We are going to bring the XML/RSS easy-subscribe feature to a new, wider group who isn’t demanding it yet, with no planned course of action for the people who are currently using it and came to rely upon it. Furthermore, we will leave them with no official way to reproduce the behavior which has been present now in our brower for years.

In short, when the Mozilla team mankes a decison, it’s final, and it appears that they are looking to expand their userbase, even at the expense of the most dedicated users now. So if you choose to have the search engine of your website return RSS for external apps but styled XML for a browser, turns out — you can’t.

It’s been days since I posted on this site about this; the goal was to make sure my new post was not overly dramatic. But here goes: I am now going to be suggesting that Windows users I support use IE7.

Why? Because IE7 is a nice upgrade. It supports most of the features that I think are necessary in a browser. Most people will never use AdBlock or any extensions at all, so that who construct is a non-starter. And it’s much more secure. Firefox, however, has notable memory leaks. IE7 uses far less memory when open for a long period. This is a FIREFOX issue, as you can see, Camino doesn’t have the same problems:

Firefox, open for ~8 hours

Camino, open for ~38 hours

Lastly, the IE team has done an AMAZING job at responding to their users. I’ve watched the IE blog, and I am really impressed with the level of communication and immersion the devs have. They are patient and appear to take an interested in their users.

The Firefox team, while mostly even tempered and polite, has pretty much given me the push off by suggesting that they know better than I do about how RSS is used in the real world, and therefore, decided that my website should work the way that /they/ want. In fact, they are SO sure of themselves, they won’t even provide me — the webmaster — a way to do what I used to do, even with extra steps. No, consistency is key – my wishes are second to a consistent web experience for someone who is new to the web (and likely won’t even know the term “RSS” until about 2009). Furthermore, the leader of the project himself, Asa Dotzler, posted a “slam” against me in the Firefox newsgroup that perfectly illustrates the point – the developers are missing the idea completely.

They are so focused on catering to the end user that they have decided that that the tech-savvy people, people who made Firefox successful in the first place, are no longer important. So unimportant that when they complain that the browser has changed its behaviors and things no longer work as they have for years, their only responses are “we aim for consistency and ease of use for the end user.”

If Firefox devs can *decide* one day that the trends of use are different than current use or even different than intended when a standard was written, and will make decisions that change the ways the browser behaves with very little notice or upgrade path, how can we invest ourselves in them by using the browser full time? Knowing they could pull the rug out from under us?

To address those who say that IE7 does the same thing, I have two responses:

1. IE /adds/ functionality to RSS. It’s less insulting when I can do things manipulate the data I couldn’t do before. It’s not my preference, but it’s at least a decent response.
2. Much more importantly, IE7 *IS* an aggregator. It will save posts, mark them read, allow you to filter them, track multiple feeds, etc. IE7 is a full feature RSS reader, and a full featured RSS reader can remove style. Firefox just wants to style a feed its own way.

So, am I blowing off Firefox completely? I’m not sure. No doubt I am invested in FF, from both a data standpoint (all my cookies, usernames, passwords, etc) , but also from a user standpoint. I’ve been using it for over 5 years, and it’s home to me. But it certainly looks like the day of switching (probably to Opera) is coming soon.

But I am realist. The fact is, most large networks run Windows clients, and they ALL (save those few Windows 3.1x networks and the ancient, barely network-able Windows 95 clients) have IE on them. I’m willing to bet that a VERY VERY VERY small percentage have something older than IE5.5 on them, because browsing the web with IE pre-5.5 gives you such a reduced experience it’s just not feasible that a capable network admin wouldn’t have upgraded. These machines, today at least, are doomed to run IE6 until EOL. No newer core browser will run on them, and other browsers are just that – browsers. Since Win98, the browser is joined to the file manager, so they WILL run IE, even as a backend engine to hosts of products, from the help viewer to many management tools.

Now, ALL networks running Windows XP are running IE6 and, if genuine, are capable of running IE7 (after installing SP2). And everyone knows that IE6 is still a piece of crap. There are a LOT of reasons that IE7 is better than IE6. So, given that you have clients that are running IE6 anyway, why would you NOT want them running IE7? The vast majority of websites are 100% compatible with IE6, because I’ve read that unless you declare yourself XHTML strict, it reverts to the same quirks mode as IE6 anyway.

