I have used this blog to grumble about "Flash turds" - those super-annoying adverts whose determination to grab the eye brings them to the point of being a test for epilepsy. I'm not seeing many of them being built in Silverlight, yet, but it can only be a matter of time.
Fortunately I use IE7-Pro which has both an AD blocker and a Flash-blocker, which is more effective than simply disabling the Flash add on in IE - a box appears which says "Flash blocked" and I just have to click it if it is some part of a site which I want to see. It's not 100% effective - Our own Live Spaces manages to bury its flash too deeply for IE7Pro to un-pick it, but IE7Pro will run scripts against pages it loads and I found a script in their forums to plug that gap. Hooray !
As O'Brien passed the telescreen a thought seemed to strike him. He stopped, turned aside and pressed a switch on the wall. There was a sharp snap. The voice had stopped. Julia uttered a tiny sound, a sort of squeak of surprise. Even in the midst of his panic, Winston was too much taken aback to be able to hold his tongue. 'You can turn it off!' he said. 'Yes,' said O'Brien, 'we can turn it off. We have that privilege.' George Orwell: 1984
As O'Brien passed the telescreen a thought seemed to strike him. He stopped, turned aside and pressed a switch on the wall. There was a sharp snap. The voice had stopped. Julia uttered a tiny sound, a sort of squeak of surprise. Even in the midst of his panic, Winston was too much taken aback to be able to hold his tongue. 'You can turn it off!' he said. 'Yes,' said O'Brien, 'we can turn it off. We have that privilege.'
George Orwell: 1984
Once, we had to tolerate things like Pop-ups, then blockers became something that you had to add to a browser and now anyone with a reasonably up to date browser can take it for granted that Pop-ups will be blocked by default. IE7pro fills some of the gaps which were apparent in IE7 back when it was in beta (search on the context menu being an obvious one - and something IE8 addresses in a really smart way with "Activities"). IE7Pro also does a good job of blocking anti-social behaviours on otherwise useful web sites. The issue I find I come back to again and again is the responsibility of being Microsoft - not so much because we might squeeze third parties out of the market, but is it improper to have blocking abilities, out-of-the-box ? Making it too easy to block (lets say) Google Ads would have two problems - firstly if Microsoft is to develop its own advertising business, blocking a competitor would bring regulators down on us in minutes. Secondly there are plenty of sites out there which depend on Ad revenue, choking off their funding wouldn't be good for anyone: I singled out Google's ads because they are about as inoffensive as it is possible to make an ad (so unlike the Flash turds the reader gets no benefit by dumping them).
It's all very well for me as one individual to rail against Bad Flash used in advertising, but there's a question of what is legitimate to block. Pop-ups were universally hated, but what about blocking specific active-X controls (Flash, Silverlight, you choose) with a "click to re-enable" option ? What about providing methods to allow customers to block insidious advertisers, like Phorm ? In case you haven't picked up stories appearing everywhere from the BBC to The Register a number of UK ISPs propose to intercept the web traffic of their customers and pass it on to a third party to target advertising. The range of opinion runs from Sir TIm Berners-Lee saying he he would change his internet provider if it introduced such a system to a home office legal adviser suggesting that it was an interception of a communication within the meaning of sections 2(2) and 2(8) of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA), to Trend Micro telling the Register that "The nature of Phorm's monitoring of all user web activity is certainly of some concern, and there is a very high chance that Trend Micro would add detection for the tracking cookies as adware in order to protect customers.". This sets my privacy antennae twitching , not least because my ISP is one of those said to be planning to use Phorm. What's the best way to deal with it ?
Comments welcome (as ever).
(update - somehow lost a crucial NOT in there)
So I said that we'd done a lot while I was away , other gems now sifted from my inbox include.
