Microsoft: IE9 will never run on Windows XP Microsoft has ruled out putting Internet Explorer 9 on Windows XP, leaving millions of PCs open to Mozilla and Google browsers providing hardware-accelerated rich-internet. Ryan Gavin, senior director of IE business and marketing, said Microsoft would not put IE9 hardware acceleration features in the current version of its …
"and though features like Jump Lists, which make the browser "invisible" and let web sites and apps run outside the browser directly on the Windows desktop"
Can't you just see how this will be used by malware writers to spoof real warnings etc.. to get people to click on stuff and install it? Surely Microsoft have learned by now?
YOUR COMPUTER IS INFECTED, DOWNLOAD AND BUY SUPERHAPPYFUNTIMEANTIVIRUS NOW!
Have a hard time explaining, if != avast / avg / symantec warning then do not want!
I'm also worried about the combo search / web address box. What would it take for someone to hook a rogue search provider in there instead of "bing!" / google, the end user enters "www.ebay.com" -> invokes a search on the rogue engine which redirects to "http://ebay.superhappyfuntimemalware.com"
The minimalist interface concept will be thrown out the window anyway as every piece of software now wants to install its own browser toolbar, some IE example I have seen look more like a grey set of venetian blinds with half the screen taken up by toolbars.
As for XP support, I am amazed that it has lasted this long. Windows 3.1 only had a shelf life of 3-4 years before it was usurped by 95. XPs stay of execution was that Vista was a disaster. I too was sceptical about Windows 7 aka 6.1, thinking it was a Vista reskin, but am actually pleasantly surprised (and I don't usually compliment Windows, more of a Linux fan anyway).
I can't get IE7 or 8 on my Windows 2000 laptop (the only laptop I have that has a serial port for console access), but am happy enough with Firefox.
"Why not just buy a 10 quid USB to serial adapter and use whatever OS on whatever laptop you like?"
Because in my experience they are mostly broken. A bit like USB to PS2 adaptors.
I prefer using my serial port enabled laptop for console work anyway.
I wasn't complaining, I am happy enough using Firefox on any of my Windows and Linux machines, my comment was tinged in irony, I can't get IE 7 and 8 on 2000, I can't get IE 6 on Windows 95 and 3.1, those who are lamenting the passing of the latest IE on the 9 yr old 2nd previous generation of Windows need to realise that development priorities move on.
Yes there are many companies using XP, but in my experience they are also corporate locked down on IE6 anyway, Windows 7 and IE 8/9 will come along with the next round of upgrades.
are complete shite. Where I work, there are a bunch of research scientists who need to connect their laptops to various elderly (sorry, apparently I mean *legacy*) measurement devices, and of course none of the laptops we're allowed to buy have serial ports. I have to light black candles and sacrifice chickens to dark gods to get those bloody USB-to-serial adapters to kind-of, maybe work, some of the time, if the wind's favourable.
In many research institutions there is indeed legacy equipment (often connected to "legacy pcs" because they cannot "talk" to anything more advanced) and the reason for that is very simple. In my lab, for example, we have an old Dell connected to the control systems of a high pressure liquid chromatography rig. Those control systems need software that will not run on anything later than Win2k. Why have we not replaced it? Answer; because we would have to replace the _entire_ rig, pumps, columns, the sample feeders ect. ect. _in addition to_ the control systems and the pc. Ask the manufacturers of scientific equipment why there is so little reverse compatiblity. Oh and by the way, as you no doubt have begun to suspect given my little rant, yes replacing the whole system (which still works fine actually) would cost a fucking fortune.
VMware is your friend! You can even present specific PCI cards to VMs now. I personally think that one of it's major strengths is allowing you to virtualise legacy equipment. You can run it on Windows or Linux base OS or even (hardware allowing) use the ESX hypervisor although this is more of a datacentre tech. The big advantage is that once you've virtualised your Win2k image it's portable, so in the inevitable event of hardware failure, you can move your VM to shiny new hardware with no loss of functionallity.
