Section 1.5. A Long Shot That Paid Off

1.5. A Long Shot That Paid Off

Netscape's responded to its dilemma in two ways over the course of 1998, and both shocked the world. First, in January 1998, Netscape announced that it was open sourcing the programming code to its web browser, making it available to anyone in the world to work on collaboratively. By harnessing the collective work of brilliant programmers all over the world, Netscape hoped to leap past Microsoft and ultimately win the browser warand produce much better software while it was at it.

Nowadays, as the open source movement continues its inexorable march toward ubiquity and Microsoft is beginning to feel the pressure of a rival that it cannot buy out, frighten, or cow into submission, Netscape's move (like so many of its other actions throughout its history), seems prophetic and forward thinking. Netscape was the first big company to embrace open source by opening its code, but it was certainly not the last.

The name of this new open source project? Mozilla. The Mozilla browser was to be the result of Netscape's release of its code, and it was overseen by the newly formed Mozilla Organization (http://www.mozilla.org). The Mozilla Organization was up and running by March 1998, and work immediately began on a new open source web browser.

In late 1998, the second big announcement was made: AOL was purchasing Netscape for $4.2 billion. Netscape was absorbed into AOL's corporate culture, causing many of the old-timersamong them Marc Andreessento leave.

However, neither action stopped Internet Explorer from continuing to gain market share throughout the rest of the decade and into the new century. Today, the vast majority of web surfers use Microsoft's browser. I won't say it's the preferred browser of most users, though, because most people have no idea that alternatives exist. To the vast majority of Windows users, the Internet is that blue "e" on the desktop. Netscape? A name from the distant past, something that no one uses anymore. Mozilla? Isn't he the monster in those cheesy Japanese movies?

A funny thing happened once Microsoft achieved dominance on the Web, though: it got complacent, lazy, and slow, and its poor choices about architecting a web browserchoices that were first made nearly a decade earlierbegan to catch up with it. IE began to ossify, and, amazingly, users began to notice (of course, it's hard not to notice when your brand spanking new PC slows to a crawl due to an infestation of worms, viruses, and other nasties caused by simply using your web browser...and this happens regularly). It's now starting to look as though the browser war that Microsoft appeared to have won was actually just one battle, with the next still to be fought. Let's look at the reasons why, and at how a new web browser offers up a more-than-compelling alternative.

1.5.1. Internet Explorer's Stagnation

Microsoft claimed during its antitrust trial in the late 1990s that it was fighting for "innovation." Innovation, huh? Table 1-1 takes a look at a list of IE versions, the dates they were released, and the Windows versions that accompanied them.

Table 1-1. See a pattern in IE releases?

IE version	Date released	Windows version
1.0	August 1995	Windows 95
2.0	November 1995	Windows NT 4.0
3.0	August 1996	Windows 95 OSR 2
4.0	October 1997	Windows 98
5.0	March 1999	Windows 98 SE & 2000
5.5	July 2000	Windows ME
6.0	October 2001	Windows XP
7.0	2006 (projected)	"Longhorn" (codename)

If you look at that chart, a pattern becomes obvious (one that has been repeated time and time again in Microsoft's history). In the early years, when there was competition in the browser market, Microsoft worked as hard and as fast as it could to release new versions of IE. Later, though...

In its first year of life, IE went through three versions (and, in another typical Microsoft pattern, it wasn't until the third release that the software was decent at all). Version 4, a major upgrade and the first time that IE really overtook Netscape in features and quality, appeared just a little over a year after the previous release.

Then the slowdown started. Moving from Versions 4 to 5 took almost a year and a half. Version 5 really was better than Version 4, with some interesting new features, improved stability, and better support for common web standards. But these new abilities shouldn't have taken over a year to add. So why the delay? IE was now being released along with the operating system, and as Microsoft's release cycles for Windows lengthened, so did those for the web browser that was now bolted onto the OS.

This pattern only worsened with later releases. IE 5.5 had nothing on IE 5 beyond a few bug fixes, but Microsoft had to have something to make Windows ME (otherwise considered one of the absolute worst versions of Windows ever releasedand that's saying something!) appear new, fresh, and interesting. Consider Version 5.5 essentially a stopgap. IE 6 didn't appear until two-and-a-half years after IE 5, and it was essentially just a spiffed-up version of that release, made to look nice for Windows XP. Oh, sure, there were a few new gewgaws and a little bitty bit of better standards supportand golly, those icons sure were big and cartoony!but IE 6 was hardly breaking new ground. If anything, it was treading water.

Another way to look at the slow stagnation of IE is through the lens of cash and manpower. When IE 1.0 appeared, a grand total of about six people worked on it at Microsoft. At that point, the company began to pour money into browser development, to the tune of more than $100 million every year, and developers were assigned to make a better browserfast!

Just a year later, by the time IE 3.0 came out, the IE team consisted of 100 people. When IE 5.0 saw the light of day, that team had grown tenfold, to more than 1,000! That's right1,000 people were working on IE at Microsoft in 1996, while Netscape's total employee count (including management, support staff, and, most importantly, programmers working on the browser and on other software projects) was just a little over that number.

And then what? Tony Chor, the Group Program Manager for Internet Explorer at Microsoft, explained what happened in a blog posting he wrote on April 13, 2004: "After IE 6 shipped in the fall of 2001, parts of the IE team went off to focus on different web browsing challenges...it's probably fair to say that we defocused on Internet Explorer proper."

