Microsoft doesn't even test Bing in Internet Explorer. Lord help us.
garry.posterous.com
garry.posterous.com
I don't think it's fair to criticize a developer for venting frustration, but then give a Microsoft executive a pass when he blows out at him like that the same way in the comments of his blog.
"Meanwhile, I'll take my Posteri over to Tumblr. Maybe they have more maturity when it comes to handling the occasional bug."
That's not a constructive way to handle criticism. There was a great opportunity to take the high road here, but he ends up just tossing flames back and the whole experience becomes a net-zero shouting match. Neither of the participants in that exchange have the high moral ground here.
As for the general point, I couldn't agree more. I do think Microsoft has intentionally impeded the progress of the open web. They made it clear with the whole Netscape deal that shift away from desktop apps (i.e., win32) towards a system where one can access programs and accomplish tasks equally well on any desktop OS was something they sought to avoid. And why not? They essentially had an obligation to their shareholders to preserve their advantage.
One could see how their interests would be served by making web development more difficult.
Trust me, servicing IE comes at a phenomenal cost to us; nothing would make us happier than to have to deal with a smaller matrix to deal with ...
Yes.
Would you be happy if Toyota came by and said they refused to fix your car since it was over 5 years old and your only way out was to upgrade?
That is standard practice in many industries. At some point, maybe not in 5 years but more like 7-10, you will bring your Toyota to the dealership and they'll explain that the part it needs is no longer available. Your options at that point include using aftermarket or salvaged parts, likely installed by an independent mechanic, or to get a new car. Life goes on.
OK, how about a television analogy? Let's say you bought a television 5 years ago, and come to find out that all the local cable and satellite providers have started to only offer HDMI connections to connect your television to. Chances are your 5 year old television doesn't support HDMI which would force you to upgrade.
Beyond being frustrated that your TV is obsolete, you probably won't chose those cable or satellite providers again in the future.
How frustrated would I be if I could download a brand-new TV from the manufacturer's web site, for free?
Gotta love analogies.
Yes. Happens all the time. My Toshiba Techra A6 made in '06 will not have win7 drivers released for it - therefore no win7 for me. Life goes on.
This is especially true given that browser upgrades are free
Also - is there a good reason for why ie6 cannot be simply sandboxed into a ie9 tab? This would solve all of the 'corporation are unwilling to upgrade' arguments.
Or maybe a 'portable' version with all the dependencies bundled into one distro so that ie6 could be launched without installation?
And actually... yes, I would prefer if some nimrod who is trying to install a copy of XP from 6 years ago has problems with it and understands that they need to run modern software to access the modern internet.
If Toyota was going to upgrade my car for free, as every browser is available for free, why would I have a problem with that?
The IE development team however are not human. They are monsters.
I certainly aren't human after having to deal with nasty comments on IEBlog over the years ... and I guess now, unfortunately, even on news.yc ... I guess I should be happy it hasn't deteriorated to death threats in here yet (like it has at other places) :/
It's not fair at all to take it out on individuals on the IE team or do something stupid like threaten physical violence (and I'd fully support someone being called out for that), but letting people rant at your organization as a whole keeps people sane. Leaving Posterous because a designer finally hit a boiling point in frustration? That's just as bad.
FWIW, I can appreciate how hard it is to work on a team where you're fighting both the legacy of your old products and the decades-old impression of Microsoft as anti-web. Every version reduces the amount of frustration we encounter and every version that drops off makes us all that much happier. We're glad to see IE join the forefront of the browser race again. :)
You can't really fault Microsoft because IE6 has yet to drop off. To their credit, Microsoft has made large strides in getting users to upgrade, but as reported in the past a lot of corporate customers are unwilling to upgrade. I'm sure a lot of people on the IE team would like to see IE6 die as much as the rest of us.
Incorrect. The code to create an XHR object in IE looked something like this:
var xhr = new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP.6.0");
Any browser could absolutely have supported creating XHR objects in this manner without being forced to support ActiveX.
Inhuman monsters is way way over the top. The IE team can take credit for plenty of bugs, but they can also take credit for some pretty neat things as well.
When somebody is frustrated, you forget that a company is run by people too.
I used to work for a company where the web site was too buggy. We (the developers) want to make the site stable but are not given resources and time by the management to do so. Our users were complaining and it was frustrating for us because there was not much we can do.
Microsoft is not a machine that churns out software. You may not agree with some of its practices but there are people in Microsoft that actually believe that they are doing something good for the internet as a whole.
In addition, I remain always available to the news.yc community (see my profile for my contact info) if you have IE issues to debug. Please don't hesitate to drop me a line!