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Windows Longhorn and Internet Explorer 7 554

An anonymous reader writes "At Gnomedex this year, Microsoft is excited about the new RSS integration into Windows Longhorn and Internet Explorer 7. Screenshots of Internet Explorer 7 reveal how Microsoft has added a search tool to the top right of the browsing window similar to the one found in Safari/Firefox. Also, Microsoft revealed that RSS will be integrated into the heart of Longhorn."
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Windows Longhorn and Internet Explorer 7

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  • Say no to Windows (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bigwavejas ( 678602 ) * on Sunday June 26, 2005 @12:29AM (#12912261) Journal
    I think I'll stick with Firefox and run http://www.bloglines.com/myblogs [bloglines.com] for my RSS feeds.

    Stop the machine.

    • by Anonymous Coward
      Oh my god, They're developing at an incredible rate!!!
    • at least when you get to a site that is only IE compatible you won't lose all your standard features...oh wait, we have to wait for Longhorn first. See: DN Forever
    • by reporter ( 666905 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @12:47AM (#12912351) Homepage
      I am sitting here, pondering the future of Windows, as I watch the operating system slowly boot up and struggle along. I suspect that operating systems and web clients have now reached the point where they offer much more features than I need and actually use.

      Has anyone suggested that Microsoft create 2 parallel operating systems: slimware version and bloatware version? I want a slimmed down version of Windows that includes just a little more than a true pre-emptively multi-tasked kernel I also want a slimmed down web client that lacks support for ActiveX and anything else that is not strictly necessary for accessing the secure website run by my bank.

      I need little more. I suspect that this barebones configuration meets the need of most Americans, who are not tech savy.

      • by pdbaby ( 609052 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @12:52AM (#12912370)
        But that's not in microsoft's best interests. They're a company, after all. They're in a perfect position: they can make their operating system require a faster processor and more memory. Do you think Intel, AMD and the various memory makers aren't "very grateful" of the extra business they get from the dizzyingly high requirements of Windows nowadays?
        • by RzUpAnmsCwrds ( 262647 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @02:24AM (#12912694)
          "Do you think Intel, AMD and the various memory makers aren't "very grateful" of the extra business they get from the dizzyingly high requirements of Windows nowadays?"

          Because, as we all know, GNOME runs *great* with 128MB of memory. And of course, Mac OS X is absolutely smooth on 128MB as well.

          With 256M of memory, Windows is as nippy as any other fully-featured desktop environment.
        • by fwarren ( 579763 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @10:43AM (#12914041) Homepage
          Have you ever read the "leaked" Whitepaper Microsoft did on the conversion of HotMail from FreeBDS/Apache to Win2000/IIS?

          One of the things they specifically mention is the fact you can build a VERY SMALL minimal *nix system because you can cut all of the cruft. It is humanly possible to figure out the mininum dependancies, libraries, etc.

          Whereas with Microsoft, who was doing this as a matter of pride, would not create a striped down version of Windows for themselves. And even stated that you could not strip down a build of windows because there are to many unknown interactions.

          It would take a lot of work to figure out what you can remove. More work than Microsoft was even willing to do as a matter of pride on a project they were throwing millions of dollars at and took several years to complete.

          I don't think we will see a striped down "core" version of Windows anytime soon.
      • by Anonymous Coward
        Look up xplite. It's what I used, trimmed the windows partition down to 700mb (you can go lower, but I kept in stuff like media player and IE)
      • by Anti_Climax ( 447121 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @01:12AM (#12912458)
        Well, they'll probably never give it to you, but you can definitely have it.

        http://www.nliteos.com/nlite.html [nliteos.com] allows you to pull unwanted components from your windows install cd's, including media player, messenger and internet explorer. If you're so inclined I highly recommend making your own personalized install.

        It also comes in particularly handy when you want to keep people from using IE after their machine gets hosed by malware.

