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MSN Search - From A UI Perspective
An anonymous reader writes "The user interface community has also started poking and prodding away at the latest iteration of MSN search and has discovered some interesting findings including: XHTML strict, CSS for layout and the death of IE 5 support. You can also read first-hand MSN designer insight into the design process as well."
So it won't render correctly in IE, then?
and the layout is fine on either browser.
If it's all standards compliant, why do I keep having problems with the style sheets? (In both Firefox and Safari, the page displays completely without styles.)
Great to see that even Microsoft 'admits' that IE 5 is non-standard on many things by dropping support for it on MSN search... trust me, building a layout compatible with IE 5, IE 6 and mozilla is a true nightmare. If at least they could patch the bad implementation of the box model...
If every webmaster would stop implementing fixes and hacks to support non-standard browsers, I think IE would lose quite a marketshare to Firefox... end users don't see the problem (IE render every page fine! Firefox don't in some situations!) because webmasters optimize for IE (it IS 95% of the market, you know). Vicious circle...
Eureka Science News - automatically updated
It may be WELL-FORMED XHTML, but it introduces a proprietary attribute (so... Microsoft).
Respect for web standards... yeah right. IMO they just did an optimization of their design... and certainly they did NOT have in mind any consideration for web standards. They nerver had.
With any luck this also implies that the next release of Frontpage won't create pages in a magical mystical microsoft invented language similar, but importantly different from HTML or XHTML...
XHTML strict
If they can be strict with this standard, that can only mean they have pre-emptively co-opted it! They have embraced and extended it before anyone else had a chance to simply follow it. They must have bribed the committees. This has to have been an inside job.
This cannot be allowed to stand. We must stand up and fight for our rights to unpoluted standards. It is time to find a new standard.
Infuriate left and right
They said they were *working* towards XHTML strict. Just as you (hopefully) wouldn't say that about a beta with a work in progress feature.
...its gone from about 130 errors when it was first released, to eight errors now. Not bad. Not bad at all.
From TFA: Some of you may be interested to know that folks from the MSN team have definitely seen this page, and are aware of the feedback, compliments, and criticism
Yep, they did a search in their own search engine for "Miscrosoft Criticism" and found this website.
Who cares about the UI? How good are the searches?
love is just extroverted narcissism
"Shit man, even the Mona Lisa is falling apart."
- Tyler Durden, Fight Club
scott king
Has nothing about this company's past and recent history meant anything to us? Do you really think they intend to play fair? Do you really feel you will be able to trust their search results no matter what promises they make? Maybe you do, but I can't imagine ever trusting Microsoft for anything. Live and learn, eh?
From the weblog:
All we ask for is for people to look at the page as a work in progress. I have seen some feedback that we should not have declared the doctype as XHTML Strict. If anything, we are closer to HTML 4.01. I agree. But our target is to get to XHTML strict. We realize we are not at a point where we can say we have achieved our goal. We will be working hard to get to that goal. Let us know how we are doing. Where are we slipping up? What do we need to fix? We are listening.
But I suppose giving actual feedback would be too much to ask.
The coolest voice ever.
XHTML Strict? Don't think so I ran:
HTML Stricthttp://search.sympatico.msn.ca/ through http://validator.w3.org/ and got at least 1 error with the conclusion being, "This page is not Valid XHTML 1.0 Strict!" Certainly not valid HTML Strict.
CSSRan the URL through the CSS validator and got an error returned:
Errors URI : http://search.sympatico.msn.ca/ Line: 7 Uncaught error java.lang.NullPointerExceptionAdditionally, I don't see any mention of the service being in beta, like Google tends to do with all their service offerings. MSN Search should either say they are beta or they lie (not like this wasn't the first time they lied).
How the design principles used on a web page that is basically a textbox and a submit button is news is beyond me.
I'm a big tall mofo.
Look through the imported style sheet on the home page, and you'll see several uses of @media handheld {} to target certain rules for handheld devices.
Hey, that's good practise. The intent is for the one page to render appropriately for multiple device types. The web needs more implementations of this to make mobile browsing viable.
