Comments on: Fixing GC issues on IE 6: New IE download

By: John

John — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 09:37:44 +0000

Some mention in Microsoft’s Jscript blogging site too.

http://blogs.msdn.com/jscript/archive/2007/08/12/windows-script-5-7-released-for-windows-2000-windows-xp-and-windows-2003-server.aspx

By: Sebastian Werner

Sebastian Werner — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 12:19:47 +0000

@Nick: It’s not me who has not a license. But it is generally bad from Microsoft to block users from such updates, which are highly interesting for third parties. I think that their are a bunch of users of our two million customers who cannot update their system because of this restriction. It would be a lot better to handle this fix like a typical security update a push it to all windows machines this way automatically.

By: Markku Uttula

Markku Uttula — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 06:16:35 +0000

Now that IE7 is a recommended update by Microsoft, everyone who uses Windows Update now uses IE7. The rest of the IE-using public does NOT use Windows Update.

Well, that’s not exactly true. For example, I’ve been using Windows Update (as well as Microsoft Update) since the day I installed Windows on this machine. Still, I haven’t got IE7, since it can’t be installed on Windows 2000 through WU/MU. And the reason I still have W2K on my machine is simply that it still is the most stabile OS from Microsoft. My new harddrive has XP on it, but I still haven’t started using that one – still migrating my old stuff onto it… might take the next couple of years to get that job finished ;)

By: Kit Grose

Kit Grose — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 00:21:16 +0000

This cannot be a good thing.

Now that IE7 is a recommended update by Microsoft, everyone who uses Windows Update now uses IE7. The rest of the IE-using public does NOT use Windows Update. If they’re using IE6, they’re getting the memory leaks. If we update our version of IE to one where this is fixed, we won’t know when our code is causing serious leaks for our IE6-user customers.

We have to, sadly, keep our buggy old copy of IE6 until everyone is using something else, and work around the memory leaks as best as we can in the mean time.

By: Max Shirshin

Max Shirshin — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 00:07:54 +0000

For many corporate users, upgrading their browser is not easy, simply because the browser is not theirs. It belongs to the company they work for, as does many other corporate software. While we can blame big companies for delaying browser upgrades, average users are innocent in this case. Using IE may be an internal requirement; maintaining a separate Firefox installation just to work with That Cool Ajax Web Site is quite inconvenient because all your settings, customizations, bookmarks, passwords etc. still reside in IE.

What is really necessary is a consistent policy of providing all the minimal features for IE6 (or even maybe IE5?!) while enriching the interface in decent browsers. This is the way Microsoft goes with their OS: while providing application compatibility layers even for Win98 software, they consistently enhance the set of features available for a new generation of applications. We may hate them or not, but Microsoft (besides being the root of all evil :-)) is a large software company with good reputation among businesses, therefore we may benefit from their strategy a little.

Most of web2.0 resources nowadays do not follow the above mentioned guideline; 90% of them are providing the same set of features for IE6 users, making things looks well where they are not, and the remaining 10% go geek and support only the latest browsers, thus cutting off a good deal of their potential audience.

By: Spocke

Spocke — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 22:19:51 +0000

I remember the good old days where users where forced to update since sites contained messages like “your browser doesn’t support frames”. I some times feel the urge to just write “your browser is leaky and old, you must upgrade to a new one”. It’s a shame that we are to afraid to do that these days.

I mean there is today no need to upgrade since there are a bunch of developers out there pulling their hair off in order to make all sites work anyway. :)

By: Jerome

Jerome — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 19:14:38 +0000

I’ve blogged about this before. And I printed a T-Shirt with the information on it. And I got the URLs tattooed on my buttocks. Like, years ago. So nerrr.

By: Rizqi Ahmad

Rizqi Ahmad — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 14:31:52 +0000

Why doesn’t IE have an automatic updater?

By: gslin

gslin — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 12:41:21 +0000

For a web site, you shouldn’t ask user to upgrade it, you must adopt the older version.

The best way is time. Wait for XP SP3 and wish Microsoft will include this.

By: Nick

Nick — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 11:35:48 +0000

@Sebastian Werner: I’m sure they won’t, you should get a licensed copy of windows

By: Mark Wubben

Mark Wubben — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 09:45:36 +0000

I’d say that this release improves the JScript engine. I don’t actually expect it to fix GC for COM objects (such as the DOM tree), since this was fixed last month in an IE patch and not a JScript patch. Not to say that a new engine won’t speed things up though.

By: arnaud

arnaud — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 08:13:04 +0000

This patch is working great for me.
(I think it gives IE6 the same GC as IE7.)
Allocating 100000 objects takes now 1 second instead of 6 seconds on IE6!

By: Sebastian Werner

Sebastian Werner — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 04:55:23 +0000

Do anybody know, if this fix memory leaks only or does this affect “the wall”, too, which results into extreme performance losses with each additionally created instance/object/string?

By: Sebastian Werner

Sebastian Werner — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 04:53:34 +0000

Again it’s a bad choice of Microsoft to only offer this download after the required validation step. As this, indentical to IE7, is a really important update, it would be much easier for the users to update, if there is not a validation step between them and the download file. Hope they will change their mind.

By: Sebastian Werner

Sebastian Werner — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 04:49:51 +0000

Just curious: Are we really sure that a “Windows Script” update also influences the jscript engine of the currently installed browser? Does IE really use this engine or comes with a separate one? Any references or informations resources regarding this topic would be great.

By: Oliver Tse

Oliver Tse — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 03:12:45 +0000

Never mind…

Script 5.7 is the same version as that found on Vista. So, the GC issues **should** be resolved.

Oliver

By: Thomas Aylott

Thomas Aylott — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 02:27:55 +0000

subtlegradient.com/articles/2007/06/26/warning-do-not-update-your-windows-testing-box

This is stupid. Seriously, why upgrade and stay with IE6?
Upgrade to Safari, Firefox, IE7, or rm -rf / yourself!

This is useless for developers because we still have to be compatible to non-patched IE6. Once IE9 comes out, sure you can ditch support for IE6.

By: Jordan

Jordan — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 01:36:30 +0000

I’ve blogged about this before.

By: Kishore Senji

Kishore Senji — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 00:19:25 +0000

Green Card issues – lol.

By: Oliver Tse

Oliver Tse — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 00:18:07 +0000

This is cool, but what is it suppose to do?