I couldn’t remember when I first noticed they were missing but when ever I checked a working folder on my laptop the tortoise svn icon overlays were missing. When I edited a file the red cross would appear as expected, but the green tick to say a file was up to date or the question mark for non-versioned files were missing, meaning I didn’t know if a file was up to date with the repo head or an ignored/non-versioned file.

This morning I came across a post on stack overflow that suggested modifying the registry to over-right the usual Microsoft default setting cock-up. In Windows, for memory reasons Im guessing, they have limited the number of allowed Shell Icon overlays  to 11. Now at first this seems like a logical way to stop memory abuse in Explorer. But for some stupid reason (most likely so their overlays come first), they are actioned in alphabetical order, so any overlays in position 12+ are ignored. With M being in the middle of the alphabet this results in the majority of these slots being allocated by Microsoft Products. In this case Tortoise SVN (obviously starting with a T) was being pushed out of the allowed slots.

I found this out by doing a search in the registry for ‘ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers’  (NOTE: only open regedit if your comfortable using it, we don’t need to change anything just taking a peek so you should be ok). This reviled that most of the Shell Icon slots were being taken up by something called Microsoft Groove. Not having a clue what this is I turned to a popular search engine to find out.

Microsoft Groove is the name for their multi-user document collaboration tool, which makes sense that it would need some icon overlays as it is essentially the same thing as Tortoise SVN. I don’t do any online document collaboration so re-searched for how to remove it. The Microsoft knowledge base article advised to remove the feature from Office via the add/remove programs control panel but when I looked I couldn’t find anything that mentioned Groove but after a further search or two I found that it has now been renamed to Microsoft SharePoint Workspace, which was listed in my version of Office. I disabled the feature and restarted my laptop and I now have my overlay icons back.

Full of “how are javascript engine is better than your javascript engine” talk, there isn’t much about the features it will include, or a reason why they dont just release a version 8.* will all these updates rather than just going for version 9, but it does highlight their focus on improving CSS support (including rounded corners), its defiantly worth a quick read and also a bookmark for those of you not already subscribed to the RSS feed.

You can find the post on the IE Developer Blog

The Microsoft blog post was made in responce to a Digg blog post made a few weeks ago asking visitors to the site using IE6 to comment and vote on why they still use the ageing browser. The results showed that while numbers are decreasing, there are still a lot of people using the browser, a statistic backed up by numerous other sources.

It did however once again highlight that the majority of these users were at work and unable to upgrade it due to internal IT policies and potential cost of upgrading, so the question of “should you support IE6 when building a website” comes down to one thing… Your target audiance.

If your site isn’t aimed at people in the workplace, a social networking site, an online shop or gaming website for example, then you can probably get away with your site not looking or working as flash and fancy as it does in a modern browser, although you should check users can navigate around or display a message advising they re-visit in an alternate browser. If your target audience is the home user… add as much javascript and inline-blocks as you can handle.

I think the news Microsoft will continue to support an out of date version instead of “persuading” office users to upgrade to their flagship browser isn’t in the best interests of itself or its customers, numerous security issues, non-standards compliant..need i go on.

I think the line they have taken that as it comes with a default installation of windows they must support it till the end of that products lifecycle is a blow to developers everywhere and will ensure the pothole on the internet roadmap will be with us for another few years yet.

Im not sure if this is a good thing or not, on the one hand its a shame to see an internet pioneer hang up its search engine boots in favour of the blood money it will get from Microsoft for embedding bing, but then Yahoo is a network going nowhere but downhill, used only by those that have used it since the early days or those that cant figure out how set a new homepage, missing out on the new generations as they flock to cool uncle google for their search needs, the revenue they will make from Microsoft will probably help the name Yahoo! stay in the headlights that little bit longer.

You can read more on the Yahoo! corporate Blog or the special site set-up to answer your questions.

Hopefully this will release will mark the end of Internet Explorer 6, the bane of website developers everywhere, IE6 is almost 8 years old and now 2 versions behind the stable release, so people still running it are compromising their security with outdated software and disrupting their online experience by using a browser riddled with bugs.

I for one am taking this opportunity to draw a line in the sand and will no longer test my site designs in IE6, I will also be adding a small pop-up message to alert users visiting via IE6 that while they are welcome, they are visiting the site using outdated software and the site may not be compatible, I will also be providing a link to upgrade to IE8 (would be rude not to add a Firefox link as well )

UPDATE: (16/04/09 @ 22:04)

True to my word, if you now visit my website in Internet Explorer versions 7 or below, you will get an Information bar pop-up advsiing to update your browser.

