Submitted by BusinessWeek is reporting that Microsoft’s next release of Internet Explorer, version 7, will not be integrated into Windows. Breaking nearly ten years of tradition, Internet Explorer was always very tightly integrated into Windows, allowing users to do such things as launch a website directly from any Windows Explorer window, or save a live web page as the desktop wallpaper.
It’s good for Microsoft and Windows users, since it improves security.
It’s good for Windows users that prefer one of the many other browsers.
It’s good for us Wine users that don’t have a good implementation of IE yet.
People who use Wine are mostly UNIX variant users.
We don’t really want an IE implementation, save a couple web developers such as myself, and even then…
We don’t really want an IE implementation…
Exactly. A lot of Windows software won’t install under Wine because of IE problems. I’m not perfectly sure, but I hope this will make it easier to solve some of those problems. That is, easier for the Wine developers to implement more modular pieces and more likely that Windows software will install and run.
’bout time
Think panto:
DOJ: Oh yes it can…
MS: Oh no it can’t…
etc for how ever many years that trial lasted.
next point.
I thought the only problem with not having IE on a windows was that you could not patch. But now its got an auto tool this is not a problem.
Does any one know of any explorer or other windows parts which you cannot use FireFox (or other browser) to view web links in?
“Think panto:
DOJ: Oh yes it can…
MS: Oh no it can’t…
etc for how ever many years that trial lasted.”
Actually, I was highly amused when I noticed that you can easily set up XP embedded without IE, media player, etc. 😉
I for one think that it is a (very) good thing that they are not integrating IE as tightly into the system. Now all they need to do is sandbox IE and Windows would immediately become more secure.
I think Microsoft decided this after they figured out that 60% of Windows code needed to be re-written. The other 40% was IE.
I realize you’re trying to be funny, but all you’re doing is reminding me how readily people believed that Microsoft intended to rewrite 60% of Windows’ code in a few months, and it’s just depressing.
How the heck do you save a live web page as your desktop wallpaper? And, where I have I been that I’m just hearing about this? Thanks.
It’s all good. I found it. Thanks, no need to respond.
Edited 2006-03-28 17:21
IE has been the achilles heel of the security situation in windows. By making it it’s own application again, it’s more modular.
That means it’s more nimble, they can fix it faster without breaking other things.
Seems like MS took a nod from the linux/unix world. Integration isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Look at all the potential that X.org 7.0’s modularity opens up.
They couldn’t beat Firefox, so they joined them. Prepare for an acceleration in features on IE in the future.
And by Linux/Unix world you mean: Their Computer Science professors who taught them to modularize and tried to show them the horror that is unorthogonal code.
But sure, it’s just Unix that’s modular, riiiight. That whole OO thing was just a new way to write more integrated code…
Not quite. The whole OO allows for encapsulation, which can be seen as modular. You can change the code in the objects class, and it will still work if you kept the interfaces.
Seems like MS took a nod from the linux/unix world.
KDE is using the same integration. Konqueror.
Well on a KDE desktop, I can deinstall Konqueror completely without breaking anything.
Tom
KDE has components called KHTML and KJS. These components are for example used by Konqueror to render websites. The system is very transparent and the components can be deinstalled without a problem. You could even substitute the components with Gecko (there are some projects that do that) because the interface is Open Source.
Quite a difference to Windows with IE imho.
And more importantly, KDE is just normal software that runs as a low-privilege user. It’s not part of the OS, it’s not even part of X11, which is itself not part of the OS (except for DRM drivers in the kernel). It’s a far cry from Microsoft’s level of integration.
IE and Explorer are also normal software that runs at your account’s privilege level. They’re not part of the OS, or even a part of the window server, let alone the kernel.
Not much different eh?
No, this is exactly how IE works, actually.
The only difference is Windows specifically uses Trident and you can not substitute.
So, other than not being able to substitue Trident for another rendering engine, you explained EXACTLY how Windows uses IE.