MS make a product stupid to promote their "latest version"
Like Office 95 on Win95 but deliberately made to not work on Win3.11 So they had to patch NT3.5 to NT3.51
Well.. Those majority of people with XP may just use Chrome and Firefox forever.
Explain me again why a browser should use HW acceleration at all, like this?
Office 95 was basically Office 4.3 with OLE2 and Long Filename Support, so required Win95.
NT3.5.1 supported these with it's Win32 Win95 compatible system, in fact it could also run Office 97 (this is why the 97 interface was slow, as it drew them itself). Still strange to see such a "modern" app running with 3.1 style Window frames.
http://toastytech.com/guis/nt351word.gif
No reason to cling to XP?
Well, no, I'm not clinging to XP by any means, although the PC I'm typing this on is an XP runner. But then that's the crux - if my system does everything I need or want it to do, then why change it? That's effectively the question that you need to answer whenever this crops up.
On a cursory glance of everything that IE9 has to offer, both hype from Microsoft and in spite of them, my own response is "So what?" Sorry, but I'm likely to keep my plethora of machines, including the works XP, my home W7 and anything else where it is right now.
Just take a look at the published AutoCAD specs to see why XP is superior. Their published requirements note that you need more RAM and a much faster processor if you want to run on Windows 7. Kinda shows the lie in the "fastest Windows ever" statement that MS trots out with every new version.
"Just take a look at the published AutoCAD specs to see why XP is superior. Their published requirements note that you need more RAM and a much faster processor if you want to run on Windows 7. Kinda shows the lie in the "fastest Windows ever" statement that MS trots out with every new version."
Oh come on - of course it's faster - it's faster because of the new PC you had to buy to run the damn thing :)
Runs beautifully on a machine with 1GB RAM and an old AMD XP 3200+ socket A CPU. It loads faster than XP and things are just as snappy if not snappier. Now I'm just a plug doing business type work with very little video stuff going on but them that wasn't mentioned was it? And I just bought my grandson a Toshiba minibook with 2GB RAM and an AMD 1.7GHz CPU. A tad slow to load but hey, once loaded it does very well. So I guess the slow and deliberate old farts like me can be satisfied with having a slooooow Win7 machine just so long as we got a fast hot woman ... which I have. After all, the computers are cold boxes with no life. My bride is a, well... better not go there. But you get the picture.
I seriously doubt that the wholesale cost portion of the OS for new PCs is less than 30. (Sorry I normally do not use the little pound symbol).
And I seriously doubt that any retailer does not mark up their wholesale costs.
So claiming that nobody pays the high retail price for the Microsoft combination totally lacks any credability at all. When you buy a new PC all idiots pay the retail price. And even if it is a special deal it is more expensive because of the monopoly products forced upon all consumers.
I guess Microsoft salesmen just can not avoid committing fraud.
IE9 looks like an unnecessary and desperate attempt to drag users to Vista and Windows 7. If all IE9's competition can happily run on XP, so should IE9. As simple as that. Don't give BS graphics reasons. There's GDI, OpenGL and Direct3D on WinXP. XP users don't expect hardware acceleration. They expect a standards compliant browser from Microsoft without the added cost and compatibility hassles of Windows 7.
Vista, Windows 7, IE9....
I suspect that Microsoft suffer from the delusion that people want these just because they're the latest thing from Microsoft.
Fifteen years ago, this might have been the case: MS was almost the only game in town and the general standard of software was so poor that new releases brought noticeable improvement. Today, the focus is elsewhere. Most people probably want faster internet and quicker load times for programs. I don't suppose anyone's gagging for HTML5 and DX10 in the browser.
If MS hope people will be compelled to upgrade their OS so they can get IE9, I fear they will be disappointed.
"Translated: the future is Windows 7, and there's no going back to Windows XP."
Wow, this is the kind of investigative insight that journalists should provide, reading into a company strategy and stating the complete obvious. That the future is an operating system released last year and the ten year old predecessor isn't the future.
