What do you think this means for SVG?
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/cnet/CNET_2100-1032_3-5577263.html? ex=1109134800&en=6096e30219fb67de&ei=5070 Reversing a longstanding Microsoft policy, Bill Gates said Tuesday that the company will ship an update to its browser separately from the next version of Windows. A beta, or test, version of Internet Explorer 7 will debut this summer, Microsoft's chairman and chief software architect said in a keynote address at the RSA Conference 2005 here. The company had said that it would not ship a new IE version before the next major update to Windows, code-named Longhorn, arrives next year. News.context What's new: In a reversal of policy, Microsoft will ship the next update of Internet Explorer separately from the next version of Windows. Bottom line: The move acknowledges that the browser has become the target of virus and spyware writers. As the security threats have increased, rival browser Firefox has gained fans. More stories on browser security In announcing the plan, Gates acknowledged something that many outside the company had been arguing for some time--that the browser itself has become a security risk. "Browsing is definitely a point of vulnerability," Gates said. The new browser version will work on machines running on Windows XP Service Pack 2, a security-focused update to the operating system that the company launched last summer, Gates said. Analysts attributed Microsoft's change of heart to the progress of the Mozilla Foundation's Firefox browser, which has made incremental but steady market share gains against IE in recent months. In a survey conducted late last year, Firefox nudged IE below the 90 percent mark for the first time since the height of the browser wars in the 1990s. "I think it's a response to both the delay of Longhorn and the challenge of Firefox," said NPD Group analyst Ross Rubin, who added that Firefox was probably the sharper spur. "Were there no Firefox, they'd have more leeway to sit on it until Longhorn." Bart Decrem, a founding member of the Mozilla Foundation, former head of its marketing and business development and current volunteer, said that Microsoft clearly was responding to the group's work. "I can't think of a better validation of the success of Firefox," said Decrem. "The success of Firefox is forcing Microsoft to improve IE. The only surprise is that it took them this long to make that announcement." Bitten by bugs Microsoft's decision to announce plans for IE 7 at a security conference was no coincidence. IE 6's security reputation has suffered over the years, dogged by a long string of security bugs, phishing schemes and patches. The company sought to allay security concerns last year by issuing the SP2 update for Windows XP, which included a number of changes to browser security. But critics complained that the update would benefit only those people who either already owned XP or who had paid for an operating system upgrade, leaving about half the Windows world out in the cold. Microsoft on Tuesday acknowledged that those complaints about XP exclusivity lingered, particularly among enterprise users of Windows 2000. "Right now, we're focused on XP SP2," Dean Hachamovitch, who heads Microsoft's IE team, wrote in the company's IE blog, in a posting dated Tuesday. "We're actively listening to our major Windows 2000 customers about what they want and comparing that to the engineering and logistical complexity of that work. That's all I can say on that topic." But IE 6 has earned enmity among developers, and not only for its security lapses. Web authors have long complained about Microsoft's spotty implementation of various Web standards including Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), the Portable Network Graphics (PNG) image format, Extensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML) and Extensible Markup Language (XML). As the company reversed itself on issuing a standalone IE, Web authors wondered aloud whether version 7 would fix those bugs along with the security holes. "Any released information stating your commitment to modern coding practices--meaning XHTML, CSS, XML, not to mention full PNG support?" asked Web designer Brady Frey in response to Hachamovitch's blog posting. "Aside from security, this has been the reason why we've dropped IE's usage company wide--I have the choice of building one Internet application for all users, or one for IE users. We don't want to waste money doing both anymore." Apart from promising a test version by summer, Microsoft remained coy about its plans for releasing the final standalone IE 7. "Yes, we have a date in mind," Hachamovitch wrote in the IE blog. "I'll talk about the date after we get feedback from customers and partners. We're going to release a beta and listen, then refresh the beta and listen some more. We'll ship when the product is ready." ----- To unsubscribe send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -or- visit http://groups.yahoo.com/group/svg-developers and click "edit my membership" ---- Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/svg-developers/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
