5 ms·

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

by 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
      The good reason why it'll never work is that it has to be done for bilions of pages.
mechanical_fish 19y ago
The problem is the installed base of web sites that are specifically designed around IE6 and IE7, bugs and all. Those sites will break on a "standards-compliant" browser. You and I tend to forget that such sites exist, because the environment of the public web, which teems with Firefox and Safari users, has rendered them mostly extinct in the wild. But in captivity, behind various corporate firewalls, where every single user has been running IE for a decade, such sites still exist, people care about them, and those people just happen to be Microsoft's core customers. If, as you suggest, Microsoft ships a totally new browser -- which, let's face it, might as well be called "Firefox 3.0", although I suppose it could just be IE8 with a different User-Agent heading -- you and I will be happy, but lots of internal corporate sites will break, with no upgrade paths other than "redesign your site's HTML to be standards-compliant" or "tell your users to run two browsers: one for the intranet and one for the modern world". And corporate customers don't want to fork over license fees in exchange for that. That's the basic contours of the dilemma: MS can either blow off their installed base or blow off the standards movement. The installed base has the money. The standards movement has the influence. Spolsky is right: The IE team is well and truly damned. They're just going to have to weasel out of it somehow.
- deleted 19y ago
  [deleted]
- jcl 19y ago
  But blowing off an installed base is nothing Microsoft hasn't done before. There are Internet Explorer versions (5.5 and prior) that are effectively end-of-lifed. No web developer has to think about the 5.5 hacks anymore, and any corporate intranet that relies on 5.5 hacks is screwed. Has this been a problem? I get the feeling that it has not, because a good MS-based IT department can spin the cost of rewriting its websites as part of the MS upgrade treadmill... as part of the cost of upgrading to .NET, or .NET 2.0, or Vista, or Sharepoint, or Windows Server 2008, etc. (And any business that has decided to get off of this treadmill is no longer among MS's paying customers.) On the other hand, Microsoft's piecemeal approach to web standards is starting to hurt it. The de facto web development best practice is now "Develop for a standards-compliant browser first, then hack it until it looks right in IE." This hurts Microsoft because it means that most new webpages only work incidentally in IE; if a corner case of some new feature is accidentally missed in the IE rewrite, the workaround might well be: "Try using Firefox until we get a fix out."
phaedrus 19y ago
This is not a bad idea, unfortunately a lot of sites (especially online applications) check for IE specifically and if you don't have it, take you to a message page that says "this page only displays in IE, go away." You see this a lot using Firefox; saavy Firefox users know just to ignore the message because the site works fine anyway. But imagine if your mother in law has just downloaded Microsoft's latest browser, and a site tells her the browser she's using won't work - she'll just get the "deer in the headlights" look and freak out. There really isn't a way out of the corner Microsoft painted itself into on this one.

by philh 19y ago

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
    The good reason why it'll never work is that it has to be done for bilions of pages.

mechanical_fish 19y ago

The problem is the installed base of web sites that are specifically designed around IE6 and IE7, bugs and all. Those sites will break on a "standards-compliant" browser. You and I tend to forget that such sites exist, because the environment of the public web, which teems with Firefox and Safari users, has rendered them mostly extinct in the wild. But in captivity, behind various corporate firewalls, where every single user has been running IE for a decade, such sites still exist, people care about them, and those people just happen to be Microsoft's core customers. If, as you suggest, Microsoft ships a totally new browser -- which, let's face it, might as well be called "Firefox 3.0", although I suppose it could just be IE8 with a different User-Agent heading -- you and I will be happy, but lots of internal corporate sites will break, with no upgrade paths other than "redesign your site's HTML to be standards-compliant" or "tell your users to run two browsers: one for the intranet and one for the modern world". And corporate customers don't want to fork over license fees in exchange for that. That's the basic contours of the dilemma: MS can either blow off their installed base or blow off the standards movement. The installed base has the money. The standards movement has the influence. Spolsky is right: The IE team is well and truly damned. They're just going to have to weasel out of it somehow.

deleted 19y ago
[deleted]
jcl 19y ago
But blowing off an installed base is nothing Microsoft hasn't done before. There are Internet Explorer versions (5.5 and prior) that are effectively end-of-lifed. No web developer has to think about the 5.5 hacks anymore, and any corporate intranet that relies on 5.5 hacks is screwed. Has this been a problem? I get the feeling that it has not, because a good MS-based IT department can spin the cost of rewriting its websites as part of the MS upgrade treadmill... as part of the cost of upgrading to .NET, or .NET 2.0, or Vista, or Sharepoint, or Windows Server 2008, etc. (And any business that has decided to get off of this treadmill is no longer among MS's paying customers.) On the other hand, Microsoft's piecemeal approach to web standards is starting to hurt it. The de facto web development best practice is now "Develop for a standards-compliant browser first, then hack it until it looks right in IE." This hurts Microsoft because it means that most new webpages only work incidentally in IE; if a corner case of some new feature is accidentally missed in the IE rewrite, the workaround might well be: "Try using Firefox until we get a fix out."

phaedrus 19y ago

This is not a bad idea, unfortunately a lot of sites (especially online applications) check for IE specifically and if you don't have it, take you to a message page that says "this page only displays in IE, go away." You see this a lot using Firefox; saavy Firefox users know just to ignore the message because the site works fine anyway. But imagine if your mother in law has just downloaded Microsoft's latest browser, and a site tells her the browser she's using won't work - she'll just get the "deer in the headlights" look and freak out. There really isn't a way out of the corner Microsoft painted itself into on this one.