Never underestimate Microsoft...
See subject-line/title...
I dunno, there is not a doubt in the world that IE needs improvements (especially to the arena of security, & especially stuff like ActiveX), but if there's a company that has the brainpower & talent out there for it? It's Microsoft...
(Personally, I think they are up w/ the likes of IBM in that capacity - the likes of some of the talent they've got, or acquired from other companies like Borland, are up there w/ anyone's staff, imo @ least).
They're funny about things sometimes, slow to react to things they should have caught onto in the first place... but, they have many products to "tackle & tame", many millions of lines of code... & bureaucracy.
That slows up things pretty badly... any of you that've worked in larger companies already most likely know & have seen this. Especially network admins & engineers.
Still, in the end of things... they always seem to "turn up roses", now don't they?
E.G. -> Heck, I remember when Microsoft COMPLETELY missed the boat on how the internet would affect things circa 1992-1995, when everyone was saying "Netscape will rule the world" & stuff like that...
Who won, Microsoft or Netscape though?
(They'll get it right imo, as right as it can be, eventually... even if it means turning off features that can be used as weapons!)
APK
P.S.=> IMO, their biggest problem, is the fact they made apps scriptable, & extendable (this extends to the latest edition of Microsoft Office even, especially Word & Excel, since they are the latest "victims" of attackers that leverage features & turn them into weaponry against the end-user)...
Man!
Things meant to be features, get exploited maliciously (this is a BIG task to try to 'fix', because the attack vector's huge, limits of the imagination really)... talk about using the nature of the enemy against them (I actually admire this tactic, it's a REAL destroyer, but turning an advantage into a weakness...? Takes genius, I admire the "hacker/cracker" community in this capacity actually!).
Still, I really DO think personally that IE7's going to be a huge step in the RIGHT direction for this & will be a good browser, even in the area of security... I can see this already in the "security-enhanced" version of IE6.x in Windows Server 2003 already.
It's crippled down quite a lot, but to protect the end-user really. IMO that is the ONLY thing you can do really to protect folks from themselves (& also against interlopers). Limit CERTAIN functions to "intranet zones" only really... should work!
However, we'll have to wait & see on this speculation of mine... apk
