Microsoft News Tracker

Today was the kickoff of the 2007 Apple World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) and as usual Steve Jobs were there to fire up the troops. Ryan Block at Engadget has the play-by-play complete with pictures, but here’s the net:

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Gregg Keizer at InformationWeek observes that Despite 100 Million IE 7 Installs, Microsoft’s Browser Still Loses Ground:

“[As of] January 8th, we had the 100 millionth IE7 installation,” said Tony Chor, an IE group program manager, in an entry on the team’s blog. “Even more important than installations is usage. According to WebSideStory (the company we use to measure browser usage), as of this week, over 25% of all visitors to sites in the U.S. were using IE7, making IE7 the second most used browser after IE6.

That’s not particularly surprising considering you have to beat off IE7 with a stick to keep Automatic Updates and Windows Update from installing it. But here’s the bad news:

While Microsoft had the WebSideStory numbers correct, it didn’t tell the whole story, says Geoff Johnston, an analyst with the Web metrics company. “[The growth of IE 7] seems to be exclusively at the expense of IE 6,” says Johnston. “It’s not eating into the Firefox share at all.”

Firefox’s share of the U.S. browser market, says Johnston, is at 14%, and has continued to grow each of the last three months. “I thought that IE 7 might flatten Firefox’s growth, but it’s not taken a hit from IE 7. All the movement there has been internal, from IE 6 users upgrading,” he says.

Another Web metrics vendor, Net Applications, confirmed the switch to IE 7 in its most recent data, and also noted the continued slide of IE overall.

More details by following the link, but while Internet Explorer (of whatever version) isn’t in imminent danger of being replaced by Firefox, there continues to be a slow, steady erosion of share.

Personally, I haven’t upgraded to IE7 because of a lack of time and inclination to inventory all of my browser add-ins and application programs that use the Internet Explorer HTML rendering engine to see if they are compatible. (See this Microsoft Watch article by Joe Wilcox for some less than salutary IE7 experiences.) Of course, this is why businesses take a more leisurely approach to upgrades than home users or the technorati.

However, I guess there’s a bright side as it turns out that Outlook 2007 users won’t have to worry about any oddities of IE7 because Internet Explorer got fired from the job of rendering HTML email as Microsoft takes email design back 5 years:

As I type this post I still can’t believe it. I’m literally stunned. If you haven’t already heard, I’m talking about the recent news that Outlook 2007, released next month, will stop using Internet Explorer to render HTML emails and instead use the crippled Microsoft Word rendering engine.

Hit the links for a list of what is missing, but crippled isn’t too strong a term. Presumably this move was made for security reasons which seems odd just as IE7 arrived waving the flag of improved security.

Microsoft released Internet Explorer 7 just a week ago and yesterday Mozilla fired back with the release of Firefox 2.0:

Mozilla officially released Firefox 2 on Tuesday afternoon, adding security features and a new interface.

Firefox 2 was made available for free download at 2:15 p.m. PDT. Mozilla has set up two download sites for the update, which it said it has optimized for the expected high volume of traffic, at Getfirefox.com and Mozilla.com/firefox.

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The revamped Firefox includes a new interface theme and more security protection such as built-in phishing protection. It also has session memory, which, when the browser is re-opened, brings back the set of Web pages that were in use when it was last closed. Changes have also been made in the technology to import RSS feeds, which now offers a feed list view with title and first lines. (Click here for the CNET Review.)

The camp in favor of having a “close” button on each tab has won over the majority who argued against them, Beltzner said. Previously, there was one “close” button at the right of the bar. Clicking on this closed only the one last viewed–but it could be difficult to work out which one this was.

“Google did usability studies with eye-tracking tools and determined that people actually look to the tab first, and it would take longer to determine if they had the right tab and were ready to close it,” Beltzner said. “NASA Ames recently did cognitive modeling for us on tabs. Not only was the ‘close’ button on a tab quicker, but people would be more accurate. They also gave us good data on how wide tabs had to be before people clicked on the wrong one.”

I guess it helps to have friends in high places. The CNET review linked in the quote concludes that Firefox 2 beats IE7 as does the PC World review, while Paul Thurrott dyspeptically calls Firefox 2.0 a “dud.”

Practically, Internet Explorer got back in the browser game with a radically updated IE7 while the changes in Firefox 2.0 were more modest, but neither is going to knock the other out and webmasters will get to deal with users of each for the foreseeable future. Here at hunterstrat.com, I’m already getting 12% Firefox 2 users and 26% IE7 users.

Joe Wilcox discusses Windows Vista’s Speed Bumps:

About 18 months ago, I suggested that Microsoft’s security challenge with Windows Vista would be “trying to make the operating system more secure without taking too much away from partners and customers.”
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Unfortunately, after many months of using Windows Vista, I conclude that Microsoft has placed a thick security facade around the operating system that impedes usability compared to Windows XP. The comparison to XP is important. Microsoft must emphasize user benefits to show potential customers that the current operating system isn’t good enough compared to Windows Vista. If the experience isn’t better–as in much better–customers will be less likely to rush out and buy off-the-shelf upgrades or new Windows Vista PCs. Neither situation would be good for Microsoft partners.
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For example, I am rather stunned by the enormous number of security popups introduced in Windows Vista, either by the operating system’s “User Accounts Control” or Internet Explorer 7. Because Windows Vista has been in beta and the number of popups has reduced with each new test version, I decided to stay quiet and watch–to cut Microsoft some slack because of the amount of undeserved crap the company gets. But, if news reports are to be believed, with Release Candidate 1 imminent and the number of popups still numerous, I decided to voice my concerns now. Microsoft partners should carefully what Microsoft’s approach to Windows Vista security might mean for them.

Much more by following the link. I never thought that upgrades of existing XP systems were going to be that numerous and I still expect the overwhelming majority of new PCs to ship with Vista, but this rather makes you wonder whether Microsoft is in for some really bad PR.

Still, hopes for RC1 are high and Paul Thurrott says it is planned for early September despite some problems:

… behind the scenes, the company has had to come up with a new plan for the Release Candidate 1 (RC1) version of the product after plans to use build 5520 for RC1 fell through.

There’s been lots of press buzz over Microsoft offering to help the Firefox developers ensure that it runs on Vista, but my experience in recent years as the representative of a major ISV has been that for any new Windows OS, or even a major service pack, Microsoft is all over developers of popular 3rd party applications to ensure there are no compatibility glitches. Firefox certainly qualifies for that kind of support. In fact, Microsoft proactively tests a number of 3rd party applications themselves and I wouldn’t be surprised if they had tested Firefox. Some of the information and tools that Microsoft makes available for ISVs are listed here.

How Vista screws dual-booting nirvana. Vista continues the Windows tradition of overwriting the Master Boot Record. (Via Neowin)

Rachel Rosmarin reports at Forbes that Mozilla Gains On Microsoft:

Mozilla’s Firefox Web browser continues to burn a path into Microsoft’s house–the PC.

The open source Web browser software is gaining on Microsoft’s (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) Internet Explorer, amassing 11.3% of the global browser market, up from 9.5% at the beginning of the year, according to Web traffic tracking from Net Applications. IE’s share slid from 85.3% in January to 83.6% in July.

In the U.S., Firefox’s claim is even larger, with 15.8% in July up from 14.1% at the end of last year, according to Web analytics firm OneStat.

It’s not exactly a water main break, but it seems be a steady leak.