firefox 3: better than internet explorer 7

This is a difficult thing for me to admit, but I think Firefox 3 is better than Internet Explorer 7. Having worked on the IE team, I am the first one to defend it, apologize for it, and staunchly refuse to use anything else. So how could this have happened?

Well, the product I work on now is a plug-in for both Firefox and IE. Since I am primarily responsible for the IE version, and I do most of my development and debugging of our product when it is running inside IE. As a result I am forced to use Firefox to read e-mail and such while my IE install is in a bad state.

Firefox 2 was usable, but I liked IE much better still. A lot of really good UI work went into IE 7 around the Tab UI and optimizing away the old menu bar. Sure, it has its faults and quirks, but I still felt more at home in IE.

Now that Firefox 3 is out, I basically have been converted without even thinking about it. And that's the key: when I use Firefox 3, I don't notice that it isn't IE. The only time I notice it's Firefox is when it does something better than IE, like spell checking my edit boxes, or remembering the URLs from my last session.

It's the little things that matter.

When I use IE now, it feels slow and poorly put together. Firefox is snappy; the UI is more polished. They stole some ideas from IE (The Gold Bar) and made them better. They have some ideas of their own (disjoint search term matching in autocomplete) that are great, too.

And as a good friend of mine used to say, "if it ain't snappy, it's crappy."

So Firefox 3 sets a high bar for the IE team to meet. I sincerely hope they blow it away. I think it is way too early to judge the IE8 UI; I will just have to wait and see how it shapes up.

your bho and your activex control can't be the same object

Frequently I see people writing a BHO, and at some point they realize they need to make a way for a webpage to call some function implemented by the BHO. The best way to do this is to expose an ActiveX control. The most common mistake I see is trying to make the ActiveX control be the same C++ object as the BHO.

This is wrong for several reasons.

It violates good coding practice.

The whole point of object level encapsulation is that each object does one thing. If your BHO is your ActiveX control, now it does two things. It may seem at first that you're really just adding a new method to your BHO, but you have to take into account all that goes along with being an ActiveX control. Implementing IDispatch, loading and dealing with the type library, implementing IObjectSafety, etc.

Your site will be wrong.

Pretty much every IE extension type--toolbands, BHOs, toolbar buttons, ActiveX controls--implements IObjectWithSite. If you make one object be two different types of extension, they will share IObjectWithSite implementations. And they all have a different IE object that is their site.

For example, a toolbar button's site will be an object in IE's toolbar code. A BHO's site is a completely different object in ieframe.dll that knows how to create and interact with a BHO. Explorer bars are sited to an object in ieframe.dll that hosts an explorer bar. And ActiveX controls are sited to an object in mshtml.dll that knows how to host ActiveX controls and implements several DOM interfaces (IHTMLElement, etc) as well.

So if you make your BHO and your ActiveX control the same object, the BHO will be instantiated first and IE will call your IObjectWithSite::SetSite() method with a pointer to one type of object. Then, when your ActiveX control is created later on, IE will call the IObjectWithSite::SetSite() method again, but this time with a different internal IE object's address. Now your BHO is broken. And debugging this sort of thing may take you a long time.

What we Learned Today

Every IE extension you implement must be it's own object, or bad things will start to happen.

the internet explorer object cookbook

When you start writing Internet Explorer extensions, or dealing with the DOM and the Webbrowser control at all, you frequently find you have an object of type X and you need to get the corresponding object of type Y. There is a lot of myth and bad advice on the web surrounding how to do some of these things.

The "site" in all of the following refer to the IUnknown you are given by Internet Explorer when it calls your IObjectWithSite::SetSite() method.

IWebBrowser2 from site

1. QueryInterface() your site for IID_IServiceProvider.
2. QueryService() the IServiceProvider for SID_STopLevelBrowser, IID_IServiceProvider.
3. QueryService() the top level IServiceProvider for SID_SWebBrowserApp, IID_IWebBrowser2.

IHTMLDocument2 from IWebBrowser2

1. Call IWebBrowser2::get_Document().
2. QueryInterface() the resulting IDispatch pointer for IID_IHTMLDocument2.

IHTMLDocument2 from site

1. Follow steps for "IWebBrowser2 from site" above.
2. Follow steps for "IHTMLDocument2 from IWebBrowser2" above.

IWebBrowser2 from IHTMLDocument2

1. QueryInterface() the IHTMLDocument2 for IID_IServiceProvider.
2. QueryService() the IServiceProvider for SID_SWebBrowserApp, IID_IWebBrowser2.

IHTMLDocument2 from IHTMLElement

1. Call IHTMLElement::get_Document();
2. QueryInterface() the resulting IDispatch pointer for IID_IHTMLDocument2.

IHTMLDocument2 from HWND

1. Use the accessibility hack described at here.

the freedom to choose includes the freedom to choose poorly

No, I am not going to talk about democrotics and our current and upcoming elected officials. I am going to talk about the consumer computer eco-system.

When I was doing IT consulting work during collage, there were a few major players in the PC world: Dell, HP, Compaq and Gateway. They all had their ups and downs with their products. Usually one would be good while the other was making boxes with problems, but then it would switch. Our job was to keep up on who was making good boxes at the time and sell them to our customers. However, we all knew the best machines were machines you built yourself. And we enjoyed building them. So when friends and family would ask me what computer they should buy, I would mention who I though was making a good model, but I would also offer to build them one that was better for cheaper.

