Microsoft mocks Internet Explorer haters in new ad [video] | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft mocks Internet Explorer haters in new ad [video]

venturebeat.com

34 pointsvsloo63 comments

This ad isn't about the merits of IE as a browser, this ad is about building a preformed thought in the common users mind whenever they hear someone bash IE. IE hasn't been the victim of bad PR, it has earned it's reputation through years of blood/sweat/tears by the hands of developers. Microsoft recognizes that they won't be able to change this attitude in the developer community, but that they can lessen the weight a developer's opinion has amongst non-technically minded people, which is a much larger share of users.

Like it or not, a lot of people will think of this ad first (and what it tells them), the next time one of us tries to warn them about IE

With all 300 views...I doubt it will change anything at all.

(EDIT: MY opinion will say the same until that view counter says a million and I highly doubt it will even get close. The only people who really care anyway are the "trolls" that Microsoft is talking about!)

Usually a video with 301 views means it's suddenly exploded virally. YouTube 'stops counting' temporarily at 300 views whilst it verifies that a video is being legitimately viewed by many people in a short space of time, rather than people artificially inflating their viewcount by whatever methods they can.

In a matter of minutes or hours that number will suddenly increase significantly.

So it's an anti-spam measure. There's a short explainer here: http://www.seroundtable.com/youtube-301-views-15347.html

Further confirming this, the video has 301 views and over 1800 likes, 400 dislikes.

It's at 216,000+ in under a day... I think it's safe to say it will hit a million.

Sometimes when trying to make a point or advertise a product the simplest things are missed. In this ad "Try IE" is missing. The ad itself claims "progress" and "not as bad anymore"... but there's no call to action. I could make a fallible argument that the ad itself says IE is worse than all the other browsers - because it never says you should use IE... just that IE isn't so terrible.

It'd be a bad argument, but that's why I really don't like this ad - it's a (mostly) negative ad and emphasizes a negative point (how bad IE is perceived), which is not how you change people's thoughts. This video has many repetitions of IE SUCKS in it. If I were advertising a product, no matter what people thought of it, I wouldn't be flashing "my product sucks" all over the place for the majority of the commercial in order to make the last 5 seconds try and turn that on it's head.

You change preformed thoughts by repeating "my product is now great" over and over, not "my product isn't terrible anymore!"

As I said in the other IE submission, most of the criticisms that have been levelled against IE are technical in nature and very real (dragging their feet on web standards, breaking their own compatibility guidelines from version to version, etc). So portraying IE haters as having the IQ of the average YouTube commenter just loses any credibility in the message (plus the way they fell back on badly judged kitten memes was just cringe-worthy)

Nobody is disputing that IE has come along way. The issue isn't whether the latest version of the browser is capable, but rather whether we'd want to get back into bed with Microsoft given their past history. And thankfully there is so much choice in the market now, that people can choose not to use browsers for even the seemingly trivial reasons; such as historical prejudice.

Thus as long as there is competition in the market, I'm going to support the platforms that have a history of promoting a free and open web.

IE hate is well deserved. How many hundreds of thousands or millions of productive hours have been lost due to incompabilities, bugs, etc?

That being said, Microsoft is full of talented people and they do create some fantastic products. IE is slowly getting to a more respectable point and hating on it so harshly seems juvenile.

I agree, Microsoft is chock full of talented engineers.

Now if only they would let them make the decisions instead of those clueless PR and marketing people. Let the products speak for themselves instead of trying to dumb down everyone into using them through a fishy marketing campaign; they already have the talent to achieve this, but right now I get the feeling it's helplessly sitting there watching events unfold.

Microsoft is attacking a straw man. The people Microsoft needs to worry about are not trolls with too much time on their hands. The people they need to convince are web developers frustrated by 10 years of IE that refused to cooperate with standards and held everyone back. Even IE 9 has problems with JS features that Firefox, Chrome, and Opera implement. Microsoft did this to themselves, and I believe it is one of the reasons why developers are reticent to develop for Windows Phone 7 and Windows 8.