Those arguing that IE7 still sucks can piss off – it may, but that’s not the point. IE7 is still better than IE6, and I think it’s hard to argue otherwise. About the only worthwhile argument I’ve heard is “I’m waiting for it to mature,” which is valid if you’ve used Microsoft products. That said, I’ve been running it for over a month and I find IE7 to be much more stable and much easier to manage and use productive.

So – once again – not claiming IE is a godsend, just that it’s a very welcome improvement.

First, let’s take a peek at IE7’s often-underbilled featureset. First and foremost, IE7 has dramatically improved CSS support. No, it doesn’t pass the stupid ACID2 test, which is mostly pointless for the real world anyway, because as cool as it is, it doesn’t necessarily mean it works well on the internet, just that it fails and degrades properly. ACID2 is a discussion for another time. In the meantime, IE7 supports a lot of CSS2, even if it’s still lacking, it’s still a major improvement. You can view a list from a few months ago that includes a list of the popular bugs that have been quashed.

Secondly, and this is HUGE for me and anyone who uses Web 2.0 sites – IE7 has a native javascript XMLHttpRequest object. That means no more instanciating an ActiveX control to do AJAX programming. Now, as great as this is, a competent developer will need to write those ActiveX bits in for some time to support all the legacy browsers, and they will be around for a LONG time, since IE7 requires XPSP2, which means no non-genuine (aka “pirated”) XP machines can run it, nor can Windows 2000 machines, nor can Windows 9x/Me. So you don’t ditch your try {…} catch (e) {…} catch (E) {…} code just yet. But IE7 can run AJAX natively.

Of course there’s PNG alpha support. So instead of having to use GIFs or funky javascript to make IE display .PNG files with transparency, IE7 can view them just fine. This was a huge problem – GIF files were, until recently, tied up with patents, not to mention shitty quality, and JPG files don’t support transparency, which made web developers’ lives tough. So this is a very very welcome and long overdue feature. But mostly welcome.

Tabbed browsing is not really innovative, and it’s certainly not new (I’ve been on tabs for about 5 years now), but it’s nice to FINALLY see it in IE proper. I really hope it doesn’t confuse users. There’s simply no denying that tabbed browsing makes a user significantly more productive. Same goes for built-in search. Great news for IE users, nothing new for Firefox, Camino, Safari, and Opera users.

The printing subsystem has been rewritten, and finally finally finally when you print a webpage from IE it won’t wrap the last 20 pixels over to a second page. As far as I’m concerned, this is one of the biggest boons of IE7, since at work, we have web apps on our intranet that require PDF reports just to fit onto one page. You can also drag the margins in print preview, which is just awesome. So this is great news.

The new phishing protection is also very cool. I don’t fall for these things, but someone, somewhere obviously does. I like that the browser will now warn you if things look suspicious. Unfortunately, since people are generally stupid, I think they will still fall for it some percentage of the time, even with warning. There are LOTS of other security improvements: better ActiveX warnings, cross-site scripting prevention, “protected mode,” a “clear my settings” area, and IE reset function, international domain name anti-spoofing, and better parental controls are just some of the many security improvements in IE7, which is good news for everyone.

The RSS mechanism built into IE7 is really cool, and frankly, makes the default Firefox stylesheet look cartoonish. It filters by category and lets you narrow your view by topic, by date, sort and reverse sort – it’s very cool, in fact, to be honest, it’s cooler than many web pages I visit. I can actually picture visiting the RSS feed of some sites rather than their obnoxious index counterparts. It’s the trends to have a built-in subscribe function now, so that is pretty standard, although, since FF2 is still in RC stage, it’s the first to market with the subscribe with a third-party feed reader (Safari and Opera use internal engines, FF uses “Live Bookmarks,” which, while cool, are pretty useless.)

Lastly, although I have not tested this, IE7 apparently has incredibly granular control via Group Policy. If you are a network administrator, it will be nice to be able to secure and control IE via a centralized console, and this is one of the largest reasons I don’t deploy Firefox system-wise. IE7 is suitable for our users for full time use and is a decent enough replacement for Firefox feature-wise.

Now, let’s not let Microsoft off the hook just yet. IE7 guys, you did your job and you did it well, but you’re not all the way there yet. First off, the UI, which is aimed at “increasing screen real estate” is just ugly. Yes, I know it mimics the Vista UI better and will fit in better there. However, the Vista UI also sucks, so that’s no excuse. Why is the refresh button on the right of the address bar, and for God’s sakes, why the hell is it pinned there!? Are you conceding that I shouldn’t be refresing except with F5? Or are you telling me it’s somehow better to drag my mouse across a 20″ monitor to that button than to keep it right next to the back button where it was – and has been – for the last 10+ years?

