Microsoft blames Google and makes 'adjustments' to IE11 on Windows 8.1 | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft blames Google and makes 'adjustments' to IE11 on Windows 8.1

thenextweb.com

43 pointshackhackhack45 comments

If IE weren't so horrible, people wouldn't have to program so defensively for it. It's kind of like Office... the tiniest delay causes it to throw up dialogs saying that it's not responding, and as soon as that happens the typical non-expert user nukes it, and restarts Windows. I've watched it happen. This is what they expect.

We have a whole generation of computer users used to this kind of crap: Microsoft software sucks and you expect it to constantly misbehave, and randomly change, and must be constantly on guard to prevent it from causing problems.

Even if this was Google's fault, I really don't blame them.

Well that's just irrational - argumentum ad hominem tu quoque. Aka, the "and you too!" fallacy.

The idea that Microsoft's wrongs justify alleged Google wrongs is wrong.

I don't think ConceptJunkie is implying that google was acting in bad faith, just that, perhaps, they were trying to optimize their page for IE and didn't get it right, causing the latest IE to choke.

> We have a whole generation of computer users used to this kind of crap: Microsoft software sucks

Whose software doesn't suck, in your opinion?

Sun, ... I can not find any other compagny that have produced repeatedly software that did not suck (NFS, NIS, SunOS, SunWindows, Java).

NFS, really? An attempt to abstract over network semantics using the same API as regular file systems, leading to random performance, a heap of locking issues, and all kinds of mayhem?

Sun indeed produced a lot of really great software, but I wouldn't count NFS amongst that.

I think they were joking, maybe?

Heh, you have not lived until a stale NFS mount takes down your whole server. Trying "sudo umount" on it, the umount command will not return and even "sudo kill -9" can't stop it[1]. A soft reboot can't fix it either; "sudo reboot" will hang the whole machine waiting for that NFS mount to respond to some deep kernel I/O call.

You have to cut the power....

(This was HP_UX in 2003'ish)

1. http://askubuntu.com/questions/87074/how-to-kill-the-process...

You mention NFS but not ZFS?

... Java?!

Did you have C# in mind when you said that??

Another Microsoft hater. I really don't understand how comments like this get upvoted so much.

There's not a single fact in the whole fraking comment. Just a personal rant.

HN starts to look a lot like reddit.

The opposition could now say the same thing on the opposite end: Hey look, another Microsoft apologist.

Hating on Microsoft and complaining about the hate are two sides of the same unconstructive coin.

Maybe I misread the parent, but I took it less as a defense of Microsoft, and more as a meta-comment about the frequency of comments which have no actual substance beyond opinion.

Well IE may not be so good I agree, but this does not mean that GOogle has no blame. I have experiences first hand Gmail responding with CSS exceptions to an IE browser and not to Chrome/Firefox. To validate my suspicion I revisited the site using IE emulation mode emulating firefox and everything was fine. So TBH when MS got slapped with the massive EU antitrust fine years back because of IE, that is being done today from a User experience perspective undermining the experience on certain browsers. This is just one example I am nor pro Microsoft or Google I am sure they both do it in one way or another but the fact is this kind of practice exists on both sides.

Is it just me or is it really cool to pick strawmen just to insult Microsoft?

Personally speaking, I feel that the best thing about IE is that it can download Firefox.

Hahahaha.. such a funny comment.

I'm concluding that google put some code for older IE browsers on their page that isn't actually triggered by compliant browsers, but some automated detection program flagged it as having a legacy feature.

I seem to have a panel on the left that is obscuring about half of the text. I'm sure that can't be the intention - is it yet another case of incredibly poor design?

There appears to be no way to dismiss it, and it doesn't move. In short, I can't read the article, because someone wanted to be clever.

Added in edit: It becomes visible if I reduce my text size, rendering the text visible, but difficult to read. Interesting trade-off.

On my android browser, it obscures the entire text. I gather they don't believe in mobile first.

Same here. The next web apparently doesn't include mobile.

The whole article just doesn't render at all for me[1]. Another site that seems to want to cookie-track you. (Turning cookies on causes it to render.)

[1]: http://i.imgur.com/4l9VB2l.png

Cookies and javascript, that is.

