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Join members of the Internet Explorer team for an Expert Zone chat next Thursday, July 17th at 10.00 PDT/17.00 UTC. These chats are a great opportunity to have your questions answered by members of the IE product team. Thank you to all who have attended the chats to date!
If you can’t join us online, all chat transcripts are published here. Allow approximately 7-10 days following a chat for the transcript to go live.
Hope you can join us on Thursday!
Kristen Kibble
Program Manager
P.S. Upcoming IE chat dates are posted here.
Comments
Anonymous
July 15, 2008
PingBack from http://blog.a-foton.ru/2008/07/july-chat-with-the-ie-team-on-thursday/Anonymous
July 15, 2008
Hi, I got 2 questions, when is MS going to implement the fit to width feature? And what about instant back/forward? Both of these features are found in Opera. Thanks.Anonymous
July 15, 2008
question when are they going to enable microsoft Transfer Manager for the vpc image download page? especially for the 3 part vista vpc image. also are we going to canvas object support?Anonymous
July 15, 2008
Erbitte Ihre Mitteilungen in Deutscher Sprache sonst kann ich damit nichts anfangen. DankeAnonymous
July 15, 2008
Senden Sie mir Ihre mitteilungen in Deutsch bitte . DankeAnonymous
July 16, 2008
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July 16, 2008
Please support DOM Level 2 Events and canvas. All the other browsers support this.Anonymous
July 16, 2008
Note that "DOM Level 2 Events" is a W3C recommendation since 13 November 2000...Anonymous
July 16, 2008
If you didn't remember: tomorrow is IE 8 (beta) chat time : "Please join experts from the InternetAnonymous
July 16, 2008
Any chance in Microsoft just putting a wrapper around either Firefox, Opera or Safari and calling it IE 8? I think the world would greatly benefit from it.Anonymous
July 16, 2008
@larutan: No. The world would not benefit.Anonymous
July 16, 2008
Maybe not the WHOLE world ... just those people that use IE as a browser and those that have to develop web sites for those same users. :)Anonymous
July 16, 2008
@laurtan: spoken like someone who has very little idea what he/she is talking about. The reality is that competition is good for the industry, and if FF et. all were really as good as you'd like to think, they'd have more than 20% marketshare.Anonymous
July 16, 2008
Ted is a trolling IE fanboy, don't feed him. Whatever the IE team does, they're right, are the best and all that.Anonymous
July 16, 2008
larutan - FF 3 is not all its cut out to be. People are sometimes too fast to jump on the FF bandwagon.Anonymous
July 16, 2008
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July 17, 2008
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July 17, 2008
@Dave You are right on that, but I am afraid I can't resist the power of Firefox. Basically FF is highly customizable by its configurations, layout and appearance. Once customized, I felt sense of ownership---something I could not experience with IE.Anonymous
July 17, 2008
Please add thumbnail like previews of tabs when you place the mouse cursor over them. Like the one in Opera (Previews with size like the WebSlice ones) Please do make IE8 the fastest browser available (Faster than Firefox, Safari, Opera)Anonymous
July 17, 2008
I like all five or six of the major browsers, however there are some things that I like about IE a lot, which are:
- Bookmarks stored as 1kb shortcuts for easy manipulation from file browser
- Scroll bar scrolls at faster rate with arrow keys
- Does not freeze or shutdown as often as Firefox
- Looks like a Windows program, fits in with Windows environment best
- Minimizes memory usage when minimized
- Isn't free. They pay the developers, unlike Mozilla which profits through Google and donations.
- Otherwise is basically the same as every other browser. I can never really figure out what the fuss is about them all. As long as you can see the webpage okay and basic things like typing in inline text boxes and stuff work... And I don't necessarily find it slower. Sometimes FF and Opera are faster, sometimes they aren't. Actually Opera is usually faster, but it has other annoyances.
- IE's rendering engine, which Maxthon also uses. Not a big deal, but sometimes it's noticeable (the way a page loads, what comes first, second, third, etc).
