Misc. Ramblings

I've talked about various browsers based on the Internet Explorer engine. One of those was called MyIE2. It had tabbed windows, mouse gestures, and other stuff that should be in IE already (but isn't since MS stopped development awhile back).

I haven't been over to their site for awhile and wouldn't have had it not been for a link in an article on the Mozillazine site that says the MS Director of Windows Product Management uses something called Maxthon. It seems MyIE2 changed its name to Maxthon and has found a following, including the MS Director.

In reading the interview though, I found it interesting that the Director seems to be saying MS doesn't need to update IE because third-party developers are providing the innovations for them and in any case, mainstream end users don't see a need for advanced features like tabbed windows anyway:

[Question:] How does Microsoft feel about third party browsers such as Maxthon and Avant Browser, which integrate much-demanded features with an IE engine underneath. Does Microsoft feel this is pulling users away from IE, or adding more of an IE user base? Isn't there a risk by pushing third-party browsers and making users more comfortable with a non-IE interface?

[Answer:] There you're only look at one dimension, which is the dimension of features. You're saying, "If I can get tabs in Maxthon, well I can go get tabs in Firefox, therefore I am going to switch." But that does away with all of the security stuff that we've just talked about, all those processes, the maturity of IE itself and the IE rendering engine, the compatibility with Internet sites, the compatibility with corporate applications - many of which use custom ActiveX controls that wouldn't run in Firefox in the first place.

Within the enterprise you're probably not going to see enterprises shift over to a tabbed browser on behalf of their users. Individual end users might decide "Hey, I like this feature and I'm going to go for it." But on balance, I don't think you're going to see the mainstream end user jump to tabs or jump to any other more advanced feature in the browser. For those users the browser is the Web site that they visit.[emphasis added]