According to the Wayback machine, file size doesn't seemed to have changed (or reduced) that much. This old version from July 2004 is actually smaller (33.95kb) than the current one which is 40.55kb. Note that this is from Firefox's "View Page Info" which does not take the total size of the images, etc into account (I think).
But then there are several factors other than raw filesize leading to slower load times.
It's nice to see webpage developers at Microsoft aware of standards, and trying to adhere to them. From this comment:
At 6:29pm on 1 Feb 2005, Venkat Narayanan wrote:
Guys,
I work on the MSN.com Homepage team. Thanks for all of this feedback.
We know that there are still some validation errors. There are still some accessibility issues. We will be working to fix those issues as soon as possible. Please let us know what you think.
I think it only needs standards awareness from a few of the low-level developers to bring about a change. Even if the high level management/QA may not know or care about standards, a developer could make the work standards friendly without foregoing any of the performance/features. It would help, though to have management promote standards awareness, and devote resources to make sure they're complied with. Good for Microsoft if they're doing this. On the other hand, it may only be these few standards aware developers trying to do the right job.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://search.ms n.com
the one the article refers to, only has one
And it will never be XHTML Strict valid if they still use IFRAMEs...
They'll probably have to go down to transitional in the end.
that's because the original poster chked msn.com, not search.msn.
We were curoius how broken it would be in IE 5. In IE5.5 everything was mostly ok. In IE 5 it hard crashes IE. I dont know if I've ever seen anything quite so beautiful as that browser going down in flames on its own homepage.
Although the page is using a proper DOCTYPE declaration and is rendering in standards compliance mode in FireFox, a quick trip to validator.w3.org reveals a lot of small details that could still be fixed. :P
Still a far cry ahead of Slashdot's god awful HTML output, but still leaves something to be desired...
Pretty heavy on the javascript usage, and misc clutter as well.
On the other hand, it may only be these few standards aware developers trying to do the right job.
I doubt it. Microsoft is one of the most coordinated operations around. They do their best efforts to time the development and release of everything - hell, optimally they want to release the next version of Office with Longhorn. The point is that, at Microsoft, the left hand almost always knows what the right hand is doing and there are very few communication blocks between management and developers (anyone that's worked at Microsoft in recent years can verify this, and anyone that says the contrary is true is an utter liar). Do you honestly think that the issue of standards compliance regarding their main web portal has gone unnoticed except by a few developers? Think again!
users do. duh.
Okay... so supposedly nobody fears MSN Search.
Everybody says Google still kicks full-on ass.
Etc. etc. etc.
So why is it that in the past 2 days alone there have been -3- articles on MSN Search on Slashdot ?
MSN Search has arrived - actually, it was there a long time ago. It was simply finally put into place on the msn.com portal. I'm sure that was big news to all the Slashdot users who have msn.com as their homepage *smirk*
Inspecting MSN Search - comparing image search, specifically. Using 'Britney Spears'. Gar, what inspection. Do something really interesting and post a website with text and images on a rather specific thing at various locations. Don't announce this. Now check which engine adds which website and its images, and when. Then compare them, and publish THOSE results. That just might be interesting.
MSN Search - From A UI Perspective - So from a UI perspective they've found it uses XHTML (to some extent) ? Wow. Next time I'll evaluate a user interface, I'll be sure to note that it uses COMCTL32 and COMDLG32 instructions. ffs. This says nothing about the actual UI. Which, by the way, is quite sleek - imho. Bit more form over function than Google's, but still pretty light-weight. (Again, this is search.msn.com , not the msn.com portal.) I suspect the title here is chosen wrongly - it's more of a "internet standards compliance and device support inspection".
Could Slashdot editors *please* just hold off the MSN Search articles until something actually interesting about it comes up ?
Sceptic mode: Or perhaps do they post this simply to allow some more Microsoft- / MSN Search-bashing posts in the comments ?
hmmm.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
The search is fast, the results are good, and the layout is clean(er). Maybe they are beginning to get it. Competition works.
the death of IE 5 support
I can't get to TFA at the moment to see if this is mentioned, but I did look at the stylesheet for the main page and found that they're using Tantek Celik's IE5 box model hack.
