How strange it must seem for the Internet Explorer team to again be so far behind in the ‘browser wars’. It must be disheartening to see the market share erode so quickly as well. The days of seeing a 9 as the first digit of the percentage are over for good.

Microsoft is working on it, as evidenced by the periodic releases of new buzzwords, which then get explained, like ‘Smart Screen Filter’. This will be comparable to what Firefox 3 and Opera 9.5 already have, although Microsoft states that it will count on real-time pings and use of Windows Defender for cues to potentially problematic sites. The source at Microsoft denied that this would slow the browser down, while waiting for the responses from the peer servers that will report the quality of web sites to their browser.

One, dubbed “SmartScreen Filter” by Microsoft, adds malware blocking to the antiphishing protection already embedded in IE7. The new feature, which will resemble the defenses already used by rival browsers Firefox 3.0 and Opera 9.5, will warn users when they’re about to visit a site known or suspected of spreading malicious code and then block any download from that site.

Unlike Mozilla Corp.’s Firefox, which retrieves a blacklist several times daily, then stores it locally to compare against Web site addresses, IE8 will dynamically determine whether a site is potentially dangerous by pinging remote servers each time a user tries to reach a page.

Microsoft will use multiple third-party sources to compose the blacklists for both phishing and malware-hosting sites, said Wilson. It will also draw on data gathered by Windows Defender, the company’s free antispyware tool. Wilson would not disclose the third-party information providers, however.

“We get the data feeds and update our lists multiple times a day,” he said. “And IE8 makes the call to the URL reputation service servers, and if it’s a phishing or malware site, the browser navigates away from the page and displays a warning.”

He denied that the process would have a noticeable effect on IE8’s performance. “Our choice was to make sure that the user has the most recent data possible,” he said. “We do an asynchronous call, so the page rendering takes place while the call is made to the reputation servers.”

above from ComputerWorld

It is unclear from that description if Microsoft will once again try to remove XP users from the upgrade cycle, as was originally tried with IE 7, or if it will require Windows Defender to be installed along with the upcoming browser. The forced inclusion of Windows Defender would mean that a change to Defender would be needed for use with Windows 2000, or else the closure of the upgrade door for Win 2000 to IE8. Since Microsoft wishes to regain market share, it would follow that the position may change, with the most inclusive policies for use winning out.

The source also stated that the new browser will not be completely immune to cross site scripting problems (XSS), so in that respect, it will be no more secure than other browsers – important to remember now, before the story might change at release time.

Since this upcoming release will be dubbed beta 2, with no time frame set in stone for the gold revision, it is clear that Microsoft wants to use the extended beta cycle to fully expose any problems with the new browser to scrutiny. It will be hard to assess how well this will work, as most people I speak with only used Internet Explorer when forced, and will not be using a beta of IE8 at any time. For many, unless Microsoft begins a paid beta where users collect something for their troubles, I doubt that any number of people outside the Microsoft enclave will be testing anything. The super standards mode of operation has failed to impress anyone I have spoken with, causing little to no buzz among users. Until the sites using Microsoft extensions change, it will be a non-starter.

Microsoft often benefits from the ravages of time, as many I speak to forget the overall history of web browsers, thinking that Microsoft was the inventor of the breed. They either forget, or possibly never knew, that Microsoft simply used code from the Mosaic project, which was used to build the original Netscape browser, and fashioned a browser with the right appearance for Microsoft to release. In fact, all browsers come from that Mosaic code – it would be interesting to examine the code of each browser, and see what remains of that original source.

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