5 ms·

Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 at the height of cynicism

39 points by angelod101 17y ago

trezor 17y ago
To be fair they encourage people to upgrade from MSIE 6 and 7 too, and if they can achieve that, I'm willing to consider that a good thing.
- timdorr 17y ago
  And to be be fairer, they're not encouraging others to go out and built IE-only sites. They've just designed this site (presumable through a simple JS browser check or UA check on the server side) to only allow entry via IE8. But still, kind of a dick move. The whole "get lost" message isn't really a good marketing move either.
  - jackmoore 17y ago
    How can they call FireFox 'old'? IE8 may be the best IE, but it's still a year or more behind the other browsers, and FF is very actively being developed. 3.5RC1 just came out in the past 24 hours.
    - paulgb 17y ago
      I wonder if they are checking the firefox version number. For me on Firefox 3.0, it just says "you'll never find it with that browser".
      - nebula 17y ago
        I wonder if they are checking the firefox version number I guess not. I use FF 3.0.x and they said "old Fire Fox". It looks like many people are actually downloading IE8 to participate in this. Hopefully, this actually may not change the market share of IE vis-a-vis its competitors. If you are an FF user, even if you download IE8 and participate in this contest, you are most likely to stick to FF. IOW I'm hoping that the downloads won't actually translate to conversions from other browsers. One good thing that might come out of this is some IE6 upgrades to IE8.
timdorr 17y ago
Also, turns out one of Microsoft's updates to IE8 actually breaks this contest from working: http://www.istartedsomething.com/20090617/internet-explorer-8-treasure-hunt-microsoft-australia-hides-10000/ http://www.istartedsomething.com/20090617/internet-explorer-... I can't reiterate enough how absolutely hilarious that is.
- johnnybgoode 17y ago
  Plus, after the update broke IE8, they tried to fix it and failed: "It appears the Compatibility View list cannot be overridden." If the press does its job, this whole thing will be a net loss for Microsoft.
mattmaroon 17y ago
"First, my memory isn’t so short as to have forgotten that it was Microsoft and their browser (Internet Explorer 6) that held back the web for so many years." That's bullshit. IE6 may have sucked, but it didn't hold anything back. As Firefox proved, anyone could have come along and built a better browser and started sucking up enough market share to make it an industry again.
- jackmoore 17y ago
  What are you talking about? They couldn't be bothered to update IE6 for years, and it still holds people back every day. How much time is wasted trying to get things to work in IE6? It's a ball an chain that web developers drag around and it slows progress by wasting their time and limiting their applications. Only recently have some websites been dropping support for IE6.
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- axod 17y ago
  And so comes the totally unbiased voice of an ms fanboy ;) Seriously. They employed anti competitive practices to grab market share from Netscape. Once they had completely obliterated Netscape, they decided to not update IE6 and leave users suffering. It's like their aim with IE6 was to kill off the web. Or at least make it suck so much that webapps would be delayed for 10 years - which they pretty much achieved. Obviously that was in ms's favor - their business is desktop apps, not webapps.
  - boucher 17y ago
    I dislike IE6 as much as the next guy (more probably), but people should stop harping on Microsoft like this. IE6 created the first version of AJAX. It had browser based drawing primitives ages before anyone else. It turns out that IE filters were capable of CSS transforms all this time and nobody even realized it. IE6 was innovative when it was released, at a time when the competition was simply inferior. It's unfortunate that it took Microsoft so long to release IE7, and it certainly has caused significant pain, but realize that it's not as black and white as people make it out to be.
Elepsis 17y ago
So the author is complaining that Microsoft is restricting a contest designed to get users to download IE8 to, uh, users of IE8? If they _didn't_ do that, why would they run a contest at all? Would having a Firefox user win the contest justify the marketing expense? I agree that the promo is pretty thoughtless, but I'm not sure there was any thought put into this criticism either.
peyton 17y ago
"It's not as stupid as it sounds." - Lol. IE8 isn't that bad. Sure it's slow, but most everything you'd need is implemented. I don't like the haughty tone of the contest, but meh. Firefox fans have run similar campaigns, e.g. http://wedontsupportie.com/ http://wedontsupportie.com/
- nkassis 17y ago
  That was in reference to IE6 which was a pain in the ass to support and required a site to be written with tons of exceptions.
invisible 17y ago
We need someone to win the contest using Firefox (changing their user agent) and just viewing source when appropriate (to avoid IE "compatibility" bugs that hide things).
- nebula 17y ago
  Or better, can someone quickly release an FF extension which can beat this? That would be an interesting counter strike :)

