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Interview with Lead Program Manager for Internet Explorer 7

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On June 21, 2006, 3:12 PM EST

If you're interested in the progress of IE7 and how it will impact web usage for the typical Windows user, there's a good interview with a developer on the project. Christopher Vaughan is the Lead Program Manager for the Internet Explorer team, and has worked on IE since nearly its conception, shortly after MS acquired the initial code and released IE 2. Some of the questions relate to the “quality” involved with the Internet in IE6, such as this this answer in response to what sort of lessons were learned with IE6:

The first lesson was that the Internet isn't an innocent place any more. When IE6 was under development 6 years ago, viruses were inconveniences and true Internet crime wasn't a concern.
He also talks about user education, the goals of IE7 in security, privilege separation and active content. If you're interested at all in the development of IE7, it's a definite must read.

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User Comments (8)

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DragonMaster
on June 21, 2006
5:49 PM
So instead of fixing the holes they just disable their access.

Reply

zephead
on June 22, 2006
2:30 AM
"The first lesson was that the Internet isn't an innocent place any more. When IE6 was under development 6 years ago, viruses were inconveniences and true Internet crime wasn't a concern. "TOTAL BULL$HITmicrosoft made an awful program and forced it upon windows users, end of story.

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Julio
on June 22, 2006
3:38 AM
I wouldn't consider IE6 an awful program at the time of its release, but the fact that it didn't evolve with the rest of the Internet made it the crappy program it is today. It's Microsoft to blame for not developing it further when they dominated the market by such a large margin.

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nic
on June 22, 2006
6:34 AM
[b]Originally posted by zephead:[/b][quote]"The first lesson was that the Internet isn't an innocent place any more. When IE6 was under development 6 years ago, viruses were inconveniences and true Internet crime wasn't a concern. "TOTAL BULL$HITmicrosoft made an awful program and forced it upon windows users, end of story.[/quote]IE won a lot of praise from users/reviewers when it first came out. You don't have to like IE (I use Opera), but making remarks that aren't based on fact only makes you look bad.

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DragonMaster
on June 22, 2006
9:31 AM
When it was released, viruses were of a big concern, the only thing is that there were a lot less people with computers.

Reply

nic
on June 22, 2006
1:37 PM
If you go online these days you'll likely get a virus/trojan on your PC within minutes. That never used to be the case. Firewalls never used to mandatory (if you have any sense) until fairly recently. It takes years to change the code base of a complex product that is tightly integrated with the OS. Vista is all change for Microsoft, so you can expect real change when this new OS finally ships.[Edited by nic on 2006-06-22 13:52:12]

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canadian
on June 22, 2006
5:09 PM
Now, with IE6, microsoft was planning on just leaving it, and using it for a few more years. Are they planning on finishing IE7, then leaving it, or will they constantly work on it, and let it evolve?

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nic
on June 23, 2006
1:17 AM
I think because security is a major selling point of Vista, they will certainly be keeping IE7 up to date. IE6 was free and with over 90% of the market there wasn't any incentive to spend millions in developing it. Any company would do the same. There's a lot more competition out there now.

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