5 ms·

Martian Headsets

79 points by bdfh42 19y ago

run4yourlives 19y ago
The biggest issue I have with this article - which does an excellent job of explaining the issue - is that Joel seems to ignore the elephant in the room: EVERY OTHER BROWSER MAKER HAS SOLVED THIS PROBLEM! Seriously: Opera, Firefox, Safari. All of these manufacturers have no issue rendering both pages designed to standard and table designed mishmashes. They're getting so good at their implementations of standards support that for 90% of the time, a design will look exactly the same in one browser to the next. The exception to the rule is IE. The EXCEPTION. Why? Because Microsoft, or forces within it, as far as this outsider can tell, continually wishes to revert the many-to-many market back to the one-to-many market. They use their size and position to force their way on everyone. Their way isn't necessarily bad, but it's different for the sake of being different to achieve the goal. From my POV, Microsoft is an increasingly irrelevant player in the web browser world. The imminent failure of Vista will make this more evident. Customers are getting sick and tired of having things break when they upgrade their software.
- mixmax 19y ago
  I wouldn't call a company with a marketshare of 81% in the browser market irrelevant - I'd call them marketleaders. Yes they are the exception, but like it or not you just have to deal with it. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers
  - Hexstream 19y ago
    Alright then, let's just say they're rapidly gaining irrelevance status. Happy? 81% market share is not very spectacular when you used to have 97% a few years ago.
    - mixmax 19y ago
      81% market share is still spectacular - even if you used to have 97%. However you look at it they are the largest player, and you have to design for it. Having a website that doesn't work in IE is like having a store where you have a guy at the door telling 4 out of five people that they can't come inside to buy your stuff. I don't particularly like MS, and I don't agree with their tactics but that doesn't mean I make the naive mistake of dismissing them or thinking that in a few years they'll be gone. They won't, so be a little pragmatic. IE is in no way irrelevant, nor is it becoming so in the near future.
      - Hexstream 19y ago
        Agreed, but I can't shake the feeling this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. You're advising to act like they'll still be the dominant player in a few years, but by supporting them this way it's indeed true that this will be the case. See the vicious circle?
        mixmax 19y ago
        I do - but unfortunately it's not really a matter of choice. Not if you goal is to make money that is.
- alex_c 19y ago
  I was thinking along similar lines while reading the article (why doesn't Firefox have this problem?) I don't think it's so much that the other browsers have SOLVED the problem, more that they never created the problem for themselves in the first place (to the same extent that Microsoft did, anyway). By sticking closer to the "standards" yesterday, they made backwards compatibility simpler to solve today, and Microsoft hasn't. None of this answers the real question: now what? IE isn't going anywhere soon, and we'll have to live with it either as web developers or as users for the foreseeable future. Even if Microsoft wants to do the "right" thing, how can they clean up their mess without breaking all the "if IE do this" sites out there?
  - mechanical_fish 19y ago
    Exactly. The problem is that MS can't turn time backwards. The time to have "solved" the problem was back in the IE4 through IE6 days -- when, frankly, nobody realized how great "standards-complicance" was, because only about three people on Earth had seen a "standards-compliant" browser load a "standards-compliant" site. Before Firefox and Safari, everyone used IE. [1] The IE team seems to be properly repentant, now, and they're down with the idea that they need to conform to standards. But they're under pressure not to break all existing IE-specific sites at the same time. And they can't go back into the past and convince their old marketing team to emphasize "standards" instead of encouraging customers to develop around IE-specific features. The laws of physics don't work that way. [1] Cue irate reply from an old-school Opera user in: 3..2..1..
