5 ms·

Pre-Satya Microsoft had an odd combination of paranoia and blindness regarding the rise of browser applications. Blindness: I was in a Microsoft VP’s office wh

by wrs 8y ago

Pre-Satya Microsoft had an odd combination of paranoia and blindness regarding the rise of browser applications. Blindness: I was in a Microsoft VP’s office when he said he was downsizing the IE effort because “the browser is done”, enterprise users were satisfied, and consumers don’t generate significant Windows revenue. I think that was IE6. Paranoia: I was present for many early-00s decisions where a Microsoft exec weakened the ability to write rich applications in the browser to avoid devaluing Win32. So they were at least scared of the idea of a “browser OS” in the abstract. Although...at the same time, Office was pushing for browser application capabilities, which is where we got XHR, which is a big reason browser applications became practical. Sometimes you’d never guess Office and Windows were the same company.

bena 8y ago
In a lot of ways they aren't/weren't. Office does a lot of things their own way and without a lot of the cross-compatibility that's a feature of most Microsoft products. That's why you'll find you'll be able to do something in Office, but other Microsoft programs won't. Or vice versa. Like Notepad and Internet Explorer are pretty much just containers for certain Windows controls. Controls Office don't use. They roll their own. Or at least, used to. Wouldn't surprise me to find out that Office had their own browser rendering engine that didn't rely on anything in IE.
- krn 8y ago
  > Office does a lot of things their own way and without a lot of the cross-compatibility that's a feature of most Microsoft products. That's probably because unlike most Microsoft products, Office is cross-platform and has to support multiple operating systems, including MacOS, iOS, and Android.
  - gmueckl 8y ago
    Isn't Office for Mac a completely diverged fork from an old Windows version of Office? I remember some blog posts from the understaffed Mac Office team stating that much several years ago. I don't know if they rebased it in the meantime. The posts read as if the big Office team was focused entirely on Windows and everything else was done by understaffed teams struggling to keep up.
    - bena 8y ago
      Funny story, Excel was on the Mac before Windows.
    - marpstar 8y ago
      Earlier this year they put out a blog post that announced that their cross-platform versions share a common codebase for "core functionality". https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Office-365-Blog/Shared-Office-codebase-for-Windows-Mac-iOS-and-Android-means/ba-p/150291 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Office-365-Blog/Share...
      - tragic 8y ago
        Does 'core functionality' include opening a UTF-8-encoded CSV file properly?
    - magnawave 8y ago
      Not anymore. From what I’ve been told from an insider, the latest versions are derived from a common code base now, with platform specific bits separate for each platform. The latest office for Mac looks quite a bit like the windows version now (for once) so it’s not too surprising.
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      Since 2014 not anymore. The Office team did a couple of session at CppCon about how they refactored the code. "CppCon 2014: Zaika Antoun "Microsoft w/ C++ to Deliver Office Across Different Platforms" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HROqnw-nf4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HROqnw-nf4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGMoRu5yrVc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGMoRu5yrVc
- wvenable 8y ago
  > Wouldn't surprise me to find out that Office had their own browser rendering engine that didn't rely on anything in IE. Outlook renders HTML for email but doesn't use IE. This, of course, was a very smart decision even though Outlook's rendering of HTML is terrible.
- c5karl 8y ago
  > Wouldn't surprise me to find out that Office had their own browser rendering engine that didn't rely on anything in IE. I'm not sure what the situation is now, but for a long time Outlook used MS Word, not MSIE, to render HTML email messages. Word is a terrible web browser, so that made it next to impossible to design templates for things like email newsletters that would look & behave sensibly in Outlook.
  - chrismorgan 8y ago
    Outlook 2003 switched to the IE renderer, then for what I consider to be terrible reasons they switched back to MSO in 2007, and still use it in Outlook and even Windows Mail now. (The reasons I recall were bugs in the editor and security—.) For people that aren’t in the know: the MSO engine is basically a very incomplete and quite buggy implementation of the HTML 3.2 specification. From where I stand, it looks like the entire thing is a binary blob that essentially hasn’t been touched at all for over twenty years. Literally. Microsoft switching back to MSO breathed new life into an entire industry of people with esoteric, hard-won knowledge about the eldritch affairs of HTML for email. Without it, HTML for email would not be such a disaster. (Sure, there are other awful email clients, but Outlook is by far the most terrible that is used much these days. If it had tightened its game, other bad clients would have been much more like to fix theirs too.)
wvenable 8y ago
> So they were at least scared of the idea of a “browser OS” in the abstract. Well you literally had Mozilla telling everyone they could that the browser is going to be the OS in that era. Microsoft was certainly paying attention.

