Is Microsoft warming up to alternative browsers?

[Doom9]

Obviously, the answer is "no way", but recently they revamped the member session of the Microsoft developer network, and the software archive, which previously was almost unusable (tree fully expanded, no way to enlarge the frame containing the tree), is now finally usable in Firefox.

[_SoLaRiS_]

I guess 'they' - Microsoft, will have to realise that the world's community of p.C. users will use what ever software they feel fit. If BG and his empire want their operating system to remain dominant then flexibility will be a necessity not a choice. Its no longer a DOS or windows 3.1 world!

[Neo Neko]

MSDN is for developers. That is one group Microsoft has to cater to. Developers are generally smart and intelligent. So they generally use the best tool for the job. When it comes to browsing web pages IE is not that tool. But when it comes to writing apps specifically for Windows visual studio is. As a result Microsoft gets alot of whining geeks saying fix yer stuff! If there had been a viable alternative Microsoft would have lost them altoghether. But MS lucked out in this case.

Now OTOH when it comes to users most of em are dumb as a post. Microsoft feels free to screw them over something awfull. Look for improved standards support in most Microsoft user software the day hell freezes over. :P

[Inventive Software]

Agreed. On the screwing over issue, Microsoft has been doing it for yonks, they're never gonna stop doing it, because they want the world to use their products. Case in point with Visual Studio, it is the best out there, but there are many alternatives to most of their software that are free, open source (added bonus) and so much better than the tat Microsoft produces.

[Neo Neko]

I don't know about Visual Studio being the best there is. The best is simply what works best for you. I have used evrything from DOS EDIT and emacs/vi to Borland's IDE and MS Visual Studio. I don't deny that Visual Studio is good. (although I have encountered several people liking it less since Microsoft bought it from it's original authors) For my tastes thoug it is most times to platform specific, expensive, and bloated for my needs.

Case in point. I am currently teaching myself Mono. Or .NET for all the softies. ;) Though I considder Mono to be what .NET should have been. And .NET to be quite a let down. But that is neither here nor there. At any rate writing GTK# or GLADE# programs in Visual Studio can be done. But I have found Eclipse or #-develop/mono-develop to lend themselves better in all areas for me. I am quite getting the hang of it with #/mono-develop and using Ndoc for XML doccumentation. ;) Nothing better than coding in apps that run the same on all my systems to write software that runs the same on all my systems. ;)

[Inventive Software]

Good luck! Maybe you'll have more luck than I did learning C. :D

Microsoft has a dominant hold on the operating system market. The software coding industry is about 90% Windows oriented. Because Microsoft are the dominant force it makes sense to code specific for them. Their C and C++ compilers are pretty good, as they work in partnership with Intel. Hence why many people buy Visual C++ et al. But they try to force out other compilers (GCC and Borland) by making compiler-specific objects.

Another case in point. The tabbed browser interface that Firefox revolutionised has been around for as long as people can code in Visual Basic. Remembering back to the days when we made a browser based on the Internet Explorer kernel, just with a different shell, it wasn't difficult to put tabs for the windows that opened. It was difficult getting rid of the numerous bugs that appeared out of nowhere mind. It is therefore surprising that nobody twigged at Microsoft to do this instead of cramming the taskbar with Internet explorer windows everytime somebody clicked a link.

[Neo Neko]

Good luck! Maybe you'll have more luck than I did learning C. :D

Yeah I never got far with C and C++. Oh I understood the language quite well. It was the interfacing with/writing DLLs and shared objects to do higher level things without starting from scratch that got me frustrated. C# has been better in that respect. Much of the same syntax as C/++ but easier library writing and loading with namespaces etc. Like Java which I also like, but better in a few respects.

Microsoft has a dominant hold on the operating system market. The software coding industry is about 90% Windows oriented. Because Microsoft are the dominant force it makes sense to code specific for them.

Microsoft kinda shot themselves in the foot with this .NET initiative though. They set out to make a good portable aplication systems that can be used on all their platforms. And they try very hard to tie it to their platforms. The problem is....it's portable. And not only that. It's actually a license free open standard for the most part. So all their attempts to tie it to their platform are only speed bumps. Much of the code for the platform specific parts may be pattented/copyrighted but that will not stop others from finding other ways to do similar things and interoperate. In the end Microsoft may still controll 90% of the market. But that begins to mean less when the ability to reach the other 10% at the same time is as trivial as using portable GUI toolkits like GTK# or QT#. Mature, crossplatform, and most of all stable GUI tool kits. You would have to be stupid to just code for Microsoft in light of that fact if you want maximum penetration for your product. Why? When it would be so easy for everyone to run your product. ;)

Their C and C++ compilers are pretty good, as they work in partnership with Intel. Hence why many people buy Visual C++ et al. But they try to force out other compilers (GCC and Borland) by making compiler-specific objects.