  - dmoney 19y ago
    They could name the new browser something other than IE, and make sure the code testing for older IEs sees it as just another hopefully standards-compliant browser. Then the "if IE" code wouldn't trigger because the browser is Microsoft(r) MetalDog Home Premium, or whatever. Of course they probably wouldn't want to lose the brand recognition of IE.
- TrevorJ 19y ago
  I applaud you.
philh 19y ago
He talks about how problems are caused by IE8 identifying as IE. So sites which check for IE to run hacks run them anyway, even though they aren't necessary any more. Couldn't this be fixed by rebranding? Instead of IE8, release a totally new browser that just happens to reuse a lot of code from IE. No hacks get applied. It either works or it doesn't, and if it doesn't it also doesn't work in Firefox, Opera, etc. I suppose it would be a nightmare from a marketing perspective, though.
- sanj 19y ago
  Does anyone in marketing care what the User Agent says? Change that and be done!
  - mqatrombone 19y ago
    It's more complicated than that. If a browser breaks Sharepoint or any other intranet site, it won't get deployed. I imagine there are many, many, many corporations who still haven't upgraded to IE7. One possible solution is to identify as IE <= 7 to intranet sites (which can be designated via Group Policy) and IE >= 8 to non-intranet sites. Of course, this means admins have to properly define intranet/non-intranet, which means much rioting will ensue. Poor IE team. You're getting screwed because management decided to rest on their laurels.
    - jcl 19y ago
      If the big barrier to acceptance is intranets -- where the company controls the web server itself -- then an additional solution is available: Rather than requiring all new web pages to contain a new "OK for IE 8" flag, simply tag the old pages with a new "Not OK for IE 8" flag, to trigger legacy rendering. I imagine you wouldn't even need to edit the webpages -- just add some module to the web server that automatically rewrites the header. ...There must be a good reason why this would never work, because I don't recall hearing it proposed before.
      - mdemare 19y ago
henning 19y ago
See? This is what happens when Steve Yegge moonlights as a writing coach.
inklesspen 19y ago
One of the problems with this article is that Joel tries to divide the argument into the idealist side and the pragmatist side. But there's never just two sides. For instance, there's long-term pragmatists and short-term pragmatists. I think the pro-MS people are mostly short-term pragmatists.
brlewis 19y ago
Postel's advice is not to blame for IE's problems. If that were the case, it would only be non-standards-conforming pages that displayed differently on IE.
pchristensen 19y ago
Joel points out the main reason for Microsoft's behavior in the article: standards benefit the little guys. Microsoft isn't interested in benefiting the little guys.
- mdemare 19y ago
  The point of the article is that there is no good solution, no matter what Microsoft is interested in.
TrevorJ 19y ago
Negative line. Haha, thats' awesome.
phaedrus 19y ago
This is why I read Joel on Software!
DanielBMarkham 19y ago
Solution: Re-brand IE as "Microsoft Web Viewer" or some such and start with a clean slate and a clean set of core libraries. All the version-checking routines will not discover IE, so the IE hacks will be irrelevant. MS gets a chance to leap-frog the competition by starting over (even though it's going to suck -- sometimes you just have to suck it up) Or -- continue having a strategic plan that goes two directions at the same time. BTW, this solution works for some of the other problems Microsoft is having. Once you give up the idea of trying to lock people into a brand name and start thinking about the best ways to provide solutions, you don't have these kinds of problems.
joe24pack 19y ago
Hey, wouldn't all that MS has to do is use a different Agent string for IE8 so that the agent sniffing fails. You know, go incognito, like user-agent JF-8.