        As an aside, I find it much easier to just write the new install files into my CD image rather than burn a new one from folders on the disk and as a bonus the CD is typically smaller that way as well.
      • "I suspect that this barebones configuration meets the need of most Americans, who are not tech savy."

        Are you serious? Did you not see the article on Windows 'N' being a remarkable failure? People want their computers to be able to, shock of shocks, do things out of the box, especially those who aren't tech savvy.

        But hey, who needs facts and reality when you have Slashdot dogma.
        • Tell me something. How many regular people (by which I mean the less computer savy among us) do you think are even aware of Windows N? Why would they after all, very few people wanted to see any success out of such a thing, and Microsoft is not included in that small party.
      • by quarkscat ( 697644 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @02:27AM (#12912705)
        "Has anyone suggested that Microsoft create 2 parallel operating systems: slimware version and bloatware version?"

        Well, yes actually. Microsoft now offers the following "flavors" of Windows:

        (1) Windows XP Home
        (2) Windows XP Pro
        (3) Windows XP Embedded
        (4) Windows XP "Lite"
        (5) Windows XP "Thin"
        (6) Windows XP Home Theatre Edition
        (7) Windows XP 64-bit Edition
        (8) Windows XP N
        (9) Windows CE

        Pray tell, just which other version of Windows were you actually looking for, that MSFT doesn't already offer (except "Windows XP Secure")?
        There are already more versions than you can shake a proverbial stick at, and all with varying levels of bloatware and also vulnerabilities. Pick your poison, and prepare to be "owned".
    • by RoadkillBunny ( 662203 ) <roadkillbunny@msn.com> on Sunday June 26, 2005 @12:59AM (#12912393)
      Why though? IE7 looks exactly like Firefox.
  • Looks like FireFox (Score:5, Informative)

    by ryg0r ( 699756 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @12:30AM (#12912262)
    Maybe its just me. But it looks like FireFox with some Longhorn UI added. :P
    • by pdbaby ( 609052 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @12:32AM (#12912277)
      Yay Microsoft! King of innovation. They have the menu bar below the tablist. Truely innovation I'm sure people will pay for (in more ways than one).

      Any word on how many bugs they'll have introduced, their png and css standards compliance support?

      Good to see that RSS is integrated into the OS. That's something every kernel lacks these days ;-)
      • I seem to recall reading somewhere that Microsoft does not intent to support CSS2, ever. Apparently they regard the standard as flawed. Kinda makes you wonder what Microsoft is thinking. I mean, they're called standards for a reason. To ignore them because you don't agree with them is silly at best, and sheer wrong at worst.
        • I seem to recall about 4 misleading stories on slashdot about the CSS2 situation, so perhaps that's where you like to get your misinformation.

          What they actually said was they were targetting CSS 2.1, and that no browser would probably ever completely support that standard. Reading between the lines on the IEBlog, they seem like they are working on a competitive CSS implementation, but that remains to be seen.
        • by pdbaby ( 609052 )
          It would be fair enough if they had an IE-only alternative for common web problems like rounded corners on things; it strikes me that the IE team are incredibly lazy - all they've managed to do is write an RSS reader and add tabs in how many years?

          It's really odd, especially because they have stiff competition from Firefox. In Visual Studio, the competition from Eclipse and other free IDEs is showing: Visual Studio 2005 is a really smart, really well designed development environment.
      • by XNormal ( 8617 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @01:54AM (#12912604) Homepage
        They have the menu bar below the tablist.

        It's not just below - it means that the menu bar is part of the tab and can change when you switch tabs. It's actually a pretty clever design. I think they will use it for plugins and web pages that add items to the menus (PDF, Office, etc.)
    • more like Safari than Firefox I would say, the real question is does it pass Acid2? (my guess is no)
  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 26, 2005 @12:30AM (#12912264)
    This is a good move by MSFT, but their lack of respect for web developers is ridiculous.

