is a threat. The product is gaining market and > mindshare over IE pretty consistently, and if they want to stop it > they have to act now not before it gets to 30 or 50%. MSs plan (I > think I read this somewhere but cant remember)
Slashdot, perhaps? > is to get everyone off > the browser and write apps with their avalon thing anyway I've seen no evidence of this -- outside of the conspiracy theorist blogs. As far as I can tell, they are trying to do the reverse: make traditional desktop applications deployable and updatable via the Web. > (kind of > like Flex for the desktop, but probably more complicated with > engineered in vulnerabilities). I'd even say MM is a threat to MS at > this point (unless they are playing footsie under the table) > > The more people that get hooked with complex apps in the browser the > more they'll have to convert later. But MS says the only reason I've > heard they are upgrading is because "their customers asked for it" > (like they listen to them ;-D) Have you ever personally spoken with a Microsoft employee or even read a few of their blogs? As a Microsoft customer, we were asked to demonstrate an application that we had written. We met with project leaders from several teams. In many ways, the app we had written competed with what they were doing. So, with some of the teams, we discussed differing approaches to solving the same problem. With other teams, we discussed how they could market the product we'd written to their customers. It was an educational experience, much more useful than making the same old "us vs. them" argument. > I'd bet IE7 is not going to be anything grand - it's going to be catch > up like it almost always is. How so? Firefox only reached version 1 a few months ago. Safari has only been out for a year or so, I believe. Between the release of Internet Explorer 4 and Safari, I can think of only two browsers that competed on a technical level: Opera and Mozilla. Opera failed to render many sites correctly (often because of bad browser detection, but that's the way it is). Although the Gecko engine is pretty nice, the Mozilla suite left a lot to be desired. Anyway, my point is, it seems like there were a few years there that Internet Explorer was the uncontested leader. And has it really slipped that far? > They'll just add the basic features that > are in firefox so that the IE crowd who now say they don't need tabbed > browsing can say they love IE for its tabbed browsing Ah, so now we're insulting Internet Explorer users as well as Microsoft. I guess I can respond since I'm one of those people who doesn't "need" tabbed browsing. I use Firefox religiously at home. I'd say that tabbed browsing hasn't revolutionized my surfing experience. I rarely miss it at work where I generally use Internet Explorer. That said, I think the implementation of tabbed browsing in Firefox and Mozilla is very poor. There are some popular extensions that greatly enhance the experience. So, I'm not willing to judge based solely on my experiences with Firefox. Nevertheless, if Microsoft makes a better *default* tabbed browsing experience, well, good for them. It seems to me that browser innovation may really be dead when Web designers start trumpeting features like tabbed browsing. Ben Rogers http://www.c4.net v.508.240.0051 f.508.240.0057 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Discover CFTicket - The leading ColdFusion Help Desk and Trouble Ticket application http://www.houseoffusion.com/banners/view.cfm?bannerid=48 Message: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=i:4:195071 Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/threads.cfm/4 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=s:4 Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.4 Donations & Support: http://www.houseoffusion.com/tiny.cfm/54