IE stopped identifying itself as IE - that's confusing. (I know it didn't just happen in IE11 on Windows 8.1)

While it can be confusing, that by itself should not be an issue for anyone, they did it to avoid all the older IE specific fix as they become compliant with a more recent set of standards, and any website should use feature detection rather than browser detection.

feature detection happens too late, if you want to serve fast.

I could have sworn that some compat modes fairly faithfully mimic the original version- to the point of dropping APIs such as addEventListener. So yes, you can use feature detection but if you get flagged by IE then you essentially need to code for IE7 or whatever.

The feature detection mantra is true for you and me, but it's a leap to say you can apply the same tactic to a huge site like Google. Google isn't stupid, if they UA sniff, you can bet they have good reasons.

bs. most fixes for ie are implemented with the conditional comment, maybe even one for each version of ie. loading a truckload of css.

and honestly, for most cases feature detection is just an empty term. i agree with if t for javascript. but the rest is mostly impossible (or so much more work that it is i practical)

would someone mind doing an analysis as per comments in the other thread? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6576521

im interested to see what changed now that MS "fixed" it. was the UA string mismatch updated? or did they just remove it from their compatibility list

I may be reading too much into it but the following[0] just reads as entitled to me.

> if Google had tested in IE11 and discovered all was great, it's very easy for them to contact us to remove them from the list

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6576981

How do you stop people downloading Chrome? Break Google search.

Or how do you get more people to download Chrome? Break the #1 search engine in IE. It could go both ways you know...

Web surfers, like water and electricity, seek the path of least resistance. In this case this means another search engine rather than another browser.

There's enough smoke now that we can safely assume that all these actions by Google are to sabotage the experience on Microsoft products.

The "action by Google" of maliciously adding themselves to a quirks-mode list[1] maintained solely by Microsoft, that Google had no access to or ability to add themselves to, when their website works perfectly well in IE11 if that list is disabled[2]?

[1] "What appears to be happening here is that Google’s search engine has somehow been added to IE11′s Compatibility View list."

[2] "Uncheck “Use Microsoft Compatibility lists” and Google’s search engine should work again."

That actually doesn't explain anything: "quirks" mode just emulates IE's old behavior and changes the user agent string to match. Old IE renders Google fine, so simply being in quirks mode shouldn't cause anything to break.

Disclaimer: Work at MS, I can't even see IE from my building, etc, etc.

Slow down there - that list is hardly a "quirks-mode" list and there's no reason to believe a change in behavior was malicious by either party. You're assuming that list was recently changed by Microsoft for the purpose of what - ruining customer's experiences of using Windows 8.1? Tarnish Google's reputation?

There are so many assumptions at work here that I don't think it's reasonable to conclude any malice.

> You're assuming that list was recently changed by Microsoft for the purpose of what - ruining customer's experiences of using Windows 8.1? Tarnish Google's reputation?

I'm not assuming that, and I haven't concluded malice on MS's part. I worded the comment to emphasize the ridiculousness of concluding malice on Google's part, but didn't mean to imply I thought there was malice the other way. Apologies if I misled you.

Relevant: Hanlon's razor[1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

Apologies to you then - and I'm fond of Hanlon's razor myself.

Not to mention the huge negative effect it must have on Google's short-term revenue to do such a thing intentionally. I suppose it could be argued that longer term it may make sense for Google to break IE in order to increase Chrome's market share, and thereby increase the number of users defaulted to Google search. Would be very risky, though.

Have you read the article at all ? Google is set in IE's "compatibility mode" list. That means someone at Microsoft itself has made a mistake or has no faith in their browser rendering google's site properly in their normal rendering mode. Nothing in the article indicate that Google has done anything.

You really shouldn't draw any conclusion about issues when you can't even bother to read the entire article.

I sure hope this was meant to be sarcastic and isn't just a ridiculous attempt at spreading FUD.

He's an obvious troll; his name is the name of the SomethingAwful techy-circlejerk sub-forum.

YOSPOS: Your OS is a Piece Of Shit

Google has certainly done that before (especially with Windows Phone) but we should probably give them the benefit of the doubt here. Is it really in Google's best interest to no longer effectively serve ads to their users?

As others have suggested, this was probably an inadvertent change.

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