Microsoft to fast-track new Internet Explorer?
Fri, Mar 4 2005
It seems like Microsoft's Internet Explorer has dominated the web browser market for so long that people have just come to accept all its faults as a normal part of browsing the Internet.
Even with the numerous security flaws in IE resulting in computers being overrun with viruses, adware, and spyware, Microsoft has become complacent in their market dominance and for the last couple of years has steadfastly refused to provide a major update to one of the most widely used pieces of software on the planet. Despite all the problems with the current version of Internet Explorer they have claimed they can't release an updated version yet because it's too tightly integrated into Windows itself, and they could only release the next version of Internet Explorer along with the next major Windows release. It was claimed that Internet Explorer couldn't be rewritten without also rewriting Windows.
But then along came Firefox, the free Open Source web browser that's proven to be faster, safer, and more powerful than IE, and it's in the process of rapidly taking over the browser market. People have started to realise there is a superior alternative to Internet Explorer, and with over 25 million users downloading Firefox in just the first 100 days of release Microsoft has had a painful reality check. As a result they have been rapidly reassessing their browser strategy, and in a complete reversal of their previous stance have announced that they will release a beta of the next generation Internet Explorer, IE7, in just a few months time - way ahead of the next version of Windows which they previously claimed it depended on.
Bill Gates announced at the recent RSA Conference in San Francisco that IE7 will be a major new version that focuses on security, addressing the primary concerns that many experts have with IE6. So far there have been no comments at all about adding new features in IE7 such as the pop-up blocking and "tabbed browsing" features that have become so popular with users of Firefox, Mozilla, Safari, and other modern browsers, or fixing the display problems that it has with many modern web pages. From the sounds of it IE7 will be pretty much the same as IE6 from a functional standpoint. Users may not see much difference at all, with all the touted changes taking place under the hood.
Which raises an interesting question for cynical people like myself: any software developer will tell you that if you want to be seen to be taking action it's trivial to generate a "new" release of an existing piece of software. Just increase the version number of your software, make some minor cosmetic changes, write a press release and ship it out. Voila, a "new" release. With Microsoft making noise that the changes in IE7 are going to be internal, it raises the obvious question: how will we know what they changed? Is IE7 really going to be a major rewrite that addresses all the existing security flaws but just happens to look almost the same as IE6? Or is it just an "oh my gosh, Firefox is killing us in the market, we've got to be seen to be doing something" reactive marketing exercise?
Only time will tell.