A Modern Browser
blogs.msdn.com
blogs.msdn.com
First, IE9 doesn't fully support mature HTML5 and CSS3 standards. Congrats, the only tests you pass are the ones that your own department submitted to the W3C. Everyone else's show IE9's Release Candidate as having less support than other browsers released 1-2 years ago.
Second, nice job cherry-picking a single paragraph out of one of the few comments in the Hacker News thread supporting your position. You also conveniently omitted the scalding final line of that paragraph: "It's just a shame they're not providing it on XP." This is typical of your response in general: you've responded to absolutely 0 of the actual criticisms of your product, and instead decide to praise the few improvements you happened to make over IE8.
You're only providing your new browser to a small fraction of the OS market, it still doesn't support stable and mature spec features, the ones you do support are still wildly broken (canvas, ahem), and you remain silent through it all.
I had high hopes when you initially announced your plans for IE9 all those months ago. It's a damn shame they turned out to be nothing more than marketing smoke and mirrors.
I still fail to grasp the argument of IE9 not being released for XP. I mean, the OS is ten years old, upgrade already.
If Microsoft had stopped supporting their olders OSes, stopped backporting new features and just shipped security updates, the figures would probably have been different.
Ask yourself: What incentive does Microsoft have to support users who paid them $15 for an OEM license a decade ago? I genuinely don't get this entitlement the users of legacy-Windows seem to have here. I've yet to see users of Slackware 8 cause massive uproar because Compiz haven't been backported to their 2001 OS. So what's different about XP?
If the mentality that "people are using the old product so Microsoft should fully support old product and backport and make everything work there" were to rule, basically Microsoft would go bankrupt since nobody would ever need to buy a new product from them. That's not how you become one of the worlds biggest software-companies and that's not how you get your OS supported in the future.
Microsoft may have themselves to blame for the remaining large Windows XP userbase having provided too good support in the past, but that in no way translates into obligations to keep on doing that in the future.
Chrome, unlike IE, jumped into browser war really late. What this means is that they need to support as many platform as possible to gain every possible percent of the usage metrics. In the end, the percentage number of the usage metrics is the key indicator of success.
Why would you expect a modern browser from a company that is frightened of the web?
And this is ignoring my corporate clients, who are using software that is integral to their business, that hasn't been updated in years and does not run correctly on Windows 7.
The "always be upgrading" mentality in the computer industry is a serious problem for end-users.
Even though there are usually feature updates mixed in with the bug fixes and security issues, many people (especially non-techie people) lump the Chrome updates in with OS updates as a necessary part of maintenance like changing the oil in a car.
Upgrading Windows beyond XP currently adds very little of significance to most people though, particularly corporates with many many desktops to upgrade (and people to support when they do) and home users with limited cash.
From a designers point of view the "just upgrade already" argument can't wash. We can't force our users to upgrade there OS (we can only just get away with cajoling them into upgrading their browser or occasionally (but increasingly) choosing an alternative (though this is less of an option for corporates for the usual reasons).
The accusation is that MS is trying to make IE9 one of the reasons to upgrade (and therefore pay for that upgrade). This is the same accusation levelled at them with DX10 and later, and it is equally correct (and equally understandable from their commercial PoV). In the case of the browser though this is seen as more onerous because your internet access method is more ingrained in your life and much more potentially damaging when there are security issues.
A large client of hours (a major bank) is rolling out IE8 to their users (who are currently stuck on IE6) in a few months time. If IE9 had promised XP support they might have planned to roll that out instead, though a little delayed as they would need to wait for at least the RCs to start their main roll-out testing - so IE9 not being available on XP is definitely going to have an effect on the number of people still using the irritations that are IE6/7/8 in corporate environments.
Not refuting the rest of your point, but Windows 7 comes with "XP mode". It's literally a virtual machine running Windows XP.
Saying something which works in Windows XP "doesn't work" in Windows 7 is obviously misguided or wrong.
That is not a native solution, it's just a workaround.
Other browsers show that it is technically possible to support XP, without limiting your product on Vista/7. This would be even more true for Microsoft.
So the reason Microsoft does not support IE9 on XP, is apparently to encourage upgrading from XP.
In other words, Microsoft's IE roadmap is determined, in this case, more from Microsoft's overall agenda and interests, rather than what is good for IE and IE's users.
I think that other browsers show it is possible to run using only the APIs that were available in Windows XP without using any of the new snazziness that is Vista/7.
It's like the difference between saying, well, I can write my browser to use Carbon on OSX and it works fine even on OS9, but nobody inside of Apple would write a new product not using Cocoa. If I'm getting the metaphors correct -- apologies to Apple folks if I missed it. I'm an old MSFT developer at heart.
In any case, it's exactly the same as asking modern Safari to run on OS9. But OS9 is considered so bad nobody should use it, whereas WinXP is still considered reasonable, relative to the other operating systems currently in use.
Trying telling that to our corporate clients.
Or a home user on a limited budget, who doesn't want to switch to Linux because their games won't run and doesn't want to switch browser because they think they'll have to relearn stuff.
