Project Rincon: Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7.0

May 25, 2005 – Microsoft announced its plans of releasing Internet Explorer 7.0 anytime soon this summer. With the project code, “Rincon”, the release is intended to improve the IE browser’s security. Aside from this objective, people are almost sure that Internet Explorer 7.0 will not only bring with it security enhancements but also features like tabbed browsing, built-in anti-spy ware and RSS aggregating.

Every website owners and developers in the internet community is also further speculation if Microsoft will create a browse that interprets CSS 2 in a standard way. This question is being highlighted because the current Microsoft Explorer does not support all of CSS2’s functionalities. In fact, Microsoft even tends to add functionalities that aren’t initially supported by CSS2. Web site developers are questioning this matter since they usually encounter a major headache in the process of developing websites that should be accessible to all people notwithstanding the browser they are using.

A study on Microsoft’s history and current marketplace position seem to indicate the unlikelihood of Microsoft’s support to the CSS2 and other open source development trend. Four of Microsoft’s vision show their continued resolve to buck the CSS2 and their decision to mold a marketplace entirely according to their vision.

1. Incompatibility can be a Competitive Advantage - owing to its boom, Internet Explorer are the first consideration of website developers in developing a website, placing other secondary browsers second in line. Indeed, once a website works in Internet Explorer and not in any other browsers, a small percentage of site visitors are inconvenienced. But if a site is broken in Internet Explorer and appears to work in other browsers, like Firefox, it may inconvenience about 90% of its visitors. Thus, Microsoft finds that having the vast market share in the browser market, it can readily influence the behavior of web site owners and surfers. By not following a standard set of rules that any browser can comply with, Internet Explorer stands to gain more traffic and less inconvenienced web sites and users.

2. Keep the Advantage, Eliminate the Disadvantages – only few people shy away from Microsoft and its products. There are also but very few reasons that users would switch to Firefox from Internet Explorer. This small percentage does not matter to Microsoft, however, what Microsoft is concerned about is the real advantages of making the switch to Firefox.

3. Security Matters – after the awareness of PC security has become a big issue and people have become aware of spyware, people see the top reason of switching to Firefox. Persons who study and analyze will realize the fact that most spy ware programs focus on the Internet Explorer’s vulnerabilities, which most surfers use. Thus, a switch to Firefox gives them more security features not available in Internet Explorer. Given this condition that security problems may be the biggest reason for surfers to change into Firefox browser, Microsoft decided to make security a major priority, hence the introduction of Internet Explorer 7.0.

4. Browser Features – Firefox have unique features that users don’t get in Internet Explorer. But, Microsoft have made Firefox a market testing of some sort and saved them costs for development tests. Once proven effective, Microsoft tend to copy the successful features of Firefox and ignore other features that did not gain user’s recognition. -30-

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