Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Responds to IE Criticism
darthcamaro writes "Looks like there was an online free-for-all on Microsoft's chat servers yesterday with Internet Explorer engineers. Several interesting things come out in the story including the fact that the IE big wig thinks that all of his engineers should have other browsers installed to see what they can do and, catch this...he thinks they're the underdog. 'I've worked at Microsoft for 14 years and I have always felt like the underdog,' said Hachamovitch. 'Maybe the road behind us looks easy, but at the time going it wasn't. I welcome the feedback today. Getting informed is the only way I know to get better. The day we don't get heated feedback I'll be concerned.'" Reader nkodengar notes that "Microsoft has posted an article on MSDN listing everything that will be affected by the the updates to Internet Explorer in Service Pack 2. This will be particularly important to developers who use ActiveX controls, pop-up windows and file download counters in their websites..."
"People choose," replied Hachamovitch (IE lead engineer). "Hundreds of millions of people actively use Windows and they get to choose. Nothing in Windows as it ships keeps them from downloading other software that extends their browsing experience (e.g. the Google or Ebay toolbars) or changes it (e.g. an alternative browser)."
No they don't. Maybe I do, but I'm a computer expert.
My mom certainly has no clue that there even IS anything other than IE to use. Most of our mothers probably don't even realize that IE is not "the Internet".
There's a reason AOL is still popular with 20+ million people -- because it's easy and most computer users are idiots when it comes to technical knowledge/know-how.
I find Microsoft guility of contempt -- contempt of not upgrading their browser. They kept quoting x-million users but then saying they had a choice. No they didn't. They used what popped up when they clicked on a Web address somewhere on their computer, and they've used that default browser from Day fucking One.
Microsoft is going to be looking at major lawsuits if they don't immediately push this RC-2/SP-2 patch series out immediately. They owe it to the world and they owe it to those of us who write proprietary software that DOESN'T suck.
(P.S. GMAIL invites! I woke up this morning and saw that my other gmail account got 2 new invites, so if you reply with a funny joke about sex and befriend me, I'll give em out to my two favorite ones.)
If you liked my post,
We've seen what they said about it, now all thats left is to see what they DO about it...
It simply isn't fair to blame Microsoft for the ignorance of their users.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Perhaps MS has finally looked at themselves and figured they were behind the times with their browser technology. Sure, they might still be #1, but word spreads quick about the underlying problems and that there is actually another browser choice out there... And it's better! The security problems right now are just the icing on the cake.
Why can't you comment on them? Why wouldn't you implement the CSS3 standard? Am I missing something here?
Hmmm.
Over the years I've read several books and opinion pieces on Microsoft and their success. "Microsoft as the underdog" was a theme in many of them. I guess it's their strategy for motivating their workforce.
As a peon, what would influence you to work harder? Being told that you're the underdog and you're going to get stomped on by Sun, Apple and probably now Linux, or being told that you have a world wide monopoly in the desktop computing space and companies are throwing buckets of money at you every year despite the fact that your software is mediocre at best.
It seems like a logical thing to tell your employees. I guess they leave out the specifics of exactly where they would be classified as the underdog.
How can I tell if Internet Explorer has blocked my pop-up window?
Functions that return a window object will return null if the window is blocked. Always check the return value of window.open() before using it to avoid script errors when pop-ups are blocked.
By allowing a script to determine if the popup was blocked, it opens the floodgates for even more annoying and intrusive advertising.
Now whenever the page detects it's popup was blocked, it will force the user to view a full-screen advertising page for a pre-determined time, or other annoyances.
When will advertisers get the message. If people block pop-up windows, they do so for a reason - they are not interested in you're stupid special offers. They should spare themselves the bandwidth and everyone else the annoyance.
When I build my software applications I have the end-user in mind. Why is it too much to ask the same from Microsoft? Why is they could get away with it, where if I blamed it on the user, it could mean losing my job? You make no sense.
Hmmm.
