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Welcome to 2014, where Microsoft web stuff still works best in Microsoft Internet Explorer... They had an actual shot on getting up to par with proper HTML5, w

Welcome to 2014, where Microsoft web stuff still works best in Microsoft Internet Explorer... They had an actual shot on getting up to par with proper HTML5, with funky ms extensions being optional where absolutely neccessary. Instead, they rely on an astounding number of non-cross-browser methods and features, as they have done since '95 https://github.com/winjs/winjs/issues https://github.com/winjs/winjs/issues Most issues listed currently are about stuff that just doesn't work on any other browser/platform than IE Footnote: I'm a web developer myself and I use Windows 8.1. How tempted have I been at fiddling with the winjs flavour myself? not at all. Footnote2: I do have to give them credit for the roadmap though. It seems like they're on the right track https://github.com/winjs/winjs/wiki/Roadmap https://github.com/winjs/winjs/wiki/Roadmap Footnote3: I've been fooled into thinking that Microsoft was on the right track again and again.

Eyas 13y ago
Not entirely fair, considering: (1) these are marked as issues that need to be fixed, and (2) many of them are related to IE implementing the CSS-grid W3C draft, vs. coming up with their own proprietary technologies. (Your comment was modified since I hit reply, but I think my point still stands, especially that it isn't strictly MS-extensions, but actual standard drafts)
jasonlotito 13y ago
"The WinJS is a library of CSS and JavaScript files. It contains JavaScript objects, organized into namespaces, designed to make developing Windows Store app using JavaScript easier."
nivla 13y ago
I did notice some of them only to work in IE since it uses the MS- prefix. However they are also marked as an issues that would be fixed later. So hopefully it be corrected soon but since its already open sourced and the syntax is merely CSS3, its won't be that hard to go ahead and fix it yourself. Working on a project that relies heavily on CSS3, I have come to the conclusion that most browsers still depend on vendor specific prefixes. Take the CSS animation for instance, without the inclusion of "-webkit-", it fails to work in the latest Chrome and Safari while having no issues on Firefox or IE. [1] http://www.w3schools.com/cssref/tryit.asp?filename=trycss3_animation-delay http://www.w3schools.com/cssref/tryit.asp?filename=trycss3_a...
- nnq 13y ago
  LESS or SASS/Compass are you friends :) ...and the only way to maintain sanity when doing heavy edgy CSS3. Once you have your mixins abstracting away browser prefixes and common patterns, you can get to the new level of style patterns reuse with higher-order-functions-like features like LESS's mixins that can take mixins as arguments (great for the @keyframes prefixes madness at first, afterwards only your masochism and imagination set the limit). I'll never be able to stand the pain of writing "plain ol' CSS by hand" again...
- nawitus 13y ago
  You can use autoprefixer[1] to apply vendor prefixes automatically. In fact, CSS is madness without it in my opinion. 1. https://github.com/ai/autoprefixer https://github.com/ai/autoprefixer
toni 13y ago
I was recently commissioned by a mid-size company to port their web-based issue manager app from Microsoft Silverlight to plain HTML + a server side language. Their reasoning was that as Microsoft is pulling the plug on Silverlight, the company did not want to implement new features in their issue manager app inside a dying platform. So they decided to first port their app to a vanilla thing and from then on continue developing their app further. Am I comparing Silverlight with WinJS? No. But will this company rush to invest time and money into yet another pumped-up Microsoft product? No either.
- j_s 13y ago
  Microsoft's earnings are tightly coupled to the tech churn they themselves instigate; it is impossible to count on their new technologies until each gains self-perpetuating inertia. "Trust, Users and the Developer Division" discussion 2 months ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7107544 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7107544
  - pjmlp 13y ago
    Like any other commercial vendor.
    - ErikRogneby 13y ago
      I had a conversation the other day on my commute about rough (or failed) SAP migrations/implementations and it was clear that the buyers and other supply chain folks fallback to emailing excel spreadsheets when things hit the fan. This ubiquity of their products and it being the lowest common denominator means they will never go out of business. Like it or not Microsoft products are the glue that holds the business world together.
    - dragonwriter 13y ago