- Even with IE1-6, you had a tab bar. It's called the START BAR!!! Just because it's at the bottom of the screen doesn't mean....
- Has the "tab list" button, which is nice. I use that more than "quick tabs," which I think Opera started.
- A few other things that are hard to describe, that seem to be mostly invisible or intangile, which improve user experience. There's probably some other things, but mostly the browsers are all the same and you can pick any of them and have a good time.
Anonymous
July 17, 2008
Actually maybe it doesn't minimize memory usage when minimized. The program MemUse v0.4 doesn't show a drop, and in Task Manager (XP) it shows the memory slowly climb back up.Anonymous
July 17, 2008
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July 17, 2008
It was a good chat session, thanks to the MS Experts. Here are some of the AJAX related Q/A during the chat for those that missed it. EricLaw [MSFT] (Expert)[13:13]: Q: [20] Can you talk a little bit more about this new "Improved Protected Mode" in IE8. What are the differences to IE 7 in this respect? A: As noted in the blog post (http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/07/02/ie8-security-part-v-comprehensive-protection.aspx) the improvements primarily consist of APIs that make it easier for add-ons and internal applications to interact with Protected Mode instances. There's documentation on MSDN covering the full set of new APIs. EricLaw [MSFT] (Expert)[13:15]: Q: [21] 18: What I mean is, do we just say, for example 'createNavPoint()' and then a new entry shows up in their history that will restore the state of the app at the time the nav point was created? A: This isn't something that would happen automatically. If you check out the blogs linked from http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/07/14/ie8-ajax-navigation.aspx, you'll see how you can use the AJAXNav improvement to build a "createNavPoint()" type function that reconstitutes your application's prior state out of the fragment data. Their example shows how to do this with Silverlight + Javascript, but you can of course do this with Javascript alone. Chris Wilson [MS] (Expert)[13:16]: Q: [25] In developing this AJAX navigation in IE8, are you (Microsoft) working with any outside stanrdard groups to make the API standard or consistent to prevent each browser implementing it in a different way? A: Ah. No - it's not an automatic "state restore" for the entire web application platform engine (e.g. it doesn't roll back Javascript variables, etc.) - it gives the web app (the HTML page) the ability to put checkpoints into the nav stack, and gives the app a notification when the user wants to go "back" -so the web app still has to do some work to support it. Chris Wilson [MS] (Expert)[13:18]: Q: [31] Are there any improvements about memory leak? A: One of the significant causes of memory leaks was the use of Javascript closures. This functionality essentially pins an object in memory across the scope of any function. In IE7 we made some improvements in circumventing leaks caused by closures, but we are continuing in this effort in IE8. There are a number of relevant articles about our tools ( http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2007/11/29/tools-for-detecting-memory-leaks.aspx ) and some information to help developers understand how these problems are caused (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb250448.aspx). EricLaw [MSFT] (Expert)[13:44]: Q: [51] when we do a xmlhttp request to server and assign the contant to a frame and do it again to a different web page and repeat these operation, if the memory of ie in task manager is noticed it will be keep on growing every time, any solutions? A: You must ensure that you're properly clearing the event handlers to prevent closures. There are a number of articles you can find that describe how to do this; search for Reusing XMLHTTPRequest leak for some more info.Anonymous
July 17, 2008
There's an error your transcript; Q25's answer was intended for Q21. The answer to Q25 ("Is Microsoft working with standards on AJAXnav") the answer is yes, this behavior is a part of HTML5.Anonymous
July 17, 2008
Well, if thats the case, then the answer itself was wrong since I simply copy/pasted this directly from the chat window itself. So someone answered the question wrong....Anonymous
July 17, 2008
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July 17, 2008
i have only one question... how come Eric Lawrence is so good looking!!Anonymous
July 17, 2008
@Matthew The key difference between the browsers is what functionality they support -- the quality of web pages is limited by what common features are supported by browsers. Since IE supports the least amount of desirable functionality and is the slowest, any web page designed can use only this functionality, often having to ignore the enhancements in other browsers. It's users like you that won't move away from browsers like IE when you've been told over and over again to do so that slows down visible progress.Anonymous