Here at Tech-ed IT-Forum I went to dinner with some people from the PowerShell community. I heard someone say afterwards something to the effect "If anyone in Microsoft has a right to a huge ego, it's Jeffrey, but he's really nice and wanted to hear what I had to say". I interviewed Jeffrey the following morning, and his philosophy about listening to customers came out in the interview (which will be posted early next week - it probably on Edge). When I go to these events I'm usually "man on a mission"; this time I've not got quite the same sense of purpose - I'm just networking with people at random: I'm not exactly Mr Smalltalk at the best of times, and I'm only just over my jet lag which has made me feel even less inclined to chat. But I think my interview with Jeffrey is a good one, and one of my highlights of the show. The weird moment of Tech-ed was meeting Hugh Macleod: not so much for meeting him, but I happened to be wearing a Blue-Monster Shirt at the time. So our evening of drinks was one long round of Eileen saying to people "This is Hugh" [pause] "He drew the that" - [pointing to my shirt] and Hugh getting the reaction "Ohmygod ohmygod - you're him !"
I was talking to a customer (I know he reads this blog, so no names). He was having some trouble because two parts of Microsoft weren't communicating the way you'd expect them to. And I said in passing that one thing which we are unjustly accused of from time to time is underhand collusion: for example product "A" supposedly has some secret API that only the people working on product "B" know about. What we actually do is a bit like that scene at the very end of "Raiders of the lost Ark" where the Ark is hidden by placing it in crate and stored with thousands upon thousands of similar crates. Whilst I can't say for sure that never happened, people who believe "secret collaboration" is widespread really don't understand what Microsoft is like inside. You'd hope that all Microsoft web properties would:
But lighting up the search box needs a <link rel="search" ... > tag on each page; and some parts of the empire are starting to get the message. I was pleased when I saw IE's search drop-down go orange when I was on the support site, clicking it show the "This site only search"
.
But I'll bet something from my "Swag" cupboard that we don't have this on the Microsoft home page before Christmas. (If we do - first person to send a mail to me pointing it out gets the prize) .
After being taken to task by some recent commenters I'm a bit hesitant about suggesting that I (or others) are vain, but I can't come up with a better tag for it.
I find that quite often I want to find a post on my blog. Because I often write about things I've found on the web the link to them is in my blog rather than my favorites folder. There are other things like in house Wikis or sharepoint sites where we want to go back to our own stuff- hence vanity searching. I find this is a great use of the search box in IE7.
I've added "My Blog" to the search list, and I'd pass that on as a top tip. Add search for any site you post to a lot. The easy way to do this is to search for the word TEST and then copy the URL from the address bar - if you paste it on on the "Search Providers" web page the server there will generate the open search XML that IE needs.
By the way in the screen shot on the right you'll see I've got Live Search as my default - I'm now finding it's quite rare that I have to drop back to Google. Once I've switched I'll keep on using Google until a search there doesn't work out. I've got a couple of other bits, Wikipedia (as you can see in the screen shot) is on my menu and while you're at the site it puts itself on the menu - that's what the yellow star is showing - the pull down menu also goes Orange when the site supports this - I really wish all Microsoft sites would - but like getting them changed to use silverlight, to write phone numbers as TEL: clickable links this seems a bit of a forlorn hope.
One of the things that annoys any technical person is when you get asked a question and have to shrug and say "No, never seen that one", even if you suspect there is a genuine problem. I've had a couple of people ask me about problems with Outlook web access under Vista. The symptoms are usually in the form that the user can read mail but not reply to it. I've known for a while that there is a patch for OWA but until recently I didn't know what the cause was or where to go for the resolution. A post on the IE Team blog explains what the root cause is (removing the DHTML control), where to get even more information, and where to go for the patch.
So now I know (and so do you)
This isn't a question about your employment practices. In recent years a lot of work has been done to make buildings usable by wheelchair users; but how many of the people you do with visit your office. I've known for some time that websites do a lousy job, the most obvious case being the use of Flash and similar technologies which doesn't work for a blind user working with a screen reader.
So guess, if you will, what proportion of Web sites reach minimum standards of accessibility. Half maybe ? Hopelessly optimistic. A quarter then ? No. We talking minimum standards - surely 10% of sites can manage that ? Apparently not. The figure is 3%, according to a study which came out last week
Here are the most common sins:
And, no, based on our home page I don't we'd pass the test with flying colours either.