    Markus Mielke, quite possibly the most braindead member of humanity ever to use a computer, seems to think that separating content from presentation is wrong. See here [msdn.com] for details. Even worse, the article he links says the reason is that CSS3 is not ready. This is despite the fact that the IE team won't even support CSS 2.1 fully in IE7! Yes, they might have fixed Peekaboo and Guillotine, but how about :hover for all elements? Or any semblance of support for floating elements? And they simply seem incapable of giving a straight answer!

    Dave Massy, senior program manager and all round idiot, in comments to this article [msdn.com], says that support for MathML and SVG should be left to 'experts', never answering the very pertinent query about why Microsoft isn't an expert in web technologies.

    Why not go over to the IEBlog [msdn.com] and let them have a piece of your mind?
    • by MrDomino ( 799876 ) <.mrdomino. .at. .gmail.com.> on Sunday June 26, 2005 @12:57AM (#12912388) Homepage

      You're assuming, in calling these people idiots, that what they're doing is unintentional.

      If web coding were easily doable by hand with a text editor, would they get much in the way of sales for FrontPage? If web applications were ubiquitous thanks to a fully functional browser, do you think people would continue to fork over such obscene amounts of cash for MS Office?

      Is this crazy? Over-the-top? Probably. But for a company that has so many brilliant researchers among its ranks, isn't it odd that their web browser is so shoddy, yet they still continue to pour money and development time into it rather than let someone else take over?

      • by NutscrapeSucks ( 446616 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @01:29AM (#12912517)
        Except that 5 years ago, Internet Explorer was a light-year ahead of the competition in client-side functionality. Despite Andreessen's hype, Microsoft did far more to legitimize web-based applications than Nutscrape ever did.

        Don't forget that Microsoft is (at heart) a development tool vendor, and I'm sure they're fully aware that web application development is where the coding market is. And they've finally seemed to re-understand that browser features are critical to that market. Things like XHTML and CSS2 allow Microsoft to sell much effective web development tools (Visual Studio/ASP.NET), and that's a real revenue stream for them.

        People romanticize the "Browser Wars", but it's really a big battle over nothing -- a bunch of almost zero-revenue eyeballs using a free product. The strategic value is what people build on top of the browser technologies.

        As great of a browser as Firefox is, I don't believe that Mozilla.org still got the lessons of the last war. They spent a lot of time and money to build an enormous amount of developer technology, but have never seriously packaged and marketed it. You have to assume that Microsoft is not just trying to build a browser, but looking at this "holistically" (client/tools/server); while Mozilla isn't.
        • by Anonymous Coward
          "I don't believe that Mozilla.org still got the lessons of the last war. They spent a lot of time and money to build an enormous amount of developer technology, but have never seriously packaged and marketed it."

          Hmm. Do you not understand what Open Source Software is? You see, there's no need to package and market it. It's not really a "product". However it does present a choice to users of IE, which happens to be a free, and rather good choice at that. It's also not tied to one Operating System. It's also
          • Do you not understand what Open Source Software is? You see, there's no need to package and market it.

            Firefox is one big packaging and marketing exercise, and a pretty good one at that. Mozilla tried the "base" thing for years and it never caught on, even with AOL/Netscape marketing.

            Also, I'm not talking about declining web standards, my point is that you can actually do much more with web standards than "just a brower" lets you do.
      • Of course MrDomino is right - the long-time fear of the web as an OS/app platform, so Windows wouldn't matter, and Office wouldn't matter.

        Your explanation is simple and explains a lot -it's almost certainly right.

        What better way to sabotage the web as OS and web-apps, than to control the browser? Make it *just* good enough for enough people to accept; but not good enough to make web-apps great - which they definitely could be.

        Evil. Brilliant. Very Microsoft.

    • I am a little concerned over Microsoft not supporting standards. Only a little, simply because they've never supported standards before, so why spoil a time-honored tradition?

      Microsoft are not web experts, because they're not spiders. They're fire ants.