This "defocusing" will be obvious to anyone who's used IE in the last few years. The browser hasn't really been updated in over three years, and its age is showing. Oh, sure, Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) finally introduced pop-up blocking (which other browsers have offered for years and still do better and more easily than IE) and a few bits of security tightening, but on the whole, IE 6 is still the same ol' thingand if you're not using Windows XP, you're out of luck entirely. Some of the other areas in which IE lags behind other, better web browsers include:

Tabbed browsing

Every other major web browser offers support for multiple tabs inside a browser window, so you can have several sites open at the same time without cluttering up your work environment with numerous windows. IE refuses to embrace this innovation (see Chapter 3 for more info).

Support for web standards

When IE 6 came out, its support for HTML, CSS, and other World Wide Web Consortium standards was great. However, other browsers have surpassed it, and now it's easily the worst of any major browser in use, causing headaches for web developers and users.

Incomplete support for PNG images

Web browsers have supported the GIF and JPEG image formats forever, but a new, better image format is now available: PNG (Portable Network Group, pronounced "ping"). The PNG format enables web developers to do amazingly cool things with graphics online. Unlike the other major browsers, IE offers only shoddy support for this important new format.

User control

Other browsers enable users to change font sizes to suit their eyes, no matter how the web developer set the original size. Not IE. Other browsers let users stop certain kinds of annoying behavior, such as scripts that disable right-clicking or resize windows. Not IE. Other browsers make it easy for users to block annoying ads or images they don't want to see. Not IE. I could go on, believe me.

Multiple built-in search engines

Other browsers provide built-in access to a variety of search engineschiefly Google, but others are always availableso that you can find the info you want in the way you want it. Microsoft really, really wants you to use its own MSN search engine, so it pretends that others don't exist.

Security

This one is so bad that I'm devoting a later section in this chapter to it. Suffice it to say that if your PC has suffered through a spyware infestation, you undoubtedly have IE to blame. And that's just the start. In summary, Internet Explorer is a security disaster.

And you know the worst part of IE's decrepitude? That it's not going to be updated until the next version of Windows, codenamed "Longhorn," comes out. The current forecast is for 2006. Maybe. That's a long way off right now. Oh, and there's one little detail I forgot to mention: in order to get that new version of Internet Explorer, you're going to have to buy Longhorn when it comes out!

1.5.2. No More Free Lunch

What's that? The only way to get IE 7 (if it's called that) will be to buy an upgrade to Windows? Yup.

Up to now, it didn't matter if you were running a previous version of Windowsyou could still download and install the latest version of IE. Heck, even Windows 98 users can run IE 6. That's no longer going to be the case, though.

On May 7, 2003, Brian Countryman, Microsoft's Internet Explorer Program Manager, announced that IE will no longer be distributed separately from Windows: "As part of the OS, IE will continue to evolve, but there will be no future standalone installations. IE6 SP1 is the final standalone installation." In essence, if you want the new IE, you'll have to shell out for a new copy of Windows.

Beating the retreat

Just a month after Countryman made his statement, the other shoe dropped: Microsoft announced that it was stopping all further development on the Mac OS version of IE. When IE 5 for Mac came out in 2001, it was probably the best web browser available on any operating system: the most innovative, with the best standards support, containing features that IE for Windows still does not have to this day. However, Microsoft had no financial imperative to continue developing IE for the Mac, so it was put down.

So what does this mean for users? Currently, if you have trouble viewing a web site because you're using an old version of IE, it's easy and free to upgrade to a new one. In the future, you'll have to head over to your local computer store and spend good money on a Windows upgrade or, even worse, a computer upgrade. Who the heck is going to do that just to see a web site with a new browser? Hardly anyone, unless the browser not only displays web pages but also washes your car, feeds your dog, and makes your morning cup of coffee.

Previously, new releases of IE have edged out older versions over time. By the end of 2004, IE 6 had been available as a free download for all versions of Windows for three years, and its use currently dominates among IE users, with only a few using IE 5 and hardly anyone still using IE 4. Upgrading a browser is one thing, but upgrading an OS is something of a completely different order. Windows XP has been out since 2001, and it took three times as long as Windows 98 to capture the earlier OS's place on one-third of all computers running Windows. People are upgrading their computers far more slowly now than they used to, either to save money or because the newest versions of Windows don't really seem to have new features that they absolutely must have. Microsoft's new scheme means that IE 6 will continue to be around for a long, long time, which means that all its bugs, all its security problems, and all its flaws are going to be issues for web developers and users for years to comeprobably until at least 2010.

This is terrible news, but it's not surprising. Microsoft is a monopoly, and this is the logical end to its goals with IE. The new Justice Department in place after the 2000 Presidential election wasn't inclined to pursue further legal remedies against Microsoft for its illegal anticompetitive behavior (remember, the judge in the case determined it to be a fact that Microsoft illegally abused its monopoly, and that judgment still stands), so the company feels it has free rein to do what it wishes. Now it can leverage a browser update to sell more copies of its flagship operating system (in the case of IE for Mac, there was nothing to leverage, so why continue working on it?). The fact that these actions will mean that web site buyers, developers, and users will have to live for years to come with the browser described by noted web designer Bryan Bell as "the boat anchor being dragged behind the Internet" (http://www.bryanbell.com/2003/06/18#a434 ) means nothing to Microsoft.