July 17, 2008
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July 17, 2008
@Ted Seriously, I know a way Microsoft could really start rolling in the dough. Have a convention once a year and invite all the web developers from around the world to come. Tell them that for X-billion dollars Microsoft will pretend to have their own browser but really it will just be Firefox in disguise (like Flock). Then just pass a few baskets down the aisles and wait for the money to start pouring in! The best part is that your end users would never know the difference! See the reason so many people use IE ISN'T because it's better, it's just because they don't know any better. They think that if it's made by Microsoft then it MUST be good (ie. Sharepoint).Anonymous
July 17, 2008
@Dave I edited a few typos you had in your last post. No thanks is needed! ------ What Dave meant to say ------ IE 7 is not all its cut out to be. People are sometimes too SLOW to jump OFF the MS bandwagon.Anonymous
July 17, 2008
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July 17, 2008
@larutan: I'm not aware of ANY caching regressions in IE7. Please feel free to grab a capture (www.fiddlercap.com) and email it to me for analysis. I'd love to have a look.Anonymous
July 17, 2008
Matthew: rendering aside, security and bugs are some key differences between IE and its competitors. Some of these IE bugs (how it wouldn't ask to save passwords anymore, the lack of ability to manage these passwords, the infamous "Untitled.bmp" bug, and so on) as well as security problems (home page changed or desktop background changed simply by visiting a site, and other JScript goodness) just ended up getting on my nerves, and made me switch to Firefox over 3 years ago.Anonymous
July 17, 2008
@Mathew No offence but if you are not a web developer I think you have a very unhealthy obsession with web browsers.Anonymous
July 17, 2008
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July 18, 2008
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July 18, 2008
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July 18, 2008
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July 18, 2008
lol... So it's still not IE's fault, but mine for going to a dangerous site, and my supposedly outdated plugins (doubt that has any connection, really, not to mention I tend to keep my stuff up to date). Don't you think browsers could and should handle such issues properly, rather than trying to pin the blame on something else?Anonymous
July 18, 2008
Gee, maybe there should be some sort of browser sandbox to protect you from buggy add-ons. Hrm... Maybe they could call it "Protected Mode" and ship it as a part of a new OS that ensured that the protection goes all the way down to the kernel. Oh, wait... they already did that for IE7 on Vista. Oops. No other browser offers such protections.Anonymous
July 18, 2008
Yeah, that totally makes IE7 the most secure browser out there, as serious studies show. And let me remind you you're the one who decided my problem was plugin related. To me, it just sounded like yet another JavaScript (oh, sorry, "JScript") vulnerability.Anonymous
July 18, 2008
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July 18, 2008
Larutan asks... Q: "Who runs Vista?" A: 180 million people. For those keeping score, that's more than the combined marketshare of all non-IE browsers, combined. Food for thought.Anonymous
July 18, 2008
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July 18, 2008
@EricLaw What's your email so I can send you more info on my IE7 problem.Anonymous
July 18, 2008
@Larutan: Send it to my alias at microsoft.com. Thanks!Anonymous
July 18, 2008
im tierd of having to install java features that all never use like additional languages how do i not install that option? any cmd install options for latest win ver. to not include this feature?Anonymous
July 19, 2008
When will IE comply with the HTTP standard and identify the product as MSIE/7.0 and not Mozilla/4.0?Anonymous
July 20, 2008
"180 million people. For those keeping score, that's more than the combined marketshare of all non-IE browsers, combined." No, that would be 180 million Vista licenses sold, which allows you to install XP instead. And since you can't really buy an XP license anymore this is the only way to get XP. I've met very few people who actually used Vista and who didn't go back to XP or switched to a Mac. The ones I've met who still use Vista got it with their PC and are the kind of people who really don't care what OS they are running as long as they can read their e-mail. As for IE8, why doesn't MS just give up and issue a patch that removes IE from the OS completely and replaces it with Firefox. IE is holding back the web, as far as I can tell from the limited information given by the IE team IE8 will be too litte, too late. Another pointless release and another incompatible browser for us to develop workarounds for. So instead of building a separate version for IE6 and IE7. We will now have to build separate versions for IE6,7 and 8.Anonymous