      > Like any other commercial vendor. Like any commercial vendor optimized around selling software licenses. A commercial vendor optimized around selling software-backed services and complete solutions has different incentives, since they end up eating the costs of churn. Unsurprisingly, lots of companies that do the latter are built around (and often sponsor) open source software.
sibartlett 13y ago
Their main target with this library is Windows Store Apps though - not web sites or applications. I'm sure they'll work on cross-browser compatibility, but I don't think it's one of their priorities.
- timdorr 13y ago
  It's their number one goal, actually: https://github.com/winjs/winjs/wiki/Roadmap#the-present https://github.com/winjs/winjs/wiki/Roadmap#the-present
_wmd 13y ago
It wouldn't be fair to mention this without mentioning of the 3 fixes landed since that repo was created, 2 are for cross-browser compatibility bugs.. That aside, I love how this negativity only seems to stick to Microsoft when every other major player has their own private set of bits that only work well on their platform (WebOS, Firefox OS "proposed standard" mobility APIs, Chrome endless variety of "we're doing it so it's going to be a standard" APIs, etc). It's no excuse, but it's hardly unique to MS
- jimmcslim 13y ago
  THIS. I think Scott Hanselman put it best with his recent 'Microsoft killed my Pappy' post... http://www.hanselman.com/blog/MicrosoftKilledMyPappy.aspx http://www.hanselman.com/blog/MicrosoftKilledMyPappy.aspx
  - randunel 13y ago
    Really? Since when is mentioning hardware specs considered "open sourcing"? Quote: We've open sourced Azure hardware specs, opening SDKs, and we're making systems more pluggable than ever.
    - nailer 13y ago
      Datacenter hardware designs are valuable. They solve physical limitations of heat dissipation, airflow, as well as compute power density problems and electrical stuff. Companies building their own DCs spend a lot of money on doing this, so companies like Microsoft (I think Facebook do it too) showing off their designs is really useful.
- al2o3cr 13y ago
  Just IMO, but perhaps it doesn't "stick" because none of the other folks spent years trying to use their effective OS monopoly to extinguish everything that wasn't their proprietary browser. Also, ActiveX. ;)
  - _wmd 13y ago
ChuckMcM 13y ago
I share/understand your cynicism, but am hopeful that Microsoft is really turning a corner with the latest management change. The messaging has certainly been a lot more cross platform. And something like WinJS you don't do in a day or a week, I could easily believe that throughout its life it was a 'windows only' thing until the strategy changed and now its a cross product thing but carrying a lot of technical debt from that previous positioning. Lucky for both of us there is a built in barometer for seeing how committed Microsoft is, in the form of the Github issues list.
- Zelphyr 13y ago
  "hopeful" "turning a corner" Word used to describe the latest coming out of Microsoft for decades now. And each time we're left wanting. I, for one, am no longer hopeful. Internet Explorer has been and continues to be hostile to the web.
  - chc 13y ago
    Really? What aspects of IE 11 are "hostile to the Web"? It looks pretty OK to me.
    - okasaki 13y ago
      They killed the DNT header to generate some cheap PR.
      - jenscow 13y ago
        The funny thing about the do-not-track header, is when you setup Windows 8 it's on by default... then on the next page all the things that send data to MS are also enabled.
    - ascotan 13y ago
      IE still refuses to support push notifications: http://caniuse.com/#feat=eventsource http://caniuse.com/#feat=eventsource. Curse you IE!
  - 13y ago
tn13 13y ago
Every browser has non-cross-browser methods and features. Also, the IE in 2014 is not as bad as it use to be. If Microsoft is open sourcing this code nothing prevents from the OO community to help them from making it more compatible with rest of the browsers.
sdegutis 13y ago
> Welcome to 2014, where Microsoft web stuff still works best in Microsoft Internet Explorer... Not much different than everyone else. Chrome, Firefox, Safari, all have features that work best in their own browsers.
soAsian 13y ago
It's not for web. It's for WinStore/Metro apps. Footnote: You should read it first before jumping into a conclusion.
- forgotAgain 13y ago
  From the posted article: <h2>Bringing WinJS cross-platform</h2>
  - soAsian 13y ago
    Did you click on read more? Even if you didn't, just scroll a bit down and there is the WinJS in production code section which show off some example apps. That didn't tip you off about WinJS?
yulaow 13y ago
Just to point out, at the moment the big part of those signaled bugs does not work also in IE version < 11. This must stress the fact that, at the beginning, winJS was used only for windows app store and only recently it is being opened towards a cross platform evolution