      As for the RSS support, this is Microsoft Extended RSS, guys! The odds are extremely high that they'll try to push the "standard" RSS off the field - the same stunt they pulled with all of their extensions to HTML, Java, Kerberos, yada yada yada.

      (Actu

      • I'm sorry, i mention this every time someone says this, but while you have a point with MS extending HTML and Java to the point of almost changing them entirely, but

        What 'stunt' have they pulled with Kerberos?
      • As for the RSS support, this is Microsoft Extended RSS, guys!

        RSS is an extremely simple pseudo-standard, that's been extended by dozens of people already. Unlike Kerberos, which is linked to your OS's authorization protocols, any change to RSS that is made by anyone can easily be accomodated.
    • Did this video annoy the crap out of anyone else? "Here's the cool thing. When IE is on a page with an RSS Feed... This button lights up!" Wow, I've never seen anything like that before... And the other guy saying he has no idea what it means when people ask if Microsoft is taking control of the standard... These guys are total ass-monkeys.
      • It's quite ridiculous. They've taken a technology (RSS) that was invented 8 years ago and has been in common use since at least 2002, shamelessly ripped the UI from Apple (again), and it's still a year and a half away!

        It's one thing for the marketing driods to try and hype something like this, but developers? Who the hell do they think their audience is?

    • Funny, there are actually IE-fanboys there at that thread. Didn't know those existed.

      What really amazes me is the fact that they're saying that "RSS is going to be so much broader because MS is putting the work they are doing into the platform." RSS has been around for years, and now RSS is amazing because IE integrates it? IE is so far behind that technologies aren't realized until years later. Ridiculous.
      • But, for now, the actual usefulness of RSS is completely and totally questionable. So far, I've found absolutely no use whatsoever for it, and I've been doing this stuff as long as it's been around.
  • its sad (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ericdano ( 113424 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @12:30AM (#12912267) Homepage
    It's sad how Microsoft is so far behind the curve, yet they get excited cause THEY have figured something out. They are their own Hype machine.

    It's sad.

    • Also, Microsoft revealed that RSS will be integrated into the heart of Longhorn.

      It may just be the way the submitter wrote it, but this reeks of hype and buzzwordism as well, as though marketing pulled it out of their ass during a presentation or something.
      • Seriously. It sounds like they are saying that this is a FIRST or something. Isn't Internet Explorer the LAST browser to support RSS feeds?
        • Seriously. It sounds like they are saying that this is a FIRST or something. Isn't Internet Explorer the LAST browser to support RSS feeds?

          yes, but for the vast majority of Windows users out there, RSS will be something new for them, they've never used any other browser, so they won't know that it really isn't...

          They're well late for the RSS party, but Microsoft are claiming that it's only just starting now

  • Well now I'm almost positive that the search engine integrated into IE is MSN's own. And since IE is embedded into Windows, this has a good chance of reducing traffic for Google, Yahoo, and other search engines. So can we expect to see a possible lawsuit for these unfair business practices, which Microsoft is infamous for?
  • by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @12:33AM (#12912290)
    Microsoft is adding technology into Longhorn? For a moment, I thought it was another announcement of yet another technology being pulled from the house of cards called Longhorn. The next thing that they will be announcing is a Mactel version.
  • by Rekrapt ( 813221 ) <tparker@tparker.net> on Sunday June 26, 2005 @12:37AM (#12912310) Homepage Journal
    Can't we just all get along? ---
  • I'm fairly certain that search bar uses msn search :). Do you think IE users will start using that instead of going to google first?
  • "RSS will be integrated into the heart of Longhorn."
    Am I the only one that has a feeling that it will be a crappy product full of security holes that is impossible to get off the system, a la IE in Win 2k/XP?
    • Given Microsofts security record that's a pretty valid concern; I'd be lying if I said I didn't share your uneasiness regarding it.