July 20, 2008
A.M.: The "HTTP Standard" makes no such requirement. As discussed here ad nauseum, making compatibility-breaking changes just for the sake of change is the stupid path toward irrelevance.Anonymous
July 20, 2008
@Aaargh: Exactly what percentage of that 180M have you "met"? 0.00005%? Only a tiny percentage of those with Vista licenses have installed XP, seeing as how a Vista license costs slightly more than an XP license.Anonymous
July 20, 2008
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July 20, 2008
@Argh For one, there's more to browsing the web than making everything perfect for developers. Maybe people like me wanna just....browse the web. Besides, there are some people who have never heard of Firefox. So what if someone installs the patch and finds out IE is missing? What if they are not computer intelligent as you may be? Honestly, I hate FF fanboys like you.Anonymous
July 20, 2008
Ted: "Only a tiny percentage of those with Vista licenses have installed XP" Man, your credibility decreases with each of your posts. MS has great troubles pushing Vista, and everyone and their grand mother know that. I know you're trying to defend Microsoft, but really... lighten up. sonicdoommario: you don't need to be "computer intelligent" to use Firefox, average Joe can just do everything he's used to do on IE with it. And if Firefox was actually the default browser on Windows, who cares if some people never heard about it? Everyone would simply use it whether they've heard of it or not, that's really not a problem.Anonymous
July 20, 2008
I installed IE8 beta and then uninstalled it. IE 7 does not work the same anymore. Even the Microsoft Live site refuses me because it thinks I'm using an unapproved browser. Windows update thinks my PC is a Mac now. Now I can't even uninstall IE 7. I'm using Windows XP SP2. Please help.Anonymous
July 20, 2008
Joe Mack: sounds like a user agent problem. Check what this tells you: http://www.useragent.org/Anonymous
July 21, 2008
More and more these days, searching for a word on a website is becoming harder and harder to perform because you cannot even find where the "found text" selection is. Can we please have the search feature like in Safari? That would be an amazing must-have feature for all of us.Anonymous
July 21, 2008
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July 24, 2008
@Les "Removing IE would break anything that uses WININET" Not quite. The only thing removing IE would break in WinINet is support for SOCKS type proxies. Without IE, WinINet still recognizes CERN type proxies (HTTP) and TIS FTP proxies (FTP). Besides, if Windows really couldn't survive without IE then you could still keep it on the system but just hide it from the user. Then just create a wrapper around Opera, FF or Safari, and slap an IE icon on it.Anonymous
July 24, 2008
@larutan: I'm not sure exactly what led you to the conclusion that WinINET's only dependency on IE is for SOCKS proxies, but you are mistaken. WinINET has no particular dependency on other IE dlls for SOCKS proxies, but does have dependencies on other IE dlls for other reasons.Anonymous
July 28, 2008
Stifu: "And if Firefox was actually the default browser on Windows," Then it would have as many exploits as IE6. The reason IE6 and XP had so many exploits was because they had 90+ % usage share. If Firefox would have a 90% usage share, it would get exploits on a daily basis. IE7/8 is actually pretty good considering
- the amount of exploits it fixed/will fix
- the amount of rendering bugs it fixed/will fix
- doing both of the above without breaking compatibility with the x billion sites already on the net. Firefox and all other browsers are exempt from these, because
- no one writes exploits to a browser with a low market share
- no one cares about rendering bugs, since "lol IE" is the perfect scapegoat (even if its not the fault of IE). Firefox (and Opera for the matter) users are most of the time ridiculous fanboys as well, so the developers can shove down everything on their throats. They can just label it as "innovation" or "new feature", even if its batshit ridiculous (I heard they were trying to change the bookmark system into an SQL database). IE on the other hand will always fall short of expectations, because it has the bar way way way higher then any other browser.