You could replace the components that compose IE, too. This is basically the approach WINE uses, with Gecko as the backend. You could delete the DLLs and break all of the software that makes uses of the controls, including the shell. If you were really determined you could use Windows without IE.
You could delete the DLLs and break all of the software that makes uses of the controls, including the shell. If you were really determined you could use Windows without IE. —Get a Life
I do just that. Only I automate the process with a little something called nLite and this helps me to configure my Windows box (when I use it) to use the apps I want without the insecurity of IE on my machine. The only thing I can say about this ‘news’ is that its too little and too late for many of us who have been doing the deintergration dance since Windows 98 hit the shelves, as most of us have either moved on to Mac OS or Linux or are carefully preparing our hardware software data formats for such a move.
Microsoft usually gets it right…eventually. Unfortunately as this whole IE fiasco has shown over the years, when they get there they have a bad habit of allowing themselves to lose their momentum and becoming arrogant about their position. These days however there are more and more alternatives popping up all over the place and many of us are unwilling to wait long enough to allow them to get it right this time.
–bornagainpenguin (who wishes these mega corporations would go back to serving the end users and power-users rather than themselves and their mega corporation friends…)
PS: nLite can be found here: [ http://www.nliteos.com ]
Forum discussion can be had here: [ http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showforum=89 ]
That’s false. If you manage to install IE with WINE it uses exactly the same code as on windows: gecko is NOT required.
Apparently you don’t understand the purpose of WINE. The purpose of WINE is to provide an implementation of the Win32 API. You apparently don’t seem to understand this but that includes mshtml. Don’t make me find you a link for something you can do yourself.
Please stop inserting foot in mouth. Konqueror and IE bear no resemblance to each other, even if you might have grasped otherwise on a very cursory review.
They couldn’t beat Firefox, so they joined them.
Ummm, IE hasn’t had a major update in about 5-6 years, and Firefox still doesn’t even have 20% of the browser market, I don’t think. That’s not exactly Firefox destroying the competition
Market share is tougher to get than it is to lose. Wthout a browser monopoly it becomes much harder or impossible to control web standards.
This just means that the OS no longer uses Trident (IE’s rendering engine).
IE was never really “integrated” with Windows. It was always a separate app, it’s just that Windows used Trident to render parts of the OS.
IE is still bundled with Vista. People can still use Trident in their own applications (and know that it is already shipped with the OS).
I did notice, though, that when you type a URL into Explorer, it no longer converts intself into IE, it opens up a IE in a separate window.
So many people have completely misunderstood how IE worked with the OS. IE was NEVER part of the kernel. It has always been a separate application.
This does not effect security in the slightest bit, it just allows the removal of IE without breaking parts of the OS (the help system, Windows Update, etc…), as these parts that used to rely on IE have been re-written so as to no longer require IE to be present.
This does not effect security in the slightest bit
But from the article:
Security analysts have been telling Microsoft for a while … Exploits that were found to exist in current versions of Internet Explorer, were used to attack the core operating system because of the tight integration.
So, unnamed “security analysts” say it does improve security, but “CPUGuy” says it does not.
I can’t add anything authoratative, but I think it does.
The most impressive thing about IE is that it demonstrates that the most popular web client for the most popular desktop operating system can still appear to be magic. All they’re really changing is shell integration. The components that make up IE are all going to be there and capable of being embedded.
The thing is, IE is still there.
Windows using IE does not all of a sudden make it more vulnerable. The reason the problem exsists (beyond IEs own security flaws) is because IE is bundled with Windows, and that bundling is still there.
Just because a “security analyst” says that it will improve security does not mean it will… and it won’t.
What will improve security is how IE runs as an isolated process, in its own sandbox, in its own world. IE is not allowed to touch anything outside of IEs own folder. So when a security hole does arise, it can’t actually do anything except mess up the IE directory (I think not even anything outside of the Temp Inet files dir).
This all comes from the DOJ vs MS trial where MS lawyers got so many people up to swear blind that you just could not remove IE from Windows.
Alot of this comes from all the fud MS kicked out back them.
