5 ms·

The 11% for IE11 challenge

57 points by lanthe 13y ago

jawns 13y ago
The blog and the 11% for IE11 landing page both imply that if you complete the challenge, you will win the prizes described. For instance, the blog entry says: "If you can get 11% better page load performance from your site, we'll send you and your team some 11 goodness." I'm no lawyer, but that sounds like a valid unilateral contract to me. Similarly, the landing page says: "Show us how you got 11% better page load performance in your organization's home web page and we'll send you all this goodness." But in the fine print, it says: "The first 11 organizations that meet the qualifications above will each receive the following: 11 pizzas (in the form of a $120 gift card), 11 year-long subscriptions to BrowserStack (ARV $240 each), and 11 copies of Parallels Desktop 9 for Mac (ARV $79 each)." There's a heck of a big difference between "If you do this, we'll give you this" and "If you're one of the first 11 people to do this, we'll give you this." The fact that there will be only 11 prize winners should be made more clear. After all, there is PIZZA on the line. And there's nothing like a pizza bait-and-switch to get developers angry at you.
- wnevets 13y ago
  Well now I just feel cheated. How do I un-vote up a story?
  - rbanffy 13y ago
    You can flag it.
- justgar 13y ago
  @jawns. We have updated the blog post to clarify. I encourage you to try out the new tools and I hope the perf testing is worth the pizza+.
  - jawns 13y ago
    Thanks. I hope you'll also update the landing page of the challenge. A little more feedback, which I hope you'll take as constructive: As I said above, there's quite a difference between "if you do this, you'll win this" and "if you're one of the first 11 people in the United States to do this, you'll win this." As I see it, if I have any chance of winning the prize, I've got to drop everything right now and scramble to complete the challenge, and even then, who knows how many other people are doing the same thing? So, my incentive has just dropped from, "This is exciting! I have a decent shot at getting pizza!" to "It's extremely unlikely that I'll win. Why bother?" I would therefore suggest that you look for ways to increase the value proposition to developers. I'm not saying you have to spend millions -- but maybe find some creative ways to reward developers outside of the first 11, such as by featuring some of the success stories on your blog.
    - justgar 13y ago
      You bet. Feedback well taken jawns and thanks! This has been live for 2 hours so I still think you have an opportunity here.
- smackfu 13y ago
  What if the plan is to change the page after 11 orgs win?
Aardwolf 13y ago
Am I the only person who is sensitive to JPEG artifacts? Look at this image from the article. Why did they use such low quality JPEG? http://blogs.windows.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-59-33-metablogapi/clip_5F00_image002_5F00_2073DC23.jpg http://blogs.windows.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver...
- kamjam 13y ago
  That's how you get your 11% performance gains!
- adivik2000 13y ago
  Haha. I was kinda thinking if Kraken.io was the culprit there for a bit. ;)
- 0x0 13y ago
  They probably compressed it on quality level 11%
- ye 13y ago
  Why did they use JPEG at all? It's a perfect image for PNG. Pure incompetence.
- lambda 13y ago
  Wow. No, you're not the only one. Those are some of the worst compression artifacts I've seen in an actual image that wasn't just a compression demo that I've seen in years.
- harpastum 13y ago
  JPEG from article, 18,873 bytes: http://blogs.windows.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-59-33-metablogapi/clip_5F00_image002_5F00_2073DC23.jpg http://blogs.windows.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver... PNG grabbed from actual site: 19,764 bytes: http://f.cl.ly/items/3w3k2O3n0y0v2W0L1p40/lossless.png http://f.cl.ly/items/3w3k2O3n0y0v2W0L1p40/lossless.png About the same size, much better looking.
maaaats 13y ago
Wow, the debugger tools looke very nice. Will need to check them out.
- Meai 13y ago
  Thought so too, but then I remember the lack of "right click->inspect element" and no good plugin api
  - thoraway 13y ago
    Click to inspect is in, they even have an example of using it in the linked introduction to developer tools. [1] /works at Microsoft, but not on IE [1] http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2013/07/29/debugging-and-tuning-web-sites-and-apps-with-f12-developer-tools-in-ie11.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2013/07/29/debugging-and-...
xradionut 13y ago
Here's a challenge: It would be nice if Microsoft would fix the issues with IE11. Like all the sites that work with IE10, that don't work anymore with IE11. Their solution was to issue an IE11 upgrade blocker with a shitty manual install routine.
- Zelphyr 13y ago
  Internet Explorer has been and continues to be hostile to the web. It easily makes my job as a web developer at least 50% more difficult which translates into costing my employer more money. As far as I'm concerned, we as developers need to make a concerted effort to force Microsoft to either adopt WebKit or release a version of IE that is 100% standards compliant.