> Don't be mesmerized by the tawdry typography, though: with juicy propaganda it's always what isn't said that matters. There is no mention of IE9's hyperspeed JavaScript engine, Chakra. There's no mention of pinned tabs or per-process tabs or Tracking Protection Lists. It feels a bit like a scrawny, bespectacled geek throwing stones at a fat billionaire with three trophy wives -- the nerd is probably right, but the pimp doesn't really care.
the next paragraph, somehow, begins with
> There's no doubt that Firefox 4 implements a broader range of Web technologies -- and don't get us wrong, it is an excellent browser -- but more stuff doesn't necessarily equate to better stuff.
This is what passes for logic nowadays?
Haven't they learned the lesson? Everytime they try to come with something, the community backfires even harder. Let's just remember what happened with the IE9 team[1] and the Hotmail team[2] on reddit's AMA.
1: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/related/dkk3l/iama_we_are_membe... 2: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/ej32l/we_are_the_hotma...
Both IE9 and Firefox 4 (I think) lack Chrome's automatic updates. They simply cannot bring new features and bug fixes to users as quickly as Chrome can.
You can spend 1-2 years working on a major release, but if the competition is rolling out automatic updates every 6 weeks, you're at a major disadvantage.
In reality, I think we're starting to get to a point where browsers are differentiating and targeting different groups of users. Chrome uses automatic updates to drive innovation and chase after the "power user" types who care about HTML5 and having the latest and greatest. On the other hand IE needs to maintain its core user base which is enterprise and business users where stability and support are far more important than <canvas> support. Automatic updates would be a horrible idea of IE because it would alienate these users.
Hopefully people are starting to realize that there is not one "best" browser, there are a number of different browsers, each with their own perks and downsides, and it's down to each individual user to pick the one that best suits their needs.
I'm not sure I understand what disadvantage they're at?
I absolutely hate the auto-update feature of chrome.
As for the not maintained applications, I think users should stop using them (and upgrading to a maintained alternative). Old applications should not be the reason for not upgrading the platform under which the app runs.
You can't turn off automatic updates in Chrome.
"It just creates thousands of configurations for a web developer to worry about."
Absolutely the opposite. I don't know why this is so hard to see. When users aren't given the option to update, they all end up with the same version. So there is literally only one configuration to worry about.
1. http://google-chrome-browser.com/how-google-speeds-chrome-re...
Erm... the preferred configuration is unprompted and unattended installation of Windows updates, you only "notice" them in the sense that you see a Windows Update icon appearing and disappearing in the notification bar if you're there at your set update times.
It's a shame that Microsoft haven't been using Windows Update to update their browser more regularly and so away with these large development cycles.
Who cares what you define "modern browser" to be? Rouget's point that IE9 still doesn't support the feature set that FF3.6 did is a valid concern.
Will MS push for larger feature set support? Will I have webworkers on IE9? What about javascript strict mode? When do I get SMIL Animations?
These are the questions I care about, not "what does modern browser mean?"
To use their own example:
http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Graphics/VideoCity/Default...
vs
http://videos-cdn.mozilla.net/serv/mozhacks/flight-of-the-na...
Which one is more 'modern'?
Perfect example: CSS transitions. It's been around a while... like 3 years.
Having no support and nothing to show for, in respect to something with an Editor's draft out from the W3C, (css transitions, for example), just proves you're really good at dragging your feet.
And even then it was just a proprietary vendor extension. It's not like it was part of the draft standard at that tmie.
If MS adds a new feature to IE, does that start the clock on when everyone else needs to implement it?
So... two implementations older than 2 years.
> We have another cool new CSS feature to talk about: animation specified in CSS. There is a lot of ground to cover here, so we’ll start with the basics first.
There are two technologies here, though both sometimes use the word "animation" they're separate: they implemented transitions in 2007 (using transition-* properties [0]), transitions are used to smoothly go from one state to an other and they are implicit: you only say which CSS property will transition and over which duration and the browser will handle all the decisions within that scope.
CSS animations[1] were added in 2009[2]. They are related to transitions but they're explicit and keyframe-based. Much more complex, but much more flexible as well (for instance you can have back and forth movements with animations, but not with transitions).
[0] http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-transitions/
Just thought it was kind of ironic.
At least Paul's post gives a tangible and definition of what 'modern' means in form of checklist points that are easy to prove true or false just by looking at the browser implementation. How do you measure 'modern', Microsoft? You will have to do better than saying it is 'faster' and that provides 'rich, immersive experiences'.
Mozilla hasn't stopped pushing the web to its boundaries and making a big effort to put standards first during all these years. And there is no doubt that the new Firefox will be a much better browser than the new IE (check out the beta).
Also, where is the strict mode in IE9?
Only MS can make so many errors within such a limited window of opportunity ;-)
Plus, the word, modern, is so vague. As Microsoft did, it can mean totally different things to different people. HTML5 isn't standard, yet. There is very little number of websites that fully utilize the capabilities of HTML5.
Now, go grab a cup of coffee and do something more productive :)
Ok, when can we expect WebGL support then?
I think a more true, yet less controversial statement from Mozilla would be, FF 4 will leave IE9 (and FF3.6x) in the dust with respect to standards conformance.
I'd even agree with that. But saying that IE9 is not modern seems dishonest.
But the argument that a version of IE which hasn't even come out yet doesn't have features that other browsers have had for years are valid points.
I guess "IE9 sucks" was deemed not to be tactful enough.
http://www.inspiredgeek.com/2011/02/07/mozilla-plans-to-rele...