Warp wrote:
> Tim Cook <z99### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>> The whole article is going on about 'well, ok, IE8 is a teeny bit faster 
>> loading pages than Firefox', then the last paragraph says "In practical, 
>> everyday use, you likely won't notice much of a difference between IE 8 and 
>> Firefox 3. Due to the fact that broadband connections are so commonplace 
>> today, and the fact that browsers in general can load pages faster than they 
>> could even a couple years ago, the page load time differences between the 
>> two are relatively moot."
> 
>> Basically, it grudgingly admits that IE8 is a little bit better in a 
>> particular aspect, then dismissing it as irrelevant, where with any other 
>> browser, any speed increase would be trumpeted as the greatest thing since 
>> sliced breat (especially if it were for a Mac).
> 
>   Seriously though, IMO speed is certainly not the main issue with web
> browsers. Security, stability and implementation of standards is. Whether
> the browser can display a huge page in 2 or 3 seconds is not all that
> relevant compared.
> 
>   IE has a very sad history in this regard. While maybe not the absolute
> first, it nevertheless basically defined the whole concept of insecure
> web browsing (in other words, simply going to a web page could get your
> computer infected with a trojan, virus, adware or other malware, without
> you even having to do anything special).
> 
>   Some argue that IE is not the only browser which has suffered from such
> security holes. However, the main issue that IE hasn't had one or two such
> issues. It has had a myriad of them during its 10+ year history. No year
> has gone by without at least a half dozen serious security flaws having
> been found (often after it has been too late). While other browser have
> not been completely free from security holes, their overall history has
> usually been much cleaner, with far, far fewer flaws, compared.
> 
>   The reason for this can arguably be said to be that other (modern)
> browsers were designed to be secure from the start, while IE was not.
> IE was never even designed to be secure, and security measures were only
> kludged afterwards on top of the old code. It has not been until very
> recently that MS redesigned IE from scratch to correct this. (And even
> then the end result has been somewhat dubious, with all the backwards
> compatibility with ActiveX and such crap, which is only begging for
> security holes, no matter how much you try to avoid them.)
> 
>   The other sad history of IE is that MS has never cared about established
> web standards and invented their own, as usual. Also some design principles
> in IE have in the past made very hard to make complex web pages which are
> fully compatible with IE and other more standard-compliant browsers at the
> same time. (It's not like Netscape is completely innocent of this either,
> but at least Netscape is practically dead, while IE isn't.)
> 
>   Also IE became really infamous for dragging behind in implementing the
> latest standards for years and years, leaving their "customers" with little
> to no support for them. This seriously hurt the advances in web technologies
> for many years.
> 
>   Again, it hasn't been but very recently that MS has swallowed its pride
> and actually started to try to implement all the standards that other
> browsers have implemented for over half decade. And this was only because
> other browsers started to get scaringly popular.
> 
>   It's no wonder that many people feel that this is "too little, too late".
> IE has already get a bad reputation of being insecure and lacking in
> standard-compliance. A new-and-better version is not going to clean this
> reputation overnight. IE loading a page in 2 seconds while Firefox loads
> it in 3 is certainly not enough to clean its history and reputation.
> 
>   Thus "the page load time differences between the two are relatively moot"
> is spot-on. It's really not an issue of speed. It's an issue of trust.
> 

And, of course, one key issue here is that, since IE, even 8, is tied 
into the OS on some level, and even basic stuff like their folder 
browsing uses it, there hasn't been a version of it *ever*, even now in 
XP, Vista, or 7, where something crashing IE doesn't at least "risk" 
rendering the OS itself unstable. Yes, its gotten better. And, here is 
the joke. Something like the Eee PC uses Firefox, or something, as its 
"desktop" as the default. Crash Firefox and... it doesn't take down the 
OS. The only serious problem I had with it was with the 4GB setup, 
installing patches, then having no room to write back the "settings". 
I.e., it mangled them during shut down, so wouldn't boot again, without 
fixing it. Not a problem with the browser, just not enough space for the 
configuration to be saved.

Yeah, winning in this situation is going to require that they prove they 
are willing to strive to produce the best, not just the *most used*, and 
give a frack about the standards. Their entire reaction so far has been, 
"Lets catch up, so we are most used again.", but its hardly clear they 
have otherwise even attempted to reform.

-- 
void main () {

     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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