  - AaronFriel 13y ago
    Diversity of implementations on the web is vital for continued innovation. Though it's less important that IE stick with the Trident engine now that Blink and WebKit 2 have diverged, we should celebrate progress and encourage participation in the standards process - things IE has gotten a lot better about especially in the last two iterations. > has been and continues to be hostile to the web I'm going to have to dispute "continues to be": http://caniuse.com/#compare=ie+11,firefox+25,chrome+31 http://caniuse.com/#compare=ie+11,firefox+25,chrome+31 You have to scroll down quite a ways before you find feature differences between the browsers, and it's not quite clear which (except maybe Chrome) is the best. If we remove feature drafts, it's a good deal closer. Now, regarding has been: http://caniuse.com/#compare=ie+6,ie+7,ie+8,ie+11 http://caniuse.com/#compare=ie+6,ie+7,ie+8,ie+11 Well, there's no contest there. IE8 being the last supported browser on XP is a harsh reality for web developers. :(
    - camus2 13y ago
      > things IE has gotten a lot better no it has not. IE9/IE10/IE11 dont even render the same page the same way , dont even get me started on CSS3 support. You want things to get better ? let Microsoft drop the version number.and update its browsers automatically all the way back to IE8... Oh , but why should they do that , they make money by making their os obsolete ... /sarcasm.
galapago 13y ago
Internet Explorer SUCKS™[1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrMOBKHqqc8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrMOBKHqqc8
volandovengo 13y ago
Cool idea. Unfortunate that they limit things to the first 11 responses.
lampe3 13y ago
"IE11 for Windows 8.1 is our fastest browser yet – 9% faster than IE10 and nearly 30% faster than the nearest competitive browser." 30% then what competitive browser?
- ConceptJunkie 13y ago
  Firefox 3?
nwh 13y ago
Doesn't make up for the fact that I spent most of my time writing workaround for the stupid rendering bugs their "30% faster" browser introduces. Even just basic CSS layouts and constantly wrong in IE.
- hacknat 13y ago
  I know, I don't care if they are objectively the best browser (I doubt they are), my grudge against them runs too deep. I want them to fail. Does that make me a bad person?
  - LandoCalrissian 13y ago
    It makes you human.
  - ConceptJunkie 13y ago
    No. But then again, I feel the same way, so my opinion may be biased.
- missing_cipher 13y ago
  In IE11?
  - nwh 13y ago
    Mildly better, at least I don't have to use a workaround to get transparent PNGs to work anymore. It would be alright supporting just IE11, but you're not, you're supporting IE7, IE8, IE9, IE10, and they all have their own weird bugs.
chasing 13y ago
Microsoft now gets to continue to reap what they've sown after spending a solid decade pissing off web developers...
FridayWithJohn 13y ago
"nearly 30% faster than the nearest competitive browser." - Micro$oft. Absolute crap as can be seen here: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2413632,00.asp http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2413632,00.asp I'm not loyal at all to any browser. I swop and change (used to use IE, then went to Opera, then Firefox and now to Chrome), but when I hear obvious lies such as IE is 30% faster than any other browser I all of a sudden want to permanently leave IE alone
- asdasf 13y ago
  Why do you think IE9 performance numbers indicate that claims about IE11 performance are lies?
- maaaats 13y ago
  > I'm not loyal at all to any browser. I don't see why you need to point that out. It's not saving your credibility after writing "Micro$oft" anyway.
calbear81 13y ago
These must be really cheap pizzas because last time I checked you couldn't get 11 pizzas at Costco for $120.
- maaaats 13y ago
  Uh, $11 per pizza is plenty enough?
- ConceptJunkie 13y ago
  If I recall those big ol' pizzas that they make themselves are around $10 each.
omgitstom 13y ago
I wonder how they came to a conclusion that a pizza was 10.9090909 each
- statenjason 13y ago
  probably calculated it with javascript
codecop 13y ago
We need to forget IE for all times, and leave it for M$ own usage
- maaaats 13y ago
  We need to be pragmatic and deliver content to whatever device and software our users use, not hold grumps and use stupid nicknames like "M$".
  - rbanffy 13y ago
    Microsoft worked hard earning a bad reputation.
Justsignedup 13y ago
So basically I disable my CDN, show how slow it is, enable it. BOOM faster. Done.
asdasf 13y ago
I noticed it was both obvious and trivial to add a web page to your home screen. Is that also the case on windows phones? Is it the case on any other phone? Or are webapps treated as second class citizens still on phones?
tcfunk 13y ago
"IE11 for Windows 8.1 is our fastest browser yet"...and I still don't care, because my user base isn't using IE11. In fact, I'm lucky if they're on IE9.
ericclemmons 13y ago
I would test for IE, but there's no native Mac client outside of virtualization. Until they match Chrome and Firefox, it will be the browser of graceful degradation for me :(