      More troubling however is Microsofts constant need to integrate various things such as their browser and now RSS into their operating system as tightly as possible. Keeping everything nice and modular would be much better; but I guess Microsoft see's some value in this approach despite the inherent security risks and stability issues.
  • by Frank Grimes ( 211860 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @12:47AM (#12912349)
    "RSS will be integrated into the heart of Longhorn." Oh my god! Someone get on the phone to Linus Torvalds and tell him to integrate RSS into the Linux kernel as fast as possible!
  • TARGET=_TAB (Score:2, Insightful)

    by klaasb ( 523629 )
    That is all I need
  • Gnomedex!? (Score:2, Interesting)

    Am I the only one confused as to why M$ would call the gathering Gnomedex? I though it was going to have something to do with the Gnome desktop and M$ for second. Wierd.
  • by WMD_88 ( 843388 ) <kjwolff8891@yahoo.com> on Sunday June 26, 2005 @01:00AM (#12912397) Homepage Journal
    When IE 7 comes out and all the Joe Average people start using it (via auto updating, or the new computer they bought, or whatever), they're gonna see the finally-added features and think, "Wow, look at these new things Microsoft created! They're amazing!" because they've never used anything but IE. Microsoft thus gains mindshare for nothing.
    • Why do you think Mac people are always showing off our computers? We're not pugnacious pricks, we're trying to help the *nix community so that when MS finally pushes what OSX and Linux have been doing for years people will actually believe us when we offhandedly say it's been done before and they're being held back by Windows.

      We take so much ridicule for you guys. :)
  • by Jackie_Chan_Fan ( 730745 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @01:07AM (#12912425)
    Microsoft really needs to hire some real UI artists one of these days.

    Personally, i dont need the windows title bar, address bar, etc taking of a chunk of the screen like that. It must be a low res shot but still...

    MS likes to make these big screen eating UI's with things that most people never use.
    • Microsoft really needs to hire some real UI artists one of these days.
      Personally, i dont need the windows title bar, address bar, etc taking of a chunk of the screen like that. It must be a low res shot but still...
      MS likes to make these big screen eating UI's with things that most people never use.

      Um, I use Firefox, but IE is just as customizable in that respect. Try F-11 for starters.

  • by fermion ( 181285 )
    It would seem that after 10 years the richest software developer in the world would have caught up with the state of the art. I mean a search box? Is that the best they can do. I mean for those of us that have been browsing the internet for all that time, and a bit more, IE has always been the laughing stock. It is a very good application front end, a terminal really, but a horrible browser.

    Which is realy not the fault fo the devolopers. I am sure they are very good. But when the goal is get and kee

  • Is it just me, or does that screenshot look surprisingly like the Pinstripe theme from Firefox?
  • by smash ( 1351 )
    So... its got tabs, and a search box.

    Yay. Where did the other 4 years of development go?

    smash.

  • Cool! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by sammyo ( 166904 )
    >RSS will be integrated into the heart of Longhorn

    Maybe there will be a scripting extension so I can add some dynamic content to my blog.
    Hey how about automatic forwarding?

  • by LS ( 57954 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @01:31AM (#12912523) Homepage
    Seeing this news item really awakened me to the lack of innovation with Internet software these days. Embedding RSS into IE is mundane to the extreme. This pales in comparison to the rate at which ideas were pouring out 5-7 years ago. I suppose the browser is a mature market, but is it really? Perhaps we need to go back and look at some of the older ideas that were ahead of their time now that the Internet infrastructure is more mature. It just feels like we are still staring at the embers of a long-dead bonfire.

    LS
  • Looks pretty good (Score:4, Insightful)

    by melted ( 227442 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @01:37AM (#12912549) Homepage
    Gotta admit, they have some smart people there. Yes, firefox is a superior browser, technologically. Yes, it's open source. Yes, it supports CSS2 a little better and yes, it supports alpha channel in PNGs. Does any of this matter as far as Joe Sixpack is concerned? Not a bit!

