Why you browse the web with IE

Why you browse the web with IE and why as developers and users of web applications (services) we should care.

<Part 1 : The Past>

I bet even the majority of you cool open source people out there still surf the web with Microsoft's Internet Explorer, 95% of the world do. I bet there are those among our ranks who get annoyed at making their web application/ service work in Netscape/ Mozilla. I bet some of you don't even bother.

I bet some of you would even go so far as to agree with this statement:


Well comrades it is time we read this article: Browser wars: High price, huge rewards and get a little more educated as to why we browse the internet with IE.

That is right M$ got worried about Netscape taking over the desktop and decided to kill them off (they're words). Here's how they managed to go from a 2.9% market share in 1995 to a 95.9% share in 2003, facts ::

• Gave the software away for free to Internet service providers and computer makers.
• Offered to pay whatever ISPs owed to Netscape if they agreed to switch from its rival.
• Paid America Online to convert subscribers to software using Internet Explorer technology.
• Provided co-marketing funds and lowered Windows pricing to PC makers that agreed to promote Internet Explorer.
• Labeled Internet Explorer an integral part of the Windows operating system, thereby prohibiting computer manufacturers from modifying or deleting it.

M$ was found guilty : "Microsoft is a monopolist and engaged in massive anti-competitive practices that harmed innovation and limited consumer choice.", although I don't believe anything has been done about this and we're all still using IE right?.

Now why do I care you say, finishing your coffee and latest site / service, I'm just trying to earn a living, everyone uses IE that is not my fault, don't pull the old open source morals M$ is evil crap stuff just get off my case.

Why should you care :: stay tuned

<Part II: Why we should care: The Future>

Why I think we should care :

While IE has remained pretty constant for the last years (even with the 1000 developers who worked/work on it), not solving any of the problems we the developers have, something else has been happening. In 1998 Netscape made their browser free also, and took the revolutionary step of releasing their source code, starting the Open Source project Mozilla. The core engine behind both Netscape and Mozilla is Gecko. Gecko renders XUL, CSS, RDF and JavaScript DOM into a real GUI interface based on open standards. Aside from Mozilla and Netscape there are many other projects and products using Gecko such as the IDE Komodo. Now I know some of you think its a toy but if there are browsers, IDEs, a Mail Client, an Instant Messenger and more built on a platform and they work effectively (embedded /endorsed by such names as IBM, Silicon Graphics, AOL, HP/Compaq, Nokia, Redhat, Sun) I think you can hardly say its a toy, but rather a full blown application development platform.

Okay Z thanks for the Gecko/XUL rant, and the M$ is Evil rant but I still don't give a smeg (and man you've gotten altruistic for someone who has been quiet for a while round here -- although that is another story ).

Well here is why we should care, if M$ hadn't broken the law and destroyed Netscape we would all be able to develop real applications in the browser with Gecko, and I don't mean the document-centric web we have now, I mean rich application interfaces, the kind you could build with Delphi, or C++ or even VB at the drop of a hat. What else could we be able to do, well after just a little digging here is some stuff that I think you just might be interested in ::

Better User Experience :: Real Application Platform

(1) Easily be able to send data backwards and forward without reloading / requerying the entire webpage or interface making for a far more enjoyable user experience, also allows real-time data exchange.

(2) Easily build interfaces with ready widgets you've always wanted (menubar, scrollbar, progress meter, tabs, panels, scrolling menus, etc.)

(3) Easy to define behaviour, for example hotkeys (with <ketset> tag) and drag and drop saves event handling code

(4) Multiple ways of starting the web application (start from command line/ short-cut and run application-specific browser window or from URL)

(5) Provides secure method to save data and applications locally (as part of web application / service)

(6) Easy to customise for users / skin (use CSS)

Architecture

(7) Perfect way to abstract entire user interface to implementation independent definition language (XML-based)

(8) Implements the model-view-controller architecture, abstracting data/ content from interface, storing data in compliant RDF format. Also provides method for binding data to interface definition and behavior (XBL)

Open approach and Browser Customisation

(9) Built on open standards, W3C compliant (XML, DOM, CSS and RDF, includes DTD for XUL), XBL (XML binding language) has been submitted to W3C.

(10) XUL and Mozilla work entirely open to the developer, and Mozilla itself is also written with XUL. This makes the integration of custom applications into the browser easy (adding custom tabs to the sidebar, treemenu for bookmarks) and allows the developer to use the actual Mozilla interface components themselves. It makes Mozilla completely customisable and not only this but Gecko can be embedded into other applications (like Komodo).

(11) True Cross-platform implementation, runs on Nix, Mac and Windows and potentially device independent (Phonex project aims to slim coore code down)

Developer Support

(12) Mozilla comes with a DOM inspector, JS debugger and HTML Editor (Composer) that has an API and can be integrated into web applications.

What else? With Gecko you can connect directly to a database, you can handle XML excellently (without a MSXML plug-in) including XSLT, SVG, MathML, handle user authorisation /authentication (can you say security), and so on (check out Mozilla Projects for more). How can you get started with Mozilla: check out the resources listed here.