by wrs 8y ago

bena 8y ago

In a lot of ways they aren't/weren't. Office does a lot of things their own way and without a lot of the cross-compatibility that's a feature of most Microsoft products. That's why you'll find you'll be able to do something in Office, but other Microsoft programs won't. Or vice versa. Like Notepad and Internet Explorer are pretty much just containers for certain Windows controls. Controls Office don't use. They roll their own. Or at least, used to. Wouldn't surprise me to find out that Office had their own browser rendering engine that didn't rely on anything in IE.

krn 8y ago
> Office does a lot of things their own way and without a lot of the cross-compatibility that's a feature of most Microsoft products. That's probably because unlike most Microsoft products, Office is cross-platform and has to support multiple operating systems, including MacOS, iOS, and Android.
- gmueckl 8y ago
  Isn't Office for Mac a completely diverged fork from an old Windows version of Office? I remember some blog posts from the understaffed Mac Office team stating that much several years ago. I don't know if they rebased it in the meantime. The posts read as if the big Office team was focused entirely on Windows and everything else was done by understaffed teams struggling to keep up.
  - bena 8y ago
    Funny story, Excel was on the Mac before Windows.
  - marpstar 8y ago
    Earlier this year they put out a blog post that announced that their cross-platform versions share a common codebase for "core functionality". https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Office-365-Blog/Shared-Office-codebase-for-Windows-Mac-iOS-and-Android-means/ba-p/150291 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Office-365-Blog/Share...
    - tragic 8y ago
      Does 'core functionality' include opening a UTF-8-encoded CSV file properly?
  - magnawave 8y ago
    Not anymore. From what I’ve been told from an insider, the latest versions are derived from a common code base now, with platform specific bits separate for each platform. The latest office for Mac looks quite a bit like the windows version now (for once) so it’s not too surprising.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Since 2014 not anymore. The Office team did a couple of session at CppCon about how they refactored the code. "CppCon 2014: Zaika Antoun "Microsoft w/ C++ to Deliver Office Across Different Platforms" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HROqnw-nf4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HROqnw-nf4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGMoRu5yrVc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGMoRu5yrVc
wvenable 8y ago
> Wouldn't surprise me to find out that Office had their own browser rendering engine that didn't rely on anything in IE. Outlook renders HTML for email but doesn't use IE. This, of course, was a very smart decision even though Outlook's rendering of HTML is terrible.
c5karl 8y ago
> Wouldn't surprise me to find out that Office had their own browser rendering engine that didn't rely on anything in IE. I'm not sure what the situation is now, but for a long time Outlook used MS Word, not MSIE, to render HTML email messages. Word is a terrible web browser, so that made it next to impossible to design templates for things like email newsletters that would look & behave sensibly in Outlook.
- chrismorgan 8y ago
  Outlook 2003 switched to the IE renderer, then for what I consider to be terrible reasons they switched back to MSO in 2007, and still use it in Outlook and even Windows Mail now. (The reasons I recall were bugs in the editor and security—.) For people that aren’t in the know: the MSO engine is basically a very incomplete and quite buggy implementation of the HTML 3.2 specification. From where I stand, it looks like the entire thing is a binary blob that essentially hasn’t been touched at all for over twenty years. Literally. Microsoft switching back to MSO breathed new life into an entire industry of people with esoteric, hard-won knowledge about the eldritch affairs of HTML for email. Without it, HTML for email would not be such a disaster. (Sure, there are other awful email clients, but Outlook is by far the most terrible that is used much these days. If it had tightened its game, other bad clients would have been much more like to fix theirs too.)

wvenable 8y ago

> So they were at least scared of the idea of a “browser OS” in the abstract. Well you literally had Mozilla telling everyone they could that the browser is going to be the OS in that era. Microsoft was certainly paying attention.