Also, put this into a gaming scenario, Call Of Duty Black Ops will come out soon, and wierdly nobody will be supporting the original Xbox or PS2 for it. Why, because its equally as old as XP, yet nobody moans when new products and innovations aren't released for those platforms.
I know people love to hate Microsoft, but to criticise it whenever it innovates is truly hypocritical.
"Microsoft has ruled out putting Internet Explorer 9 on Windows XP, leaving millions of PCs open to Mozilla and Google browsers providing hardware-accelerated rich-internet."
Just fix that....
Microsoft has ruled out putting Internet Explorer 9 on Windows XP, leaving millions of PCs open to all sorts of nasty shite from the scumbags, if users are running any IE browser v8 or less."
XP is out of support, so out of mind as far as MS is concerned! Just like a true corporate in the vein of Union Carbide, McDonalds and Monsanto! Not our problem any more, let the plebs who insist on using product X worry about using it and cleaning up after it!
yes he's called mr gavin. mr knobbyballs would be more curious....or mr mozilla.....or mr stylesheet....
are you that desperate to have a dig at them that you criticise his surname? what the hell are you going on about? or are you 12?
yes it doesn't work on xp, get over it, move on like millions of others.
I bet that means it won't run on W2K, or Win98, or Win95 or even 3.1. I missed out ME on purpose, nothing at all ran on that.
This is disgraceful.
When oh when is Microsoft going to realise that tired old operating systems like XP, and those that went before, are the lifeblood of IT stick in the muds?
If we jump up and down and really shake our rattles very hard then maybe those cruel men in Redmond will hear our cry, "we want to keep XP, we want to keep XP."
Even though we trashed it when it was released and made the same statements about it then that we now make about Win 7.
"You don't want to differentiate on HTML5 - [as a coder] I want to be able to write this mark up once and it runs across all browsers," Gavin said.
Oh, you finally noticed did you? Well +1 Interwebz to you :P
"You step on top of that and say how do I do HMTL5 right, and that's where hardware acceleration comes in for graphics, images and text."
Woah, woah, stop right there... just what the hell does that even mean? You've stepped out of the realms of reality and into the world of the adman and his buzzwords. Do you know what HTML5 actually is? Are you aware that HTML isn't a verb... you can't DO it!? What the hell has hardware acceleration got to do with just correctly rendering a <DIV> tag so that the margins and padding you added in the CSS aren't all calculated as part of the division's total width? We're not overly bothered about the <VIDEO> tags... sure that's a nice extra feature, but the ONE THING that concerns us most is that IE actually does what every other browser out there does - just follow the same basic rules that ensure the structure of the pages renders without having to create separate stylesheets or hack-around conditionals or even load plugins to 'fix' previous browsers. Everything else will then be icing on the cake, assuming that you don't try to reinvent HTML5 like you've kept trying to do with every other existing standard throughout the past 20 years...
I have to admit that on reflection Microsoft's implementation of the box model actually makes more sense, but standards are standards! Isn't that a CSS issue though, not HTML. In fact the real problem with IE's HTML implementation is lack of support for XML, and by extension proper XHTML, which is moot going forwards, as is its previous inability to render unknown elements, which again is more a CSS thing in all reality and that has been fixed in IE9. Hasn't the issue has always really been poor CSS support? Forms are a PITA in IE mind...
No way!!! The MS box model was counter-intuitive. Padding is inside a box, margins are outside. In no other circumstance would you consider the space outside of an object to be part of the object's overall size. The standards were very clear on this (and other) issue(s) and MS chose to do it differently than every other browser maker.
CSS are an extension to HTML, being that they take the visual aspect of the markup away from the content, but the two are intertwined. Style can still be written perfectly validly inline with HTML tags (such as defining widths for a DIV or SPAN) so whilst you can actually consider HTML without stylesheets, the opposite isn't really true. But generally I agree with your point about CSS being the issue.
That WAS MSs box model...
