Microsoft wants to win over alternate browser users.

[G(ordon)-man]

You forgot Xbox!

 

[Tagaziel]

Valve should switch to Firefox in Steam.

IE is slooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow.

 

[Bad^Hat]

Or at the very least a version of IE with tabbed browsing.

Firefox and I have something of a symbiotic relationship. I like it just enough not to switch browsers, and it likes me just enough to not **** up so constantly that I'd not like it just enough to not want to switch browsers.

 

[jverne]

you guys are missing the point here. i for one welcome the new IE8, because it will mean more competition and more goodies for us, the consumers.

 

[Saturos]

-.-
3.0, 3.1, 98, Vista, MS Office 2003/2007 and of course Calculator!

Dare I say, it's because of an OS/office suite monopoly these products were successful and the lack of advertising on behalf of other OSs?
Microsoft needs some serious competition fast if Windows 9 and it's browser/office suite is going to be any good.

Vista's not bad, it's just nowhere near as good as it could be, and IE can never compete against the likes of the open-source community as long as a huge corporation like Microsoft owns all the development rights.
Microsoft tries to be a jack-of-all trades in every aspect of the hardware/software industry and as a result, they come up short on nearly just about everything they do tbh. Even the 360 hardware with it's proneness to constant failure. The dashboard, games, Live, means nothing it the damn thing keeps breaking.

EDIT> Oh yeah, MS calculator is the only other product/feature that's "great" and not just "good" other than XP. Sadly. Once support is dropped for XP for good, (first and third party) I'm going the Linux route.

DOUBLE EDIT> ...and Office 2003 wasn't too bad either, but that's it. Access sucks though. No respectable enterprise uses Access.

you guys are missing the point here. i for one welcome the new IE8, because it will mean more competition and more goodies for us, the consumers.

/agree

Without competition, FF would eventually start sucking too I suppose.

 

[PvtRyan]

You're ignorant Saturos. Microsoft has made a LOT of good products and technologies.

Windows? Great OS, no arguing about that. Is Linux better? Well Linux is a kernel and nothing more, so we'll have to compare Windows to a distro, but which one? Exactly the problem with Linux. No standards and you're often stuck with poorly supported shitty homebrew hobby projects with an interface clearly designed by a programmer, if it even comes with one, when you try to do perfectly normal stuff.

Office? Best office suite, at least I can't think of one that comes close to Office 2007. OpenOffice? Hah. Works well enough for most stuff, but Office is definitely superior.

Then there's things like Windows Server, SQL Server, Visual Studio, .NET framework, some cool .NET languages (C#, F#), DirectX as well as tons of cool research projects like Singularity.

 

[Diesel_Power]

Don't forget that Ubuntu is damn next to impossible to remove from your computer.

 

[G(ordon)-man]

And the Xbox. Only thing that has the potential to win Sony. And don't forget the line of mouses and keyboards and SideWinder gaming controllers and mouses. And Silverlight, Windows CE and Mobile, Direct3D, Movie Maker, Media Player and the whole Live family.

 

[Kadayi]

Chrome user here, but I honestly don't see the point in people bitching about MS all the time. Fact of the matter is, we wouldn't remotely be where we are on a number of technology fronts if it wasn't for MS. It's like bitching about the roof over your head.

For a start without MS, Gabe Newell as an early employee would never have made the millions in stock options he used as the Start up for Valve software. No Valve, no half life, no half life 2, no half life 2.net :dozey:

 

[Iced_Eagle]

People get way too excited for these Acid tests.

Yes, it is indeed a nice thing when a browser is so standards compliant that it can pass the tests. However, it's all about how the browser behaves in the real world at the end of the day. Bitch all you want about how hard it is for web developers, etc etc because there will always be something to bitch about. MS realized how big of a mistake they were making when they weren't following the standards, so they are correcting that.

However, it can't just be overnight they switch IE to be a completely standards compliant browser. Think of how much more that would **** up the web? MS has to take a slow and thought out process.

Browsers such as Safari, Opera and Chrome can rapidly iterate to achieve these standards tests, mostly because that they don't have to worry about compatibility. Yes, in a perfect world, no browser should ever have to worry about compatibility (just code for the standard and it should "just work"). We need to be realistic here though, and realize that's not what we have. IE is in fact moving towards standards compliance though. If you are a smart web developer, you realize this and will start coding your sites to take advantage of this. MS does have to carry all of the luggage of their past renderers and such, so that's why there isn't a rewrite of the rendering engine or anything going on.

Laugh at IE8 if you want for having a low score on Acid3, but honestly, for the people who use the browser, does it matter?

Oh, and also about that EU thing, right now it's only possible, and it will obviously only be for people in europe (the same case was brought up in the US in the 90's against MS by netscape and MS was found to be doing nothing wrong). If MS has to bundle another browser, I don't see that as a bad thing, however it is just added bloat into the OS. Many people will still stick with Internet Explorer though, as it's what they are familiar with.

 

[G(ordon)-man]

Hmm, you are maybe right. But still I think FF is superior to IE. Though there is one thing that can kill FF and that's building IE inside the Windows.

 

[Iced_Eagle]

Hmm, you are maybe right. But still I think FF is superior to IE. Though there is one thing that can kill FF and that's building IE inside the Windows.

That is totally false.

IE has been bundled with Windows before FireFox even came around, and look at how much it's grown! It will continue to be bundled, and if people like FF, they will keep using it. If some other people don't really care, they will use IE. The fact of the matter is that you will have to bundle some browser with Windows, no matter what. Obviously, IE is the first obvious choice as they can synchronize the product schedules and control it a bit more.

One thing I wish they did do though was in the Welcome Center when you start Windows for the first time, add a link to show alternative browsers.

Even with all of this though, in the end the consumer wins. FF, Chrome, Opera, Safari, etc will continue to improve and iterate so that they can dethrone the king of IE. IE on the other hand sees these guys' market share rising fast (especially FF) and now they are innovating and getting into gear so they don't fall behind. It's a win for us all around!

On that note, I would just like to say how awesome tab recovery is. I think Chrome has it (probably FF and Opera?). I just had a website cause a crash, and years ago, bam say goodbye to the browser, but now it only brought down the tab and then reloaded it for me. Sweeetttt.

 

[G(ordon)-man]

No, i mean like "really" inside. Having it everywhere, from search bars to folder bars.
Also FF has tab recovery.

 

[ríomhaire]

IE pisses me off because the "Remember me" button for this forum doesn't seem to work with it. But FF only works half the time on this college's network.