6 ms·

in response to a question about websockets and friends: Our approach when deciding what technologies to support starts with data. There are three things we con

in response to a question about websockets and friends: Our approach when deciding what technologies to support starts with data. There are three things we consider: What are developers actually doing on the web today? What do developers want to do in the future? <snip> We started by building a tool to look at the top 7000 sites and what web APIs they used. Isn't this arse about? Isn't it kind of hard to use new tech if it isn't supported. I'd love to be able to use some of the new HTML5 things, but IE is holding us back XP is a platform that doesn't allow for the performance characteristics of a modern web experience. WTF sort of a response is that? There's some good answers in there, but this sort of spin-driven markety rhubarb works so hard to hide it. Why not just say that IE9 makes use of features available in Vista and 7, but not in XP.

noibl 16y ago
> Why not just say that IE9 makes use of features available in Vista and 7, but not in XP. Even better, why not take a leaf out of the books of the four major cross-platform browsers and make opportunistic use of OS features.
- bvi 16y ago
  You're talking about how IE9 itself could have been improved; cubicle67 was speaking about how the IE9 team's response could have been better. In this case, while IE9 is still a terrible product, the team's response is so stuffed with fluff it appears this whole Q&A session might have backfired. Everyone is just looking for a direct, no-bullshit response. We don't want anything that sounds "hip" or loaded with marketing speak.
  - noibl 16y ago
    > You're talking about how IE9 itself could have been improved No, I'm talking about how deeply in the product dubious marketing ideas (such as creating up-sell opportunities) have been embedded. The problem is that 'IE9 makes use of features available in Vista and 7' is not a justification and is therefore just as bullshit-ridden. There are some ugly truths in this tl;dr that push the burden of explanation away from the dev team and onto marketing. When IE8 came out, Chris Wilson answered similar questions, and a lot of his answers amounted to 'shrug Guys I'm on your side here but we had to limit our ambitions because this is Microsoft and there are strategic decisions that we had no control over.' At least this way we get a sense of what those decisions are rather than get a good cop/bad cop act. (Not to say that Wilson isn't a natural good cop.)
  - points 16y ago
    > "the team's response is so stuffed with fluff it appears this whole Q&A session might have backfired." I cannot really imagine how it would have ended any other way. It was obviously going to make MS look incompetent and desperate.
gjm11 16y ago
> Isn't this arse about? Not entirely, for two reasons. 1. Supporting what's actually out there is at least as important as supporting what isn't out there yet because the browsers don't support it. 2. The very next sentence said: "We also spoke to developers and partners to understand what they were going do in the future and what they couldn't do today."
- mgkimsal 16y ago
  But.. 1. Part of 'what's out there' is still limited by attempts to remain compatible with IE6. Especially looking at the 'top X' sites. Yes, some sites are ignoring IE6 these days, but I bet when they started researching that wasn't the norm (and it's probably still not the norm today). 2. Spoke to developers and partners - yay. Except the majority 'partners' they speak with likely are very MS centric. This isn't a "MS devs are dumb" comment, but I speak with many people across multiple platforms, and there's a shocking lack of understanding (or even caring) about other platforms across the board. Many "mac only" devs don't know much about Windows, for example. If the majority of people they spoke with were MS partners, they're going to get a very skewed input base. Did they go out of their way to consult with anti-IE devs? Did they talk to Rails/Mac-based shops to see what they're doing? Did the reach out to Opera or user groups (if any exist)? "What they were going to do in the future" may have been dictated by their understanding of a future MS roadmap.
  - kenjackson 16y ago
    "2. Spoke to developers and partners - yay. Except the majority 'partners' they speak with likely are very MS centric. This isn't a "MS devs are dumb" comment, but I speak with many people across multiple platforms, and there's a shocking lack of understanding (or even caring) about other platforms across the board. Many "mac only" devs don't know much about Windows, for example." You really don't think most strong web devs get the problems regardless of what their dev platform is? I'm sure IE's partners include folks from Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and much smaller companies. I really have a hard time believing that they aren't getting pretty good feedback.
    - 16y ago
StavrosK 16y ago
Their entire attitude is worrying. I'm afraid that this is going to hinder the web again, it just looks like they want to release the bare minimum they can to get marketshare instead of actually make a good browser. Opera, with its 5% market share (or so) has been reigning on the tests and innovation for ever, and Microsoft can't get enough employees together to work on a browser? As far as I'm concerned, nobody should recommend IE for anything, as the risk of Microsoft pulling another IE6 is too high, and not worth the reward.
- kree10 16y ago
  The thing is, this attitude isn't new. MSFT's MO for many, many years has been to put out "just good enough" products.
- DeusExMachina 16y ago
  I wonder if it could be possible to see more and more web apps take advantage of the full standard and state clearly on the front page "this website does not work on any IE version. Please use another browser". This is indeed a hard choice to do, since it means leaving a lot of potential users out of the plate. Maybe startups can afford such bold moves, I don't know. But I think this could be the only way to force Microsoft change their mentality, eroding their browser market share more and more.
  - StavrosK 16y ago
    This is debatable. For example, the historious bookmarklet works on all browsers right now, except IE8 which refuses to run the JS. IE users are about 6% of our users, so is it worth spending hours debugging an issue for 6% of the userbase? We will do it, for the user, not for the browser. I don't want to have to tell someone "this doesn't work, use something else", because it's just not polite to tell him what he can or can't use for a few extra hours of work on our part. However, if the browser is so broken that it takes considerable work to make it usable, then yes, I'll put up an overlay saying "your browser is too broken, please use another one for the good of the internet and your sanity". EDIT: Also, I don't want Microsoft to change their mentality. I want them to stop making browsers (and maybe a few other things).
loewenskind 16y ago
>>XP is a platform that doesn't allow for the performance characteristics of a modern web experience. >WTF sort of a response is that? There's some good answers in there, but this sort of spin-driven markety rhubarb works so hard to hide it. Why not just say that IE9 makes use of features available in Vista and 7, but not in XP. I love how every time MS makes a new OS they publicly trash their last one. NT had the greatest uptime of any OS around... Until Windows 2000 came out. Then it suddenly had an average uptime of 9 days.
noodle 16y ago
i think its just indicative that IE will always be behind the curve. or, to look at it differently, they're a big company willing to let others blaze the trails while they follow behind at a safe distance.
sapphirecat 16y ago
> Why not just say that IE9 makes use of features available in Vista and 7, but not in XP. Then the knee-jerk reaction becomes "But why did you do that?" and the response still seems unsatisfying. I think asking for IE9 on XP is like asking for a Python project to be compatible with Python 2.3-3.2. Assuming it could be done for a complex project, is it worth the effort, compared to targeting 2.6+ instead and leaving people on older, long-supported systems behind?
jdoliner 16y ago
This right here is a very bad attitude toward software development because it prevents you from making the product that proves its worth to users and developers. It seemed in the original article that they justified almost every design decision with "Our marketing team told us to." It almost feels as if they're preemptively trying to blame someone else absolve themselves of blame. I'm not sure to what degree this is influenced by the editing.
plq 16y ago
why does it suprise you? it's coming from a company whose latest operating system still doesn't offer A PROPER TERMINAL EMULATOR (you know, like putty minus the ssh) on the grounds of lack of demand from its customers.
emehrkay 16y ago
"We couldn't figure out a Microsofty-enough way to do websockets"