Take a DIV of width 100px - give it padding 10px and under the standard model the DIV is now 120px wide; under the MS model, the DIV is still 100px wide but the usable area of that DIV is only 80px - MS padded in, the standard pads out.
The reason is obvious when you give your 100px DIV a padding of 50px.
I seem to remember margins worked the same in IE's model and the standard.
What's this emphasis on HW acceleration? Most PC's are quite powerful enough to run 99.99% of web tasks without too much effort - and OpenGL/VG, being OPEN STANDARDS would appear to provide all the extra acceleration required.
Acceleration is more relevant in the mobile space, but hey, Win7 doesn't run on mobiles.
Sounds like a bit of an own goal by MS to me.
...one more reason to ditch MS then. Plus ca change.
As for the "great job" they're doing on Windows 7, could they please explain why Windows 7 runs slower for me than XP ever did? Can they also explain why it takes Windows 7 longer to log in than it does for Lucid (on much older hardware) to wake from a cold boot and let me get going?
And is it just me, or does the phrase "It's now like a website running outside of the browser" in reference to Windows give anyone else the screaming heebie-jeebies?
I tried Windows 7, and found it piss poor.
I installed it on 2 different PC's, and had 2 completely different sets of issues.
1st PC Intel Atom dual core.
The Pro version of windows 7 worked fine for a week. After 1 week the pc would BSOD on shut down, and reboot... Reinstalled windows 7 ran it for a week letting the PC idle for the amount of time I usually use it with NO additional programs installed. Same thing happened. Tried it one last time it started happening on the 4th day (didn't even make 1 week) on the 3rd install. Re-installed XP no issues. Used all win 7 drivers.
2nd PC AMD Athelon dual core. This one started acting up right away. Four hours after install the PC shut down on its own. Restart the comp ran fine, walk out of the room for a hour, come back, it was shut down again... Tried reinstalling windows 7, same issues. Again used all windows 7 drivers and no additional software was installed on the 2nd install. Put XP back on PC runs fine.
BOTH PC's ran the Windows 7 Beta beautifully, honestly I wish MS would have just slapped the done label on the beta and called it a day.
I might have made the move on my main PC to windows 7 from 2000, instead of the move to XP from windows 2000(only put XP on due to starcraft 2)
But seriously IE9 will definitely not get me to move to windows 7, if anything that desktop integration BS will keep me farther away then I am now.
...there's nothing inherently bad about having live HTML elements or areas that live outside the browser window - Dashboard widgets in OS X are exactly that - the problem comes when the system allows these things to be created without any input or authentication by the user. That's where Windows has always fallen down; in the drive to give convenience to developers, because they could, not enough thought has been given to whether they should.
The result is the kind of drive-by malware that emulates native system alerts and messages that others have noted above.
If they sandbox it then it shouldn't be a problem...
"You don't want to differentiate on HTML5 - [as a coder] I want to be able to write this mark up once and it runs across all browsers," Gavin said.
What the world has wanted for ever, M$ to stop doing their own thing and do what the world does. But as he said IE9 will be adhering to standards then, you heard it from the horses mouth guys. When it doesn't you know who to sue / shout at / laugh at
But the genius statement for me is:
"A modern web needs a modern operating system."
I couldn't agree more Gavin, Ubuntu 10, Mac OSX? When can we expect one from Microsoft?
Is it just me that finds the trumpeting of great features, great experience and great service both irritating and a sure-fire warning that far from being great, the things in question will be distinguished by bloated software, annoying bugs, unnecessary features, intrusive advertising, dog-slow and intermittent network connections, high prices and piss-poor customer service?
Perhaps it's a sign of imminent old age, but as soon as I see the g-word these days I start to switch off.
This is a surprise? functionality in the microsoft world is driven directly by bells and whistles,therefore the imperitive to buy 7 ( and swell the coffers even more) is being pushed.
