Comment by pilif | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pilif | Hacker News Reader

What really concerns me about Windows Mobile 7 is the damage it's going to do among mobile web applications. You see, right now, if you want to do a mobile webapp, you can live in HTML5 land with working scripting, working DOM, good CSS3-support and all other goodies.

Sure, there are differences between mobile browsers, but all major platforms are now using webkit of some sort (and for those that don't, Fennec is available which also works really well), so that's a solid foundation to build upon.

And now WP7 arrives, brining us not IE9, not IE8, but IE7 (which by now is 4 years old already) in all its glory.

Up until today, you could get away by just ignoring WM6 and pointing the rare user of that platform to Opera Mobile, but now, there's no more Opera Mobile and the platform is about to get a lot more popular, so your app better works in IE7 too.

This means to either provide two versions of your app, or go back to what we have to do on the desktop too, which is progressive enhancement which sometimes can really destroy the quality of your code and will, again, costs hours upon hours of wasted effort (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1828586).

Thanks Microsoft. Much appreciated.

I amused/depressed by all the supposedly tech-savvy bloggers who are pleasantly surprised that the vast majority of the web works on WinMob7 despite it not having much modern HTML5/CSS3 support.

They seem blissfully unaware that Internet Explorer on the desktop is the boat anchor holding all these sites back from deploying these technologies and that they're now adding a second flank with this mobile browser throwback.

We can only hope that either:

a) they release an OS update soon next year with an IE9 rendering engine

b) no-one buys the product

I actually suspect that both are likely, at least in Europe.

rooting for b) myself, but I can't post that here on HN, can I? That's not constructive at all.

It's a grey area, I think.

There is little reason to support a platform that appears to break common-sense web apps. To take it to an extreme, would everyone be expected to support (or remain silent about) a new mobile platform that only supported gopher:// ?

> a) they release an OS update soon next year with an IE9 rendering engine

Unlikely - Microsoft's strategy is to fragment every market it can't control and prevent commoditization of the platform layer. The inclusion of a broken IE was probably deliberate.

makes me think...

maybe it's time we developers stood up and said "no".

Let's stand together and declare that "working mobile web" just isn't a feature of WP7. If you want the cool bling of todays mobile web, you'll have to get any other phone aside of WP7. Any will do. Just not WP7.

That's fine, but you pay my salary to feed my family. Thanks!

what I meant was to shift our mindset. At least for me it has always been a matter of honor to support all clients out there as equally well as possible just because that's what we have done on the web ever since.

What I was thinking was to not do it this time around. Now if your customer insists, explain the issue and add the IE tax (I'd say an additional 80% of what you'd charge for the real-browser-only version). If your employer insists, well, then you don't have too many options of course.

"and prevent commoditization of the platform layer"

This is an extremely naive perspective, but one you often hear from a certain type of crowd.

Really it's not about quote/unquote preventing this specific layer. It is about preventing commoditization of where profit/revenue is derived. And every company does it.

Try to commodotize mobile apps and the app store and see what Apple does. Try to have an open ad market where all revenue goes to non-profits, and see what Google does.

And frankly the reaction from all of these companies should be to show they can accelerate faster than the commodotized market. When MS does it, it's called embrace and extend. When Apple does it, its called "we've patented all over this thing and its the next great thing" and you wait in line for 48 hours to buy it.

And since everybody does it, how is this perspective naïve? How would it be unexpected to see Microsoft sabotaging web applications since they can run on every device regardless of the OS/browser and that eliminates their grip on customers?

I spoke with someone who was able to play around with a pre-release device and their verdict was the included browser actually behaved more like IE6 than IE7.

They screwed themselves with this. There are already a lot of web apps that target iOS and Android and other forward thinking browsers. The majority of the current phones are NOT WinPhone 7, which means that Microsoft is insane if they'd expect the market to adhere to them. If they want to dictate they need to have market share and traction first, but they don't.

No no Microsoft, not this time!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com