7 ms·

I don't get it. Their brand new phone doesn't support HTML5.

by mrj 16y ago

cryptoz 16y ago
Nor does any MS browser for Windows XP, which still has > 50% of the Windows market share. It's very doublespeak of them: Yes we love HTML5, but we won't have any of it on our most popular OS or our new mobile phone ...wtf?
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
  - cryptoz 16y ago
    > Just because XP is their most popular OS doesn't mean that they need to keep supporting it. Ballmer said "we're embracing HTML5". If they want to embrace this technology then yes, they do need to bring it to their older, more popular OSs. Otherwise, they're just putting in a halfassed, minimal effort to it. All other HTML5 browsers run on Windows XP. Microsoft is the only company to produce an HTML5 browser that doesn't run on the world's most widely used OS, which happens to be made by them. That's absurd. Definitely not "embracing".
    - confuzatron 16y ago
      So there are multiple browsers that support HTML5 on XP. What's the problem again?
      - cryptoz 16y ago
        Since none of them are made by Microsoft, very few corporations will use them. This means that many web developers will still be developing for IE8 in the year 2020.
        confuzatron 16y ago
        You have a point, but at the same time MS have no obligation to pander to these hyper-conservative corporations in a way that makes no business sense for them. Perhaps they should promote usage of Chrome on XP ;-) (http://techie-buzz.com/tech-news/using-chrome-for-hotmail.html http://techie-buzz.com/tech-news/using-chrome-for-hotmail.ht...)
- trezor 16y ago
  Again? XP is old. Seriously. Just get over it.
  - cryptoz 16y ago
    If XP is old, then Microsoft should stop supporting it. They should stop selling downgrade licenses. But they don't. They still support it and they still sell it. In fact, they will keep selling it until 2020. That's 10 more years! Source: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9179109/Microsoft_extends_Windows_XP_downgrade_rights_until_2020 http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9179109/Microsoft_ext... Now, can you seriously sit there and tell me it's reasonable for MS to sell an OS for ten more years (totaling about 20 years!) without releasing a single HTML5 capable browser for it? And then comment that they're "embracing" HTML5? Ridiculous.
- contextfree 16y ago
  Here's what I suspect their strategic angle on this is: I think when MSFT talks about HTML5, what they tend to mean by it is web applications with desktop-like rich UIs, fancy graphics (that, in particular, require hardware acceleration on powerful PCs to run smoothly), etc. They have decided it's in their interest to encourage the proliferation of such applications (expect to see a lot of tools to help this along - Microsoft have already released an Adobe Illustrator plug in to export to HTML <canvas> (http://visitmix.com/labs/ai2canvas/ http://visitmix.com/labs/ai2canvas/) and Blend 5 is strongly rumored to support SVG/<canvas> as a target platform) for two reasons: 1. They think it's a chance to differentiate their web properties, especially by moving them toward a rich-client model in which they already have experience. They tried to do that with Silverlight previously but didn't get enough acceptance from various quarters. They probably think it's an opportunity for their development tools business as well (in particular, <canvas> being a low level API leaves a lot of room for new frameworks on top of it). 2. If rich-UI, CPU/GPU-hungry HTML5 sites become common, people who haven't upgraded in a while will need newer browsers and PCs to view them correctly. Of course, Microsoft is hoping to encourage them to move to IE9 and therefore to Windows 7, but even if they go to another browser instead, if they're on older computers they'll still need to upgrade their PC for the sites to run well, regardless of what browser they're using, and by default that means moving to a W7/8/ ... machine. I think this is probably the most important consideration for them.
  - contextfree 16y ago
    I'm actually curious what people think of my take on this. Does it make sense, am I crazy/deluded, or ... ?
judofyr 16y ago
Their brand new phone is of course using the most stable browser they have, and their brand new browser supporting HTML5 is of course not the most stable browser they have. In a perfect world they would have shipped the phone with WebKit, but we all know that Microsoft is not going to do that (I'd love to be proven wrong).
mechanical_fish 16y ago
Pivoting the Microsoft ecosystem is like trying to shove the Indian subcontinent a foot to the left. On the plus side, continents may not move very quickly or in the precise direction that one might desire, but they do move.
- ihumanable 16y ago
  This doesn't make much sense, it's their phone software. All they have to do is leverage their own browser tech for IE9 for their phone. It may not be easy, but if you can't get all the legs walking in the same direction in your own company, why should people have faith in your ability to deliver a good user experience.
  - cpr 16y ago
    MS is a pretty ponderous beast. Remember Joel's pointer to the story about someone trying to fix the shutdown experience? http://moishelettvin.blogspot.com/2006/11/windows-shutdown-crapfest.html http://moishelettvin.blogspot.com/2006/11/windows-shutdown-c... Sounds like it takes years to get the legs moving together, which means it's too late for IE9 on the phone for a while...
  - SpikeGronim 16y ago
    "All they have to do" is take a hardware accelerated Vista/Windows 7 application (IE9) designed for mice and port it to much weaker hardware with a different OS and multi-touch. That's not easy.
  - bkhl 16y ago
    ...Okay. IE9, which supports HTML5, is still in beta. WP7 has already been released, and I'm sure the folks in Redmond is working on the next release/updates. Do you get it now? ...Okay. It's not an easy job to align products and release cycles. Microsoft was already late on WP7. They probably missed a cycle and Android kicked in. Microsoft doesn't want to be late anymore. Meaning, they probably couldn't wait for IE9 for mobile to be released (which wouldn't be a HUGE job if you have a working, stable, and RC version of IE9). In conclusion, Microsoft is being smart that they release the phone and let people dive/absorb/digest earlier instead of waiting for full featured phone OS with a HTML5 supported browser, which is still in beta for desktops. However, this just means..the next release of WP7 will be very interesting. Remember, Android and iPhone OS (which wasn't iOS at the time) weren't closed to feature complete with their first release. I'm an Android user, and I can remember when I first bought my Droid, it went through so many updates software updates. Companies just have to cut things if one or two things will block the entire release.
confuzatron 16y ago
But isn't HTML5 a whole bunch of not-standardised-yet technologies? If so, I am not amazed that their brand new platform doesn't support it.
- rimantas 16y ago
  iPhone did support it more than three years ago.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - confuzatron 16y ago
    So mobile Safari 3.0 (looks like the best candidate for 'three years ago') supported all of HTML5? Really? Googling shows that safari 3.0 for Windows certainly didn't support HTML5. Did mobile safari 3 support '2010 HTML5', given that it's still in draft at the moment. Has 'HTML5' remained the same for 3 years?
    - rimantas 16y ago
      What has safari for windows to do with Mobile Safari? If fact there were features that first were released on Mobile Safari, and only later came to Safari on OS X (hardware accelerated CSS transforms and animations). As for "all of HTML5" — no current browser AFAIK has support for full HTML 4.
contentvoid 16y ago
It will, they just focused on UI and development ecosystem first and I'm sure the updated mobile IE will be a derivative of IE9 which isn't complete yet.