Correct me if im wrong but we are forced to buy a licence to run a microsoft product like office etc etc, therefore why are we denied the right to use the later updates? Vista was as we all know a rushed and over graphiced product a ram hog and in general a beta version of what 7 turned out to be, yet again we are the beta testers for a short sighted self interested bag of garbage based in Seattle.
If they are unable to make software that does what it should ( i remind the populace with abject terror about Millenium) then why deny us poor consumers the opportunity to test IE ? Ill tell you why
Because those in business like myself and many others are going to get the happy joyful youth attempting to load 9 and out IT staff will be pulling their hair out.
As usual Microsoft you are raping the industrial user
The "industrial user" as you put it, is **why** we still have IE6 an Windows XP (Both 10 years old BTW) lingering like a bad smell. IT department lazily threw intranet and "business critical apps" together as cheaply as possible (the extra money is for "investors"), made bad software implementation decisions and managed to get themselves locked in to a single vendor model (thanks for that, accountants. Reason #2843 Why accountants shouldn't be allowed to make business critical decisions). You have the temerity to say that industry an business generally is getting "raped" by Microsoft? Hey, you guys made your bed. I see time and time again Microsoft being blamed for 'holding up the internet' or for 'IT being behind by 10 years' or some other bullshit metric. I guess they, like other software and hardware companies are in a small part responsible, but the **real** culprits are the lazy and greedy corporations who are under the misapprehension that the internet, and computing generally, is for and revolves around them, refusing to upgrade because it'll break "business critical" legacy systems. If they'd designed and written them properly instead of cludging them together in the fucking first place it would'nt be a problem, would it! Fuck 'em.
1. Support for XP is due to end fairly soon so why should MS bother coding IE9, or any other new app) to run on XP?
2. Or there's the cynical way of looking at it. MS won't allow IE9 to run on XP so that people will upgrade to Windows 7.
Although it's tempting to believe the latter I don't think anybody at MS is so stupid as to believe that would work.
However it has to be said that nothing MS could do with support could be quite as nasty as the way Mozilla dropped support for FF2 about five minutes after FF3 was released.
"Although it's tempting to believe the latter I don't think anybody at MS is so stupid as to believe that would work."
Apparently they thought it would work when they imposed the loathsome W7 "starter edition" crippleware on netbook users. Among a long list of simple tasks it won't allow, it won't connect to a local (home) network that isn't running on Windows 7. Fortunately, such crippled netbooks can be made fully functional by upgrading them to XP or Ubuntu.
Be a bigger step forward if you allowed me to remove the IE bloat from my hard drive completely as I don't routinely use it. Thats what I would want, along with Outlook which I also don't use. I'm impressed by 7 - for the few things I am forced to use Windows for - but disappointed that even now Redmond still insist on filling my drive with stuff I wont use, and wont give me the opportunity to skip it on install or remove it post install. Redmond lost me as an IE user years ago around about when I moved to Opera, I also use Firefox occasionally, but never browse with IE.
I have arrived at a point where I have pretty much the same software on both Windows and Suse, even my dyslexic sister can get along with it - so her current XP machine will continue to function with the penguin fine after XP SP3 has gone No need for expensive upgrades/replacement and no IE9. Redmond missed the bus here... by several years.
Let's also do away with frontpage and netmeeting, two of the most useless pieces of software that can possibly grace a default install. And I wouldn't mind getting rid of movie maker either.
Why can Microsoft not allow those things to be a choice ? What on God's green Earth made them decide : "okay, we're going to make the netmeeting directory a functional Windows requirement" ?
... then why not offer a £5 online upgrade?
XP and Vista users have already paid microsoft an arm and a leg for it, and 95% of W7 functionality (disregarding cosmetic enhancements) has already been paid for, so the upgrade shouldn't need to cost more than 5% of the original. Plus I suspect that if everybody with a properly licensed copy of XP took out a £5 upgrade it would make microsoft shareholders a little richer than they will by waiting until everybody gets W7 bundled with their next generation PC.