39 points by angelod101 17y ago

To be fair they encourage people to upgrade from MSIE 6 and 7 too, and if they can achieve that, I'm willing to consider that a good thing.

timdorr 17y ago
And to be be fairer, they're not encouraging others to go out and built IE-only sites. They've just designed this site (presumable through a simple JS browser check or UA check on the server side) to only allow entry via IE8. But still, kind of a dick move. The whole "get lost" message isn't really a good marketing move either.
- jackmoore 17y ago
  How can they call FireFox 'old'? IE8 may be the best IE, but it's still a year or more behind the other browsers, and FF is very actively being developed. 3.5RC1 just came out in the past 24 hours.
  - paulgb 17y ago
    I wonder if they are checking the firefox version number. For me on Firefox 3.0, it just says "you'll never find it with that browser".
    - nebula 17y ago
      I wonder if they are checking the firefox version number I guess not. I use FF 3.0.x and they said "old Fire Fox". It looks like many people are actually downloading IE8 to participate in this. Hopefully, this actually may not change the market share of IE vis-a-vis its competitors. If you are an FF user, even if you download IE8 and participate in this contest, you are most likely to stick to FF. IOW I'm hoping that the downloads won't actually translate to conversions from other browsers. One good thing that might come out of this is some IE6 upgrades to IE8.

timdorr 17y ago

Also, turns out one of Microsoft's updates to IE8 actually breaks this contest from working: http://www.istartedsomething.com/20090617/internet-explorer-8-treasure-hunt-microsoft-australia-hides-10000/ http://www.istartedsomething.com/20090617/internet-explorer-... I can't reiterate enough how absolutely hilarious that is.

johnnybgoode 17y ago
Plus, after the update broke IE8, they tried to fix it and failed: "It appears the Compatibility View list cannot be overridden." If the press does its job, this whole thing will be a net loss for Microsoft.

mattmaroon 17y ago

"First, my memory isn’t so short as to have forgotten that it was Microsoft and their browser (Internet Explorer 6) that held back the web for so many years." That's bullshit. IE6 may have sucked, but it didn't hold anything back. As Firefox proved, anyone could have come along and built a better browser and started sucking up enough market share to make it an industry again.

jackmoore 17y ago
What are you talking about? They couldn't be bothered to update IE6 for years, and it still holds people back every day. How much time is wasted trying to get things to work in IE6? It's a ball an chain that web developers drag around and it slows progress by wasting their time and limiting their applications. Only recently have some websites been dropping support for IE6.
- deleted 17y ago
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- deleted 17y ago
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axod 17y ago
And so comes the totally unbiased voice of an ms fanboy ;) Seriously. They employed anti competitive practices to grab market share from Netscape. Once they had completely obliterated Netscape, they decided to not update IE6 and leave users suffering. It's like their aim with IE6 was to kill off the web. Or at least make it suck so much that webapps would be delayed for 10 years - which they pretty much achieved. Obviously that was in ms's favor - their business is desktop apps, not webapps.
- boucher 17y ago
  I dislike IE6 as much as the next guy (more probably), but people should stop harping on Microsoft like this. IE6 created the first version of AJAX. It had browser based drawing primitives ages before anyone else. It turns out that IE filters were capable of CSS transforms all this time and nobody even realized it. IE6 was innovative when it was released, at a time when the competition was simply inferior. It's unfortunate that it took Microsoft so long to release IE7, and it certainly has caused significant pain, but realize that it's not as black and white as people make it out to be.

Elepsis 17y ago

So the author is complaining that Microsoft is restricting a contest designed to get users to download IE8 to, uh, users of IE8? If they _didn't_ do that, why would they run a contest at all? Would having a Firefox user win the contest justify the marketing expense? I agree that the promo is pretty thoughtless, but I'm not sure there was any thought put into this criticism either.

peyton 17y ago

"It's not as stupid as it sounds." - Lol. IE8 isn't that bad. Sure it's slow, but most everything you'd need is implemented. I don't like the haughty tone of the contest, but meh. Firefox fans have run similar campaigns, e.g. http://wedontsupportie.com/ http://wedontsupportie.com/

nkassis 17y ago
That was in reference to IE6 which was a pain in the ass to support and required a site to be written with tons of exceptions.

invisible 17y ago

We need someone to win the contest using Firefox (changing their user agent) and just viewing source when appropriate (to avoid IE "compatibility" bugs that hide things).

nebula 17y ago
Or better, can someone quickly release an FF extension which can beat this? That would be an interesting counter strike :)