The problem was traced back to Internet Explorer 6, most internet-based problems are traced back to IE6 to be honest. This browser has now been around for almost ten years. It’s been superseded twice and it’s widely acknowledged that this is possibly the worst and most insecure browser you can have on your computer.

IE6 came out at a time when Microsoft had won the browser wars and Netscape had largely disappeared. Firefox had yet to appear and the Redmond giant had 99% of the browser market. They had nobody to compete with and internet commerce was in its infancy. Thus Microsoft just let the browser stagnate for many years until finally forced to innovate by the likes of the Mozilla Foundation, who realised that adequate security was the minimum specification their new browser should have.

But IE6 was buggy in all sorts of other ways too, mostly in the notoriously bad way it rendered HTML code. Microsoft seemed to have their own ideas about how HTML worked and so most web pages had to be ‘fixed’ to work on it. But this had to happen because of Microsoft’s 99% market share. I was working in web design at the time and I can remember the constant complaints which still continue today.

Eventually with Vista and Windows 7, Microsoft released far superior and better protected versions of the browser but by this time big business had already developed their web-apps and portals to work with IE and made it clear that they didn’t want to spend the tens of thousands needed each to reformat them so they worked in IE7 or IE8.

Now Google is taking the bull by the horns and dropping support for IE6 from some of its products, starting with Google Docs. They’re doing what Microsoft should be doing. Not pandering to big business and causing the world a headache, but forcing people to stop using this buggy, insecure piece of antiquated rubbish.

Google are only giving you a month to prepare too. From the 1st March some services, there’s no definitive list yet, will no longer operate properly in IE6. Hopefully this will spur Microsoft to withdraw support for IE6 soon too, but somehow I doubt it.

This speaks volumes about Microsoft’s business model, and of how important to the company its volume licensing customers are. In some ways Microsoft execs will warmly welcome the move by Google. They’re doing what Microsoft can’t and it can only be a good thing.

It may even encourage more businesses to roll out Windows 7 before the first service pack is released later this year, traditionally the time when businesses begin deploying a new version of Windows.

We can only hope that IE6 is very soon dead, forgotten and that the world can concentrate on the security issues of today, not fixing the security nightmare of the 20th century.

Source: Windows7 News

The release candidate for Windows 7 offers an extended Windows Features control panel which can be accessed from the Programs and Features menu. New features have been added to that control panel that can be removed from the computer system including media features like Windows Media Center, Windows Media Player or Windows DVD Maker, the indexing service, Windows Search or the Microsoft .net Framework 3.51.

Deselecting a feature has the following consequences:

If a feature is deselected, it is not available for use. This means the files (binaries and data) are not loaded by the operating system (for security-conscious customers) and not available to users on the computer. These same files are staged so that the features can easily be added back to the running OS without additional media. This staging is important feedback we have received from customers who definitely do not like to dig up the installation DVD.

This is a very interesting move by Microsoft that should please advanced users who usually rely on third party software instead of Microsoft programs.

Source: Windows 7 News