Those with old hardware will probably want more memory, so microsoft could possibly also do a deal with Crucial or similar and have a W7 upgrade serial number given away with every 1Gb of extra memory.
No mention of Silverlight in all the IE9 blaze of publicity that I have seen; it all seems to be about Microsoft's new found love of HTML 5, CSS 3 and standards. The HTML sites the used to demo IE9 even showed things like games that Microsoft were/are claiming you need SL for.
I get the feeling that MS are divided into and a significant proportion just don't buy into Silverlight as an answer. Will be interesting to see if Win Mobile will push SL adoption - I personally doubt it.
HW Acceleration is for video, games, and rich Internet applications. Possibly to overcome the low Internet bandwidth in rural USA - do the Opera trick of compressing the web site in an Opera proxy server, send less data and uncompressing on the mobile device.
Why waste your general purpose processor's time doing graphics, when you have a dedicated graphics processor attached to the video RAM.
"and let web sites and apps run outside the browser directly on the Windows desktop"
Do Microsoft never stop inventing new ways for criminals to infiltrate people's operating systems?
When are they actually going to learn? This is even more reason to not use IE if you were stupid enough to still be using it ...
re: MS Malware Development Kit - IE9
As far as I can see all it does is;
1) A better taskbar icon
2) Some button colour changes to pick up the favicon colour
3) Some Jumplist options specified in HTML
There is nothing to say the the site itself operates outside of the browser or it's security model.
to upgrade OS.
Being a geek, it's safe to say I switch OS about 10 times more frequently than an average user and I've almost never experienced a net gain in satisfaction from any of them. The one exception being my switch from Vista to Ubuntu, because now my PC doesn't take a week to boot. But I still need XP when the mood strikes me for a little musical composition. The "JACK" audio dealy you need on Linux for that kind of stuff just doesn't work for me at all. Maybe I could get it to work, but maybe I don't actually care.
So anyway, switching OS is generally hard (in that it takes a period of days or weeks for simple tasks to become second nature again like they used to be) and it generally involves moving a whole bunch of your files around - crap you haven't looked at in 5 years but suddenly have to start agonizing over. Then you find out you've got to learn how to use a whole bunch of new software, even though 90% of new software is shit.
You better have a damn good reason to go to that trouble. The only reason big enough for most people is a catastrophic hardware failure - where they have no choice but to buy a new PC and they probably didn't bother backing up their files anyway so they might as well get the latest version of everything and start over. That's how Joe Bloggs uses a computer. He doesn't have a home file server with all (most) of his stuff backed up like you and I do.
Windows XP is currently the most widely deployed PC operating system. Microsoft have a newer version (<cough> two, actually, but who remembers Vista these days?) and people aren't biting quite as hard as they should, even with most new computers coming with Win7 preinstalled.
MSIE, on the other hand, is an older more lethargic browser that is fast losing ground to other offerings. [don't say how wonderful the latest IE *will* be, let's work with the NOW]
So, to try to punt their latest OS they say the latest incarnation of their own browser will not work on the OS that the majority are still running.
Well, damn, I'm SO upset. Given there are easily four better options (Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari (alphabetical order)), this is not much of an incentive to upgrade. In fact, where I stand - given IE's long and tragic history - it is as good an incentive to NOT upgrade. And with a little luck online companies will start to come around to more widely supporting what their customers actually USE rather than being brainwashed into "must work on IE".
For what it is worth, I've been browser sniffing on my blog: 67% use Firefox, 12% use Opera or OperaMini, 5% use a RISC OS browser (ouch, no/lame CSS!), 5% use Safari/Webkit, 3% use IE, and the final 8% is "other" (somebody used NCSA-Mosaic on Windows 3.11!). It might not be as representative a sample as, say, argos.co.uk, but it shows me where my priorities should lie.
Sorry Microsoft... Internet Explorer? Wasn't that popular back in the days of Netscape Navigator? :-)
Good argument. A product that doesn't exist at all will continue not to exist on WindowsXP. Why would that affect your decision to ditch MS - if you run XP you hopefully already chose a browser you like, if you run W7 then why would you care?
