November 07, 2003 | View Comments (7) | Category: Our Thoughts
Summary: Not everyone will appreciate that you can run multiple versions of IE on your computer.
As many people undoubtedly know by now, Joe has found a way to run multiple versions of IE on one computer. Many designers the world over are probably seeing this as the most significant design find this year. It is definitely a great cause for celebration and cheering. However, I can think of at least 3 groups of people who are crying right now.
Many people are wondering why did it take a non-microsoft person to discover and release such a thing. If designers were going to use IE as their main browser, then they would undoubtedly upgrade to the latest and greatest anyways. However, since we are designers and developers we understand that not everyone is as cutting edge as we are so we have to keep in mind that our sites are being viewed in older browsers (IE 5.0, 5.5). We had no at-home option of being able to check our sites in these browsers besides the gut-wrenching thought of setting up multiple partitions or using more than one computer. Why keep these secrets Microsoft? Surely someone knew about this, but why wouldn't you want us to know?
Well I have a theory to the conspiracy. Remember the Department of Justice and the whole monopoly thing? Well supposedly IE was so intertwined into Windows that it could not be removed, right? Well eventually they released service packs to allow people to get rid of the monster. However, what if the government had known that IE could be installed as stand-alone packages? Microsoft certainly would have no justification for "bundling" the os and browser together. Just a thought.
These guys came up with the brilliant idea of offering a one-stop solution for all our browser checking needs. The main reason developers would want this was for IE 5.0 and 5.5 (maybe to check some Mac stuff also). I do not know how successful they are, but it would seem that they would be doing pretty well because there are just too many developers who would benefit from this. Now that it is possible to run multiple IE's, the poor browsercam guys will more than likely lose a significant portion of their business. That really sucks because it really is a brilliant idea that is very well executed.
Unfortunately, now we have no excuse not to see how our sites render in IE 5. I checked out 9rules and almost cried. Whitespace was a frickin nightmare. CSSVault was the same with the exception of the navigation. Great, now I got more work to do. No cheering from me.
All in all though, Joe has done the world a great service. Many thanks.
Trackback URL: http://9rules.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/47
Well I didn't really claim to know my facts and including the engine is totally different than saying you cannot remove the software which is something they were saying for a while. When it comes to IE I don't care how many versions I can run on my computer I wish the browser would die because it does not like to follow all of the rules I give it. It likes to have a mind of its own and I am tired of having to keep in mind that browser whenever I am creating a stylesheet. Sorry, I will stop my rant now...before I get carried away.
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)
Haha,
just was curious and browsed Whitespace with IE5.
Isn't it funny you talked about liquid vs. fixed layout two days ago??
;)))
Minz Meyer (http://www.minzweb.de)
Yeah, for anyone who doesn't know what Minz is talking about, in IE 5 whitespace fills the whole screen essentially leaving no whitespace.
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)
Sorry! I couldn't help it ;-)
[rant]
JC wrote "I'm pretty sure the mac has always let you have multiple versions of IE... trouble is, they all pretty much sucked."
I'm sure you're saying this based on your extensive use of various Mac browsers right? I hope so. Here's what Eric Meyer said about Mac/IE:
http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2003b.html#t20030614
Then again if you're using something based on PC IE, I guess things like standards aren't important to you. "[Mac IE 5's CSS1 support is] still better than IE6/Win's CSS1 support". Hey it might improve .. with Longhorn ..
This sentence sounds as silly as Mac users saying "the world's fastest personal computer" sound to you. Write about what you know.
[/rant]
For the record, Macs have no problems running multiple versions of programs. In fact that is how a lot of designers check their work in multiple browsers - a MacOS X machine running MacOS 9 and a bunch of different versions of Windows/Linux under emulation (VirtualPC). It was cheaper than multiple PCs, and faster than rebooting.
I don't know how much longer this will continue though, as Microsoft recently bought out VirtualPC, and it's presently incompatible with MacOS X 10.3. Its entirely possible the product might get killed if Microsoft sees it as competition (although considering it's still selling Windows licenses for them I think that would be silly).
peace - oli
PS out of curiosity, why not Mozilla/Firebird? Is CrazyBrowser's UI that much better?
oli (http://oli.boblet.net/)
Sorry to rain on your parade, Oli, but I use a mac, too. I know it's more fun when you can bash on mac haters, but I'm sure you'll live.