57 points by lanthe 13y ago

jawns 13y ago

The blog and the 11% for IE11 landing page both imply that if you complete the challenge, you will win the prizes described. For instance, the blog entry says: "If you can get 11% better page load performance from your site, we'll send you and your team some 11 goodness." I'm no lawyer, but that sounds like a valid unilateral contract to me. Similarly, the landing page says: "Show us how you got 11% better page load performance in your organization's home web page and we'll send you all this goodness." But in the fine print, it says: "The first 11 organizations that meet the qualifications above will each receive the following: 11 pizzas (in the form of a $120 gift card), 11 year-long subscriptions to BrowserStack (ARV $240 each), and 11 copies of Parallels Desktop 9 for Mac (ARV $79 each)." There's a heck of a big difference between "If you do this, we'll give you this" and "If you're one of the first 11 people to do this, we'll give you this." The fact that there will be only 11 prize winners should be made more clear. After all, there is PIZZA on the line. And there's nothing like a pizza bait-and-switch to get developers angry at you.

wnevets 13y ago
Well now I just feel cheated. How do I un-vote up a story?
- rbanffy 13y ago
  You can flag it.
justgar 13y ago
@jawns. We have updated the blog post to clarify. I encourage you to try out the new tools and I hope the perf testing is worth the pizza+.
- jawns 13y ago
  Thanks. I hope you'll also update the landing page of the challenge. A little more feedback, which I hope you'll take as constructive: As I said above, there's quite a difference between "if you do this, you'll win this" and "if you're one of the first 11 people in the United States to do this, you'll win this." As I see it, if I have any chance of winning the prize, I've got to drop everything right now and scramble to complete the challenge, and even then, who knows how many other people are doing the same thing? So, my incentive has just dropped from, "This is exciting! I have a decent shot at getting pizza!" to "It's extremely unlikely that I'll win. Why bother?" I would therefore suggest that you look for ways to increase the value proposition to developers. I'm not saying you have to spend millions -- but maybe find some creative ways to reward developers outside of the first 11, such as by featuring some of the success stories on your blog.
  - justgar 13y ago
    You bet. Feedback well taken jawns and thanks! This has been live for 2 hours so I still think you have an opportunity here.
smackfu 13y ago
What if the plan is to change the page after 11 orgs win?

Aardwolf 13y ago

Am I the only person who is sensitive to JPEG artifacts? Look at this image from the article. Why did they use such low quality JPEG? http://blogs.windows.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-59-33-metablogapi/clip_5F00_image002_5F00_2073DC23.jpg http://blogs.windows.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver...

kamjam 13y ago
That's how you get your 11% performance gains!
adivik2000 13y ago
Haha. I was kinda thinking if Kraken.io was the culprit there for a bit. ;)
0x0 13y ago
They probably compressed it on quality level 11%
ye 13y ago
Why did they use JPEG at all? It's a perfect image for PNG. Pure incompetence.
lambda 13y ago
Wow. No, you're not the only one. Those are some of the worst compression artifacts I've seen in an actual image that wasn't just a compression demo that I've seen in years.
harpastum 13y ago
JPEG from article, 18,873 bytes: http://blogs.windows.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-59-33-metablogapi/clip_5F00_image002_5F00_2073DC23.jpg http://blogs.windows.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver... PNG grabbed from actual site: 19,764 bytes: http://f.cl.ly/items/3w3k2O3n0y0v2W0L1p40/lossless.png http://f.cl.ly/items/3w3k2O3n0y0v2W0L1p40/lossless.png About the same size, much better looking.

maaaats 13y ago

Wow, the debugger tools looke very nice. Will need to check them out.

Meai 13y ago
Thought so too, but then I remember the lack of "right click->inspect element" and no good plugin api
- thoraway 13y ago
  Click to inspect is in, they even have an example of using it in the linked introduction to developer tools. [1] /works at Microsoft, but not on IE [1] http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2013/07/29/debugging-and-tuning-web-sites-and-apps-with-f12-developer-tools-in-ie11.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2013/07/29/debugging-and-...

xradionut 13y ago

Here's a challenge: It would be nice if Microsoft would fix the issues with IE11. Like all the sites that work with IE10, that don't work anymore with IE11. Their solution was to issue an IE11 upgrade blocker with a shitty manual install routine.