All very dull. Whatever they do people will twist it round to be bad. If they gave free copies of Office2012 to everyone they'd be criticised because it doesn't run on XP, and users are forced to upgrade.
"If they gave free copies of Office2012 to everyone they'd be criticised because it doesn't run on XP"
If they gave me a free copy of Office2012, I wouldn't criticise them - I'd appreciate the gift of a free coaster. I haven't upgraded Microsoft Office since Office97. When later versions started using incompatible file types I had a moment of confusion, but a quick upgrade to Open Office took care of it.
Keeping IE9 from XP is just a way of keeping desktop apps still developed for windows and still maintaining a good reputation. If it's too easy to write consistent webapps, windows desktop market will go down down down.
I understand that they can't maintain xp forever but now we're stuck with IE8 workarounds for at least another 5 years.
Disabling the jumplists would take max a day of work so that's no excuse. Ok on the hardware acceleration but it's still a big shame that no software workaround has been made :(
How will it run on PCs with shitty intel graphics cards btw? In these cases software rendering can sometimes even be faster.
XP's mostly still entrenched in business. They've just started their migration to IE7. Forget about 8 or 9. You see, they bought into this whole stack of platform development tools that standardized them on Windows from the server to the desktop. They built their line of business in-house applications by embedding their business logic in custom applications on the server side that would only talk to IE6, or symmetric applications on the client side, required Microsoft languages and tools, clients and frameworks and media formats. This would have been a grand idea if that platform was designed with some thought to future migration. But it wasn't.
It was designed to get them stuck in a place where they couldn't migrate away from XP to something else and it worked too well. Now they can't migrate away from XP to future versions of Windows either. There will be a lot of cursing and pain as they cut themselves out of this trap, and the last thing that they want to hear about is how well [browser next] is integrated into [os next].
Some time back there was a survey that indicated that IE6 is STILL used around the web, and some applications STILL rely on it. And so it goes. Nothing is EVER obsolete in Microsoft's world. People have things that "work" and they keep using it. Then complain that the new kit they just bought won't work correctly. When the next version of windoze erupts on to the scene, I suspect that it will still somehow support IE6, or something like that, since there are still aps out there that insist upon having that version.
As long as there is still a "C:" drive, it will still be DOS, maybe with lipstick and mascara but still DOS.
The GUI stack has been re-ordered, so that the API "direct" to hardware on Win7 is not "direct" on XP. (And v.v.)
This means that Hardware Accelerated XP software runs slow on Win 7, and Hardware Accelerated Win 7 software runs slow on XP.
So it would make no sense at all to port a "hardware accelerated" application from Win 7 to XP.
Lets say you have a productive box, it creates video, audio, along comes an update for IE, and now protools won't work, along comes an update for quicktime and .mov files no longer display on the time-line. While you could be annoying and argue one one of what I just pointed out belongs to Microsoft, the reality is whatever it is, it put a stop to productivity. And all you win7 lovers, you can't even load half the existing working XP programs STILL a year after your win7 is out. I laugh now, when I hear win7 adopters complain, this won't work, or that won't work. And one other thing, win7's start menu sucks, it slows productivity to SEARCH for my programs, where in XP I CLICK on my program links. (Yeah I know there's a nice open source mod for that called classic menu bla bla) Even ztree has to fight with 7. It's completely a pain in the ass getting an "access denied" because of junctions and other such nonsense. The only file I can't manipulate in XP is one which is locked or running. And even still it's a much shorter trip to stop it from running and unlock it. Default Junctions which don't point to the data drive where I actually keep my videos / audio I might add. (Yeah I know I can change the path-if I have some spare time) And to everyone who keeps saying the security is better, it seems to me patch tuesday, win7 has just as many stupid ass patches as any XP box does over the years. Clearly I use both by the way I am talking, but really my interaction for a year now with win7 has been SUPPORT. I don't think it really matters what Microsoft does on security anymore. Especially when security or the latest shiny object cripples your productivity. It's not just audio and video production get's slaughtered by these browser updates. The .NET updates break existing code. Most users I have seen can not deal with keeping either XP or win7 box patched so there's no benefit there. In every way possible I hate win7. When it comes time to upgrade, I find myself more and more trying to research the results of what is broken after the update, before the update cause productivity to be broken troubleshot, fixed, or rolled-back (via cloned backup.) Isn't it funny how when you do a good video and they ask you what you did it on and you say an XP box, microsoft blindly get's the credit, but when you get a call at 3AM for .mov files not loading in sony vegas, it's suddenly apple or sony who get's the credit, and when it's a dual problem it takes even longer to get fixed. I am just saying, who really cares anymore, what version IE is, when your trying to pump out a set of disks which represent someone's life, or your next fucking meal? One broken thing and it's equally as destructive as if your power/mains cable was stolen/damaged.
