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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.
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..
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
If you buy a Ford and the radio only plays The Ford Station and you need to get a gas tank adapter to use anything but Ford Gas do you think Ford might be held responsible when someone plays a song on The Ford Station that makes Ford Gas explode?
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.
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
Ford would be held liable. Remember the Firestone/Ford deal with the bad tires? If a company 's product causes you physical harm because they're negligent, they'll get sued. So why not the same if a company's product causes all your personal information/identity to get stolen?
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.
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.
I'd say that the problem MS has (other than a tendency to unfairly dominate the market) is that they are *too* reliant on the end-user. All too often with MS, it really *is* a feature and not a bug.
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson
If you buy a Ford and the radio only plays The Ford Station and you need to get a gas tank adapter to use anything but Ford Gas do you think Ford might be held responsible when someone plays a song on The Ford Station that makes Ford Gas explode?
That is not a fair comparison. Windows doesn't force you to use any of Microsoft's products (with the exception of IE for WindowsUpdate).
Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.
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.
Maybe, if Ford was the only car manufacturer you knew about.
Maybe if when you drove car you didn't see any other cars.
Maybe if almost all your friends and neighbors drove Fords, except for the graphic designer down the street who drives a deisel BMW.
Maybe if the other person you know who doesn't drive a Ford is one guy from your IT department... and he drives a Chevy that runs off of used vegetable oil.
Maybe if schools provided their students with Fords and your work provides you with a Ford.
Maybe if switching to a Mercury requires that you tow it home with your Ford, and you have to keep the Ford around, not only because you cannot get rid of it, but also in case there is a road the Mercury can't drive on.
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.
"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).
The metaphorical Ford isn't forcing me to buy their radio. I can go down to Mobile One and install a Concord in an even exchange. Ford isn't forcing me to use Ford Gas, they even provide a free adapter via the mail. They still don't tell me that I can replace the radio and I have to find out about the gastank adapter through Consumer Reports.
Microsoft isn't forcing you to use their dangerous browser, but they make it sufficiently hard that it's taken several years before more than a tiny fraction of the users are thinking about using something else...
> 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
That's because they don't fucking read books.
As far as I am concerned, people who do not take their own lives seriously enough to read and educate themselves get the miserable lives they deserve.
Think it's callous? Watch discovery channel and note that the lioness goes for the antelope that limps.
A while back I was at a restaurant. I was also working in the restaurant industry, so I know good customer service skills. The manager at that Burger King on Sherman Way in Reseda treated his customers like dirt. Now, I though: "that's unfair" and I wanted to go tell him. Yet I thought to myself: "why should I help this man run his restaurant better? He'll just compete against me better. Fuggedaboutit."
(I'll get to MS in a second)
As I was driving away, I was thinking about the customers that go to that place. You know, the ones that don't know any better.
Now, you know, Microsoft understands that 90% of the world's people are generally stupid and uneducated. They cater to them. They give them crappy software that makes lUsers feel smart (in retrospect, it's hard, you know, to make something that makes a stupid person feel smart), they take their money, treat them like dirt (no phone support, no email support, we'll sue your ass if you steal from us), and the customers just love it...
I have no sympathy for those users.
I wish microsoft good luck in their endehavor to cater to the stupid 95%.
If that's what we open source people want to cater to, I say watch out. It's harder than it seems to make a stupid person go "this was easy". There's gonna be a lot of good high quality complex and powerful software that's gonna become mundaine and everyday for the everyman, thus absolutely unuseable by the people who have to get the work done.
"Piter, too, is dead."
In what way is that different from any other industry though? I don't remember buying a Nissan that included an ad for a Mazda in the glovebox. If people have heard of other browsers (which most have, even if it is just Netscape 4.7), then they KNOW of the alternatives...if they aren't able to download and install them that is there fault.
Think about these scenarios for a second:
Microsoft doesn't include ANY sort of browser in the default Windows install. Only the technically literate will be able to get a browser using commandline FTP tools. This limits people's access to other browsers more than the current situation.
Microsoft includes Mozilla and IE in its default Windows install. This is something we would NEVER expect any other company to do. See the Nissan/Mazda example above. Also, what about people that don't like EITHER, should they also include Opera and Konqueror ports?