For those who may have forgotten why IE deserves all the hate thrown its way:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Internet_Explorer

http://www.favbrowser.com/the-history-of-internet-explorer/

The problem is all the users Microsoft will leave stranded on IE10 after web standards have progressed beyond that point, just as they've done with every previous version of IE. Microsoft is simply too slow to release new versions of IE, and too restrictive of the versions of Windows supported with each release. Nothing has changed with IE10, and developers will be working around its idiosyncrasies for many years to come, long after IE11 and 12 are shipped.

I actually kinda like the ad, because the guy could be me in a heartbeat, i even own the same keyboard xD.

However the hate in me burns with the power of a thousand sons, when it comes to IE. The almost constant changes of MS standards with each new version of IE, inevitably breaks something, and will often require separate CSS styling..

And dont get me started on maintaining an app, that was built on IE6..

If I was in a room with Hitler, Osama bin Laden and the devlead for IE6, and had a gun with only 2 bullets.. I would shoot the IE6 lead twice..

That said and done, i really hope they start to embrace the "real" standards, as the the new development team proclaims.

"I would shoot the IE6 lead twice.."

That's a little bit harsh, isn't it? While I would never defend it's usage today, it wasn't that horrible at the time it was released.

However, as Microsoft decided to kill off development it soon grew too old for it's own good.

> While I would never defend it's usage today, it wasn't that horrible at the time it was released.

It wasn't exactly good either, IE5/Mac was better on many fronts, and released at least a year before.

> While I would never defend it's usage today, it wasn't that horrible at the time it was released.

I think it was bad even considering that it was released in 2001. Not supporting PNG alpha channel is just an example.

But I do agree that Microsoft taking so long to release IE7 made things even worse.

The issue with Microsoft can be entirely explained by this sentence: "While I would never defend it's usage today, it wasn't that horrible at the time it was released."

Windows Update has been reasonably coherent since Windows XP. They've had the ability to push out software for a long, long time. Why isn't every person using Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8 currently using Internet Explorer 10?

The issue at hand isn't that Internet Explorer 10 is bad. It's not! It's a great browser.

The issue is that Microsoft doesn't care about providing an ecosystem that protects people from legacy browser lock-in. They have the ability to transition tens of millions of users to a modern browser. But they haven't, and they won't. Actions speak louder than words. Or perhaps, in this case, inaction speaks louder than words. Until they join the rest of the browser vendors in the 21st century, they're simply not worth trusting.

At least give Microsoft credit: IE10 is a modern, standards-compliant browser. And, you know, IE6 was actually the best web browser out there for a long time.

It was, though it was also designed with Embrace, Extend, Extinguish in mind. ActiveX anybody?

NaCl anybody?

I see that mostly as a crutch to let you use a Chromebook as something closer to a real computer. It hasn't been pushed in nearly the same way that ActiveX was.

> At least give Microsoft credit: IE10 is a modern, standards-compliant browser.

For how long? Hell, we know microsoft will have to be pushed kicking and screaming into supporting WebGL (and likely the fullscreen API as well as they go hand-in-hand), and they've just proposed their alternative to WebRTC (how not unexpected). See also: their proposing a brand new touch API, but not implementing the one which everybody is already using and the current standard.

> And, you know, IE6 was actually the best web browser out there for a long time.

IE5/Mac says "bitch, please". Also Phoenix was already a better browser than IE6 about 2 years after the latter's release.

> supporting WebGL

I think it's reasonable they might implement it on top of DirectX and then tell us how much faster it is.

> likely the fullscreen API as well as they go hand-in-hand

Why does Metro IE need the fullscreen API? Pointer lock maybe, but what's the use of going fullscreen in a fullscreen browser?

> I think it's reasonable they might implement it on top of DirectX and then tell us how much faster it is.

I'm not aware of their even planning to do it.

> Why does Metro IE need the fullscreen API?

1. IE is also available in desktop mode

2. The fullscreen API allows making a given element of the page, such as a video or a canvas, fullscreen. Not just remove the browser chrome

3. Even if the API was a noop in a chromeless browser — which it is not — it can be implemented as a noop for compatibility

4. Fullscreen web application may benefit from disabling e.g. some of the built-in gestures where that makes sense

Oh, I'm well aware of the other benefits of the Fullscreen API. But I still don't see much need for it, I think Pointer Lock is far more important here.

a thousand sons? Man, you must have been bizE!!

