User:Mjb/Sandbox
Sandbox
Please ignore anything you see here. It's where I copy and paste things, and try out code.
More testing
1. testing “quotes” in ‘Firefox’ result: proper Unicode quotes, UTF-8 encoded in HTML
2. testing “quotes” in ‘IE’ after pasting into and recopying from Textpad result: same
3. testing “quotes” in ‘Firefox’ after pasting into Textpad, saving as ANSI, reloading, and copying result: same
4. testing “quotes” in ‘IE’
Internet Explorer
I cut the following from the criticisms section, and am checking to see if any of it needs to be folded back into the
Since version 6, there has been no major development on the browser. Critics consider it to be technically inferior in some ways to its competition. Some would even go so far as to say it hinders further standard-based development of
Criticisms regarding support of open standards
During the browser wars, modifications of Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator were focused on the addition of non-standard features. In contrast, more recent browsers have been designed with open standards in mind. Since version 5, there have been no significant changes in IE's
Because of its market dominance, some casual web developers only test their websites with Internet Explorer. Some developers also use non-standard extensions offered by Internet Explorer. This can cause pages to be rendered incorrectly in other browser. In the worst case, it could block users of other browsers from accessing parts of the sites. Critics feel that this is the execution of the final step of EEE: the extinguish stage.
Sometimes pages that are designed to be compliant with certain W3C standards are not rendered correctly in Internet Explorer. This is often encountered when using complex CSS models. Conversely, many other
Criticisms regarding security
Internet Explorer comes under heavy scrutiny from the computer security research community, in part due to its sheer ubiquity.
As of
Exploitation via COM
Over the years, numerous attacks were targeted toward Internet Explorer. The embedding of COM into the Internet Explorer created a combination of functions that provides a gateway for explosion of computer virus, trojan and spyware infections. These malware attacks mostly depend on ActiveX for their activation and propagation to other computers. Microsoft has recognized the problem with ActiveX since 1996 when Charles Fitzgerald, program manager of Microsoft's Java team said, "If you want security on the 'Net', unplug your computer. … We never made the claim up front that ActiveX is intrinsically secure.".
One of the main problems in Internet Explorer's security measure is the total reliance on human judgment. Also, ActiveX security relies solely on security zones and digital signing, which was utilized by malware multiple times. One of the common techniques is to mark malicious pages incorrectly under trusted zone, either through human judgment or exploiting the browser's bugs without user interaction. In the
The forth-coming
Time for patch creation
Critics have claimed that security fixes take too long to be released after discovery of the problems, and that the problems are not always completely fixed. After Microsoft released patches to close holes in its general operating system in February 2003, 200 days after their initial report (instead of 30-60 days), Marc Maifrett, Chief Hacking Officer of
Microsoft attributes the perceived delays to rigorous testing. The testing matrix for Internet Explorer demonstrates the complexity and thoroughness of corporate testing procedures. The browser is released in 26 different languages on many different Windows platforms. Therefore, it is estimated that each patch is tested on at least 237 installations.
Criticisms regarding download size
Over the versions, the download size of Internet Explorer has increased significantly. As of Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1 (including Outlook Express), the total download size for a typical installation was approximately 25 megabytes. The size varied between 11 (minimal install) and 75 MB (full install). This was much larger than that of other internet suites, for example (based on Windows installer): 3.6MB for Opera 8.0 and 11MB for Mozilla 1.7.8.