I don't get it. Their brand new phone doesn't support HTML5.

by mrj 16y ago

I don't get it. Their brand new phone doesn't support HTML5.

Nor does any MS browser for Windows XP, which still has > 50% of the Windows market share. It's very doublespeak of them: Yes we love HTML5, but we won't have any of it on our most popular OS or our new mobile phone ...wtf?

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
- cryptoz 16y ago
  > Just because XP is their most popular OS doesn't mean that they need to keep supporting it. Ballmer said "we're embracing HTML5". If they want to embrace this technology then yes, they do need to bring it to their older, more popular OSs. Otherwise, they're just putting in a halfassed, minimal effort to it. All other HTML5 browsers run on Windows XP. Microsoft is the only company to produce an HTML5 browser that doesn't run on the world's most widely used OS, which happens to be made by them. That's absurd. Definitely not "embracing".
  - confuzatron 16y ago
    So there are multiple browsers that support HTML5 on XP. What's the problem again?
    - cryptoz 16y ago
      Since none of them are made by Microsoft, very few corporations will use them. This means that many web developers will still be developing for IE8 in the year 2020.
      - confuzatron 16y ago
        You have a point, but at the same time MS have no obligation to pander to these hyper-conservative corporations in a way that makes no business sense for them. Perhaps they should promote usage of Chrome on XP ;-) (http://techie-buzz.com/tech-news/using-chrome-for-hotmail.html http://techie-buzz.com/tech-news/using-chrome-for-hotmail.ht...)
trezor 16y ago
Again? XP is old. Seriously. Just get over it.
- cryptoz 16y ago
  If XP is old, then Microsoft should stop supporting it. They should stop selling downgrade licenses. But they don't. They still support it and they still sell it. In fact, they will keep selling it until 2020. That's 10 more years! Source: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9179109/Microsoft_extends_Windows_XP_downgrade_rights_until_2020 http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9179109/Microsoft_ext... Now, can you seriously sit there and tell me it's reasonable for MS to sell an OS for ten more years (totaling about 20 years!) without releasing a single HTML5 capable browser for it? And then comment that they're "embracing" HTML5? Ridiculous.
contextfree 16y ago
Here's what I suspect their strategic angle on this is: I think when MSFT talks about HTML5, what they tend to mean by it is web applications with desktop-like rich UIs, fancy graphics (that, in particular, require hardware acceleration on powerful PCs to run smoothly), etc. They have decided it's in their interest to encourage the proliferation of such applications (expect to see a lot of tools to help this along - Microsoft have already released an Adobe Illustrator plug in to export to HTML <canvas> (http://visitmix.com/labs/ai2canvas/ http://visitmix.com/labs/ai2canvas/) and Blend 5 is strongly rumored to support SVG/<canvas> as a target platform) for two reasons: 1. They think it's a chance to differentiate their web properties, especially by moving them toward a rich-client model in which they already have experience. They tried to do that with Silverlight previously but didn't get enough acceptance from various quarters. They probably think it's an opportunity for their development tools business as well (in particular, <canvas> being a low level API leaves a lot of room for new frameworks on top of it). 2. If rich-UI, CPU/GPU-hungry HTML5 sites become common, people who haven't upgraded in a while will need newer browsers and PCs to view them correctly. Of course, Microsoft is hoping to encourage them to move to IE9 and therefore to Windows 7, but even if they go to another browser instead, if they're on older computers they'll still need to upgrade their PC for the sites to run well, regardless of what browser they're using, and by default that means moving to a W7/8/ ... machine. I think this is probably the most important consideration for them.
- contextfree 16y ago
  I'm actually curious what people think of my take on this. Does it make sense, am I crazy/deluded, or ... ?