79 points by bdfh42 19y ago

The biggest issue I have with this article - which does an excellent job of explaining the issue - is that Joel seems to ignore the elephant in the room: EVERY OTHER BROWSER MAKER HAS SOLVED THIS PROBLEM! Seriously: Opera, Firefox, Safari. All of these manufacturers have no issue rendering both pages designed to standard and table designed mishmashes. They're getting so good at their implementations of standards support that for 90% of the time, a design will look exactly the same in one browser to the next. The exception to the rule is IE. The EXCEPTION. Why? Because Microsoft, or forces within it, as far as this outsider can tell, continually wishes to revert the many-to-many market back to the one-to-many market. They use their size and position to force their way on everyone. Their way isn't necessarily bad, but it's different for the sake of being different to achieve the goal. From my POV, Microsoft is an increasingly irrelevant player in the web browser world. The imminent failure of Vista will make this more evident. Customers are getting sick and tired of having things break when they upgrade their software.

mixmax 19y ago
I wouldn't call a company with a marketshare of 81% in the browser market irrelevant - I'd call them marketleaders. Yes they are the exception, but like it or not you just have to deal with it. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers
- Hexstream 19y ago
  Alright then, let's just say they're rapidly gaining irrelevance status. Happy? 81% market share is not very spectacular when you used to have 97% a few years ago.
  - mixmax 19y ago
    81% market share is still spectacular - even if you used to have 97%. However you look at it they are the largest player, and you have to design for it. Having a website that doesn't work in IE is like having a store where you have a guy at the door telling 4 out of five people that they can't come inside to buy your stuff. I don't particularly like MS, and I don't agree with their tactics but that doesn't mean I make the naive mistake of dismissing them or thinking that in a few years they'll be gone. They won't, so be a little pragmatic. IE is in no way irrelevant, nor is it becoming so in the near future.
    - Hexstream 19y ago
      Agreed, but I can't shake the feeling this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. You're advising to act like they'll still be the dominant player in a few years, but by supporting them this way it's indeed true that this will be the case. See the vicious circle?
      - mixmax 19y ago
        I do - but unfortunately it's not really a matter of choice. Not if you goal is to make money that is.
alex_c 19y ago
I was thinking along similar lines while reading the article (why doesn't Firefox have this problem?) I don't think it's so much that the other browsers have SOLVED the problem, more that they never created the problem for themselves in the first place (to the same extent that Microsoft did, anyway). By sticking closer to the "standards" yesterday, they made backwards compatibility simpler to solve today, and Microsoft hasn't. None of this answers the real question: now what? IE isn't going anywhere soon, and we'll have to live with it either as web developers or as users for the foreseeable future. Even if Microsoft wants to do the "right" thing, how can they clean up their mess without breaking all the "if IE do this" sites out there?
- mechanical_fish 19y ago
  Exactly. The problem is that MS can't turn time backwards. The time to have "solved" the problem was back in the IE4 through IE6 days -- when, frankly, nobody realized how great "standards-complicance" was, because only about three people on Earth had seen a "standards-compliant" browser load a "standards-compliant" site. Before Firefox and Safari, everyone used IE. [1] The IE team seems to be properly repentant, now, and they're down with the idea that they need to conform to standards. But they're under pressure not to break all existing IE-specific sites at the same time. And they can't go back into the past and convince their old marketing team to emphasize "standards" instead of encouraging customers to develop around IE-specific features. The laws of physics don't work that way. [1] Cue irate reply from an old-school Opera user in: 3..2..1..
- dmoney 19y ago
  They could name the new browser something other than IE, and make sure the code testing for older IEs sees it as just another hopefully standards-compliant browser. Then the "if IE" code wouldn't trigger because the browser is Microsoft(r) MetalDog Home Premium, or whatever. Of course they probably wouldn't want to lose the brand recognition of IE.
TrevorJ 19y ago
I applaud you.

philh 19y ago

He talks about how problems are caused by IE8 identifying as IE. So sites which check for IE to run hacks run them anyway, even though they aren't necessary any more. Couldn't this be fixed by rebranding? Instead of IE8, release a totally new browser that just happens to reuse a lot of code from IE. No hacks get applied. It either works or it doesn't, and if it doesn't it also doesn't work in Firefox, Opera, etc. I suppose it would be a nightmare from a marketing perspective, though.

sanj 19y ago
Does anyone in marketing care what the User Agent says? Change that and be done!
- mqatrombone 19y ago
  It's more complicated than that. If a browser breaks Sharepoint or any other intranet site, it won't get deployed. I imagine there are many, many, many corporations who still haven't upgraded to IE7. One possible solution is to identify as IE <= 7 to intranet sites (which can be designated via Group Policy) and IE >= 8 to non-intranet sites. Of course, this means admins have to properly define intranet/non-intranet, which means much rioting will ensue. Poor IE team. You're getting screwed because management decided to rest on their laurels.
  - jcl 19y ago
    If the big barrier to acceptance is intranets -- where the company controls the web server itself -- then an additional solution is available: Rather than requiring all new web pages to contain a new "OK for IE 8" flag, simply tag the old pages with a new "Not OK for IE 8" flag, to trigger legacy rendering. I imagine you wouldn't even need to edit the webpages -- just add some module to the web server that automatically rewrites the header. ...There must be a good reason why this would never work, because I don't recall hearing it proposed before.
    - mdemare 19y ago

henning 19y ago

See? This is what happens when Steve Yegge moonlights as a writing coach.

inklesspen 19y ago

One of the problems with this article is that Joel tries to divide the argument into the idealist side and the pragmatist side. But there's never just two sides. For instance, there's long-term pragmatists and short-term pragmatists. I think the pro-MS people are mostly short-term pragmatists.

brlewis 19y ago

Postel's advice is not to blame for IE's problems. If that were the case, it would only be non-standards-conforming pages that displayed differently on IE.

pchristensen 19y ago

Joel points out the main reason for Microsoft's behavior in the article: standards benefit the little guys. Microsoft isn't interested in benefiting the little guys.

mdemare 19y ago
The point of the article is that there is no good solution, no matter what Microsoft is interested in.

TrevorJ 19y ago

Negative line. Haha, thats' awesome.

phaedrus 19y ago

This is why I read Joel on Software!

DanielBMarkham 19y ago

Solution: Re-brand IE as "Microsoft Web Viewer" or some such and start with a clean slate and a clean set of core libraries. All the version-checking routines will not discover IE, so the IE hacks will be irrelevant. MS gets a chance to leap-frog the competition by starting over (even though it's going to suck -- sometimes you just have to suck it up) Or -- continue having a strategic plan that goes two directions at the same time. BTW, this solution works for some of the other problems Microsoft is having. Once you give up the idea of trying to lock people into a brand name and start thinking about the best ways to provide solutions, you don't have these kinds of problems.

joe24pack 19y ago

Hey, wouldn't all that MS has to do is use a different Agent string for IE8 so that the agent sniffing fails. You know, go incognito, like user-agent JF-8.