It's fair to hold M$ accountable for taking unfair advantage of the ignorance of users. Who else would educate them? And which would be more appropriate to change, one monopoly company under court administration for illegally exploiting its market, or millions of unorganized consumers with better things to do today?
--
make install -not war
Getting informed is the only way I know to get better. The day we don't get heated feedback I'll be concerned.
Every time you complain to any software company about a bug, a misfeature, or a problem, you are giving them something pretty valuable, something they would otherwise have to pay a lot of money to find through testing. But all your investment in time and bug reporting is repaid by--having to pay for the next upgrade.
It's like sending the company a $50 donation and then still paying $200 for the next upgrade.
That's one of the reasons why it is so important to use open source alternatives when available: when you report bugs in OSS, you don't pay for the resulting improvements over and over again.
Users, not programmers or lines of code, are the most valuable asset any software project has.
One thing that Slashdotters tend to forget in their eagerness to hold Microsoft in contempt is that they are not stupid.
They may not have much respect for the typical consumer, be slow to respond, and ship buggy software, but they are anything but stupid.
From their standpoint, there really is not much imperative need to respond to complaints until they become critical enough to convince a common user to switch to a competing product.
But when it becomes apparant that such a thing is happening, they can and will respond.
END COMMUNICATION
This pretty much means that the popup window will be officially dead in a year's time.
Agreed! But only if by "dead" you actually mean "more insidious" or "replaced by even more sinister means to spam-advertise you to death."
I dread the ubiquitous use of pop-up blockers, as that means their effectiveness will soon wane..
What, precisely.. is the point of having such a press release?
:/ what is the point?
Is it to engender sympathy b/c microsoft is feeling abused or unloved?
Is it damage control because Microsoft finally figured out that many people are dissapointed in IE?
Or is it a press release that simultaneously tells the masses that Microsoft recognizes the problems, but wants users to still stick with it 'cause they are so concerned?
Hrmmmm
It's a bizzare situation, either way??
Just ruminating.. I'm not trying to be insightful or anything.
Oh great, they're looking at possibly, maybe doing more to support CSS3.
WTF? I don't want them to add more CSS, I want them to get what they have working like it should.
All the designers I have worked with are mad as hell. The amount of hacks they have to use to produce CSS that is cross-browser compatible and doesn't look like shit on IE is absurd, and the extra time spent on that is killing my budgets.
In other words, I'm mad as hell with IE and Microsoft. I don't really give a damn that IE doesn't have tabbed browsing, or that it ships with insecure defaults. Couldn't give a rat's ass about the lack of pop-up blocking. I care that every f'ing simple web design project's budget has to account for a few extra hours getting their shit working properly.
When FF hits 1.0, I'll go on a mission to convert as many people from IE. I hope others do the same; maybe this will help M$ wake up and smell the standards.
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
No. All of the IE engineers should have a twelve-year-old kid use their computer at night while they're out of the office. Maybe after uninstalling a few thousand pieces of spyware they'll reconsider some of their basic design choices.
It also means that non-power users will freak out when their banking websites or whatever that use valid popups stop working.
I would add to that prediction that help line call for institutions that use popups as part of their interface will skyrocket.
Blaze a trail to the New World
What have the IE engineers been doing for the last three years? Handing out towels in the rest rooms?
Before you folks even THINK about implementing outrageous and curiously new features like... Tabbed Browsing or ActiveX, why don't you seriously think about the fact that the core part of IE is a load of junk. How about making the render engine RENDER XHTML and CSS2 properly?! IMPLEMENT THE STANDARDS *COMPLETELY.*
... what a concept ... have it render properly in IE!
I, along with so many other developers are sick and tired of hacking our otherwise perfectly valid and conforming CSS and markup to make it display properly in the hack you call a browser, which has remained virtually unchanged since the *conception* of Mozilla's Gecko engine. Before you start implementing *parts* of CSS3, why don't you fully and *PROPERLY* implement CSS2? Have you seen the numerous sites dedicated to Internet Explorer specific CSS hacks? You are the most HATED browser. Developers are outraged. It's ridiculous. No one CHOOSES to use IE.
