6 ms·

How the next version of IE, codenamed 'Spartan,' might support extensions

13 points by orand 12y ago

StavrosK 12y ago
Is IE at all relevant any more?
- allegory 12y ago
  Yes definitely. Outside the fickle world of consumer internet usage, tech media and devices/appliances (basically leaving businesses at all levels), it's #1 and shows no sign of slowing down. 99.5% of our web hits are IE7-11 (financial sector). The other 0.5% is our dev team's Firefox instances.
  - StavrosK 12y ago
    Oh wow, that's huge. That's too bad. Then again, I guess you only have to design for one browser.
    - allegory 12y ago
      I'm fine with it myself. We support IE9+ which isn't particularly painful (IE7 and before was). There was some interest in iOS devices around the iPad 2 era but that wore off when people couldn't use them for a lot of things. We still aim to be 100% cross browser with some functional limitations. The killer features for us are actually ActiveX and ClickOnce. The former allows us to do magical things like ripping documents from a drum scanner through our back end straight into S3 without deploying desktop software. The latter allows us to deploy transparent integrations with desktop applications i.e we can click a link in the web app and kick off a quoting engine on the desktop and broker to and from our web back end. We've been doing this before even Firefox and Chrome were on the scene! It's all rather wonderful.
  - r00fus 12y ago
    Would that be in part due to Citrix? I know of several cases where friends in that sector are forced to use Citrix and the only approved browser to access intranet sites in that setup is IE...
    - allegory 12y ago
      We have a couple of clients using Citrix. It's on the way out though as to be honest it's inflexible, knackers client performance and is of dubious value these days.
  - drstewart 12y ago
    >it's #1 and shows no sign of slowing down. I don't know if I would agree with that. http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-yearly-2010-2013 http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-yearly-2010-2013
    - allegory 12y ago
      Outside the fickle world of consumer internet usage, tech media and devices/appliances I think I was pretty clear and statcounter pretty much ONLY tracks the above.
- krapp 12y ago
  Is the browser that still ships by default with the most widely used operating system in the world relevant? Sorry to say, yes.
- kriswill 12y ago
  MS IE11 is a pretty decent browser. Has auto-updating, and supports many web standards correctly. It's not perfect, or even better than other browsers, but it's a beginning. Now we just need Microsoft to sunset everything before IE11, and save the web development world $Billions.
- IvyMike 12y ago
  They have the one killer feature that Enterprise loves more than any other: glacially slow change. Last I heard, IE8 lives until 2016, which is amazing (although not necessarily in a good way :)
- zghst 12y ago
  Is there a reason any other devs want it to be relevant?? On the consumer side, IE is great(ish) with low power usage, good font rendering, tie-in with other MS services, native features, etc. For developers, um no, I can attest to absolutely detesting IE in every way. Its web dev tools are slow and clunky, they are getting beat over the head in features by Chrome, Firefox and even Safari, IE11 just got prefetch and pre rendering, something the other browsers have had for years; IE looks like it will always be playing catch up. Good thing they put an auto updater in their browser, but has there been any significant upgrades to IE's feature set in the past year (implementing features over a time other than every year is important as well)? The worst part is that Microsoft always gives the previous version a reason to exist and be a pain. With Google and Firefox, the auto updater takes care of itself. With IE11, it has just gotten an auto updater and there's no telling if Microsoft will pull an IE10/Windows 8 and stop updating IE for Windows 8.1. Already I can envision in a year or two at work we'll have to support IE10 at the least, even though it should be dead. The fact that Microsoft skipped Windows 8 (which you cannot upgrade Windows 8.1 if you have the Enterprise or education edition) really burned me. At least Apple always updates its browser one version back if you don't decide to upgrade OS X.
  - dstorey 12y ago