Eyas 13y ago

Not entirely fair, considering: (1) these are marked as issues that need to be fixed, and (2) many of them are related to IE implementing the CSS-grid W3C draft, vs. coming up with their own proprietary technologies. (Your comment was modified since I hit reply, but I think my point still stands, especially that it isn't strictly MS-extensions, but actual standard drafts)

jasonlotito 13y ago

"The WinJS is a library of CSS and JavaScript files. It contains JavaScript objects, organized into namespaces, designed to make developing Windows Store app using JavaScript easier."

nivla 13y ago

I did notice some of them only to work in IE since it uses the MS- prefix. However they are also marked as an issues that would be fixed later. So hopefully it be corrected soon but since its already open sourced and the syntax is merely CSS3, its won't be that hard to go ahead and fix it yourself. Working on a project that relies heavily on CSS3, I have come to the conclusion that most browsers still depend on vendor specific prefixes. Take the CSS animation for instance, without the inclusion of "-webkit-", it fails to work in the latest Chrome and Safari while having no issues on Firefox or IE. [1] http://www.w3schools.com/cssref/tryit.asp?filename=trycss3_animation-delay http://www.w3schools.com/cssref/tryit.asp?filename=trycss3_a...

nnq 13y ago
LESS or SASS/Compass are you friends :) ...and the only way to maintain sanity when doing heavy edgy CSS3. Once you have your mixins abstracting away browser prefixes and common patterns, you can get to the new level of style patterns reuse with higher-order-functions-like features like LESS's mixins that can take mixins as arguments (great for the @keyframes prefixes madness at first, afterwards only your masochism and imagination set the limit). I'll never be able to stand the pain of writing "plain ol' CSS by hand" again...
nawitus 13y ago
You can use autoprefixer[1] to apply vendor prefixes automatically. In fact, CSS is madness without it in my opinion. 1. https://github.com/ai/autoprefixer https://github.com/ai/autoprefixer

toni 13y ago

I was recently commissioned by a mid-size company to port their web-based issue manager app from Microsoft Silverlight to plain HTML + a server side language. Their reasoning was that as Microsoft is pulling the plug on Silverlight, the company did not want to implement new features in their issue manager app inside a dying platform. So they decided to first port their app to a vanilla thing and from then on continue developing their app further. Am I comparing Silverlight with WinJS? No. But will this company rush to invest time and money into yet another pumped-up Microsoft product? No either.

j_s 13y ago
Microsoft's earnings are tightly coupled to the tech churn they themselves instigate; it is impossible to count on their new technologies until each gains self-perpetuating inertia. "Trust, Users and the Developer Division" discussion 2 months ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7107544 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7107544
- pjmlp 13y ago
  Like any other commercial vendor.
  - ErikRogneby 13y ago
    I had a conversation the other day on my commute about rough (or failed) SAP migrations/implementations and it was clear that the buyers and other supply chain folks fallback to emailing excel spreadsheets when things hit the fan. This ubiquity of their products and it being the lowest common denominator means they will never go out of business. Like it or not Microsoft products are the glue that holds the business world together.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > Like any other commercial vendor. Like any commercial vendor optimized around selling software licenses. A commercial vendor optimized around selling software-backed services and complete solutions has different incentives, since they end up eating the costs of churn. Unsurprisingly, lots of companies that do the latter are built around (and often sponsor) open source software.

sibartlett 13y ago

Their main target with this library is Windows Store Apps though - not web sites or applications. I'm sure they'll work on cross-browser compatibility, but I don't think it's one of their priorities.