I feel guilty about flaming you on CSS support. I'd much rather see the browser and company just collapse under the power and superior quality of Free and Open Source software. But since that's not going to happen any time soon, and since you're not going to be shipping Firefox or an alternative with your POS software you call an Operating System, and since it's unfortunate that somewhere like 90% of the population uses that abomination you call Internet Explorer... my head would stop spinning so fast if I could just write valid XHTML markup and valid CSS and
Just stop trying and give up, for the good of the common man. Really. Your days are numbered, so why not take some time to think about the good old days, and just let natural progression drag you under.
Thank you.
The reason why MS is potentially a big deck of cards is that they consistently shove things down peoples' throats and therefore never get to see what they *would* choose if they had the choice. This gives them an artificial sense of satisfaction among their user base, when it's simply a very long and forceful suppression. It's actually in their long-term best interest to provide people options and see what their choice is *absent* coercion. Otherwise, they will continue to eat their seed corn.
FireFox has been faster (and I mean FASTER) for some time than IE.
And for features, how does IE have more features when you get tabbed browsing and popup blocking in Mozila or FireFox?
What "features" does IE have that FireFox is lacking?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Check back to the Netscape trial and read Microsoft's rational for "integrating" the browser with the OS.
Also, check the comments of people who said that doing so would INCREASE the security risks.
Now, read the comments TODAY about the security holes attributed to IE and how difficult it is for Microsoft to fix them.
This is NOT a problem of "the ignorance of their users".
This is a problem that stems from an IDIOTIC approach to security that was motivated by the desire to destroy Netscape as a company.
Well good browsing habits will not protect you from Active X.
The default setting in IE will be to block popups.
This pretty much means that the popup window will be officially dead in a year's time.
WTF? You must joking, you actually must think that everyone, or even most will update.
Heck, there are still many people who are only using win98.
People don't choose IE. It's a default icon on their desktop and the default broswer in the file associations. Most Joe Sixpack users just don't know any better or are afraid to change or too lazy to change. If they do happen to know that they *can* change, they probably don't know *how* and are too lazy to find out or afraid because computers intimidate the average user.
If the Browser-Fairy were to suddenly change the target of the desktop icon on every computer all over the world from iexplorer.exe to firefox.exe, the market share for IE would go to something like 10% or less. Very few users would make the effort to switch it back. IE is a virtual monopoly because Windows is a desktop monopoly. There is no conscience choice involved.
By the way, those features, a popular staple of Mozilla, were taken from the commercial browser Opera.
Everybody "innovates" new versions of old ideas. Hell yeah, I'd love to see tabbed browser and mouse gestures. Pop-up blocking is already coming in SP2, and a download manager is in the Longhorn betas.
Ha, you should tell that to Microsoft...
I have used IE my entire life...
:-).
Let's see, that makes you 9 years old
You are right in that IE has many good features. One of the reasons MS won the browser war I was because IE worked just as good as and often better than Netscape, so there was no reason to change.
Good browsing habits will not help you with IE. I've been hit more than once by drive by installations of spyware that did not require any clicking 'Yes'. And, yes, I keep my Windows OS up to date.
So things might be different for browser war II.
Life is like a web application. Sometime you need cookies just to get by.