[Note: the information below was correct when it was published, please read the update at the end]
You can judge my loyalty to the Williams F1 team by the fact that - after several miserable years of results, I still call myself a fan. Williams' main sponsor last year was RBS. I'm thinking about getting a new credit card and I do try to use people who sponsor my teams - and RBS turns up on a number of lists as one of the better deals right now, I thought it made sense to with them. Sadly - and I say this having worked with some of the RBS IT guys who deal with mail and messaging, RBS has a web site which doesn't know about IE7
The RBS site says "Please use a recent version of Internet Explorer" - which actually makes matters worse, visit www.Microsoft.com/IE and you end up at the IE7 page. I know people in RBS who have been looking at Vista since before the beta 2 release, and so the existence of IE version numbers higher than 6 is not news to them, yet a month after IE7 was released "recent" means IE6 to the web site (which in some people's eyes is the bank). I could get around this, but it's easier to take my business somewhere else. I did try Natwest as they are owned by RBS but I got the same thing. As Natwest's Ads might say my browser: rejected, my account switched.
In case you think this is having go at RBS, it isn't really. It's a lesson in how not keeping your site up to date costs you business. Make sure it doesn't happen to you.
Update. I had a mail this evening from someone who I assume is connected with RBS: the site now accepts IE7. I've got their competitors card.
Back in July, we announced that that IE 7 for Windows XP will be pushed out using Windows update. Since IE7 is bound up with Windows Vista, the release of IE7 for XP will happen at about the same time as Vista releases to manufacturing. A few weeks after that it will be pushed out via Windows Update.
If you manage a large number of PCs, then you should be using Windows Server Update Services to manage updates and you can decide whether or not client PCs get the update. However if your PCs connect to Windows update directly, you should check to see if IE7 works correctly for any applications which are critical to you, and if not consider getting the IE7 update blocker
More information is available on the IE team blog
We have been getting some bad press over a bug which affects the Vector Markup Language in IE 5 and IE6 (but not IE7). Over on the Security Response Center Blog there are several posts about it. There were attacks based on the vulnerability (though very few), so we published a workaround and then released the patch ahead of schedule. The blog has details of release; it is already live on Windows update, or you can go here to download it directly.
Interesting footnote. The BBC have covered this story top of list of links they have is the MSRC blog... shows how blogs are becoming seen as authoritative
Tagged as Microsoft Windows XP (Windows XP) Vulerability
Here's Something I bet most people most people thought they'd never see. (Thanks to Information week). We're making sure we help Firefox development.
We have an Open Source Software Lab in Redmond - they have an interesting web site at http://port25.technet.com. It makes a good story to portray Microsoft and the open source world as engaged in a full blooded fight to the death; but life is rarely that simple. A lot of Microsoft customers have some open source software (and Vice versa), as well as wanting to understand what we're competing with, we want things to work well for our customers.
We'd rather people made IE their browser of choice. But if they're going to run Firefox, we don't want them to have a rotten experience of their Windows system as a result. And we'd certainly prefer them to use firefox on Vista than use it on XP or something even older. No sense in detering people from upgrading because the browser they happen to prefer doesn't work so well on the new OS.
I also read a great post on the IE team blog this evening, they've set out a list of things that are fixed in CSS support, but the key stuff is at the end - there is tons of information around IE 7, you can start at the Information Index for IE 7.
A couple of things I'd pick out are the IE 7 Readiness Toolkit and the Checklists for Developers IT professionals and consumers if you support web clients or servers, this tells you where you should concentrate your efforts.
Tagged as Microsoft Windows Vista IE Internet Explorer Firefox Open Source
The IE team have announced on their blog that when it is finalized, IE 7 will be pushed out via Windows Update. It also explains what to do if you or your company DON'T want it. You have a little while to act because this isn't going to happen until the fourth quarter of the year: expect IE7 to be released at roughly the same time as Windows Vista.