    > IE11 just got prefetch and pre rendering, something the other browsers have had for years Actually, Safari still doesn’t support either, and Firefox doesn’t support prerender. See http://status.modern.ie/prerenderattribute?term=pre http://status.modern.ie/prerenderattribute?term=pre and http://status.modern.ie/prefetchattribute?term=pre http://status.modern.ie/prefetchattribute?term=pre The data from the links above is pulled in from Google‘s ChromeStatus site. Also IE is updated regularly now. Feature updates are often included in patch Tuesday updates, such as big upgrades to WebGL and WebDriver support. As features are implemented (see in development in the links above) they're evaluated to see if they will be included in IE11 updates.
- wfjackson 12y ago
  A browser used by 58% of web users is not relevant at all? Talk about living in a bubble.
- jamespcole2 12y ago
  Unfortunately yes, but one of our enterprise clients has just mandated Chrome only for all their internal apps(their new head of IT really gets it). Another one of our enterprise clients has just allowed all users to run Chrome and/or FF alongside IE. So while it is still around it is losing ground IMHO. The consumer market is a totally different game though, IE is being crushed in that market. I have made several consumer facing apps in recent years that do not support IE at all, users can still log in but a warning notice is shown informing them it is not tested in IE and they need to upgrade to a "standards compliant browser".
  - hactually 12y ago
    > one of our enterprise clients has just mandated Chrome only for all their internal apps(their new head of IT really gets it). I'm sorry but no, he doesn't get it. Mandating a browser is just another stupid policy - either write web apps or don't but claiming to get it when it's just another lock in is a silly move.
    - jamespcole2 12y ago
      fair point, when I say "really gets it" I mean this is a huge step forward in comparison to the vast majority of enterprise clients that mandate IE. He knows IE is broken and the extra money spent on supporting old versions of IE is better spent somewhere else. In enterprise environments where most users don't even have admin rights on their machines you need to pick at least one browser that you know will be deployed across all machines in the entire organisation. They chose Chrome(the right choice IMHO). Especially given that people are moving away from using windows choosing something cross platform is a must.
Argorak 12y ago
Cortana, Spartan, are they lifting all their project names from Halo these days?
mundizzle 12y ago
the only thing i care about for the next version of IE is progress on this list... http://status.modern.ie/?iestatuses=notplanned,underconsideration&browserstatuses=notsupported,indevelopment,implemented&browsers=chrome,firefox,opera,safari&ieversion=11 http://status.modern.ie/?iestatuses=notplanned,underconsider...
- dstorey 12y ago
  You’ll be pleased to know that we just updated it yesterday. A good chunk of ES6 is now under development. See the IE blog for further info: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2014/09/18/updates-to-our-platform-roadmap.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2014/09/18/updates-to-our...
ethana 12y ago
I remember the IE panel of this year /BUILD, they said they were considering adopting Webkit for future IE. Even if that wasn't true, time had really changed.
kevinkimball 12y ago
poorly?
stanziak 12y ago
Extensions would be great, way better than the clunky dll addon system. I really think they eventually have to rebrand (and I hope they do) IE because of the notoriety it has gotten. Like something on the lines of Cortana.... that would be wonderful.
zghst 12y ago
If IE gets rebranded, I hope they change their dev strategy or at least open source Trident. I can't stand waiting around for Microsoft to implement/fix something. If Microsoft could open up its engine, IE would become the most progressive browser in the world. I for one would love to dig into Trident and get my hands dirty.
jamespcole2 12y ago
Not to be overly negative but if I had to guess the extensions system will be hobbled and sub-par. This is just based on my years of experience with IE and other MS products. If it had an extension that could give me the hours of my life back that I have spent trying to support their awful browsers that would be great though.