Well, there have been several instances in the past where versions of one browser have been totally incompatible with the next. I specifically remember the differences in IE 4, 4.5 and 5. More recently, there have been subtle differences in 5 and 5.5
Specifically on IE front, I empathise that it becomes more difficult because a large number of websites have been written with only IE in mind. Maybe those are now considered flaws, but there was a time when IE was preferred because of those nifty things that it allowed one to do
This probably might make you unhappy, having to re-write probably large parts of your website, however, considering the number of attacks that have been targeted towards it, if the new SP protects the naive users, then I'm sure it will go down well with the user community
http://efil.blogspot.com/
Microsoft *are* that car manufacturer, but they're just continually saying that it's the fault of the owner, for not reading the tiny warning label printed at the back of the battery tray, only visible when you get under the bonnet with a torch.
no, we bash ie because it's crap. the only reason it loads anything faster (or boots faster) is that it's always open and always running (unless you're using a mac). and it's simply not possible to use ie your whole life without getting spyware on your box. run ad-aware or spybot search & destroy. you'll be surprised exactly how much spyware is on your system.
while ie might load faster (because you can't get rid of it), it still doesn't have basic functionality that other browsers have. tabbed browsing? nope. not even w/ sp2 (that isn't out yet). popup blocking? 2.5 years after the fact. way to go ie.
and what "features and support" does ie have that mozilla doesn't? it's hard to beat open-source software on support, since it's a community effort to begin with...
bottom line - even with good browsing habits ie is still crap - as is all microsoft's products.
More features? Like popup blocking, tabbed browsing, PNG support etc.? Or did you mean 'features' like standards-noncompliance? IE is years behind in terms of functionality.
Microsoft has been using this strategy for years, it's called "embrace and extend". Basically, when you have most of the market, if you leave in a few conspicuous bugs (e.g. rendering anomalies) or non-standard behaviour, but otherwise implement a powerful and popular standard, you achieve extended lock-in to your particular product. Everyone is forced to spend time adapting to you, and frequently don't bother with implementing for other users. That's why MS doesn't ever want to fully comply with standards. Because they can.
--A Polar bear is a Rectangular bear after a coordinate transform.
I've worked at Microsoft for 14 years and I have always felt like the underdog
"..but they paid me too much for doing too little which is why I have stayed here 14 years."
Maybe the road behind us looks easy, but at the time going it wasn't.
"It's going to be just as difficult in future."
I welcome the feedback today.
"...but I'm going to do nothing about it."
Getting informed is the only way I know to get better.
"I've really messed up in the past."
The day we don't get heated feedback I'll be concerned.
"..because that means our products work as they should and I'll be out of a job."
To defend Microsoft a little, they are not the only purveyors of corporate bullsh*t. But I get so annoyed that they think we, as the general public, cannot immediately see through this coverage of facts.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Says the MSDN article:
Versus the spec (emphasis mine):
Fortunately both the HTTP spec and the article think URLs have extensions. *bangs head against wall*.
-- Arien
"If the Content-type ProgID for a given file does not match the file extension ProgID, Internet Explorer in XP SP2 may take the following actions: 1) the user may be prompted to download the file and 2) the file will not be executed in the extension-handler if it fails to execute in the mime-handler."
I'm not so sure I like or agree with that one.
MIME types are there for a reason, so I can serve anyfile.anyext as text/html or image/jpeg. Or name.hubba as a Quicktime movie. I'd expect both to work, since that's what MIME types are for...
Extensions are a bad hack, and a relic from the DOS era. They should get rid of them instead of enforcing them (yeah, I know Mac OS X partially fell for extensions also, poor sods).
Do you get the feeling MS is really starting to sweat that they are simply out of ideas and finding fewer places to steal from since they strangled thier own market place?
> When I drive my Subaru it doesn't pop-up ads for Ford.
When you drive your Subaru, the radio plays ads for Ford. And Chevy. And Kia, &c
> When I drink my Starbucks I don't get told that I could also be drinking Folgers.
When you go to the grociery store, you see House Blend next to #10 cans of Folgers.
> If your ignorant mother had a computer that had no web browser on it would she know a different way to get to the Internet, find an FTP site that has browsers for download, retrieve one, and install it?
Non-sequiter. Would anyone not familiar with the technology know how?
censorship is a form of noise, which actively seeks to drown out content with silence - Crash Culligan
It's really hard to beleive that Microsoft would seriously listen to any criticism when they STILL deliberately send broken CSS to competing browers. Visiting MSJVM support info in Opera with Opera or Mozilla as the user-agent gets the "negative left margin" style. Choose IE as user-agent and it's fine.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
just becuase users are "too busy" to educate themselves?