Does that count as "eating your own dog food"?
Why use an Extensible HyperText Markup Language if you can't extend it?
And the first thing you see is a sponsored report about how microsoft server is better than linux. On the plus side, the search results no longer include "migrate from linux to windows" as the standard number three result.
The government which is strong enough to protect you from everything is strong enough to take everything from you.
Do people check this out when modding things Interesting ?
Firefox 1.0, Windows XP.
The pulldown menu doesn't overflow the border. Sorry.
The next button is indeed in the rightmost corner of the webpage. Well, sorta. It's not like it's all the way over to the right, just on the right. The browser window at 800 pixels wide still shows the Next link. So unless you set your browser to be really, really tiny, you should be fine.
And the results are in an incredibly huge font, you say ?
I measure the height of the lowercase letter 'o' (baseline, basically) of the results' excerpt as 8px wide by 8px high. For Google, I measure the same as 7px wide by 7px high. Oh yes, incredibly huge.
Now, I'm not saying that you're not having problems with MSN Searh. But maybe, just maybe, it's something on your end ?
its not like you can explain to a client that your page is the one that's complient and IE is wrong
Does the page break in IE 5? I can't check from this computer. If it does, it'll be much easier now, since we can show them that even Microsoft's own MSN.com no longer supports outdated browsers. If Microsoft does it, the people will follow.
Eh.
Additionally, I don't see any mention of the service being in beta,
When I did a search on msn.com, it gave me a link starting with:
http://beta.search.msn.dk/....
Notice the 'beta' in the URL?
I'll probably be modded down for this...
Well, interestingly my search for circumspect elephantitis displays exactly one result - the same number as the same search on Google!.
But the REALLY interesting thing about this is that the results are different - how about THAT for a Moogle Whack?!
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
Prediction 1:
Microsoft Desktop Search and MSN Search are seamlessly combined and are available on the taskbar at all times.
Prediction 2:
The Google lawsuit against bundling and for inclusion of Google Desktop Search / Web Search with Longhorn is already in the works. (Same will apply for GMail vs. Longhorn bundled Desktop-Hotmail access).
The media-player lawsuit was nothing compared to this one...
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
They let us take back the browser market in exchange they will attempt to control the internet itself.
If you can't control the program that accesses the information, control the access to the information.
-Don.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
I was hoping for a friendly 3D animated Clippy to help me decide where i want to go today!
How much useful information can we expect to get from the page when the posts are being moderated before they are posted? I mean, I understand the potential for screaming, flaming fireballs calling MS everything but the Anti-Christ, but come on, I'd like to see the posts that don't approve of the changes as well. That would probably include mine.
Um.... why is everyone whining that Microsoft has 8 xhtml errors? Go try and validate Google's page.
Since I'm not a Linux user, so you'll have to ask someone else. So much for your assumption.
It work on konqueror too... cool!!! :P
Not an expert. But I ran it for google, and got 40+ errors.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Somebody else must have been thinking as I did in time: Try the Coral Cache of the Stopdesign site. (I usually try that, but I'm already too late; you can't cache a site that can't respond to the cacher, either.)
(Karma whoring accusers: Look at the UID. Statistically speaking, it is likely I've been capped since before you had an account.)
Google vs. MSN Search
Round One!
Fight!
Google Validation: 44 Errors
MSN Search Validation: 1 Error
Google Wins! Eh...
Um... I didn't do it!
have a lot in common. Microsoft is personally responsible for millions of infected PCs, due to their irresponsible security practices, and the pope is personally responsible for millions of people contracting HIV, due to his influence in opposing sex education and condom distribution.
One good thing to come out of the nightmare of malware is that more people will be upgrading their browsers to the latest versions. Supporting ugly old browser versions won't be as necessary.
Works for me!
Astroturf.