When I worked at MSFT, we all had Dell workstations. I would say about 90% of all Windows development took place on Dell machines with Intel Processors. So when friends and family would ask for a computer recommendation, I would point them at Dell. Of course, I no longer had time to build them a machine, though I still built my own from scratch.

Now that I work on PicLens, I have to write code that supports Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari on both Mac and Windows. We have subsystems that run on top of OpenGL, DirectX, and a software rendered that works in two different modes, depending on which we detect would give better support on a specific system.

Yet we still get a fair number of people who send in e-mail with reports of graphics issues. Some are minor glitches, some are major glitches that make the product unusable. A very small number are blue screens. We take all customer feedback seriously and follow up with them asking about their configuration, etc. Almost all of them have one thing in common: non-premium graphics cards, by which I mean a card that is not a high end ATI or NVidia card.

I am coming to the part where I get to the point.

These days, when friends and family ask me what computer they should get, I think I will start telling them to get a Mac.

Let me be clear, I still hate Macs. With a passion. I have to use one at work, and I remain unconverted. But what they do is take away the freedom to choose poorly.

Let me explain:

With a PC, you never know what you are going to get. And even people who build there own machines often make decisions based on price point, not quality. Not to mention people who build their own machines but do not really understand how hardware and software drivers work.

With a Mac, you always get good hardware. They all have Intel processors. They all have NVidia or ATI graphics cards, with drivers that are known to work. Sure, Microsoft can certify drivers, but they can not test them in every possible configuration of PC hardware. But Apple can test every configuration. Because they only have tens of possibilities instead of thousands.

Nothing has really changed since I was in IT consulting. The trade-offs are still the same: build your own, buy an OEM and roll the dice, or pay a bunch more for a Mac that you can only do so much with but at least it will work. All that has changed is my point of view.

As an idealistic youth, I wanted everyone to get the most from their computing experience. I wanted to educate them about the machines and the software. At Microsoft I just wanted them to leave me alone and figure it out for themselves. Now I just can not be bothered by it at all. Macs work. They stop you from shooting yourself in the foot. And hey, if people think it makes them look cool, then even better.

I will still be building my own machines. My house is all Asus all the time. It is amazing, but I have never had any problems with Asus video cards in Asus mother boards. I prefer NVidia (though it is not a logical or rational preference). I only buy Intel Processors(but that is a completely separate discussion) and Seagate hard drives (though I will accept Western Digital and I really wish there was a quality third player).

Everyone else should get a Mac. It makes my life easier in the short term, since I do not have to do any support. Though, I guess if everyone got a Mac I would have to do ALL my development on a Mac. And I would miss Visual Studio and NTSD.

So, I guess the moral of the story is when choosing a video card, choose wisely. Caveat emptor and all that. Or, spend more than $20 on a video card.

See also: Wired: Graphics Chips Gun for Supremacy in Silicon Showdown

the TIF really is a cache -- and it acts like one

It seems obvious, but I guess it has to be said. Internet Explorer's Temporary Internet Files folder is a cache. From Wikipedia: a cache is a temporary storage area where frequently accessed data can be stored for rapid access. Please note the use of the word temporary. This means that the data you want may not actually be there.

I frequently see questions along the lines of "How can I find this image/page in the cache?" or, even better, "How come this page I viewed isn't in the cache?" I love it when the askers of the latter form imply that this is a bug.

Files in the cache can be deleted at anytime. You can be looking at a page and then go to the cache and find it isn't there. There are many scenarios where this is legitimate. For example, if, while you are viewing this page, you go to Tools->Delete Browsing History and then clear your Temporary Internet Files, the only representation that IE will have of this page and all of its elements is the one in memory. Close the browser and that memory is freed and now its gone until you download it from the webserver again.

The page you are viewing may use the no-cache http header. The cache manager may have decided its time to scavenge. There may have even been an error writing to the cache and the cache has become corrupt.

I am sure there are other scenarios as well. The point is, you cannot rely on data to always be there. You must either capture the data in some other way, or be prepared to make a request to the server.

to help or not to help

More and more I am confronted with a sort of moral dilemma. I read and post to the IE development forums over at MSDN. Frequently I see posts like this:

i want a BHO which continuously observe IE activity and send the URLs visited and time of visit and time of outfocus of them as soon as they are available,to listening java servlet. Now Please suggest me how to do this,perticularly this sending of url and their time details to java servlet.

He does not ask for help with a specific problem or bug he has encountered in the process. He does not tell us what he has done or post a sample of code he can not get to work. He simply asks, "how do I do this?" His masterful command of English does not help his case.

This guy is probably up to no good.

I can only think of one semi-legit use for such a thing, which would be for employers or parents to spy on their employees or children. And I'm not sure I can even get behind that.

So my dilemma becomes, do I help this guy? Do I tell him what to do? On the one hand, I do not want to be enabling spyware makers in anyway. On the other hand, if someone is paying him to do this thing, he is going to write the program whether I help him or not. Given that, is it better to make sure he does it right? I mean, which is better, crashing spyware or non-crashing spyware?

Anyway, today I am not helping this guy.

PicLens 1.6.3 Released

We released 1.6.3 yesterday to piclens.com. Why the change from 1.6.2 to 1.6.3? Because we now support video in the Wall.



You can search YouTube and watch the videos right in the wall. During development we spent a lot of time watching videos... it can be very addictive.