I wouldn't use IE at all, except some programs require it's backend dll's. Like windows update for example!!
Now to be fair, win7 seems to work for some users who aren't very productive or knowledgeable.
wow after I just typed that a stunning revelation just hit me. I'm in AWE of the power of frustration...
Either/or:
1) MS just haven't potted their *beta* IE9 to XP yet and will do it later.
2) Their code is so shit that it needs hardware acceleration - unlike all other browsers.
3) A MS marketing tard fantasises that people will move to VII just to use IE9
Who cares?
The fact is that rubbish browsers from Microsoft generates huge wealth for the web development community. Sure, it's a right ball-ache to code for, but that's why the punters pay us so much. Let's celebrate that IE9 won't be generally available to the vast majority of MS customers for years hence.
3) Because the method of doing fast graphics has changed, VII gets a new browser.
2) All browsers use hardware acceleration.
1) Only IE9 does fast graphics on Windows 7.
All browsers written for Windows XP do fast graphics on XP. That runs slower on VII than it does on XP. Eventually other browsers will come out with versions for VII.
IMHO, other browsers are better, and I don't see a speed difference I care about, and MS claims about hardware acceleration for IE9 on Windows 7 are unimportant unless you are rendering 3-D images in your browser.
With all the legitimate complaints and objections available, it's amazing that people can't come up with more sophisticated criticisms
"'You don't want to differentiate on HTML5 - [as a coder] I want to be able to write this mark up once and it runs across all browsers,' Gavin said."
Uh...
Presumably the famous <VIDEO> tag is not an exception to this lofty goal. With that in mind, said browser independence can't very well achieved without a codec acceptable to all the browser makers.
Are this fellow and his employer assuming that Mozilla and Google will cave in get behind it (and Apple's) obstinate insistence upon supporting only the patent-encumbered (and to its advantage) H.264 codec and the desecration of the history and philosophy of Internet vendor-independent standards that entails?
OK ok how's about annoying Ms and someone realising a nice Linux thats able to run IE6 in a protected environment - let everyone who insists that their company / government lives can't exist without IE6 get one with it - and dump the rest of the OS?
(Don't pre-install IE6 but enable the Linux to have IE6 installed should users choose to)
Just a light comment - its a slow day.
:D
This is a joke - it's for exactly this reason IE6 is still in use by such huge numbers of people. Now I'm going to have to check IE7 compatibility whether I want to or not because there's going to be a huge user base for it for at LEAST another decade.
Big hurrah to all the people who smugly said they've "got Firefox". Shouting about the fact you're running Firefox as if it's some indication that you're great seems a bit crap really - sort of thing I'd expect on Facebook, not a tech news site.
...for my M-Audio keyboard and soundcard which are perfectly good devices and only a few years old. I can get my soundcard working in Win7 with some XP 64 drivers but it's not perfect and I can get the keyboard working using a midi to usb cable (I just use the inbuilt usb connection to power the keyboard).
It's a bit silly how we have to change things that plug into the PC and work fine everytime we upgrade the OS.
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