Compiler specific objects asside GCC generally outperforms the Visual C compiler from what I understand. I think you meant the Intel C compiler that has good Visual Studio integration but is not written by Microsoft. Rather it is written by Intel and purposfully generates code that borks when run on their competitors chips. But it performs as good as and in some cases better than GCC where Intel chips are concerned. ;)

Another case in point. The tabbed browser interface that Firefox revolutionised has been around for as long as people can code in Visual Basic.

Tabs were around alot longer than that even. There were even web browsers in the pre Mozilla and Opera days that made extensive use of them. And their use in user interface predates even that by quite a bit. Even if you considder VB.

Remembering back to the days when we made a browser based on the Internet Explorer kernel, just with a different shell, it wasn't difficult to put tabs for the windows that opened. It was difficult getting rid of the numerous bugs that appeared out of nowhere mind. It is therefore surprising that nobody twigged at Microsoft to do this instead of cramming the taskbar with Internet explorer windows everytime somebody clicked a link.

Well they probably were wise to the fact that unless you could prove beyond a doubt that it was completely their fault they would pass the buck back on you. It's part of Microsoft's standards and practices. Never accept blame. It's always someone elses fault. Had you actually nagged them about it they probably would have told you that the control was never meant to be used that way. And that you were at fault. :p

The market in general has peaked and is rather saturated. At this point Microsoft has almost nowhere to go but down. They have spread themselves a bit thin over to many markets using sketchy at best products and anticompetitive business tactics. To put it bluntly they are ripe for the fall. Just a matter of time and scale. Hopefully they will not implode as SCOX is in the process of. Because as nice as that sounds it could be problematic. They have their claws in everything ATM. Their implosion would lead to support nightmares! But I am doing my part to mitigate that though. I have donated an old athlon PC running CentOS 4.1 for my fathers use to get him off of his two older PCs. While they may have been old they both had XP on them. One was quite slow. And both were support nightmares. I should know. I was the tech support. ;) CentOS has just been rock solid and does everything he needs and more. Plus I can do almost all matinance required over any network. He can sit there playing solitair or browsing the web comfy in his chair. All the while I use the VNC interface to the X server to access my private gnome desktop and do all matinance required. Not like using VNC under Windows or god forbid the Windows remote desktop feature. No fighting over a common desktop or a single mouse input etc.

Did I mention he likes the GNOME default games better than the MS ones as well. :p Word of mouth might have me a few more CentOS installes lined up in the near future. ;)

[Inventive Software]

Well they probably were wise to the fact that unless you could prove beyond a doubt that it was completely their fault they would pass the buck back on you. It's part of Microsoft's standards and practices. Never accept blame. It's always someone elses fault. Had you actually nagged them about it they probably would have told you that the control was never meant to be used that way. And that you were at fault. :P

Fair point. But I don't really complain that often. Perhaps I should make my frustrations known more! ;)

The market in general has peaked and is rather saturated. At this point Microsoft has almost nowhere to go but down. They have spread themselves a bit thin over to many markets using sketchy at best products and anticompetitive business tactics. To put it bluntly they are ripe for the fall. Just a matter of time and scale.

Do you know how many companies a) would benefit from this, and b) be destroyed by it? Answer to a) Apple, any linux companies eg. Red Hat, Mandrake, SUSe etc. Answer to b) Any company that relies heavily on Windows and Microsoft's products for the ease of (or sometimes lack of) use. Because the majority of companies use Microsoft's products their downfall would have a major impact on global ecomonies.

[stax76]

I was reading some news stating Firefox/Opera support was done because of customer requests.

[Neo Neko]

Do you know how many companies a) would benefit from this, and b) be destroyed by it? Answer to a) Apple, any linux companies eg. Red Hat, Mandrake, SUSe etc. Answer to b) Any company that relies heavily on Windows and Microsoft's products for the ease of (or sometimes lack of) use. Because the majority of companies use Microsoft's products their downfall would have a major impact on global ecomonies.

That is why I said I hope they "don't" do the implode thing. As things stand now they are set to slowly become largely irrelivant. Assuming gates/balmer don't do anything rash they should be able to ride it out till their deaths. But any possible offspring should not count on it to do much for them.

They have no hope of dominating all the markets they have moved into. And without domination they don't have much. Kindof a catch 22. If they didn't they would shrink and die sooner. So they do it only to prolong their march out of the spotlight. I mean have you seen the system requirements expected for Vista?! Even in their golden age they could not push such massive hardware upgrade cycles. But here they are going to try it on the decline. All I can say is that if they pull it off without some major reworking my hats off to them. They have been working on similar eyecandy in the foss world for as long or longer than MS. And it requires much less resources to boot. Once they get Cairo integrated with GTK and OGL in release versions it should be quite impressive. Now all we need is some actuall new innovative user interface design. :p