They're calling their e-mail program ' Mail ' ?
My Mac-using girlfriend predicted this after seeing Vista Screenies.
< flame suit on>

Admiral Ackbar: "Its a trap!"

Are the Mozilla Devs accepting? Looks like it...
http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.planning/browse_frm/thre...

Firefox isn't that good as a browser. It eats memory and it likes to crash often.

I'm getting a fair amout of .trojan.installers on Firefox, and I don't visit horrible websites as a rule.

Bag IE all you want, but when a single product has 87% market share, it's going to garner the largest slab of attention and headaches as a result, just like the OS itself.

Firefox isn't all that popular with 13% market or something, but is is big enough to attract attention from the wrong people.

Time to bust out Amigas or something for secure browsing....because neither Firefox nor IE nor Opera have it.

You folks realize that MS used to do this kind of thing all the time? Back before Win 3.1 was released (which had some major breaking changes from 3.0) the Windows folks invited some of the Lotus guys up to help them fix 1-2-3 so that it wouldn't break on the new version. This at a time when Excel was competing fiercely (and from a lesser marketshare) with 1-2-3. That's just one example: it used to be pretty common for the Windows folks to host gatherings for 3rd party software developers. They still do that for the hardware guys (WinHEC, porting labs, etc) but somewhere in the 90s MS decided that the only applications that really mattered were Microsoft applications (primarily Office) and they stopped doing much of anything for the 3rd parties (other than releasing pretty good documentation via MSDN).

Fortunately for the industry as a whole, the balance has shifted and MS has to look beyond its own campus again to see All the Applications That Really Matter. Whether this is a temporary tactic as part of the all-out push to drive Vista adoption, or it represents a change in the religion in Redmond and a reversion by Windows Technical Marketing to their roots, remains to be seen. But I would expect they've figured it out: MS may be myopic but they aren't stupid, and they'll do whatever it takes to keep Windows on people's machines even if it means making sure those people can happily run something other than IE. In fact, to the extent that security issues are the biggest perceived negative to Windows, encouraging people to run something other than IE may be a net positive.

It's a trap!

http://itsatrap.ytmnd.com/

As long as IE is tied to the OS kernal, it will be a major security risk. Case in point: MS has already released security patches for IE7.

Oldtech

Maybe the folks from MS finally figured out that IE combines the features of a pushbutton and the data security of swiss cheese. Now they're actually encouraging a 3rd party with a *considerably* better browser to focus on it being 'Vista ready'. Maybe Vista will even ship with Firefox! Now coming back to reality...

It is a very mature move by Microsoft. On the flipside though - if MS invites the big guys in the open-source market (which is a Good Idea) then they would be critisized if they DON'T invite Mozilla.

IE has a 87% market share because they are the default option. Firefox may be 'better' (I'm a Opera user myself), but Joe Soap doesn't normally know that. IE only exist because it would look bad if a modern OS ships without a browser, or a e-mail client, for that matter*. IE is just ingrained (ActiveX) because it would be easier for MS to make Windows that way (Having a central library of applets and plugins).

MS wants to sell a good OS, and that is important. Having the support of the Open Source/Power User community is a huge bonus - we are the word-of-mouth leaders after all (Joe Soap asks your opinion to create his own - he has an 'expert' as backup now).

*The extras in Windows keeps getting better - Wordpad with XP is more powerfull than MS-Word 5 (i think), and Paint is also getting more powerfull. Will Vista's Paint have things like red eye removal? The logic behind this is that the bar for the minimum needed is raising. Outlook Express is a e-mail client but MS-Outlook is a better one, but you pay for Outlook where OE is bundled/free. Case in point - Aircon & airbags is now standard in small 'budget' cars, but was a luxury years ago.

IMHO...

EDIT: I just read through my comment and it looks like I am pro-MS. I don't care - I use a product for it's functionality, if Windows suck, so be it, I am a PC gamer so I have to use it. I sometimes think (to use a Futurama quote) that MS "is like Germany, industrious and misunderstood." (LOL)

*kidnap*

*nibble up mozilla dev brains*

*insert Mini-ITX PC as alternative brain*

*release*

Microsoft: "We aren't evil! Honest! Look, we invited an OPEN SOURCE company to our base! Love us!!"

[quote] in order to cut down on potential compatibility problems between their software and the upcoming Windows [/quote]. Heh, If I'm not mistaken, isn't it IE that renders pages incorrectly and Firefox does it correctly?

#3, I hate to rain on your MS fanboy parade, but IE6 sucks. Period. Don't believe me? PC World decided that it deserved 8th on a list of the 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time. And as for (unreleased) IE7? It may have finally caught up with the jones' feature-wise, and security may be beefier, but when the consumer version is released, it will do it's best impression of the broad side of a barn for hackers. Don't get me wrong, I would love to see IE7 be better than firefox, especially security-wise, and with the way the people in Redmond are working (smarter, not harder), this very well may be the situation. It'll be a great day when IE can offer the same power of other browsers, but until that day, I am calling it as I see it.