Next up – CSS. You’ve come a long way, baby. But you got a ways to go. You’re going back to the block, why NOT pass ACID2 and shut up the fanboys? You know who’s complaining about your browser not passing it? The people who design webpages and upgrade their parents’ and friends’ PCs. Please the influencers, I say. If they want ACID2, well, more compliance can’t be a bad thing. Also, how about supporting some CSS3 and get the ball rolling? Or the rest of the selectors? This convention doesn’t work in IE7 but does work in Firefox 1.5.x:

input[type$="button"]
input[type$="submit"]
input[type$="text"]

Why leave it to the open source guys – or worse – the Apple guys to ALWAYS burn you on supporting the newest technology. Why intentionally design your app so web developers always have to add hacks to their code to get IE to not behave like a retarded cat? Seriously, when you’re behind in the market, why release something that just matches it? CSS was one area you could’ve eclipsed the rest of the market. But ya fell short by going with “good enough.” That’s what it is – plenty good enough, but nothing to get us to write home about.

Lastly, one I cannot explain, that Mr. Holwerda noted, why is the toolbar beneath the address bar? Whose idea was that? FIRE THEM AT ONCE! It looks ridiculous, it doesn’t fit in with the UI of any system available for production use today, and even if it did fit in, it’s awkward.

Anyway, I’ve seen so much misinformation about IE7 I had to write this. I’m not an IE person, I will continue to use Firefox for the foreseeable future at work and Camino (also based on Gecko) at home – both unless something better comes along. IE7 is not that “better” thing, but it’s close, and it’s a HUGE improvement over IE6. Those who stand against it, in all likelihood, stand more against Microsoft than this browser, and that’s just lame, to be a bit informal. This browser is a step up and a valiant effort from a company whose innovation pipeline has been exhausted for some time.

I am recommending that my family and friends immediately upgrade – I’ve been on RC1 for close to a month and I’ve never regretted it. I have only found ONE website (um… this very site… firsttube.com) that has a CSS rendering problem, and it’s only the admin page, and I haven’t tried to fix it yet, but I think it’s because I tried to set it to XHTML strict. Every other site has worked without any problem whatsoever. If you run Windows, there’s no good reason not to upgrade right away, particularly when you can run IE6 in standalone mode anyway.

Now, I’m still a bit ticked about RSS. For some reason, the Firefox devs feel as though RSS is meant to be handled by a reader, so they have Firefox COMPLETELY IGNORE the <?xml stylesheet?> declaration. I filed a bug report, and it was promptly closed with WONTFIX, although they suggest it might make for interesting discussion – I’m still pissed about it. Why do they get to completely ignore a standard? Microsoft would be GRILLED if they treated users this way (and they do – IE7 also ignores xml stylesheets.)

Anyway, I’ll end up using FF2 probably, but at home I blew off Firefox for Camino, and I’m seriously thinking about moving to Opera at work. In the meantime, my user agent:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061010 Firefox/2.0

That said, I really do like IE7. I’m really happy with the layout. I really like the “mini-tab to open a tab” thing. Most people are unaware of how the printing engine of IE7 has changed, but it brings the welcome addition of scaling to page. In fact, the only thing that is simply KILLING me about IE7 is how the Refresh button is on the right side of the address bar, and apparently, unmovable.

Other than that, IE7 gets a big thumbs up from me. I just hope they don’t push it too soon.

I really do like the mini-tab new tab button. It’s useful. I also REALLY dig the default RSS stylesheet.

It has a ways to go with CSS still. firsttube.com – the admin portion – actually rendered better in IE6. Some of the javascript and style create some weird uninteded effects, such as dynamically displayed divs overlapping out of their container div.

Also, the refresh button KILLS me. It’s on the other side of the address bar, and as far as I can tell, can’t be moved. This is REALLY lame. I hate that.

I sold my Macbook Pro the other night to a fellow geek who wanted to tri-boot Windows, Linux, and the Mac OS. I gave him about a hour and a half tutorial, and he actually kept dropping to the terminal to run commands like a true geek. He was very happy, and has since told me about how happy he is with it.

In the meantime, I bought a new iMac: 20″ with the 256 video card. I’ll need to add some RAM, but in the meantime, it’s going to be awesome.