Windows installs only Mozilla by default. Same song, different pitch. Not only will M$ never do this they have no reason to be expected to do it, nor would this change the situation. Eventually everyone would use Mozilla and people would bitch about it and complain that M$ was forcing them to use Mozilla.
Personally, I hate M$ and IE. I use Gentoo/XFCE4/Firefox at home (have to use IE at work...), but this is an area where we really can't FIX the problem in any way other than doing our best to make people aware of the alternatives and helping them install the software if they can. Also we should do our best to stop new sites from using IE-centric features or just blindly assuming they are being viewed on a Win 9x/NT system using IE.
Interesting position. However, there are consequences -- namely, even the intelligent and educated are affected by the "choices" of the ignorant. Case in point -- spam, viruses, worms, etc. flood the internet, eat up storage and bandwitdth, and reduce productivity. Extra time and money must be allocated to hire and train people to combat the problem.
Here's another -- I read an article in a medical journal a few years back. It discussed doctors giving too many antibiotics to the ignorant masses -- who demand antibiotics for everything from a common cold to a stubbed toe. This results in selecting for antibiotic-resistant bacteria -- super-bugs, if you will. The result is disease that can no longer be combatted by antibiotics. There are several bacteria that now exhibit resistance to penicillin -- for a long time, the most powerful weapon in the antibiotic arsenal.
It is in the best interests of EVERYONE that people lose their ignorance. Many need help to do it. Are you going to chip in? Or are you going to sit on the sidelines when the social, environmental, and financial systems collapse and giggle about how fucking smart you are?
95%+ of all gas stations sell proprietary FORD ONLY gas protected by patents.
95%+ of tire stations sell proprietary FORD ONLY tires protected by patents.
95%+ of mechanic shops service FORD ONLY cars
95%+ of of all auto parts stores sell FORD ONLY proprietary parts.
95%+ of etc, etc This situation was created by Ford because of their illegal monopoly and tactics. The others went were the money is just to survive. If Ford had not been an illegal monopoly and engaged in anti-competitive tactics, competition would have come along and made the market much better overall.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
To be completely fair, it's taken several years for people to start discovering other browsers because it's taken several years for there to come into existance a free browser worth switching to.
"People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
IE is used all over windows - not just for web browsing. They really have integrated the damn thing into everything.
Not so sure on the "Ford" analogy, but one I have may be close. I have a Volvo that has a Bose stereo. It had a POS in-dash changer that died. Talked to the dealer and they are notoriously shitty, and are constantly being replaced (for $450 for a refurb unit.) So I go looking for third party replacements. The old bose was a 5 speaker system (center in the dash.) No normal stereo supports that. Fine - I won't use the 5th. Then I find out that the bose "system" has little amps at each speaker so that means I have to replace all the speakers too! Well, this starts getting Very expensive, very invasive, etc. so I end up getting an Alpine changer with FM modulator and keeping the half-broken old bose system because of the tight integration.
This reminds me Very much of IE in Windows. Yes, I can use an alternative browser for some stuff, but the integrated IE is still there and used for other stuff I have no control over (more than just WU.)
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
I have to buy special "Macintosh" software, and if I add any third-party product (like memory or disk drives), Apple won't service it, even if I'm paying for the repairs.
OK, name one operating system that doesn't require applications to be written/compiled specifically for it. Name one operating system that you can run Mac, Linux, Windows, Solaris, and OS/2 binaries on natively. Can't think of any? That's what I thought.
And Apple WILL service your machine if you add RAM and hard drives. What you stated is an outright lie. If your 3rd party devices are the cause of your problem however, why should apple fix/replace components that they didn't supply? Are you going to go to Dell when the Crucial memory you bought goes on the fritz?
You, sir, have no idea what you are talking about.
I don't think the number of IE-only sites are the reason for Microsoft's browser dominance. They are the result of them.
Neither one of those explanations tells the whole story. In reality it's a recursive circle. IE-only sites exist because IE is popular because IE-only sites exist because IE is popular because IE-only sites exist...
The first "base case" of this recursion was Microsoft making sure that IE exists on every single installation of Windows. That made web site developers think "If I develop for IE, I get most of the users, if I develop for something else I don't. Even if a user of Windows prefers something else to IE, I know that at least they have IE available as a fallback when they can't use my site in Netscape." (Of course the notion that it is good to develop for *all* browsers is alien to a lot of people).
The actual quality of IE versus the competition is irrelevant to this scenario.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.