IE7 To Support XMLHTTP Requests

Ruliz Galaxor writes "IEBlog posts that Internet Explorer 7 will support a native XMLHTTPRequest object as many other browsers currently do. This will mean no more ActiveX MSXML objects to implement AJAX functionality. It looks like Microsoft is seriously trying to make the lives of us web developers easier. Of course you'll still need to use the Microsoft.XMLHTTP ActiveX object if you want to support IE6 and older."

Backwards Compatability

[angst7]

"Of course you'll still need to use the Microsoft.XMLHTTP ActiveX object if you want to support IE6 and older."

Which means that browser type checking will need to remain pretty much for the forseable future. Inclusion of XMLHTTPRequest now is nice, but in practical terms its perfectly meaningless.

Re:Backwards Compatability

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, so they shouldn't add it at all, because it's apparently pointless.

Good call! After all, why in the hell should Microsoft make web developer's lives easier in the future? It's complicated now!

Looks like Microsoft has a winning strategy . . .

[mmell]

They've lost some ground to Firefox et. al.; if they can keep corporate America convinced that IE is "just as good" for what businesses want their browser to do, they'll continue to hold the hammer-lock on browsers in the workplace (remember, M$ doesn't need to convince all of us, just the PHB's among us).

Begun the browser war has (again).

And...?

[wombatmobile]

It looks like Microsoft is seriously trying to make the lives of us web developers easier.

MS deserves credit for this sensible implementation of XMLHTTPRequest, and indeed for innovating XMLHTTPRequest in the first place.

Now if MS is "seriously trying to make the lives of us web developers easier" [when] will they implement the rest of the core W3C web standards?

FF, Opera and Safari and their respective communities are already well advanced with implementations of SVG, DOM, CSS, PNG, JPEG2000 and XForms. These standards are bread and butter for "seriously trying to make the lives of us web developers easier".

When will MS join the inevitable?

But will their web apps?

[TerenceRSN]

It's nice that MS is making this change but I'm more curious about whether their web applications will work without MSIE specific technologies. Example: Outlook Web Access isn't feature full on non-IE browsers. Also live.com and the new hotmail interface are still limited. Project Web Access is another one. Until these applications work without IE it won't be possible for a lot of businesses to move away from IE.

Re:Backwards Compatability

[lseltzer]

>>in practical terms its perfectly meaningless

Not true. The point of it is that a user or company can disable ActiveX completely and still use AJAX.

Re:Backwards Compatability

[QRDeNameland]

Amen to that. To say that MS is finally fixing things like XMLHTTPRequest or PNG alpha transparency (which has only been around like what, 11 years or so?) in IE7 ONLY is somehow "making web developers' lives easier" when IE7 will only install to XP post SP2 or Vista is nonsense. You still have several different standards to code around until all those older versions fade into obscurity. Post some of these fixes back to 5.5 and 6.0 and maybe they'll actually make someone's life easier this decade.

iFrames?

[Bovarchist]

OK, so what is wrong with using iFrames? Is AJAI not a sexy enough acronym?

Seriously. IFrame support has been around for quite some time and works well in most major browsers. You just hide the iframe and communicate to the server through it. I've done this lots of times, long before AJAX was around. It even worked in IE 4 and NS 4.7x if I remember right.

Sure, its not as elegant as using XMLHTTPRequest, but when is cross-browser javascript ever elegant? Is it better to have a hidden iframe on your page, or several lines of IE-specific code and dependence on an ActiveX control?

That's just my 2 clams. I've only just started working with XMLHTTPRequest, so I might be missing something. Please enlighten me if there is some major advantage that I'm not seeing.

Re:And...?

[Bogtha]

SVG: Microsoft implemented vector graphics in Internet Explorer years ago with VML, which they submitted to the W3C in 1998 [w3.org].

CSS: A partial list of fixes regarding CSS that will be in Internet Explorer 7 can be found on the IEBlog [msdn.com]. They've fixed a lot.