They were mostly right actually. You can’t just remove shdocvw.dll (the rendering engine) from Windows. Many things rely on it.
They also couldn’t remove the integration of IE and explorer without rewriting explorer, which they have done with Vista.
It’s not that they couldn’t, but it would have been a support nightmare and required a rewrite of Explorer, which at the time, they were planning for a later OS (which is now Vista).
IE is integrated to core, part of IE loads with OS (?! hard to call it such) , that’s why IE opens faster than any other browser, and worms are attacking your computer through vulnerabilities in IE
No. No part of IE is in the core of the OS.
You can set any app and/or service you want to load with the OS, this does not make it part of the core of the OS.
So many people have completely misunderstood how IE worked with the OS. IE was NEVER part of the kernel. It has always been a separate application.
OS != kernel.
IE has always run as its own process in userspace. That’s not the issue either.
IE the browser is a relatively small exe file that doesn’t do all that much. All it does is load the individual components that provide the functionality and provide the interface to connect them.
The problem is with the IE components. They aren’t all tossed in MSHTML.DLL or other similar DLL’s. The functionality is spread somewhat randomly amongst files such as COMDLG.DLL (Common Dialogs) and other core Windows DLL’s that have existed forever.
Microsoft’s arguments in the antitrust case came down to saying “There’s IE code in COMDLG.DLL, so we can’t remove IE from the system or almost every program will stop working.”
In the end, the issue comes down to where do you draw the line between IE code and OS code, and how much of it can be feasibly removed.
> OS != kernel
What is an operating system? 😉
Andrew Tanenbaum says: The OS is everything running in a privileged mode. For Unix-like OS it’s the kernel.
I think that’s true for Windows too.
But of course i’m a little bit obfuscated with IE in kernelspace …
From a purists POV, the kernel == OS. However, from a more practical POV it is often convenient to think of associated libraries and software to be part of the OS as well.
This argument is the same one that occurs every time someone calls Linux an OS and someone else replies that it’s just a kernel.
Thanks for saying it before I could.
Add on top of that, IE being “integrated” isn’t what caused the security debacle in XP. All apps had admin rights, so if Firefox had the same flaws, it would have been able to do the same thing, or any browser or app for that matter.
I don’t think people truly understand what Microsoft meant by integrated.
This is really old news. At least 3 weeks old.
Good software design is modular; modularity promotes security and eases the task of software maintainance. The reason that Microsoft went heavily anti-modular was to kill off competitors; in the case of the browser, it was Netscape. In the case of Windows Media, it was Real.
But the damage to competitors was accompanied with self-inflicted damage, to the point where Microsoft knows it has to do better on security to keep FireFox from taking over.
That captures the whole issue so perfectly that if you don’t score a 5 I’ll come back later and give you another.
How will this effect Windows Explorer? That pretty much looks and acts like IE. Will it not work the same now? I’m not too concerned as I use an alternative to win explorer most of the time, but every now and then I like to use it.
Explorer still works in the same way, except that when you type in a URL it loads IE as a separate window, instead of in the same.
So, no, it doesn’t go back to the old Win95 style.
Does that mean they saw the light and offer firefox instead of the iexplorer?
Excuse me, but wasn’t part of their Antitrust defense that Bill Gates stood on the witness stand and said that IE was so intertwined in the OS that it could NEVER BE taken apart?
The US Court of Appeals found “commingling of code”
between Windows and Internet Explorer to be anticompetitive and unlawful.
But Microsoft said that removing it would be impossible without serious damage occuring to the OS.
“Judge Kollar-Kotelly that the reason Internet Explorer and Windows were commingled in the first place was that Microsoft could not win the browser wars on the merits. Mr. Gates’ basic message was that Microsoft has been so successful at commingling that it is now impossible to break Windows apart.”
“In a transparent threat, Mr. Gates said on April 23 that if LSRP Provision 1 is adopted, he would not instruct his engineers to begin work on compliance, but instead would run “to every court who would listen to” his appeal. His flat assertion is that “hey, we can’t do this.”