If you look into it Gecko / Mozilla solves all the problems that Client-Side Java and .NET are trying to solve. I believe .NET to be light years away (Gecko has years of break-in) and Java was killed (by M$ incidentally removing the java plug-in from their IE distribution) .... But then business is all about distribution isn't it, so let's hope we don't end up .NET developers

So now are you angry or at least a little annoyed? If not I think you should give up web applications and just do web design and simple content management

So next time a client asks for something that falls into Moz (1 - 12) but that you could never do in a million years in IE consider asking them the question: "Do you care which browser it runs in?". Tell your client that installing Mozilla is installing a application platform from which you can build them all kinds of great applications on, rather than just a browser.

Here a list of Business Reasons I thought of :

• Faster Development of User Interface means reduced cost
• Greater flexibility in interface makes it easier to modify to meet changing user requirements leading to reduced maintenance costs for UI
• Interface is easily customisable to personalise user experience.
• Better interface: more efficient (eg no unnecessarily page reloading) to enhance user experience
• Universal Accessibility, platform and potentially device independent

Just to add a note about M$ future strategy check out Microsoft limits XML in Office 2003. Yes, lovely isn't it, office 2003 will support XML, but only internally (meaning you can't get at the schema) effectively meaning it might as well just stay as .doc (although I guess they might actually be able to reduce the file sizes ... lol). What do I suggest? You guessed try using Open Office: its good, its free and it using native XML format (Excel, Powerpoint and Word). Do you think .NET might be able to hook into this format ... what are the odds ?

I honestly believe that as open source developers it is our duty to download Mozilla and Open Office, use them and advocate for them. Why?

Because otherwise we will be developing boring old document-centric applications and hacking cross browser javascript late into the night for the rest of our lives. And remember that that javascript isn't even standards compliant (or cross-platform), and the web market is far from being a free-market. Consider quotes from Guerrilla browsers continue the battle (note that I haven't looked at KHTML and Konqueror yet):





A little food for thought

Z.

I use IE cos its fast, stable and manages to correct most peoples shockingly bad HTML.

Oh and cos its associated with my html files..

I used the others, but honestly prefer IE.

/me waits for a complete open source style ripping

Mozilla will load just as fast as IE if you let it stay in the system tray.

And the popup blocker is a nice extra

Because I am currently protesting the theft of the Firebird name by Mozilla. Morally and legally wrong - damaging to the open source community. It's a shame that such a good product (Mozilla) is being run by a group of developers that don't know left from right and right from wrong and who have no moral values.

Pardon my conservative view, but I'm quite in favour of the document orientation. There are of course tasks which require real-time action and they cannot be implemented for the WWW without ugly hacks. But imho it would be better to define (and use) a new protocol for them rather than change what already exists.

I don't really see how all the fancy widgets are cross-platform. Some of them are already hard to display without graphics.

Btw, I don't use IE

It isn't so much a this browser versus that browser thread, I mean I would have mentioned tabs if it were But it is for those who have wanted to build a better user interface for their application and have had their hands tied .. also I never meant to say that *all* you guys surf with IE just general talking about the 95% who do ...

Are you guys telling me you've never watched a web application reload the entire page with every click and gone man why am I waiting?

-- nowhereman

Well it depends on what you want to do. If you want do read documents and publish them no problem, if you want to build an application with a more complex UI then a document-centric render engine isn't cool

I'm not sure what you're getting at about protocols, HTTP is still the protocol for communication, and I believe the new protocol will be webdav (where required). The UI gets sent via this protocol. Moz *has* defined a new defintion language for interfaces (rather than change what already exists) that is the point

I haven't tested the "fancy widgets" but some of those are in the xForms HTML 2.0 specification, so I guess W3C think they may be useful (note there is a member of the XUL team on this commitee)

-- jpenn

I didn't know about firebrand. The technology is still very interesting. I always think it is a shame when OS fights against itself, ... is it not like IE has 95% or the market or anything....

Z.

hmm perhaps that wasn't clear enough ::

The protocol (via which we send information) is not related to how the render engine performs at the other end, IHMO. Did I misunderstand ??

Well I use Mozilla and find that it renders pages quite nicely, even with crap HTML. I also like the fact that programs like Prefsbar are available.

Its good to be able to visit a site where someone has used bright yellow background and pink text and then turn off colours and reload the page. That way you can read what is on the site, very nice. Also things like 'Kill Flash' button, turn off Java (good for when people use crappy image effects applets), turn off fonts, etc.

The popup blocker in Mozilla is also very good, its getting better with each release. Being able to specify sites that are excluded is really handy. The image blocker is a new addition that works very well, right click on some pr0n banner or one offering to enlarge your manhood and block the images from that server. Don't see the banner ad again!

Also tools like DynamicLinks. Being able to press ctrl and click on a web address that isn't a link. Do this on a normal word and it then allows you to search the web via Google for that term.

Just thought i would post links to Mozilla add'ons I wrote about in my last post

Dynamic Links: http://dynamiclinks.mozdev.org
Prefs Bar: http://www.xulplanet.com

i only use mozilla,
more flexible and customize than ie,

this are some of the things like with mozilla; tabs, pop-up blocker, able to view source from a selected area,

and with all the addons you can get on it,
there is no way that i will use ie,

in addition to the prefs bar that a.koepke mention, i use these

mouse gestures:http://optimoz.mozdev.org/
tab extension : http://white.sakura.ne.jp/~piro/xul...ensions.html.en

Didn't know about the tab project. I did know about mouse gestures and have just decided to download and install it. Playing around with it atm, quite nice

Reminds me of using a Palm Pilot