timdorr 13y ago
It's their number one goal, actually: https://github.com/winjs/winjs/wiki/Roadmap#the-present https://github.com/winjs/winjs/wiki/Roadmap#the-present

_wmd 13y ago

It wouldn't be fair to mention this without mentioning of the 3 fixes landed since that repo was created, 2 are for cross-browser compatibility bugs.. That aside, I love how this negativity only seems to stick to Microsoft when every other major player has their own private set of bits that only work well on their platform (WebOS, Firefox OS "proposed standard" mobility APIs, Chrome endless variety of "we're doing it so it's going to be a standard" APIs, etc). It's no excuse, but it's hardly unique to MS

jimmcslim 13y ago
THIS. I think Scott Hanselman put it best with his recent 'Microsoft killed my Pappy' post... http://www.hanselman.com/blog/MicrosoftKilledMyPappy.aspx http://www.hanselman.com/blog/MicrosoftKilledMyPappy.aspx
- randunel 13y ago
  Really? Since when is mentioning hardware specs considered "open sourcing"? Quote: We've open sourced Azure hardware specs, opening SDKs, and we're making systems more pluggable than ever.
  - nailer 13y ago
    Datacenter hardware designs are valuable. They solve physical limitations of heat dissipation, airflow, as well as compute power density problems and electrical stuff. Companies building their own DCs spend a lot of money on doing this, so companies like Microsoft (I think Facebook do it too) showing off their designs is really useful.
al2o3cr 13y ago
Just IMO, but perhaps it doesn't "stick" because none of the other folks spent years trying to use their effective OS monopoly to extinguish everything that wasn't their proprietary browser. Also, ActiveX. ;)
- _wmd 13y ago

ChuckMcM 13y ago

I share/understand your cynicism, but am hopeful that Microsoft is really turning a corner with the latest management change. The messaging has certainly been a lot more cross platform. And something like WinJS you don't do in a day or a week, I could easily believe that throughout its life it was a 'windows only' thing until the strategy changed and now its a cross product thing but carrying a lot of technical debt from that previous positioning. Lucky for both of us there is a built in barometer for seeing how committed Microsoft is, in the form of the Github issues list.

Zelphyr 13y ago
"hopeful" "turning a corner" Word used to describe the latest coming out of Microsoft for decades now. And each time we're left wanting. I, for one, am no longer hopeful. Internet Explorer has been and continues to be hostile to the web.
- chc 13y ago
  Really? What aspects of IE 11 are "hostile to the Web"? It looks pretty OK to me.
  - okasaki 13y ago
    They killed the DNT header to generate some cheap PR.
    - jenscow 13y ago
      The funny thing about the do-not-track header, is when you setup Windows 8 it's on by default... then on the next page all the things that send data to MS are also enabled.
  - ascotan 13y ago
    IE still refuses to support push notifications: http://caniuse.com/#feat=eventsource http://caniuse.com/#feat=eventsource. Curse you IE!
- 13y ago

tn13 13y ago

Every browser has non-cross-browser methods and features. Also, the IE in 2014 is not as bad as it use to be. If Microsoft is open sourcing this code nothing prevents from the OO community to help them from making it more compatible with rest of the browsers.

sdegutis 13y ago

> Welcome to 2014, where Microsoft web stuff still works best in Microsoft Internet Explorer... Not much different than everyone else. Chrome, Firefox, Safari, all have features that work best in their own browsers.

soAsian 13y ago

It's not for web. It's for WinStore/Metro apps. Footnote: You should read it first before jumping into a conclusion.

forgotAgain 13y ago
From the posted article: <h2>Bringing WinJS cross-platform</h2>
- soAsian 13y ago
  Did you click on read more? Even if you didn't, just scroll a bit down and there is the WinJS in production code section which show off some example apps. That didn't tip you off about WinJS?

yulaow 13y ago

Just to point out, at the moment the big part of those signaled bugs does not work also in IE version < 11. This must stress the fact that, at the beginning, winJS was used only for windows app store and only recently it is being opened towards a cross platform evolution