13 points by orand 12y ago

StavrosK 12y ago

Is IE at all relevant any more?

allegory 12y ago
Yes definitely. Outside the fickle world of consumer internet usage, tech media and devices/appliances (basically leaving businesses at all levels), it's #1 and shows no sign of slowing down. 99.5% of our web hits are IE7-11 (financial sector). The other 0.5% is our dev team's Firefox instances.
- StavrosK 12y ago
  Oh wow, that's huge. That's too bad. Then again, I guess you only have to design for one browser.
  - allegory 12y ago
    I'm fine with it myself. We support IE9+ which isn't particularly painful (IE7 and before was). There was some interest in iOS devices around the iPad 2 era but that wore off when people couldn't use them for a lot of things. We still aim to be 100% cross browser with some functional limitations. The killer features for us are actually ActiveX and ClickOnce. The former allows us to do magical things like ripping documents from a drum scanner through our back end straight into S3 without deploying desktop software. The latter allows us to deploy transparent integrations with desktop applications i.e we can click a link in the web app and kick off a quoting engine on the desktop and broker to and from our web back end. We've been doing this before even Firefox and Chrome were on the scene! It's all rather wonderful.
- r00fus 12y ago
  Would that be in part due to Citrix? I know of several cases where friends in that sector are forced to use Citrix and the only approved browser to access intranet sites in that setup is IE...
  - allegory 12y ago
    We have a couple of clients using Citrix. It's on the way out though as to be honest it's inflexible, knackers client performance and is of dubious value these days.
- drstewart 12y ago
  >it's #1 and shows no sign of slowing down. I don't know if I would agree with that. http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-yearly-2010-2013 http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-yearly-2010-2013
  - allegory 12y ago
    Outside the fickle world of consumer internet usage, tech media and devices/appliances I think I was pretty clear and statcounter pretty much ONLY tracks the above.
krapp 12y ago
Is the browser that still ships by default with the most widely used operating system in the world relevant? Sorry to say, yes.
kriswill 12y ago
MS IE11 is a pretty decent browser. Has auto-updating, and supports many web standards correctly. It's not perfect, or even better than other browsers, but it's a beginning. Now we just need Microsoft to sunset everything before IE11, and save the web development world $Billions.
IvyMike 12y ago
They have the one killer feature that Enterprise loves more than any other: glacially slow change. Last I heard, IE8 lives until 2016, which is amazing (although not necessarily in a good way :)
zghst 12y ago
Is there a reason any other devs want it to be relevant?? On the consumer side, IE is great(ish) with low power usage, good font rendering, tie-in with other MS services, native features, etc. For developers, um no, I can attest to absolutely detesting IE in every way. Its web dev tools are slow and clunky, they are getting beat over the head in features by Chrome, Firefox and even Safari, IE11 just got prefetch and pre rendering, something the other browsers have had for years; IE looks like it will always be playing catch up. Good thing they put an auto updater in their browser, but has there been any significant upgrades to IE's feature set in the past year (implementing features over a time other than every year is important as well)? The worst part is that Microsoft always gives the previous version a reason to exist and be a pain. With Google and Firefox, the auto updater takes care of itself. With IE11, it has just gotten an auto updater and there's no telling if Microsoft will pull an IE10/Windows 8 and stop updating IE for Windows 8.1. Already I can envision in a year or two at work we'll have to support IE10 at the least, even though it should be dead. The fact that Microsoft skipped Windows 8 (which you cannot upgrade Windows 8.1 if you have the Enterprise or education edition) really burned me. At least Apple always updates its browser one version back if you don't decide to upgrade OS X.
- dstorey 12y ago
  > IE11 just got prefetch and pre rendering, something the other browsers have had for years Actually, Safari still doesn’t support either, and Firefox doesn’t support prerender. See http://status.modern.ie/prerenderattribute?term=pre http://status.modern.ie/prerenderattribute?term=pre and http://status.modern.ie/prefetchattribute?term=pre http://status.modern.ie/prefetchattribute?term=pre The data from the links above is pulled in from Google‘s ChromeStatus site. Also IE is updated regularly now. Feature updates are often included in patch Tuesday updates, such as big upgrades to WebGL and WebDriver support. As features are implemented (see in development in the links above) they're evaluated to see if they will be included in IE11 updates.
wfjackson 12y ago
A browser used by 58% of web users is not relevant at all? Talk about living in a bubble.
jamespcole2 12y ago
Unfortunately yes, but one of our enterprise clients has just mandated Chrome only for all their internal apps(their new head of IT really gets it). Another one of our enterprise clients has just allowed all users to run Chrome and/or FF alongside IE. So while it is still around it is losing ground IMHO. The consumer market is a totally different game though, IE is being crushed in that market. I have made several consumer facing apps in recent years that do not support IE at all, users can still log in but a warning notice is shown informing them it is not tested in IE and they need to upgrade to a "standards compliant browser".
- hactually 12y ago
  > one of our enterprise clients has just mandated Chrome only for all their internal apps(their new head of IT really gets it). I'm sorry but no, he doesn't get it. Mandating a browser is just another stupid policy - either write web apps or don't but claiming to get it when it's just another lock in is a silly move.
  - jamespcole2 12y ago
    fair point, when I say "really gets it" I mean this is a huge step forward in comparison to the vast majority of enterprise clients that mandate IE. He knows IE is broken and the extra money spent on supporting old versions of IE is better spent somewhere else. In enterprise environments where most users don't even have admin rights on their machines you need to pick at least one browser that you know will be deployed across all machines in the entire organisation. They chose Chrome(the right choice IMHO). Especially given that people are moving away from using windows choosing something cross platform is a must.

Argorak 12y ago

Cortana, Spartan, are they lifting all their project names from Halo these days?

mundizzle 12y ago

the only thing i care about for the next version of IE is progress on this list... http://status.modern.ie/?iestatuses=notplanned,underconsideration&browserstatuses=notsupported,indevelopment,implemented&browsers=chrome,firefox,opera,safari&ieversion=11 http://status.modern.ie/?iestatuses=notplanned,underconsider...

dstorey 12y ago
You’ll be pleased to know that we just updated it yesterday. A good chunk of ES6 is now under development. See the IE blog for further info: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2014/09/18/updates-to-our-platform-roadmap.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2014/09/18/updates-to-our...

ethana 12y ago

I remember the IE panel of this year /BUILD, they said they were considering adopting Webkit for future IE. Even if that wasn't true, time had really changed.

kevinkimball 12y ago

poorly?

stanziak 12y ago

Extensions would be great, way better than the clunky dll addon system. I really think they eventually have to rebrand (and I hope they do) IE because of the notoriety it has gotten. Like something on the lines of Cortana.... that would be wonderful.

zghst 12y ago

If IE gets rebranded, I hope they change their dev strategy or at least open source Trident. I can't stand waiting around for Microsoft to implement/fix something. If Microsoft could open up its engine, IE would become the most progressive browser in the world. I for one would love to dig into Trident and get my hands dirty.

jamespcole2 12y ago

Not to be overly negative but if I had to guess the extensions system will be hobbled and sub-par. This is just based on my years of experience with IE and other MS products. If it had an extension that could give me the hours of my life back that I have spent trying to support their awful browsers that would be great though.