noibl 16y ago

> Why not just say that IE9 makes use of features available in Vista and 7, but not in XP. Even better, why not take a leaf out of the books of the four major cross-platform browsers and make opportunistic use of OS features.

bvi 16y ago
You're talking about how IE9 itself could have been improved; cubicle67 was speaking about how the IE9 team's response could have been better. In this case, while IE9 is still a terrible product, the team's response is so stuffed with fluff it appears this whole Q&A session might have backfired. Everyone is just looking for a direct, no-bullshit response. We don't want anything that sounds "hip" or loaded with marketing speak.
- noibl 16y ago
  > You're talking about how IE9 itself could have been improved No, I'm talking about how deeply in the product dubious marketing ideas (such as creating up-sell opportunities) have been embedded. The problem is that 'IE9 makes use of features available in Vista and 7' is not a justification and is therefore just as bullshit-ridden. There are some ugly truths in this tl;dr that push the burden of explanation away from the dev team and onto marketing. When IE8 came out, Chris Wilson answered similar questions, and a lot of his answers amounted to 'shrug Guys I'm on your side here but we had to limit our ambitions because this is Microsoft and there are strategic decisions that we had no control over.' At least this way we get a sense of what those decisions are rather than get a good cop/bad cop act. (Not to say that Wilson isn't a natural good cop.)
- points 16y ago
  > "the team's response is so stuffed with fluff it appears this whole Q&A session might have backfired." I cannot really imagine how it would have ended any other way. It was obviously going to make MS look incompetent and desperate.

gjm11 16y ago

> Isn't this arse about? Not entirely, for two reasons. 1. Supporting what's actually out there is at least as important as supporting what isn't out there yet because the browsers don't support it. 2. The very next sentence said: "We also spoke to developers and partners to understand what they were going do in the future and what they couldn't do today."