The user experience of IE7 is superior - at the conference this week most of the machines set up for Kiosk style use are running XP, with Office 2003 and IE6. Having grown used to Vista, Office 2007 and IE7 going back feels crude and clunky. The security is better with the phishing filter, fix my settings and Active-X opt in (and better handling of SSL too). Personally I think everyone should have it, but it would be wrong to force people, hence the opt out.
Bonus link. When I was reading the story on CNet the page had a link to an artist who uses the same he receives as the seeds for his computer generated art. Some of his pictures remind me of the stuff I saw when I was diving last week.
Tagged as Microsoft Internet Explorer
In a previous post I admitted a small heresy for a Microsoft person. I quite liked firefox; past tense because IE7 gives me all that I liked about Firefox, and more besides.
Last week I learnt of a survey by bit9 which details their top 15 most vulnerable applications. And top of the list is Firefox, version 1.07. Firefox have updates, patches, indeed a whole new version, but if anyone still believes the “lots of eyeballs implies few vulnerabilities” myth of Open Source, they should be able to see it is a fairy story. There is an equal and opposite myth which is that software is only secure if you keep the source secret. The fact that Microsoft have a “Shared source” programme – open source with a small O, gives the lie to this too. Only in Digital Rights Management do you need to keep the code secret.
Talking of digital right management number 2 in the list was Apples iTunes. 6.02 and quick time 7.03 (which, like firefox is patchable, or can be replaced with a new version). At 3 comes Skype 1.4 (patchable) , #4 is Adobe Acrobat Reader 7.02, and 6.03 (superseded and patchable), and #5 is Sun’s Java Runtime Environment (also patchable), #6 is Macromedia Flash Player 7 (patchable again), at #7 is Winzip 8.1 (upgradeable) , keeping Skype company, at #8 is AOL instant messenger 5.5, #9 is MSN messenger 5.0, and #10 is Yahoo instant messenger 6.0, and #15 is the ICQ chat client 2003a. AOL and MSN can be patched or upgraded, Yahoo and ICQ – according to Bit 9 - cannot. You can get the full list of vulnerable apps from bit9.
Inside Microsoft, we’ve talked about what this report means. First, it means Vulnerabilities aren’t confined to Microsoft. Any developer that points a finger at someone else for having a vulnerability is setting themselves up for a fall. We might allow ourselves a small laugh at the expense of those Firefox fans who claim it is totally watertight. But only a small laugh – because they set themselves up for the fall. Too much laughter and we’ll be setting ourselves up for one.
Secondly, 9 of the top 10 have patches and or upgrades. No-one should see any impact from these vulnerabilities. It’s easy to make sure Microsoft software is patched, but how good are people’s practices for the others ?
Regular readers (if I have any) will know that RSS is one of my interests. So I noticed Robert Scoble’s post “Windows Media 11’s lack of Podcasting gets noticed” which in turn followed up a post on Geek News Central
For background:
So how do you get a Podcast into WMP 11 ?
If your feed is pictures then you can choose the photos screen saver and paste the path in there too.
By the way, this 5 line VBS script is all that is needed to get a list of feeds and their folders.
Dim rssMgr Set rssMgr = CreateObject("microsoft.FeedsManager") For Each rssfeed In rssMgr.RootFolder.Feeds If rssfeed.DownloadEnclosuresAutomatically then _ wscript.echo rssfeed.Name & "is stored in " & rssfeed.LocalEnclosurePath Next
So, last week I was talking about "getting the search you want" this morning I was looking for some information on Microsoft's intranet. We're testing the next version of sharepoint search internally and I as I putting my search in I was thinking, "I must write the XML to add this in...". So I was more than pleased to see the text Using Internet Explorer 7? Click here to add searchbeta to your toolbar search box! on the results page. Fantastic. Intranet web site owners please take note, it's easy for you to do, and makes it easy for users to get to your content. The really smart ones will put in some redundant data so they can see what's come from the tool bar.
It was a pleasant surprise to get a mention from Robert Scoble, for my "RSS in 90 lines of code", and the I'm pleased to announce that it is available for download. Before give you the link, please be aware that
If you would like a copy of the code AND you are happy with these conditions, right click here and choose save targets as.