the Forty-Second Parallel

According to this article on CNET, Microsoft has reversed its plans and will release another version of Internet Explorer separately from the release of the next version of Windows. This is a reversal of their original plan to only update IE as part of Longhorn.

IE 7.0 will only work on machines running on Windows XP Service Pack 2 and a beta should be available by this summer.

To state the obvious, this is a major change of course for MS. NPD Group analyst Ross Rubin was quoted by CNET as saying that he thinks "it's a response to both the delay of Longhorn and the challenge of Firefox."

Whatever the reason, I think that this is a good thing for the web. I'm neither a Microsoft fan or hater - I'm a pragmatist; I use whatever works. So, if Firefox spurs Microsoft to update IE and actually make it a decent browser again, I'm all for it. Netscape didn't die because IE sucked. Netscape died because IE sucked less.

Netscape died because Microsoft committed itself to producing the "best" web browser on the market. And, despite everything else, when Microsoft decides it wants to be the best at something - watch out.

Update: For a more in-depth and slightly more pessimistic take on this, see QuirksBlog.

Given the "renewed" (was it ever there to begin with?) interest in the XMLHTTPRequest object, Peter-Paul Koch has put together an XMLHTTP linkdump, courtesy of QuirksMode.

XMLHTTP is one of those things that once you discover it and start using it in your web applications, you'll wonder how you ever survived without it. Given that it's javascript though, it should be used with care to ensure accessibility.

Redesign in progress.

Update: Redesign is in place now. There are still some tweaks to be made here and there. But, overall, I think things should be settled. The front page of the old layout is still available at http://streetside.eitheror.org/

... like an iPod Shuffle (which I'm really leaning heavily towards getting, by the way).

As I was saying, some things just rock - like Panic's new Apparel store drag and drop shopping cart. In case you don't live in MacWorld, Panic is the maker of the very nice CandyBar and Transmit applications. And they've recently launched a new section of their site to sell "general mac and computer awesome" t-shirts.

The really cool part though is that to add a shirt to your shopping cart, you just drag and drop it like you would an icon on your desktop - except this is in your browser, no Flash required. It's just plain, old-fashioned Javascript/DHTML ingenuity. Removing items from your shopping cart is even more fun.

If this wasn't just so cool, I would complain that it doesn't validate. But I won't ;-)

As noted all over the place today, Microsoft has introducted their new MSN search engine. Very clean and Googlish in design. The most notable thing I noticed, though, is that search results are automatically available in RSS format. At the bottom of the page of you search results is a link to the first ten results of your search formatted as RSS.

It's not ground breaking or anything - Amazon and others have offered similar things for quite a while. But, for whatever reason, Google has been slow to embrace RSS. Since Google is obviously in Microsoft's cross hairs in all of this, hopefully this will put a little pressure on Google. Competition is a good thing (TM).

Hey - not to blow my own horn or anything, but I got quoted in yesterday's Knoxville News Sentinel in an article about the <booming voice>power of RSS</booming voice>. And thanks to fellow colleague Dr. Bob Stepno for the link.