Half baked but crispy

The beginning of the end for Internet Explorer. Maybe ... but expect it to be around for a while yet!

Could This Be the Beginning of the End for IE?

In the war for browser superiority, Microsoft may be showing signs of yielding to upstarts from Mozilla, Opera and Google.

Over the past few years, Firefox has been slowly stealing away the numbers from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser. Microsoft still holds the greater share of users, presumably thanks to legacy versions of its Windows operating system. However, despite some movement in Internet Explorer 7 and 8 (in beta now), Microsoft has been slow to play catch up, and users have been slow to upgrade.

It is enough for some to question whether Microsoft can keep up, and rather, why would they want to? There is no official word of Microsoft giving up on the browser. However, one can speculate that Internet Explorer is not a particularly valued Microsoft product next to its bread and butter software: the Windows operating system.

Unlike Windows, Internet Explorer is not a cash cow for Microsoft. It is also under the demands of a very diverse and rapidly moving web industry, one growing more crowded with browsers like Firefox, Opera and newcomer Google’s Chrome.

Internet Explorer used to drive this industry due to its market relevance and now Microsoft representatives only have a hand in directing standards and features going forward as these other browsers bring more — a task growing far more arduous with the demands of AJAX web applications like Gmail.

Furthermore, browsers is a gateway to various security flaws and viruses, and protecting users from themselves via browser security protocols and fixes is an elephantine task. Microsoft has been under the microscope for the various security holes in its system and browser. Offloading this task to third-party browsers must seem pretty attractive.

Perhaps the greatest evidence of Microsoft letting Internet Explorer slip is Microsoft Windows 7 will not require an installation of Internet Explorer. This is a dramatic shift from Microsoft’s usual operating procedure, relatively strong-arming customers to use Internet Explorer by integrating the browser in various elements of its operating system, such as file exploration.

Windows 7 not only removes that functionality, you can decide whether or not to install it on your system at all. This is a big win for browser competition, and perhaps a sign that Microsoft is ready to share the PC with the growing community.

[link to original | source: webmonkey | published: 3 days ago | shared via feedly]

If you post to post@posterous.com the the post is reposted to all your other blogs. You can be more selective by posting to #blog@posterous.com but that takes too much thinking. I have therefore removed learning lab community and fresh and crispy from my auto repost list and will just use "half baked but crispy" for email posting (e.g. for shared google reader items) of blog postings to posterous.

 

Blog postings and shared items will still be retweeted, but I think that that's acceptible.

 

Blogger of course has its own email poster, but I'll have to remind myself how to use it.

 

 

Happy 20th Birthday, World Wide Web

New guide from the Engineering Subject Centre (ESC) at the Higher Education Academy (HEA) for engineering educators (like me) who don't have much idea of the theory of education and educators (also like me) who want to do research in this area. Hope it delivers what it promises!

Education theories on learning : an informal guide for the engineering education scholar : Engineering Subject Centre guide - Case

This guide has been produced to complement and develop the Engineering Subject Centre’s existing range of resources about learning and teaching theory. It is aimed at newcomers to the field, such as: * engineering teachers who want to be able to use education theory and research findings to inform their teaching; and * aspiring engineering education researchers who want to launch their own projects. Using a view of a theory as a set of ‘thinking tools’, the guide offers a selection for building up a tool kit. Six ‘tools’ have been identified.The selection is the author’s personal choice and the tools were chosen for their usefulness in engineering education research. Tools 1-3 broadly cover learning as acquisition, tools 3-6 look at learning as participation: 1. Tool 1: Concepts 2. Tool 2: Ways of experiencing 3. Tool 3: Approaches to learning 4. Tool 4: Community of practice 5. Tool 5: Identity 6. Tool 6: Discourse. . Published: Dec 2008. URL below: web version

[link to original | source: The 10 latest additions to the Engineering Subject Centre's resource catalogue | published: 10 days ago | shared via feedly]

Something to play with tomorrow I guess.

Looking forward to using Posterous as a better Google Reader sharing option which, when I realised that was how Alan Cann was using Son of SOTI, was how I discovered it in the first place.

One question I have is does discussion also work by email?

CPJ