For me, IE is like landmines. Built as weapon to break the web rather than to do anything constructive, and then abandoned after the war to create more havoc for years.

Maybe MS should have given the new generations of IE a new name. Rebranding would probably have been cheaper and more effective than marketing campaigns trying to make IE respectable.

Sorry, you are wrong and trying to rewrite history. But this is Hackernews.

The thing about IE is that once they gain some market share, they start trying to push their "own" standards, even if the community is moving in the opposite direction. That is just the way it has been since IE6.

The ad targets haters that convince "regular users" that IE sucks...haters needed to do that because regular users couldn't totally grasp how much their web experience is affected for using that crappy browser and how many features they were missing.

The fact that a lot of them do not realize how awful their experience is, is due to countless hours of near-suicide frustration from programmers and coders around the world trying to make IE compatible applications.

Ha ha, yeah, I know, the way some people carry on, you'd think Internet Explorer had crippled the web and added hundreds of hours to web development projects everywhere for over a decade, or something. Jeez!

Yeah, the detractors of IE are just mindlessly posting "IE SUCKS" over and over for no reason. It's not that the browser is seriously lacking, or that it's been behind for so long and actively blocking open standards. It's that the internet is dumb and people just love to hate.

To be fair for every web developer with legit gripes about IE there probably are about 100 people posting "IE SUXX" on youtube.

Most discussion of technology on the internet is just noise written by people who don't have the slightest clue what they are talking about.

You forget the other side, though. There are tons of people like my in-laws who used to get all sorts of malware thanks to IE, and once they switched to Firefox or Chrome no longer do. There's a pretty large group of non-technical people out there who have found not using IE makes their life more pleasant.

This ad might have a point if it was actually IE10 that people hated. People hate IE 6, 7, 8, and 9, because they stalled web progress and MS did nothing proactive to try to filter them out of the marketplace. Talk about missing the point entirely.

I liked IE4 because it was pretty damn good.

I liked IE6 because it got me out of the hell that was IE4.

I liked IE8 because it got me out of the hell that was IE6.

I suspect I'm going to like IE10 because of IE8.

I'm going to hate IE10 because it's not Webkit/Gecko.

So internet explorer is good because it is the best browser on a platform (xbox360) that didn't have a browser before and where it doesn't have any competition because there are no other browsers?

I have to admit that I had something personal against IE:

When I stated as an entrepreneur, the banks forced me to use IE as using any other browser will be full of incompatibility bugs. They made them on purpose.

So they forced me to use a Windows machine when I worked with Unix. I had to spend a thousand dollars so I could use my ebank and read-write my customer's Office documents(because MS also made very hard for Office documents for being standardized).

When I created my site I had to spend a lot more money so it worked on the main browser: Explorer. It was kind of hard to understand why it was so difficult to make something that worked in all browsers, it was always Microsoft fault there.

I calculated that I doubled my expenses because of non expected stupid incompatibility bugs on my web site. The people that made it really cursed the Redmon company.

The moment I could jump ship and work without Windows or Explorer I experienced an Enlightenment, a liberation: Now I just don't hate them, I simply don't care because I know the only reason they are doing the right things is because they lost the monopoly in some areas and had been forced to react.

Good for them, I prefer "don't be evil" than "embrace, extent, and extinguish" for now.

Did you guys notice the OS X hand cursor when he tweets? Here is a screenshot: http://imgur.com/ll0fq

Did you notice this in the ad?

http://www.karaokewebstandard.org/

I did notice, but didn't care enough about karaoke to look it up ;)

It's all great that Microsoft is trying to push the web forward again, they used to before IE6, but I'm not sure I like this new direction. WebGL, WebRTC and other APIs being pushed by every other major browser vendor looks much more promising and useful. Karaoke isn't making the web more practical, although it's a nice feature for entertainment.

I believe it is a continuation of the joke. Mimicking the look of w3c standards. It's also interesting to point out they are using google analytics

"Sucks less"? Well, that's totally going to make me feel tempted to give it a try...