Just exactly how much self-education do you think the general populace is capable of? Our (the U.S.) public education does a lousy job of teaching the masses the three R's, much less anything technical. How about this one, mister infinite-amount-of-time-on-my-hands -- Do you know by heart all of the local ordinances of your municipality? You are supposed to! After all, ignorance of the law is no excuse, right? So, you better not be ignorant.
Sit back and chill, while I relate my little tale. I went to drop my boy off at kindergarten. I parked at the curb beside the school and escorted him in. As I returned to my truck, a janitor relayed a message from a cop that if I continued to park there, I would be ticketed! Now, bear in mind that I was legally parked (correct distance from the curb, no "no parking" signs anywhere, I wasn't in an intersection or crosswalk, etc. etc.) So, I went to the P.D. and asked some cops what the deal was. Guess what? Of three cops questioned, none knew for certain what I had done wrong. One said something about the street maybe being to narrow (it wasn't). Another said he thought there was some law about not parking at the curb of a school (there isn't). They suggested I go to the public library and read the book of local ordinances. I did that, and it turns out that I was in the right -- I was legally parked.
Things I learned:
1) Laws I wasn't aware existed, and where to find them.
2) The cops themselves DID NOT KNOW THE LAW! They are supposed to be trained in these matters, right? I mean, if they don't know the law, how can they ticket you for breaking it?
Now, It being the case that everyone is supposed to comply with the law, and that ignorance is no excuse for breaking it, we can conclude that everyone should be familiar with the regulations -- right? But, but, the book runs about 1000 pages! A personal copy costs a whopping $800, unless you photocopy it. There are only three copies in the city (of about 20,000 people) available for public viewing. Now do the math!
It is entirely UNREALISTIC to expect every member of society to inform themselves of the laws they are bound to obey, much less the web-browsing alternatives to IE. They are bounded by their level of reading comprehension, the amount of free time at their disposal, their level of mathematical ability, and their access to information itself. Get real.
But there is a major difference. CSS layers die when you close the window with the originating webpage. You have to close popups individually(putting aside those users that know how to kill the process), and thats why everyone hates them so much.
Of course, busting through all of your FUD, what they really mean is they can't just go in there and fix all of the bugs, because there are quite a few sites out there that depend on the bugs.
One thing Microsoft is fanatical about is backward compatibility. They had a whole team of people testing 16-bit apps to ensure they would run on Windows 95, and Win95 was full of little "shims" and other special cases to make applications which depend on Microsoft's old bugs and undocumented APIs continue to work.
From a purely idealistic point of view, I'd love it if MS just broke all of the sites which pander to IE's bugs, but I think we can all see that in practice that is not an option. Even Mozilla has lots of shims in it to emulate IE's bugs for the sake of backward-compatibility.
well, it is microsofts' responsibility afterall! well, not the part where the stoopid average joe doesnt update his stuff, cant blame good ol' bill for joe's misery. but yes definetley the part where people pay gobs of money to write something good and billy doesnt write good stuff. writing a GRAND "daddy" browser that is integrated with everything in the system, while there are doors and windows everywhere for everyone to come and peek is billy's fault. billy cant feign ignorance for that. surely he could have changed things as he proceeded with 95/me/2k/xp/2k3/..."longhorn" now ?
