The Future of the the Browser
Chris Wilson
Started in 1993 with NCSA Mosaic
Worked on every version of MSIE since version 2.0
What the heck happened in 2001?
Little adoption of rich web platform
Hard to build rich, sexy apps/content
Outlook web access biggest application. Why we built XHR
Dot com bubble burst
Experiments with Web OS and other super-rich apps failed.
Hacking became lucrative.
2002 security push Win XPSP2 - bit more than a service pack in my opinion.
We were very security focussed in this time.
With all this it seemed like MS was AWOL from the web
2005 Ajax gets a name.
In a lot of ways it was invented in 1998
Simple dev pattern - fetch and update
Realisation/innovation on top of web 1.0
need to care about web UI
Rebirth of the semantic web
RSS
Microformats and tagging add more meaning to HTML
Other Browsers arise
Microsoft does work best with competition.
Oct 18th 2006 - MS ships IE7
Amazing User Experience.
Secure and trustworthy browsing
Web developer platform
Amazing User Experience.
Tabs
Extensible search via OpenSearch
Great default print experience
Page zoom
integrated RSS platform
Average people don't know what RSS is
Feed discovery and default feed view
common platform
Secure and trustworthy browsing
Job #1
Protection against web fraud
integrated anti-phishing service
User experience highlights security (EV, address bar)
Putting the user in control
Add-on manager from XPSP2
we warn of insecure settings
Explicit user consent is required on first run of ActiveX
Advance malware protection on Win Vista
Protected mode eliminates silent install of code.
Powerful Web developer platform
We focussed on web developers
we fixed over 200 CSS and layout bugs on IE7
Fixed inconsistencies with W3C specs
:hover on all elements
Can overlap select
Other heavily requested features
Alpha channel in png
Native XHR
Improved performance for js
Improved standards support will mean that pages will break.
Don't break the web
Compatibility is critical adoption/deployment factor
must balance compliance with site compatibility
Quirksmode stays the same. Alot of the standards changes only happen in standards mode.
Unfortunately standards mode is increasingly popular, and developers expect behaviour not to change.
IE7 readines toolkit - check IE blog for details.
Multiple IE versions on one machine
Not technically possible.
There are hacks but they're fragile and incomplete.
Free VPC image with Win XPSP2 and IE6.
Visual web developer Express, debugging validation.
Microsoft Expression Web,
A tool to build standards-based sites
Passionate about standards.
Browser based Schemas tell you if a certain feature is not supported.
ASP.net AJAX
Client-side JS framework
Offer ajax in a model familiar to ASP programmers
Introducing WPF/E
Vector imaging
X-browser
X-platform
Similar to WPF but different
XAML subset
WPF/E is cross platform
The future of IE's engine.
We strongly believe in HTML/CSS/JS
Lots to do in web developer platform, standards standards standards.
Continue to innovate.
Adding new paradigms as they evolve.
Security is always job #1
Don't break the web is our team's slogan.
Evolution not a revolution.