mgkimsal 16y ago
But.. 1. Part of 'what's out there' is still limited by attempts to remain compatible with IE6. Especially looking at the 'top X' sites. Yes, some sites are ignoring IE6 these days, but I bet when they started researching that wasn't the norm (and it's probably still not the norm today). 2. Spoke to developers and partners - yay. Except the majority 'partners' they speak with likely are very MS centric. This isn't a "MS devs are dumb" comment, but I speak with many people across multiple platforms, and there's a shocking lack of understanding (or even caring) about other platforms across the board. Many "mac only" devs don't know much about Windows, for example. If the majority of people they spoke with were MS partners, they're going to get a very skewed input base. Did they go out of their way to consult with anti-IE devs? Did they talk to Rails/Mac-based shops to see what they're doing? Did the reach out to Opera or user groups (if any exist)? "What they were going to do in the future" may have been dictated by their understanding of a future MS roadmap.
- kenjackson 16y ago
  "2. Spoke to developers and partners - yay. Except the majority 'partners' they speak with likely are very MS centric. This isn't a "MS devs are dumb" comment, but I speak with many people across multiple platforms, and there's a shocking lack of understanding (or even caring) about other platforms across the board. Many "mac only" devs don't know much about Windows, for example." You really don't think most strong web devs get the problems regardless of what their dev platform is? I'm sure IE's partners include folks from Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and much smaller companies. I really have a hard time believing that they aren't getting pretty good feedback.
  - 16y ago

StavrosK 16y ago

Their entire attitude is worrying. I'm afraid that this is going to hinder the web again, it just looks like they want to release the bare minimum they can to get marketshare instead of actually make a good browser. Opera, with its 5% market share (or so) has been reigning on the tests and innovation for ever, and Microsoft can't get enough employees together to work on a browser? As far as I'm concerned, nobody should recommend IE for anything, as the risk of Microsoft pulling another IE6 is too high, and not worth the reward.

kree10 16y ago
The thing is, this attitude isn't new. MSFT's MO for many, many years has been to put out "just good enough" products.
DeusExMachina 16y ago
I wonder if it could be possible to see more and more web apps take advantage of the full standard and state clearly on the front page "this website does not work on any IE version. Please use another browser". This is indeed a hard choice to do, since it means leaving a lot of potential users out of the plate. Maybe startups can afford such bold moves, I don't know. But I think this could be the only way to force Microsoft change their mentality, eroding their browser market share more and more.
- StavrosK 16y ago
  This is debatable. For example, the historious bookmarklet works on all browsers right now, except IE8 which refuses to run the JS. IE users are about 6% of our users, so is it worth spending hours debugging an issue for 6% of the userbase? We will do it, for the user, not for the browser. I don't want to have to tell someone "this doesn't work, use something else", because it's just not polite to tell him what he can or can't use for a few extra hours of work on our part. However, if the browser is so broken that it takes considerable work to make it usable, then yes, I'll put up an overlay saying "your browser is too broken, please use another one for the good of the internet and your sanity". EDIT: Also, I don't want Microsoft to change their mentality. I want them to stop making browsers (and maybe a few other things).

loewenskind 16y ago

>>XP is a platform that doesn't allow for the performance characteristics of a modern web experience. >WTF sort of a response is that? There's some good answers in there, but this sort of spin-driven markety rhubarb works so hard to hide it. Why not just say that IE9 makes use of features available in Vista and 7, but not in XP. I love how every time MS makes a new OS they publicly trash their last one. NT had the greatest uptime of any OS around... Until Windows 2000 came out. Then it suddenly had an average uptime of 9 days.

noodle 16y ago

i think its just indicative that IE will always be behind the curve. or, to look at it differently, they're a big company willing to let others blaze the trails while they follow behind at a safe distance.

sapphirecat 16y ago

> Why not just say that IE9 makes use of features available in Vista and 7, but not in XP. Then the knee-jerk reaction becomes "But why did you do that?" and the response still seems unsatisfying. I think asking for IE9 on XP is like asking for a Python project to be compatible with Python 2.3-3.2. Assuming it could be done for a complex project, is it worth the effort, compared to targeting 2.6+ instead and leaving people on older, long-supported systems behind?

jdoliner 16y ago

This right here is a very bad attitude toward software development because it prevents you from making the product that proves its worth to users and developers. It seemed in the original article that they justified almost every design decision with "Our marketing team told us to." It almost feels as if they're preemptively trying to blame someone else absolve themselves of blame. I'm not sure to what degree this is influenced by the editing.

plq 16y ago

why does it suprise you? it's coming from a company whose latest operating system still doesn't offer A PROPER TERMINAL EMULATOR (you know, like putty minus the ssh) on the grounds of lack of demand from its customers.

emehrkay 16y ago

"We couldn't figure out a Microsofty-enough way to do websockets"