People just keep saying over and over that the users are just as much fault for not educating themselves. There is a reason why Slashdot users know about IE, Adaware, Linux and the new OS X system. We like learning about this stuff. Should I be accused of being lazy because I don't know how to cross-stitch? No, that just doesn't interest me and I could live out my life happily not knowing it. Many people feel that way about computers and we shouldn't call them lazy for not drilling into technical things when they really have no interest to do so. If I buy a PC from any store, I get Windows and IE...done deal. People should not be blamed for not knowing about Firefox, Safari and other options like that. It is up to a business to support the public interest of the business and since Mozilla is distributing Firefox free, don't expect advertising. Therefore it seems like the necessary advertising for Firefox is word-of-mouth and that seems to fall on users. Since Firefox's main users are techies, it's fate rests on us telling our mom's, not Microsoft. My mom is afraid of computers; she's not going to download Firefox any more than I'm going to learn how to stitch with her.
This has nothing to do with personal responsibility. If I purchased a DVD player that had bad wiring that could start a fire, would I be required to take it apart and solder myself? What if the DVD player were just defective? I still would not be required to fix it. The maker or a tech would do it at the makers expense. Liability for paid-for software should be no different. Note: paid-for software does not include closed sourced software that is free of charge. Basically, if you pay for a product, the maker of that product should be financially responsible to a certain extent.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
What are you suggesting? Maybe that Microsoft engineers had not ought to look at other browsers? Should they move forward blindly? Or is it that you are afraid they will take something they see and make it better? Isn't that what makes any one product more salable than another, because they did the same thing better? Perhaps they should not release a security update? Would that make you feel better if they just didn't do it? Change can be hard, we all know that, to bad we will have to change a few things, I know how all of us hate to see change and progress in our industry, of course MS embodies that, that's why we hate them so much. I am glad we stopped fixing things and change in the linux world or linux would be just like MS and we would have to hate that too! Come on! Let's apply the same set of rules and standards of judgement to everyone.
I have to agree many end-users are dumb, but as a Computer Scientist we some times think too technical and less end-user. Many people that work for microsoft are very talented people. I am sorry to say it is the management within M$ that is the problem. Maybe it is a start with Service Pack 2 now but lets look at the end-user and standards many organizations put in place. IE for example is an abomination to web standerds not only it is seems to be completely unmantained as much as it should be but there are also many other problems wrong with IE. Back to the end-user (eg. my gf for example is not going to switch to fire or opera I tried!!! Sorry but people are used to it.) It is the responsibility of M$ to start getting on the ball with IE. On the other hand, I am happy with SP2 it will sting but that is how upgrades should be if they are good. Example I worked for 2 years in Networking and found that everytime we upgraded something would break if it was critical we would delay the upgrade to our production side of our networks and even then their can be problems. I am happy that m$ is seeing they have to balance end-user and security with this update ... may be there is some hope to see a standard compliant IE in the near future.
phew!!!
"listing everything that will be affected by the the updates to Internet Explorer in Service Pack 2. This will be particularly important to developers who use ActiveX controls, pop-up windows and file download counters in their websites..."
Like the trojan, spyware, and virus writers.
It is TOO LATE for MS to fix their browser, because they should have done this years ago before even starting to work on the hundreds of stupid little patches for so brutally specific hacks they almost had to be originated by the user itself. 3/4's of the world's largest web sites will now break with SP2, because anyone with an iota of web talent has learned to work around the shortcomings of current MS browsers. Just killing the ActiveX popup would have been more than enough to relieve 99% of users' woes.
I'm just pissed now that I'll be hacking HTML day and night when this thing hits prime time, because my breadwinner is on the line. I'd rather see all the ignoramuses flock to Mozilla Firefox, but since they're ignoramuses they probably never leave MSN unless their 12-year old script kiddie is present to create a bookmark for them. URLs are rocket science to the common luser.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Can ActiveX be made secure *AND* functional at the same time? I don't see how. Therefore, ActiveX does not contain vulnerabilities, it is one.
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
MS doesn't seem to consider browsers to be "utilities", though.
aQazaQa
By default Windows has Automatic Updates turned on.
And this is the feature you are talking about.
They are going to your computer and updating it.
It may not work but it is there and if Microsoft improves it to the level where your computer updates itself prior to catching a worm (or removes a worm and updates) they complete what you are requesting here.
They definitely have intent to address it.