PNG: Internet Explorer 7 will have support for the PNG alpha channel [msdn.com], bringing it up to the level of support that other browsers have.

JPEG2000: JPEG2000 is patent encumbered [theinquirer.net]. Mozilla/Firefox doesn't support it [mozilla.org].

XForms: XForms support is available through a plugin [formsplayer.com].

The only really valid complaint you have there is their lack of support for the DOM. In particular, it would be very nice if they implemented DOM 2 Events, but I don't think that's likely to happen for Internet Explorer 7.

Re:MS doing what it does best ...

[Tim Browse]

Isn't that a bit unfair considering that the feature in question first appeared in IE? They're just making it simpler to access. I'm not sure you can accuse them of 'embracing' something they came up with in the first place. It's a bit like saying that with Vista they're going to 'embrace and extend' the NTFS file system format.

As I understand it, anyway. I've probably got something wrong though.

Re:Ajax over IFRAME - more compatible?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, there's a reason: the "loading" visuals on the browser. Especially if you're making lots of calls, having that progress bar and the wait cursor are confusing to the user and kind of annoying. Same goes for using script elements.

Re:oh let's not talk standards

[unapersson]

And lack of support for this property has exactly how much of a side effect? Surely you can do better than that.

This is just eye candy, IE6's flaws are deep and pervasive. If IE7 can fix some of these that'll be a big step forward.

Mozilla's most important CSS2 shortfall is support for inline-block, but as with other properties, no support is better than buggy support.

Informative my ass!

[shrubya]

Complaining that Firefox doesn't support a couple minor CSS2 features is like saying "You can still die in a car with crumple zones and air bags, so you may as well drive a 1972 Ford Pinto".

Re:oh let's not talk standards

[mumrah]

And IE6 doesn't fully support CSS1. I imagine there are few browsers that fully support any web compliance. Just sayin

Re:Except that....

[Stan Vassilev]

"On a side note, I don't see why this is a big deal. They are likely still going to use a COM object underneath. All this is is a coding shortcut, that no one will be able to use anyway because you're still going to have to support IE6 for the next 3 years at least."

If you RTFA you'll see the benefit is for those organisations that have ActiveX turned off for security reasons (lots of em).

On the IEBlog you have a code snippet showing how you create the native XMLHttpRequest object for Opera, FF and IE7, while fall back to ActiveX for IE6 and earlier.

So there IS benefit. And no, it's not a simple scripting shortcut at all.

Re:A Nice Step

[Bogtha]

Why shouldn't Firefox and Safari render more closely to the way that IE does it?

What makes more sense?

1. The developers of browsers A, B, C and D get together and write down how something should work.
2. The developers of browsers A, B, C and D go off and implement what they've agreed upon.

...or:

1. The developers of browser A implement something.
2. The developers of browsers B, C and D wait for browser A to be released.
3. The developers of browsers B, C and D try to reverse-engineer what the developers of browser A have done, while the developers of browser A implement version 2.0.
4. The developers of browsers B, C and D implement what they hope is the correct behaviour while the developers of browser A release version 2.0.

Which do you think is the healthy, competitive scenario? Which do you think hands control of the future of the web over to a single organisation?

true

[ashpool7]

Reference
http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-WCAG20-CSS-TECHS-2004 0730/#text-shadow [w3.org]

My point was that FireFox/Gecko is not the paragon of standards compliance, so dragging IE into the "you don't comply" mud is hypocritical. Indeed there are more important things to make work, but nevertheless, compliance is incomplete.

To that effect, since CSS2 came out in 1998, and CSS2.1 in 2005, I would have expected text-shadow (along with the other things you listed) to get fixed in that time frame. What have the FireFox devs been doing?

Re:true

[starwed]

I don't think you really understand the CSS standard. CSS2.1 replaces 2.0, in the process getting rid of some properties which proved too problematic. There are parts of the CSS2 spec which are contradictory. Should Firefox implement that too? ^_^ It doesn't matter whether 2.1 has "draft" status or not; it's the superior standard, and one the w3 advocates adhering to.