Extensive use of IE for Mac, no. Limited use of IE on Mac OSX and extensive listening to people complain about how IE for mac has always sucked and how people always have to use hacks to get it to work with CSS. I didn't say all mac BROWSERS sucked, just the versions of IE.
Quantify "a lot" if you feel the need. Most *designers* haven't a clue what linux IS. Developers, yes. Designers, no. And even among developers, most of them are using Windows and don't own macs, though the number of people who have both is increasing, partly because linux desktop is a pain in the ass to use compared to OSX and you get unix goodies either way (well, unix-ish goodies on linux since it's not real unix)
As for mozilla, it's too damned slow. Firebird is somewhat better, but I don't like the interface as much as crazy browser... particularly the opening and closing of tabs. Also, crazy browser is significantly faster than firebird, since it's just a shell on IE.
And as for standards... I'll spare Paul yet another rant on that particular topic and just say a couple of things. 1, there are a hell of a lot more 'standards' than tableless css+xhtml, which is what you're probably referring to. 2. IE works fine in just about every site ever made. 3. A "standard" set by a small group of people who create hundreds of useless "standards" a year, which isn't really implemented by any browser out there, though some do it better than others, isn't really a standard, it's a goal. Standard rather implies a significant degree of acceptance, and by those terms, IE 5.5/6 are the standard.
Now, that doesn't mean I don't like (some of) the web standards (that stupid compact privacy thing annoys me), but I'm not some standards fanatic who's going to jump down people's throats about how awful Internet Explorer is because it improperly implements a half dozen obscure bits of CSS and actually dares to attempt to render malformed xhtml.
The whole web standards advocacy thing was for most people a convenient tool to get people to stop using Netscape 4.7, since it wasn't even close. IE 6 is close enough that almost everything works the same way across browsers. The only reason paul is having problems is he's pushing the envelope a little farther than it should probably be pushed for another year or two for most people. But that's what makes him cool. :-)
JC (http://www.thelionsweb.com/weblog)
In my limited experience, the only reason Mac IE "sucked" was because the rendering engine was developed (semi-?)independently of the Windows version, which meant a list of new rendering quirks and thus more CSS hacks for designers to keep track of. The reason I put "sucked" in quotes is because the list was much smaller for Mac IE than for any other browsers at the time it came out, and because it extended support to many new CSS properties.
Back on the topic, I think Joe has made design history with his hack (can you call it that?). A real turning point, at least until Longhorn comes out.
Micah (http://msittig.blogspot.com/)
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#1
"IE was so intertwined into Windows that it could not be removed, right"
No supposedly about it. It *is* that way. All the 'removal' stuff does is remove the internet explorer executable, the shell of IE, not the actual underlying stuff. You can still open My Computer, type a URL into the address bar, and surf the web from it.
You're kinda confusing the facts here, Paul... The fact that IE can be installed as a standalone does not alter the fact that Windows requires the underlying engine of IE to run.
IMNSHO, combining the two was a damned good idea. Not because it killed netscape (and let's face it, netscape taking like 5 years to release a new version did nearly as much for killing netscape as Microsoft did; they only started it, Netscape finished it) but because it allowed for so many applications that can use the internal IE code so they each didn't have to roll their own minibrowser. And all those 'browsers' that are really just shells around IE with different functionality attached... like the one I'm using now, CrazyBrowser -- IE with tabs and popup blocking.
I could rant longer, but I'm already off-topic here... so I'll just say, hey, cool, I can do this at home.
Here at the office, we just have a different version of IE on each server... dev is 4, staging 5, intranet 5.5
I'm pretty sure the mac has always let you have multiple versions of IE... trouble is, they all pretty much sucked.
Ah well.
I'm sure you've seen it, but just in case, this is an interesting web resource:
http://www.thecounter.com/stats/
thecounter.com is one of the biggest providers of those little web page counters sites use... and they make their global stats available so you can get a decent view of what people across the internet are using. It looks like they stopped doing monthly reports in May, but if you change the URL to October, you can get May-October, for whatever interest that is.
The browser stats are interesting though predictable, but one thing that's really cool is the resolution and color depth info... you can see that 800x600 is king at 44%, *very* closely followed by 1024x768 at 42% and 640x480 is all the way down at 2% now; on color depth, 256 colors is at 3% and the various high and true color depths making up almost all the rest ('web safe' pallette go byebye in the hearse)
JC (http://www.thelionsweb.com/weblog)