4 ms·

I think that Microsoft needs to put itself in a position to revolutionize. One of the historical problems of IE is it tried to do things "its way" ignorant of w

I think that Microsoft needs to put itself in a position to revolutionize. One of the historical problems of IE is it tried to do things "its way" ignorant of where it was positioned in the browser landscape. That caused a slow but massive loss in market share. They talk a lot about working on the "modern web", that's marketing-speak for it uses established technologies that IE refused to use. I hope this means that I can develop for Spartan with zero handholding (unlike the IE headache/handholding)- I think this is the "just works" claim they keep repeating. If I don't have to worry about my site working on Spartan, then Microsoft is in a position that it can start revolutionizing. And from that perspective, focusing on cool stuff for the end user is a pretty good strategy. Throw a bunch of interesting innovations that don't break the fundamental rules of "it just works" and no extra developer work, and they might catch lightning in the bottle. That might just start crawling marketshare back into Microsoft hands.

seanmcdirmid 12y ago
> They talk a lot about working on the "modern web", that's marketing-speak for it uses established technologies that IE refused to use. IE pioneered much of the modern web (AJAX...)! The problem with IE is that it got entranched in the enterprise and couldn't change very easily! Ya, sure, we get to go off and use Firefox and Chrome, but there are literally tons of internal web apps that only work in IE, making IE difficult to change and evolve. > If I don't have to worry about my site working on Spartan, then Microsoft is in a position that it can start revolutionizing. It is not actually about you, but about the corporates. Anyways, the same effect: now IE legacy has been tossed away with Spartan (the corporates can still use IE as a legacy app), MS can move forward without worrying so much about the past. The approach taken previously, IE 10+ with a compat mode for legacy IE 6 web sites, didn't work well. Many just saw "IE" in the user agent string for IE 10+ and immediately thought "IE 6"! So Spartan lacks a compat mode, getting rid of that problem completely. Honestly, it would have even been an improvement to take IE 11, throw away compat mode, and just call it something other than IE. I'm sure Spartan does much more than that since it would be a wasted opportunity otherwise. (disclosure: MS employee, but far away from web browser development and speaking for self with only anecdotal knowledge about the history; also an avid Chrome user)
- magicalist 12y ago
  > IE pioneered much of the modern web (AJAX...)! The problem with IE is that it got entranched in the enterprise and couldn't change very easily! Ya, sure, we get to go off and use Firefox and Chrome, but there are literally tons of internal web apps that only work in IE, making IE difficult to change and evolve. This is...overstating things. I really like the belated recognition that the early IE team got for the work they did for the web, but that was 15 years ago. At some point you have to address the intervening years. Meanwhile, maintaining backwards compatibility was a problem IE has had, but is not at all the reason for the pain of almost a decade of IE dominance during that time. "established technologies that IE refused to use" is a fair assessment of at least some of that, although for almost five of those years there wasn't even an IE team to refuse to use standards as it had been disbanded. In any case, as a web developer, I'm for the most part thrilled with Spartan's plan of attack and look forward to seeing it succeed.
  - seanmcdirmid 12y ago
    I agree that the long gap between IE6 and IE7 was really bad (when the IE team was in China, btw, but does that count?), and I'm not saying these problems aren't self inflicted. But once more modern IEs started coming out with standard compliant features, they were ignored (supporting IE still meant IE 6). But once those web standard features were there (along with lots of effort on compliance), they were still not being used! Spartan seems to fix that current problem.

seanmcdirmid 12y ago

> They talk a lot about working on the "modern web", that's marketing-speak for it uses established technologies that IE refused to use. IE pioneered much of the modern web (AJAX...)! The problem with IE is that it got entranched in the enterprise and couldn't change very easily! Ya, sure, we get to go off and use Firefox and Chrome, but there are literally tons of internal web apps that only work in IE, making IE difficult to change and evolve. > If I don't have to worry about my site working on Spartan, then Microsoft is in a position that it can start revolutionizing. It is not actually about you, but about the corporates. Anyways, the same effect: now IE legacy has been tossed away with Spartan (the corporates can still use IE as a legacy app), MS can move forward without worrying so much about the past. The approach taken previously, IE 10+ with a compat mode for legacy IE 6 web sites, didn't work well. Many just saw "IE" in the user agent string for IE 10+ and immediately thought "IE 6"! So Spartan lacks a compat mode, getting rid of that problem completely. Honestly, it would have even been an improvement to take IE 11, throw away compat mode, and just call it something other than IE. I'm sure Spartan does much more than that since it would be a wasted opportunity otherwise. (disclosure: MS employee, but far away from web browser development and speaking for self with only anecdotal knowledge about the history; also an avid Chrome user)

magicalist 12y ago
> IE pioneered much of the modern web (AJAX...)! The problem with IE is that it got entranched in the enterprise and couldn't change very easily! Ya, sure, we get to go off and use Firefox and Chrome, but there are literally tons of internal web apps that only work in IE, making IE difficult to change and evolve. This is...overstating things. I really like the belated recognition that the early IE team got for the work they did for the web, but that was 15 years ago. At some point you have to address the intervening years. Meanwhile, maintaining backwards compatibility was a problem IE has had, but is not at all the reason for the pain of almost a decade of IE dominance during that time. "established technologies that IE refused to use" is a fair assessment of at least some of that, although for almost five of those years there wasn't even an IE team to refuse to use standards as it had been disbanded. In any case, as a web developer, I'm for the most part thrilled with Spartan's plan of attack and look forward to seeing it succeed.
- seanmcdirmid 12y ago
  I agree that the long gap between IE6 and IE7 was really bad (when the IE team was in China, btw, but does that count?), and I'm not saying these problems aren't self inflicted. But once more modern IEs started coming out with standard compliant features, they were ignored (supporting IE still meant IE 6). But once those web standard features were there (along with lots of effort on compliance), they were still not being used! Spartan seems to fix that current problem.