Zelphyr 13y ago
Internet Explorer has been and continues to be hostile to the web. It easily makes my job as a web developer at least 50% more difficult which translates into costing my employer more money. As far as I'm concerned, we as developers need to make a concerted effort to force Microsoft to either adopt WebKit or release a version of IE that is 100% standards compliant.
- AaronFriel 13y ago
  Diversity of implementations on the web is vital for continued innovation. Though it's less important that IE stick with the Trident engine now that Blink and WebKit 2 have diverged, we should celebrate progress and encourage participation in the standards process - things IE has gotten a lot better about especially in the last two iterations. > has been and continues to be hostile to the web I'm going to have to dispute "continues to be": http://caniuse.com/#compare=ie+11,firefox+25,chrome+31 http://caniuse.com/#compare=ie+11,firefox+25,chrome+31 You have to scroll down quite a ways before you find feature differences between the browsers, and it's not quite clear which (except maybe Chrome) is the best. If we remove feature drafts, it's a good deal closer. Now, regarding has been: http://caniuse.com/#compare=ie+6,ie+7,ie+8,ie+11 http://caniuse.com/#compare=ie+6,ie+7,ie+8,ie+11 Well, there's no contest there. IE8 being the last supported browser on XP is a harsh reality for web developers. :(
  - camus2 13y ago
    > things IE has gotten a lot better no it has not. IE9/IE10/IE11 dont even render the same page the same way , dont even get me started on CSS3 support. You want things to get better ? let Microsoft drop the version number.and update its browsers automatically all the way back to IE8... Oh , but why should they do that , they make money by making their os obsolete ... /sarcasm.

galapago 13y ago

Internet Explorer SUCKS™[1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrMOBKHqqc8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrMOBKHqqc8

volandovengo 13y ago

Cool idea. Unfortunate that they limit things to the first 11 responses.

lampe3 13y ago

"IE11 for Windows 8.1 is our fastest browser yet – 9% faster than IE10 and nearly 30% faster than the nearest competitive browser." 30% then what competitive browser?

ConceptJunkie 13y ago
Firefox 3?

nwh 13y ago

Doesn't make up for the fact that I spent most of my time writing workaround for the stupid rendering bugs their "30% faster" browser introduces. Even just basic CSS layouts and constantly wrong in IE.

hacknat 13y ago
I know, I don't care if they are objectively the best browser (I doubt they are), my grudge against them runs too deep. I want them to fail. Does that make me a bad person?
- LandoCalrissian 13y ago
  It makes you human.
- ConceptJunkie 13y ago
  No. But then again, I feel the same way, so my opinion may be biased.
missing_cipher 13y ago
In IE11?
- nwh 13y ago
  Mildly better, at least I don't have to use a workaround to get transparent PNGs to work anymore. It would be alright supporting just IE11, but you're not, you're supporting IE7, IE8, IE9, IE10, and they all have their own weird bugs.

chasing 13y ago

Microsoft now gets to continue to reap what they've sown after spending a solid decade pissing off web developers...

FridayWithJohn 13y ago

"nearly 30% faster than the nearest competitive browser." - Micro$oft. Absolute crap as can be seen here: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2413632,00.asp http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2413632,00.asp I'm not loyal at all to any browser. I swop and change (used to use IE, then went to Opera, then Firefox and now to Chrome), but when I hear obvious lies such as IE is 30% faster than any other browser I all of a sudden want to permanently leave IE alone

asdasf 13y ago
Why do you think IE9 performance numbers indicate that claims about IE11 performance are lies?
maaaats 13y ago
> I'm not loyal at all to any browser. I don't see why you need to point that out. It's not saving your credibility after writing "Micro$oft" anyway.

calbear81 13y ago

These must be really cheap pizzas because last time I checked you couldn't get 11 pizzas at Costco for $120.

maaaats 13y ago
Uh, $11 per pizza is plenty enough?
ConceptJunkie 13y ago
If I recall those big ol' pizzas that they make themselves are around $10 each.

omgitstom 13y ago

I wonder how they came to a conclusion that a pizza was 10.9090909 each

statenjason 13y ago
probably calculated it with javascript

codecop 13y ago

We need to forget IE for all times, and leave it for M$ own usage

maaaats 13y ago
We need to be pragmatic and deliver content to whatever device and software our users use, not hold grumps and use stupid nicknames like "M$".
- rbanffy 13y ago
  Microsoft worked hard earning a bad reputation.

Justsignedup 13y ago

So basically I disable my CDN, show how slow it is, enable it. BOOM faster. Done.

asdasf 13y ago

I noticed it was both obvious and trivial to add a web page to your home screen. Is that also the case on windows phones? Is it the case on any other phone? Or are webapps treated as second class citizens still on phones?

tcfunk 13y ago

"IE11 for Windows 8.1 is our fastest browser yet"...and I still don't care, because my user base isn't using IE11. In fact, I'm lucky if they're on IE9.

ericclemmons 13y ago

I would test for IE, but there's no native Mac client outside of virtualization. Until they match Chrome and Firefox, it will be the browser of graceful degradation for me :(