MSN Desktop search thought
Sriram Krishnan likes MSN search better than Google's tool for that - for one, he likes the client side interface. I can buy that; Google's search works for me, but I can see where he's coming from. On the browser choice though?
Some people have been complaining about MSN imposing IE on them. I really don't understand their logic - do you complain when Windows Explorer uses IE? MSN desktop search uses IE in almost the same way that Windows Explorer does. In fact,when I used Spy++ on the results, I saw good old SysListView32. Frankly, seeing desktop search results in a browser window is something that Google hopes will catch on - but which I very much doubt.
Sriram - some of us have cut off IE completely. Heck, I avoid my company's VPN services because the intranet requires IE - I sure as heck am not going to abide a desktop search tool that wants it. When MS learns to spell security - and tabbed browsing - get back to me. And no, SP2 isn't the answer...
Comments
Sriram
[Sriram] December 15, 2004 0:04:30.732
I understand what you're saying - the security issues are a big nightmare. But if you look at the past, most of IE's problems have been either in the HTML rendering or in the way it handles zones (leading to all those spoofing bugs). But here, IE is barely recognizable - it is used the same way Windows Explorer..or Winamp uses it - as a way to show UI.
I ran Spy++ to see what it was using to display the results - and while IE was the shell on which it ran, none of the things you see inside the window (the results themselves, the buttons) are from IE.They're standard Windows components.
I've had bad experiences with Firefox's ActiveX support - and I doubt whether a similar interface would have been possible in Firefox without using XUL
disconnect
[bryan] December 15, 2004 6:28:36.541
am sensing a slight disconnect between this post, and the post two posts prior: "security has more to do with the size of the ecosystem than with anything else. Why is Windows such a huge target? Because there are so many Windows systems available - anything that hits a vulnerable system has a lot of potential new places to spread. Posit a nasty Mac worm, for instance - as it tries to propagate out, what are most of the systems it tries to hit going to be? Windows boxes. Now look at the various infection rates for Windows worms, virii, and trojans... it's not a huge surprise. Sure, MS has culpability here - but even if they had been trying hard since the release of Win98, Windows would still be the major target."