    What does matter then? The stuff they're emphasizing - tabbed browsing, design, and integration. You can spend hours explaining what's better to a layman, and in the end they'll use the browser that looks better and is more comfortable. Plus, if they approach security of IE7 with the same rigor we've seen in IIS6 (which I doubt highly, considering such a short product cycle), security will not be a problem.

    It is time for Firefox/Mozilla devs to pile on the goodies. Get us some SVG and CSS3, get web devs (at least some of them) to use these cool technologies, and make Microsoft play catch-up again.

    Ain't competition grand?
  • by Nova Express ( 100383 ) <lawrenceperson.gmail@com> on Sunday June 26, 2005 @01:40AM (#12912558) Homepage Journal
    April 29, 2007: Microsoft Releases Longhorn with Integrated RSS

    April 30, 2007: First RSS-Related Security Hole Exploit Announced

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @01:53AM (#12912599)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I've emailed some AG's that were part of the original antitrust lawsuits about this latest move by MicroSoft.

    It seems that it was not enough to use this same method of introducing new methods into html to make NetScape not work with all websites. And it seems that Microsoft is repeating the process with RSS.

    The only glimmer of hope here is that iTunes RSS support for podcasts and other web tech may be too entrenched this time to give Microsoft the ability to pull the same trick twice.

    People need to talk
  • "Also, Microsoft revealed that RSS will be integrated into the heart of Longhorn."

    Or into the heart of Internet Explorer which is into the heart of Longhorn.
  • slashdot = osnews + 5 hour delay.
  • It seems to me that while MS is finally matching up to its new competitors... this is as it should be, but IE7 is not even supported on all MS platforms/OSs... holy latency batman! It should be news that after everyone else had done something, finally MS decides to do something?

    To me, if your supplier is 2-3 years behind its competition, you get a new supplier. The IE7 thing not supporting old OS versions, and the vaporware that is Avalanche just shows how far behind Redmond is....

    What is the news here? T
  • Jesus Christ, they could've not so blatantly ripped off Firefox with the toolbars and Safari RSS for the RSS feeds. It's like they don't even give a shit anymore.
  • ..."The technologies of today --- TOMORROW!"
  • by codemachine ( 245871 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @03:36AM (#12912854)
    Longhorn loses its next generation shell and filesystems, both of which are pretty core OS functionality.

    Now they make up for it by adding RSS to their browser? At this rate Longhorn isn't going to be much more than Windows XP plus IE 7 (and yet still delivered late?). And IE hardly counts as OS functionality.

    Maybe if they spent their time building an operating system, and let application developers build the applications for it, they'd be able to build an OS that has some really innovative technologies in it. Instead they spend all this time trying to "own the web", as well as compete with 3rd party software vendors like Adobe.

    From a technology perspective, I think this strategy sucks. Time will tell whether this is a good business strategy or not.
  • Blatant rip-off (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Mwongozi ( 176765 ) <slashthree AT davidglover DOT org> on Sunday June 26, 2005 @05:45AM (#12913192) Homepage

    So IE7's RSS support [flexbeta.net] looks virtually identical to Safari's RSS support [appleinsider.com]

    Why am I not surprised?

  • by Junior J. Junior III ( 192702 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @09:22AM (#12913688) Homepage
    When it is officially released, they're going to call it Windows Me 2... which will of course be pronounced "Windows, Me too!"
  • by salesgeek ( 263995 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @09:53AM (#12913827) Homepage
    Microsoft didn't get it: the reason Firefox is so damn good is that it's a better browser than IE. I think MS marketing looked at the eyecandy (search box, tabs, Live Bookmarks) and thought that this FireFox was more like some of the customized versions of IE that are out there. They totally missed out the power that Gecko, XUL and the amazingly simple extension system bring.

    Firefox renders correctly, it's simple to use and extensions are just plain fun and useful. The user has more control and is literally safer than with IE. Sure there are exploits found, but they are generally fixed quickly and users are alerted to upgrade.

    Then there's that whole extensible user interface...

For God's sake, stop researching for a while and begin to think!

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