Seriously, I started my web dev career at a time when IE had a market share of 80% and... I'm OK now.

I'm glad that Microsoft decided to embrace web standards and is committed to make IE easier to develop for but they'll have to do much more than this if they want to be taken seriously again.

I used to love IE simply for OnMouseEnter and OnMouseOut... made JS dragging techniques super easy, compared to other browsers, but still couldn't use it cause they were the only ones so, pfft. I stood by them till Chrome came out. I preferred Microsofts decisions of how the web should be rendered over w3c.

I'm a fairly young developer so managed to avoid the IE6 problems.

Can you elaborate on which MS decisions you preferred over w3c?

The infamous IE box model is one thing where you could debate that one or the other was preferable.

Thanks to box-sizing we can finally have both, but thing haven't always been like this.

didn't know that one - thanks!

I think a good response to this would be a four hour live-coding session of trying to get shit to be backwards compatible with 6, 7, and 8.

Oh wait, I can't test your browser without a VM because I didn't buy your OS? Fuck you.

Where is this ad going to be shown? Because, honestly, IE isn't that vilified outside of tech circles. My parents and friends happily use it without a second thought.

It is an example of a symptom that has presented itself because of an underlying disease rotting away the core of Microsoft.

Do you mean the constant chorus of individuals who enjoy putting down MS for fun?

Or do you mean an internal cause?

I think both sides are equally bad here.

Bashing MS just for fun isn't very smart (for all their sins, there's a few good things coming out of Redmond - and Microsoft Research is just fantastic for the most part), but Microsoft is just lowering itself to the level of their critics here.

While a large part of the public has a biased opinion of Microsoft, Microsoft also has a biased opinion of their users - otherwise their marketing wouldn't feel so out-of-touch. I don't see any winners here.

Found it interesting how they chose to portray the person doing the hating as well.

Follow up video is here, just for kicks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=d...

wishful thinking, MS... nobody gives a damn about your browser anymore

As I understand it the problem they're trying to tackle here is the opposite. That is, that some people still give too much of "a damn" about their browser and convince normal users to move away from it.

When I see an IE ad my first reaction is: "Wait, MS is still making a browser? How odd. Did not know that."

The reaction after that is: "Hmph. I wonder if it runs on any OS I run. (brief google) Nope, I guess not!"

Lmao:

> IE implements HTML6.

> and 7, 8, and 9.

Oh, if only.

Good ad though, but they're still not there yet.

So the message of this ad is that the new IE sucks less than it's predecessors? That's what I took away from it.

If you can't beat 'em, mock 'em!

"Comments are disabled for this video."

What else is there to say, really?

This was just submitted a few hours ago:

http://cbateman.com/blog/whats-missing-in-internet-explorer-...

That's probably not even the full list of what's missing in IE10, as html5test puts IE10 way below the others in HTML5 features:

http://html5test.com/results/desktop.html

I wouldn't hold my breath for WebGL appearing even in IE11. Whatever Microsoft is saying, the "security" of WebGL is not the main reason why Microsoft is not the adopting it - not even close. Just like security is also not the main reason why Apple is not allowing other JS engines on iOS.

The security reason is used mainly as a "reasonable" excuse to cover for the real reason why they aren't implementing it (they obviously don't want OpenGL to gain anymore traction that it has already gained in mobile and Linux). If security would be an excuse to not implement something, we'd probably still be in the dark ages of the web. Consider Flash, it's one of the least secure pieces of software out there, and yet it's also what enabled video on the web for everyone. It's the reason Youtube exists today.

The lack of support for XP, which is still like 40% of the market, means Chrome is still by far the most secure browser on XP, which is something companies who aren't going to get new PC's and Windows licenses anytime soon should start considering.

No full screen API, no Web Audio API, and no WebRTC (and no Opus either) are also very regrettable omissions from IE10, and it will be another year or two before it will get them. Who knows how far ahead Chrome and Firefox will be by then.

I'd bet that they will never support webgl in IE -- it competes too directly with the windows/xbox360 directx gaming ecosystem.

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