“On April 24, Mr. Gates acknowledged that in fact Microsoft today distributes a non-degraded, modularized version of Windows (called Windows XP Embedded), but refuses to license that software for use on desktop PCs. It was clear to everyone in the courtroom, including Judge Kollar-Kotelly, that Mr. Gates had made a patently inconsistent statement the
prior day when he asserted that Microsoft does not and cannot create a componentized Windows. The issue is not whether Microsoft can offer versions of Windows which allows consumers to choose non-Microsoft middleware products such as browsers, media players and the like. The issue is simply that Microsoft won’t do so because that might tend to allow competition on the periphery of its monopoly to blossom.”
http://www.procompetition.org/headlines/043002.pdf
Lying sack of @&$&#! they were back then and got away with it.
All the apps that were built into the OS that used IE have been rewritten such that they don’t use it anymore. So, everything had to be re-written.
Part of the problem they stated above is that many many 3rd party apps rely on Trident (IE’s rendering engine) to be in place and if it is removed, they simply will not work. And in this sense, IE is still bunlded with the OS. If they took it out completely, all these apps would break (thousands and thousands).
Excuse me, but wasn’t part of their Antitrust defense that Bill Gates stood on the witness stand and said that IE was so intertwined in the OS that it could NEVER BE taken apart?
———–
That may have been the case in the past, but we are talking about Vista, which is a new OS.
An obsolete, legacy browser splits off from an obsolete legacy OS. Really, they should just kill IE entirely. It’s clearly no longer of any strategic interest to MSFT.
I wonder if some kind of spyware/virus could uninstall IE7, leaving the user with no way to download anything or get on the Internet
It’s nice that MS is not integrating because atleast users must have the option to remove the softwares which they don’t want.
then i expect that you can safely remove all *htm*.dll from your windows/system{32|64} directory so that your base os still completely works? like “add/remove programs” or “config your server”
Is Konqueror the same as IE. In Windows explorer you can do the same as IE and with out it’s makes the DE somewhat useless. This is the same as Konqueror since it provides the exact same functions.
If KDE came out like Win95, it would do exactly the same thing as IE and Windows, If i’m wrong please prove me wrong with facts, just dont mod me down for the sake of it (you know who you are).
>What will improve security is how IE runs as an
>isolated process, in its own sandbox, in its own
>world. IE is not allowed to touch anything outside
>of IEs own folder. So when a security hole does
>arise, it can’t actually do anything except mess up
>the IE directory (I think not even anything outside
>of the Temp Inet files dir).
You have just described how IE 7 works with Windows Vista. This is exactly how it works.
>An obsolete, legacy browser splits off from an
>obsolete legacy OS. Really, they should just kill IE
>entirely. It’s clearly no longer of any strategic
>interest to MSFT.
yeah, because a browser and an OS that holds the majority of marketshare on the entire planet is obsolete.
Nice, trolling. Maybe next time you might add something to a post that is more than a mentality of a brick.
Windows is obsolete, it’s in shambles egghead. Most poorly writen piece of digital scurf on this tiny planet. Get a clue. Quote below from Mickeysoft employee…
“Vista – I wouldn’t buy it with someone else’s money. Then again What do I know, I’ve only been testing the dog for the last 2-3 yrs…”
http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2006/03/vista-2007-fire-leadership-now…
is that how much people are willing to accept from MS. Its like whatever they say or do wrong, or however many times they go back on their promises people still keep believing them.
After all the fiasco of the antitrust settlement, they now go back on their statement and are de-integrating IE and people just accept it.
It looks for me like everything MS does is better for win alternatives. It is plausible move.
Konqueror is not integrated this tight, but it’s more feature rich then explorer/IE together. But you can uninstall Konqueror and install Nautilus and FF instead. Or you can use all three of them. The thing is: if you don’t want it, you can use another program to replace it. Which was not possible in Windows with IE, (they even said it themselves in the antitrust case mentioned above).