judofyr 16y ago

Their brand new phone is of course using the most stable browser they have, and their brand new browser supporting HTML5 is of course not the most stable browser they have. In a perfect world they would have shipped the phone with WebKit, but we all know that Microsoft is not going to do that (I'd love to be proven wrong).

mechanical_fish 16y ago

Pivoting the Microsoft ecosystem is like trying to shove the Indian subcontinent a foot to the left. On the plus side, continents may not move very quickly or in the precise direction that one might desire, but they do move.

ihumanable 16y ago
This doesn't make much sense, it's their phone software. All they have to do is leverage their own browser tech for IE9 for their phone. It may not be easy, but if you can't get all the legs walking in the same direction in your own company, why should people have faith in your ability to deliver a good user experience.
- cpr 16y ago
  MS is a pretty ponderous beast. Remember Joel's pointer to the story about someone trying to fix the shutdown experience? http://moishelettvin.blogspot.com/2006/11/windows-shutdown-crapfest.html http://moishelettvin.blogspot.com/2006/11/windows-shutdown-c... Sounds like it takes years to get the legs moving together, which means it's too late for IE9 on the phone for a while...
- SpikeGronim 16y ago
  "All they have to do" is take a hardware accelerated Vista/Windows 7 application (IE9) designed for mice and port it to much weaker hardware with a different OS and multi-touch. That's not easy.
- bkhl 16y ago
  ...Okay. IE9, which supports HTML5, is still in beta. WP7 has already been released, and I'm sure the folks in Redmond is working on the next release/updates. Do you get it now? ...Okay. It's not an easy job to align products and release cycles. Microsoft was already late on WP7. They probably missed a cycle and Android kicked in. Microsoft doesn't want to be late anymore. Meaning, they probably couldn't wait for IE9 for mobile to be released (which wouldn't be a HUGE job if you have a working, stable, and RC version of IE9). In conclusion, Microsoft is being smart that they release the phone and let people dive/absorb/digest earlier instead of waiting for full featured phone OS with a HTML5 supported browser, which is still in beta for desktops. However, this just means..the next release of WP7 will be very interesting. Remember, Android and iPhone OS (which wasn't iOS at the time) weren't closed to feature complete with their first release. I'm an Android user, and I can remember when I first bought my Droid, it went through so many updates software updates. Companies just have to cut things if one or two things will block the entire release.

confuzatron 16y ago

But isn't HTML5 a whole bunch of not-standardised-yet technologies? If so, I am not amazed that their brand new platform doesn't support it.

rimantas 16y ago
iPhone did support it more than three years ago.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- confuzatron 16y ago
  So mobile Safari 3.0 (looks like the best candidate for 'three years ago') supported all of HTML5? Really? Googling shows that safari 3.0 for Windows certainly didn't support HTML5. Did mobile safari 3 support '2010 HTML5', given that it's still in draft at the moment. Has 'HTML5' remained the same for 3 years?
  - rimantas 16y ago
    What has safari for windows to do with Mobile Safari? If fact there were features that first were released on Mobile Safari, and only later came to Safari on OS X (hardware accelerated CSS transforms and animations). As for "all of HTML5" — no current browser AFAIK has support for full HTML 4.

contentvoid 16y ago

It will, they just focused on UI and development ecosystem first and I'm sure the updated mobile IE will be a derivative of IE9 which isn't complete yet.