EU says Microsoft violated law with IE on Windows

[General Zod]

Can you name any prominent websites that still have this requirement? I recall running into perhaps all of 3 such websites in the last ten years, and they wound up being utterly useless to me.

AT&T's online signup site didn't work in Safari or Firefox.

I just went there through Firefox and it worked fine.

[phongn]

I just went there through Firefox and it worked fine.

Did you go all the way through attempting to execute an order for service?

[General Zod]

I just went there through Firefox and it worked fine.

Did you go all the way through attempting to execute an order for service?

Which service? I went to their DSL page and I've checked out the forms for cellular. They all work without trouble.

[phongn]

Which service? I went to their DSL page and I've checked out the forms for cellular. They all work without trouble.

DSL, and then you have to go through all the mess of selecting services, declining all the extra services they want to sell you, submit your SSN for a credit check, etc. At some point the web server just gives you a "try again later" response. I tried with Firefox and Safari without success, and then a colleague suggested IE. Instant success.

[General Zod]

Which service? I went to their DSL page and I've checked out the forms for cellular. They all work without trouble.

DSL, and then you have to go through all the mess of selecting services, declining all the extra services they want to sell you, credit check, etc.

Well. I suppose that might count as one prominent site, but I generally work under the rule of thumb that if I absolutely have to have IE to view the site, then it's probably not worth my trouble.

[Spyder]

There are various sites that do require it. The page that lets us into my company's corporate VPN, via a java applet, only works in IE (I've been meaning to ask the guys with the Suse laptops how they get around it.)

As previously stated in this thread, going after MS for bundling IE isn't really going to accomplish much other then possibly a fine and another line of Vista OS's that no one's going to buy. With a company that apparently threatened OEMs into not releasing hardware without operating systems in 1998 (somewhere in here, among other things) they should be able to do better then that.

Honestly, if the EU wants change in the industry they should stop taking pot shots at Microsoft and drop some funding into OSS research (assuming their patent legislation allows such a thing.) If you could stimulate industry into looking at alternatives then you'll promote competition.

[Xon]

Honestly, if the EU wants change in the industry they should stop taking pot shots at Microsoft and drop some funding into OSS research (assuming their patent legislation allows such a thing.) If you could stimulate industry into looking at alternatives then you'll promote competition.

This is the thing which gets me, Microsoft stuff is often used because quite simply there is only a single option. Even only marginal increases in cost isn't going to change this. $2k for an OS licencing is nothing when you pay +$50k for your apps.

The primary issue the EU appears to have is Microsoft is basicly a single supplier for Microsoft software. Software may be pervasive, but the complexity is simply too great to have drop in, zero-configuration replacements for all but the most trivial of things. Even Open source stuff has the same issues, you can't simply swap a FreeBSD OS for a Linux distro and have everything you know about one apply to the other without modification.

[Spyder]

Honestly, if the EU wants change in the industry they should stop taking pot shots at Microsoft and drop some funding into OSS research (assuming their patent legislation allows such a thing.) If you could stimulate industry into looking at alternatives then you'll promote competition.

This is the thing which gets me, Microsoft stuff is often used because quite simply there is only a single option. Even only marginal increases in cost isn't going to change this. $2k for an OS licencing is nothing when you pay +$50k for your apps.

It's a couple of orders ot magnitude less then nothing when you take into account packaging, deployment and support costs. Actually getting the apps into a corporate environment costs tens of millions. The UK Ministry of Justice had a team of over 200 people dedicated to a 2 year project getting them from 2k to XP. When you're laying down that kind of cash then damn straight you're not going to take a punt with something no-one else is using.

The primary issue the EU appears to have is Microsoft is basicly a single supplier for Microsoft software. Software may be pervasive, but the complexity is simply too great to have drop in, zero-configuration replacements for all but the most trivial of things. Even Open source stuff has the same issues, you can't simply swap a FreeBSD OS for a Linux distro and have everything you know about one apply to the other without modification.

That is indeed the issue. They're complaining about the way the industry works (fair enough, there are problems) with their solution being fine microsoft for some of Bill Gates' pocket change.

If they don't like it they should try and shift the industry over to a situation where you've got multiple suppliers for software which is standards compliant. Software that's available in the public domain is a good place to start.

[Isil`Zha]

How's this for not uninstalling IE:

There are still many websites and webapps that require IE to even display, due to utilizing certain IE-only components. My solution is, of course, to use IE Tabs to view webpages that require IE - but it still requires Firefox to render the page using IE.

Can you name any prominent websites that still have this requirement? I recall running into perhaps all of 3 such websites in the last ten years, and they wound up being utterly useless to me.

Most web apps by MS basically have a "If not IE THEN really shitty version of the webapp." Outlook web access is a great example of this...

Also, if you ever have to do any Cisco admin stuff, good luck - doesn't work at all without IE.

[Dominus Atheos]

The Steam client uses IE as it's rendering engine to purchase new games and for all the community features. Remove IE and none of those things will work anymore.