Or, if you prefer, Slashvertisemnet.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
They should advertise more of the special features. http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=calories+appl e&FORM=QBRE
Obviously MS is not ready to drop support for IE5/Win, which is still an unfortunately major browser--certainly well above Firefox in marketshare if you lump 5.0 and 5.5 together. Rather they have dropped support for IE5/Mac, which is still somewhat surprising considering it is the "current" version of their Mac browser (unless you count an upgrade for MSN customers only).
Incidentally, the site renders fine in Safari except for a somewhat ridiculous looking problem where the search button runs smack into Safari's OS X native widgets.
Microsoft PR has really overrun /. I can smell the fresh mowed astroturf...
Maybe he isn't using Windows. Maybe he has different fonts. Maybe his monitor size is different. Maybe your settings for the display resolution (conversion between pixels and inches) are wrong and his are correct (or vice versa). Just because it works on your one system doesn't mean it will work everywhere.
Granted, they most likely did not want it to work correctly, but the drop down box is higher than the rest of the items. Anyone else get the same?
I've just checked my Firefox search box, there isn't even an MSN option.
Not by default, but you can add it, if you like: http://mycroft.mozdev.org/download.html.
Scroll down to "General" and follow the link.
TODO: Insert witty sig
The single most important aspect of any search engine, for me, is that my own site (Lockjaw's Lair) show up in it. It should be at or near the top of a specific search, since the title of the site consists of an odd pairing of words, or at least show up.
So, I did a search for my site on MSN Search to see how I fared. It doesn't bode well for a search site that I can find links to my site on other sites, but the search engine hasn't followed the links to my site. One would think that their spider would have been following these links, especially as there are more than a few of them, but I haven't found evidence that it has done so.
I understand that the new MSN search aims to rival Google in completeness of its database. I hope that my own experience isn't indicative of a major lack of completeness or a substandard spidering tool.
I don't expect an instant complete spidering of my whole site. It would be nice if the spider would just follow one of the links and look at my front page.
Visit Lockjaw's Lair. He won't bite.
if you have asked MSIE to ignore font sizes on pages. CSS what killed readablity.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
... because I have a G3 Power PC with OS 9 and that seems to be the only useable (and free) browser I can find. The MSN home page is definately messed up on my browser when I visited it, with words overlapping and boxes pushed off the the far, far right. It's annoying, but I run into this frequently with pages using CSS.
PS. If anyone knows of a good browser substitute for Mac IE5.1 on OS 9, I'd be thrilled to hear about it.
Sig cancelled due to lack of interest
This is indeed a pretty cool feature on a search engine. I wonder when Google will add this calculator to its site.
I've already done that.
That wasn't the point. The point is that I never added it myself - I never saw the reason to.
Of course I'm not suprised I got modded down. I was just trying to point out that some/most don't care about MSN Search until it finds a cure for cancer.
Get your Unix fortune now!
It's retardedly easy to create standards compliant HTML. Why is it that hard for MSN to create a page with a pretty simple layout that renders well in all browsers and is standards compliant? It seems that web design is full of charlatans...
Maybe they're using plain ol' HTML and CSS
:)
And maybe it should thus work just fine regardless of which OS you use. Actually, no maybe involved there.
Or which font you use. Unless your font file is f'ed up.
Monitor size doesn't matter either, nor does resolution, the location of the Next link should be fine and the size of the text should be almost the same as Google's.
Sure, like I said, I'm not claiming he's not seeing problems and is just making things up.
But, again, considering nobody else is pointing the problems he's seeing out so far, and the html and css appear to be fine, and IE, FF (Windows and Linux, just tested) and Opera alike appear to have no problem whatsoever on my end at least, well.
It just seems a little premature to mod somebody 'Interesting' or 'Insightful' when blasting a webpage, when the problem could very well be at the commenter's end. The least the users with mod points could do is actually check it out for themselves. And if they do find problems, perhaps posting rather than modding would be more constructive.
Just my 2cts
Microsoft has now purchased all rights to HTML/XHTML and effectively redefined the words "standards compliance."
Warning: Could be fatal if taken seriously
Why? Because they're a gigantic company out to preserve their position in the business world?
