From Redmond with Love - IE team sends cake for FF4
fredericiana.com
fredericiana.com
On a side note, I found Office 2010/2011, IE9 and Windows 7 a joy to use. And this is in stark contrast to Office 2003/2008, IE8 or Vista. Some things seem to be changing in Redmond!
Cumulatively, developers and clients paid millions in billable hours for their neglect in monopoly.
They couldn't warm up to me even if they swapped their board of directors with Sesame Street characters.
Or have you conveniently forgotten which browser that was introduced in?
One day you should download the version of Netscape that was around when IE6 came out.
Of course, Microsoft later added the proper XMLHttpRequest support that was lacking in until IE7, IIRC.
And then they sat on it for 4 years, refusing to fully implement the CSS 2.1 spec, refusing to fix ridiculous positioning bugs, and even refusing to fix security flaws that they mandated non-critical, although several of them used together often lead to arbitrary code execution on the client.
Like it is with User Experience in general, they ruined all the positive cred they had with IE6, causing standards-aware web devs to develop for the lowest-common denominator or invest their own time on every project for Microsoft's technical debt.
It's not fair that IE6 quirking was a required skill and a to-do for web developers, only because Microsoft had a browser share monopoly. Was it to slow down the evolution towards applications/operating system in the cloud? Mere negligence? I don't care anymore, they broke my heart.
Source?
Anyway, even worse, back in the IE 5.x era when they added most of that stuff like XMLHTTPRequest etc., they focused on that instead of complying with even basic CSS1! (Yes, it was better than Netscape 4, but that was because the JSSS/CSS fiasco that resulted in was a lot worse) IE6 added DOCTYPE switching and a "standards" mode with better CSS1 compliance, but I don't think they touched the buggy CSS2 support, and during the time they sat on it, guess what people did with it that caused trouble when MS released IE7 that fixed some of these bugs?
I could be wrong, but I just don't feel like they fall into the same trap Netscape did a decade ago.
9 and 11 > 4.
Netscape skipped version 5 (a doomed project).
Microsoft ditched version numbers for years (95, 98, 2000), and then just names -- due to how version number increments on an existing product appear to end users.
To technically savvy it doesnt really matter "is it 5.0 or 4.5?"
But the version number or name is about trying to position the product as a "new one" or even just "mature" to the more typical end user.
> I could care less, ...
However ...
I've now heard it said, in four different countries, that this phrase makes the speaker sound like an idiot. I know it's now just "the norm" in the USA, but I wanted to let people here know that saying this makes a bad impression.
If you don't care how you sound to non USAians then don't bother. But if you're wondering what I'm talking about, David Mitchell does an excellent job of explaining "I couldn't care less"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw#t=0m56s
I now return you to your normal programming.
The phrase you quote is not "now just" the norm. It has always been ever since I can remember living in North America. It's nobody's fault the British-speaking world has just discovered it. This reminds me a little of when the Europeans first discovered "America."
This is why Jorge Luis Borges once said, "Todas las palabras fueron alguna vez un neologismo" (All words were once a neologism).
It's common in the USA. People I've spoken to from other countries think it makes those who use it seem ignorant. I'm providing data, not making a judgement. I know that many idioms don't make sense when dissected.
The parts of the world I have regular dealings with - excluding the USA - all say "I couldn't care less," and that actually does make sense. The people I've spoken with about this have expressed bewilderment that the alternate version should be used. They say that it doesn't make sense, and it's open to misunderstanding.
When I speak with customers I don't use the same short-hand or code phrases that I use with my colleagues. Likewise students when applying for jobs or other positions use more formal language, because to do otherwise makes them look uneducated and ignorant. I'm just saying that I've seen the same attitude towards people who use this particular phrase.
Personally, I don't care. In fact, it would be hard for me to care less. I'm just offering a datum that some might find useful.
(Two paragraphs!)
Or maybe it's because the cake don't support full-resolution png icing.
Anyways, huge improvement over the first one, which was only black and white:
Do you think there's a big market for second hand IE branded cakes? ;-)
EDIT: And if their goal is to deliver the best browser, it would be more efficient to buy GOOG shares with the money extracted from cakes. ;->
If anyone could clear it up for me, Much appreciated
=)
An excellent treatise on the topic is discussed in Breaking Windows: How Bill Gates Fumbled the Future of Microsoft, by David Bank. It describes a lot of the tensions that existed inside Microsoft as they tried to figure out how to continue selling Windows as a platform, while still seeing the threat of the web as a platform on the horizon. IE was part of that threat response to stay in the game, ahead of the game, and in control of the game.
So then they funny result is that the more people use them the better they get; and the better they get, the more people use them. It's a perpetual motion machine, they feed on their own sucess so it almost seems impossible to catch up with them.
So are you saying that microsoft is trying to replicate this with the Bing, IE, Live/Hotmail ? Clearly that won't be enough. They're gonna need a huge innovative breakthrough to win this battle...
One thing for sure, Google coming in and messing up the rules is directly attacking Microsoft's bread and butter: Office and Windows. That's where Microsoft makes most of their money, particularly Office. Google has docs, AppEngine, and more. For many mainstream people these days, the browser is the only thing that they need; Microsoft is still powerful, but if the trends continue, they'll be irrelevant. So I'm just claiming that Microsoft's trying to do what they can to rewrite the rules of the game again and take back control while they still have the resources to do so.
It's a lot more urgent now than before, which is why Microsoft is so heavily and now visibly investing into things like mobile, cloud computing, and the like. The effort from Microsoft was always there before, but it always seemed half-hearted. 3 years ago, you never would have thought Microsoft would care about web standards to the extent that IE9 does. MS Office was still offline packaged software. Etcetera.
Anyway, I highly recommend the book. It's a fascinating read.
Microsoft is too encumbered by regulation to tie IE in closely with their core product; instead they're compelled to offer "browser choice", compelled to offer a startup wizard to help you set your search engine to Google, and incapable of effectively integrating the browser into products people actually pay money for.
Even if they were capable of developing the sort of product that might be good enough to win market share back from competitors, I'm really not sure what sort of return they'd be getting in their investment in developing and promoting IE, over and above what they'd get bundling some rapidly-developed webkit-based browser with Windows 7 and leaving it at that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Notable_eve...
Nobody knows how bigger the web browser is going to be, MS sure doesn't want to lose the power in influencing and ensuring that their other product stay relevant.
1 -> 2 -> 0 -> 5 -> 2 -> 4 -> 0
Appears to be a submartingale(maybe) Ok I stuffed up the experiment by posting this, the sequence after the 5th observations are no longer independent and invalidated.
At least, that's how I envision it.
It feel condescending to me, especially in light of the many public embarrassment that FF has caused IE (cheating benchmarks for example) and given that if anyone deserves to get something for actually shipping it's the IE team.
To me this is like the owner of a used car company sending a cake to the president of Toyota for being the #1 car manufacturer.
There doesn't seem to be anything backhanded or condescending about this gesture. Hasn't the IE team been doing this since before FF beat them in market share?
This is more like the owner of Chevrolet sending a cake to the president of Toyota.
Think of it this way: The people who work on IE are probably well aware of the areas that need improvement. They might not get to make the decisions about where the work is focused. There may not even be enough effort available to put into major changes. Then there's the issue of backwards compatibility that plagues Microsoft products.
Microsoft is full of really nice people and talented developers. This is a gracious gesture.
But seriously, it's a nice gesture from Microsoft, it goes to show that there are many different people working there and that we can't judge them as a whole.