It is believed that the next browser to come out of the Redmond camp will be based on the new and exciting Project Gazelle, recently announced by Microsoft Research.  Gazelle is a completely new browser and has been rebuilt from the ground up. It currently consists of 5,000 lines of C# code, runs with a sandboxed kernal to prevent unauthorised access to the users operating system and uses a multi-process approach to tabs meaning each tab has its own process so if one crashes the whole application doesnt freeze up.

It is also rumoured the new browser will run with webkit (the rendering engine used by safari, opera and google chrome) which is fast becoming the norm for none-IE / Firefox based browsers, I for one hope this doesnt happen as Im not a huge fan of webkit and its many flaws, but then I am an avid firefox fanboi.

Talking of rumours  (this being a theme of this post) IE 8 is expected to be released at Microsoft’s Mix 09 conference next week, Microsoft Taiwan has even given a release date of 20th March.

Having tested Internet Explorer 8 from beta 1 I have to say this is definatly the best version yet and I hope this is pushed out via one of Redmonds Patch Tuesdays as a critical update forcing users to upgrade. I will be adding an “Upgrade to IE8″ message to my site for visitors using IE7 or god forbif IE6.

Further Reading

• Gazelle White Paper

Microsoft’s latest test build of Windows 7 comes loaded with an option to delete Internet Explorer 8′s executable file – making it unusable on the OS.

The company has added its IE8 web browser as a component that can be toggled on and off via the operating system’s “Windows Features” dialog box.

According to testers, who are currently playing with build 7048 of Windows 7, IE8 is a new addition to the control panel’s list of customisable options.

However, the feature does not uninstall the browser in the latest build. Instead it simply deletes the “iexplore.exe” file. All other components of IE8 remain intact on the OS.

According to AeroXperience removal of the browser’s executable file takes two reboots and a config step to complete the process.

Many are speculating that Microsoft has added the IE8 “turn off” feature to the upcoming Windows 7 in an effort to satisfy Brussels’ anti-trust regulators.

In January the executive body of the European Union issued preliminary findings in which it said MS had violated European competition law by including Internet Explorer with Windows.

However, Microsoft, which is becoming increasingly good at writing long-winded blog posts about Windows 7 that are bereft of detail, is remaining characteristically tight-lipped about IE8’s inclusion on the Windows Features list. ®

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/05/windows_7_turn_off_ie8/ ]]> http://gavtaylor.co.uk/blog/windows-7-test-build-turns-off-internet-explorer-8/feed 0 http://gavtaylor.co.uk/blog/ie8-vs-ff31 http://gavtaylor.co.uk/blog/ie8-vs-ff31#comments Thu, 29 Jan 2009 20:30:30 +0000 Gavin http://blog.gavtaylor.co.uk/?p=8 As microsoft push their latest version of Internet Explorer into RC1, our better more reliable brother Firefox is struggling to get out of beta 3. While the two companies battle it out with who will release the next version first, i thought i would bive my two cents so to speak.

I have been playing with the IE8 betas since BETA1 was realeased all those months ago and i have to admit the RC1 is actually quite good, the progress in the browser since the first beta was releases is very good. When i quickly browsed the net and viewed my sites in B1 they were all over the place, broken css and javascript errors glaor. Now with RC1 freshly installed the majority of sites seem work fine without having to resort to the awkward compliants mode ( switch back to IE7 mode ) they have bolted on for all the lazy designers/programmers who built IE only versions fo websites. I am acually quite excited about the release of Internet Explorer 8 as it marks the start of a new generation of websites that are standards compliant from the go, without horrid IE hacks that a lot of sites seem to use.

Again the hopefully imminent release of Firefox 3.1 as got me excited, not only do we finally get the P0RN mode we have been waiting for we also start to get some CSS3 functionality we can use, most notably the use of web fonts, no more can will we be stuck with the handful of web fonts we have used for so long but with the quick upload of a public font we will be away with great typography and great looking websites.

There are a host of new features coming in FF3.1 and im not going to go through them all but i still think its the best browser you could possible choose to use but here are links to both so you can choose

• Download Mozilla Firefox 3.1
• Download Internet Explorer 8