No. Read the content of that "sponsored link". See what Microsoft says about Linux. Ask anyone who uses Linux in a corporate environment. Then see what any other big corporation says about their respective competitors.
Compare the amount of truth in what Microsoft marketing says about their competitors with the usual standards of truth about competitors used by other big corporations.
Of course, Ford says their products are better than General Motors', Philips says their products are better than Sony's, Exxon says their products are better than Shell's. But no big corporation tells such blatant lies about their competition as Microsoft does. Ergo, Microsoft cannot be trusted.
I suppose since it's xhtml you can define your own things (like xml?), but if the validator doesn't understand that you're defining your own things then that could be it. IANAWD (web designer)
For context, click Parent.
They obviously won't be using valid (and correctly-served) XHTML 1.1, since IE refuses to even render application/xhtml+xml documents as XHTML.
And judging by previous comments, they're not even bothering with XHTML 1.0, either. And writing invalid XHTML 1.0 is much worse than writing invalid HTML, since XHTML is XML and should thus die horribly if there's a single error.
Out of curiosity, why does Microsoft find it so hard to write valid XHTML when everyone else finds it so easy? And in general... why the FUCK don't full-time web developers write valid XHTML? AARGH!
The whole point of XHTML compliant documents is so that the data can be parsed by a non-HTML user agent without issue, as regular XML. This lets you do nice things like XSLT transforms on the HTML, XPath data queries, etc. It is not to make things nicer in the browser, it is not to make things faster, and in fact, both Mozilla and IE can render XHTML compliant pages SLOWER under certain circumstances, because of the validation procedures involved in the parsing.
Using JavaScript to fancy up a page has absolutely no effect on this. Unless the website is actually placing useable data on the page via JavaScript (**ahem**), then the JavaScript has ZERO impact on either the compliance level or the utility of XHTML. And from what I can see, this is exactly what MSN Search (and what most websites) are dong - using JavaScript to write fancy navigation and whatnot, none of which is really useful to a non-HTML user agent.
From the article: "I have seen some feedback that we should not have declared the doctype as XHTML Strict. If anything, we are closer to HTML 4.01. I agree. But our target is to get to XHTML strict."
And what is a doctype? That's correct: the type of the document. So if the document is really more like HTML 4.01, it should be labeled HTML 4.01. It should not be labeled with some marketing 'we'd really like this to work' drivel. Sort of a micrososm of the Microsoft Approach, actually. Lying to people fits under marketing - we're used to it and can take it into account. Lying to computers, computers which are trying to make your not-really-HTML into something presentable, is just stupid.
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
Do people actually check this out before calling it bogus?
Well, let's not argue about personal tastes. I have no intention to switch from Google until something far more important than user interface comes up. Please, wake me up when MSN search starts using more advanced search algorithms.
What I want in a search site is more intelligence than the plain old statistics they use today. What about image recognition from descriptions? I want to type "image of nude blond girl with big tits" and have the search engine look over the pictures in its cache and interpret the content of the images to find what I requested.
And I want text interpretation as well. When I type "BFR480 curves", I want to find sites that have the BFR480 transistor's technical data, even if the word "curves" appears nowhere in the site. I don't need to use the word "transistor" in the search because any self-respecting search engine should know that a part number starting with "BF" is a silicon low-power high-frequency transistor made by some European company.
Yes, I know, those things are *very* hard to do with current technology. But if anyone could do it, it would be the gadzillion computer clusters they have at Google and Microsoft. Therefore, until significant progress is done in raising the intelligence of search engines, any article about search sites is hardly "stuff that matters".
It's not "plain ol' HTML and CSS". They're also using JavaScript. And there are known minor differences in how browsers handle the DOM, which lead to different offset calculations for things like that drop-down menu.
.. is on their feedback page.
Optional: if you were not able to find a web page, enter its address or URL here.
Er... if I could not find the page, how the he** would I know it's URL?
Sorry, can't view your PNG image...I'm using Internet Explorer.
heh, heh.
No Klingon, Esperanto or Pig Latin????
