Comment by treeface | Hacker News Reader

Comment by treeface | Hacker News Reader

In all fairness to Microsoft, the last IE9 beta was released on 2010-09-15:

http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/info/downloads/Default.htm...

I wonder if he has the same issues with the latest platform preview (which came out nearly two months ago).

Now, all this fairness aside, I'm extremely curious why MS isn't adopting the rapid release cycles that the Chrome team have used. As a (potential) consumer of the Internet Explorer line of products, I feel like I'm left out in the cold when I see that the last release was sometime last September. In the meantime, Chrome has added a major enhancement to their JavaScript engine, WebGL support, and more. More importantly, they've added this stuff incrementally so I, the (current) user of Chrome don't have to wait for months for the next major release.

Or perhaps more to the point, I'm curious why the IE9 marketing team don't see the promotional advantages of rapid releases as compared to the old major release model. As the Chrome team have said...market features, not releases.

Big enterprise customers don't like change, and rapid release would frustrate their IT guys to no end. That's why we still have IE6 in lots of big companies, why I still see IE7 in my visitor stats even though IE8 has been out for years, and why all of these versions will be sticking around probably long after IE9 is dead.

Sure I recognize that, and I see it as a highly valid point. But if it is in Microsoft's interests to maintain enterprise users, I don't quite see why it must be done at the expense of the non-enterprise users.

Please call me out if my naïveté is showing, but couldn't MS fragment IE into consumer and enterprise versions? Surely something must be done to appeal to non-enterprise users to halt the increasingly rapid deterioration of IE market share.

To expound on this idea a bit...imagine IE adopts the multiple channel approach like Chrome has. They could have the four typical channels (canary, dev, beta, stable) and add another one called "enterprise" or something like that. The first four would receive silent automatic updates while the "enterprise" channel would only be updated when the administrative user requests to do so. Furthermore, they could perhaps choose exactly which release they want. So theoretically, they could upgrade or downgrade the browser without being subjected to automatic updates.

Just an idea, I know. It's probably much harder to implement in reality, but something must be done, and this sort of setup would probably be a one-up on Chrome (something I think they desperately need at the moment).

I'd guess that IE is too gargantuan a project with too many people involved and too much history (read: compatibility baggage) to be able to say, "welp, let's just fork it." Doubtless internal politics and MS's own corporate shortsightedness also have a big say in it. But that's just my guess.

I get that Chrome is fast, but do you hear what you're saying. They did a tech preview in October and it's only been three months, which includes Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years.

There's rumors that the RC is coming on the 28th. And RTW is probably a few months after that. Not Google like speed, which is ridiculously impressive, but a beta and 7 tech previews in this time isn't bad.

IE8 came out in March of 2008. By the time IE9 is out, it'll be close to 3 years between major browser releases from Microsoft. That is too slow. The Internet is moving much faster than Microsoft understands. (Or perhaps if they understand it, the Web is moving much faster than they can handle.)

Chrome went from a state of non-existing to very popular in the same time. Microsoft's web browser development speed is abysmal for such a powerful and large software company. They either don't care, or they want it to be slow and have poor performance. I can think of no other reason for such slow development of their web browser, especially in an era where everyone knows how important the web is.

[OT] I am pleased with the features in the IE9 Demo, even if a couple of features are fully matured (like the ones mentioned in the article) but what about their upgrade strategy? Are they planning on forcing IE users to upgrade? If there isn't some sort of push for people to upgrade then all these changes are for naught.

I don't think they can force people to upgrade. Like I think there would be a legitimate threat from the EU or US that they'd be sued if they did so.

Actually it came out in March 2009. So it's two years between major browser releases. In that 22 months they've dropped 7 tech previews and beta. So at about a clip of every 3 months they've released a new build.

But I do agree that it's too slow. They really do need a Chrome like schedule.

Thanks for the release date correction. I even did my research and checked Wikipedia first! Turns out I read the wrong date. Oh well, thanks. :)

From a personal perspective, I find it highly impressive that their dev team can get stuff pushed out that quickly. Please don't get me wrong in that respect. But what you and I think is cool and impressive matters very little in a highly competitive market.

And I think it's also important to note that I'm not talking about speed of feature releases. I'm talking about speed of general releases. New Chrome features often go from conception to stable release in 2-3 months because of the development structure in which they are released. I wouldn't at all be surprised if the IE team have worked out these canvas issues already, but they just haven't released it (which is why I mentioned that the last beta release was in September).

It's possible that there's a lot of organisational momentum behind it - MS have been doing slow releases of major versions for the last few decades and that mindset could be quite entrenched by now. It might be that they haven't seriously considered doing rapid incremental releases.

My bet is they will only change that when they lose their 1st place on market share.

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