MSN Search, I've got two words: No thanks!
Because these articles generate discussion, and therefore page hits. Which is good for OSTG's ad clients who display banner ads up top.
ROFL! Whatever happened to the application of logic?
I saw him, as it happens, *today*. I was just reinstalling some stuff on my computer, one of which was Microsoft Office 2k; clipps is there by default! Yes, some of us still use that 4 year old piece of software, not seeing any real point in wasting more more money when Office 2k is perfectly good for our needs. What does Office XP add, anyway? Other than a slightly different UI?
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
On the contrary, I think a lot of people here are warming up to this search engine. It really does return great search results. And let's face it, Google has been stagnating lately and not making any attempt to clean out its search results of cruft. A lot of search terms in Google that give me crap give me much more meaningful results than Google does. And, my god, it's fast. I don't know if it's because it's new and has less sites indexed or what.
I think Microsoft is great as a technology/software company (Microsoft had its big start as a software developer on the Mac). It's their OEM licensing and operating system implementations that most people think suck. Here's hoping marketing doesn't take over this search engine and make it suck.
Maybe the best part is that Google will feel the heat a little and feel motivated to improve.
But no big corporation tells such blatant lies about their competition as Microsoft does.
Now who's being naive?
Thinkin' Lincoln - a web comic of presidential proportions
God forbid I should say anything good about microsoft, but playing around on the MyMSN page shows some really awesome customization features.
It works a lot better in IE, but it still mostly works in firefox. (Well, there seem to be a lot of crashes and errors, but i guess it is still new).
Being able to hide, drag the various components around, add rss feeds, etc, is slick. i know it's nothing totally new, but it's really a nice design and i think pushes the boundries.
I added the slashdot RSS feed and now i can read the top slashdot stories on my MSN home page. oh the irony!
TODO: come up with a clever sig
On the whole, I've been happy with the MSN search. Mostly because my sites rank there when the dont rank in Google.
However, as far as the UI goes... why is the search text-box so friggin small? It's 20 characters wide. Google's is 50 characters wide. search.yahoo.com has space for 60 characters.
If I want to paste a long search string in the box, with MSN, I can't even see the whole thing. Why is MSN search being so miserly with the text box size?
SpyDock: Scientific Python in a Docker container
As a web professional, I wish to see the day that IE5 would just go away. It's failure to be web standards is already the stuff legends are made of.
Need a color? Try 100 random colors
Yes, I know, I hate to admit this, but I actually saw him today on my brand spankin' new HP with Windows XP Professional and Office 2002. In the middle of working on an Excel spreadsheet and doing a cut and paste, guess who popped up with that stupid, annoying and unhelpful word balloon? Yup, it was good ol' Clippy.
So yes, he's still there and still on by default.
I'm bonch and I'm a troll
it seems that I'm reading about some inane aspect of a search engine that I will never use. I
Hey, Amazon just released a cool new feature to their A9 search engine! I can see my house from here. I bet you'll like it.
Yes, but MSN actually warns you not to use IE: http://tech.msn.com/howto/article_203-2.armx
Check the 14th parargaph, where it gives an external link to download Firefox. I just about pissed my pants.
"Stop using Internet Explorer. Microsoft's Web browser is a hog. Switching to the Mozilla Firefox or Opera browser can yield swifter program launches, faster page loads, and an all-around smoother ride. In my personal experience, Firefox has proven the fleetest browser..."
Matthew Brundage
Silver Spring, MD
Some fonts are bitmapped, and many systems don't try to scale them because they would look crappy and be hard to read. This means your font size might be rounded to 20 pixels wide instead of the desired 12.
Wrong. Some font sizes may be specified using pixels, physical metrics or relative to the user's font settings. The older html tags don't specify a specific size at all--it is dependent on the system, web browser and user settings. Maybe you should read up how fonts work with web standards.
Why do you think there is a "display resolution" setting in Mozilla/FireFox?
Yeah, but maybe he doesn't use the default settings.
Perhaps, but modding is a dirty job, and someone has to do it.