Gates Expresses Surprise Over IE8 Secrecy

eldavojohn writes "Shortly following the frustrations of IE7, Gates claims that he is unaware that IE8 Secrecy has been alienating developers. Ten influential bloggers met with Bill on Tuesday and asked Gates questions about why they are no longer receiving information on IE. From Molly Holzschlag's blog: 'Something seems to have changed, where there is no messaging now for the last six months to a year going out on the IE team. They seem to have lost the transparency that they had. This conversation [between Web developers and the IE team] seems to have been pretty much shut down, and I'm very concerned as to why that is.' To which Bill replied: 'I'll have to ask [IE general manager] Dean [Hachamovitch] what the hell is going on, I mean, we're not, there's not like some deep secret about what we're doing with IE.'"

Comments

Of course

[darkhitman]

To which Bill replied: 'I'll have to ask [IE general manager] Dean [Hachamovitch] what the hell is going on, I mean, we're not, there's not like some deep secret about what we're doing with IE.'"

Of course there's no deep secret about it. "We're doing nothing" is hardly a secret, after all.

Truncated

[nog_lorp]

That quote was incomplete, it's really: "I'll have to ask [IE general manager] Dean [Hachamovitch] what the hell is going on, I mean, we're not, there's not like some deep secret about what we're doing with IE. *cackle*"

How can they be working on IE8...

[SpartacusJones]

before Opera 9.5/FF3 are released and they have new ideas to copy?

Reverse-engineering Opera is hard work

[Anonymous Coward]

Who am I kidding, Microsoft wouldn't dare make a product that conforms to standards.

Hmm...

[Derek Loev]

'I'll have to ask [IE general manager] Dean [Hachamovitch] what the hell is going on, I mean, we're not, there's not like some deep secret about what we're doing with IE.'
He, like, totally sounds like a Silicon Valley girl.

Re:In a perfect world

[coryking]

• Dont forget SVG support too.
• A good debugger would be nice.
• Meet the standards and then innovate on top of them. Remember back in the day when every browser was adding extra tags to try to outdo the other guy? I really think we need that again. Semantic web is a pipe dream, HTML sucks, CSS is largely ivory tower bullshit and the W3C is ineffective at giving developers a good language. A classic Firefox vs IE battle of layout tags is exactly what we need to stir up the pot. Just make sure you follow the current standards first.

I have no doubt that IE has cost our global economy billions of dollars in wasted time and effort. I also suspect there is a higher instance of stress related illness and depression in web developers. Developing on today's internet sucks monkey balls, and it is a large part due to IE. ... And this is all comming from me, proudly running on Vista developing in VS2008. I'm practically a Microsoft fanboy!

There has been conversation?

[sootman]

This conversation [between Web developers and the IE team] seems to have been pretty much shut down...

It may not have been face-to-face, but for almost a decade, it seems that the conversation between IE devs and web devs has pretty much been...
Web devs: Fuck you!
IE devs: Fuck you!

Why does the IE team hate standards so much? It's not like they don't know how to make things work. IE5 for Mac came out in 2000 and was pretty awesome--it even supported transparent PNGs with nothing more than an <img> tag!

Dear IE team: thanks for inventing AJAX. Now please go make everything else work. kthxbye.

(Note: I know for a fact that the IE team has many talented and nice people. They (and we) are just victims of horrible decisions being made further up the chain. So this vitriol is really directed at management.)

Definition of "transparency"

[Jay L]

When questioned further, Gates claimed that "When I said we'd be more transparent, I just meant we'd use more alpha-blending. You know, like Vista."

Re:Too mundane, not flashy and pointless enough

[gallwapa]

IE uses easy-to-install plugins...haven't you ever worked on someones machine with 15 search bars?

Re:Developer overload

[Dracos]

MS' ideal dialog with customers:

MS: We have loads of new eye candy, and your old software won't completely work with this new version.
Customers: Ooh, pretty. Will it help me be more productive?
MS: That'll be one arm and one leg, please.
Customers: Is this verison more secure?
MS: Oh yes, it's the most secure software evar. That'll be one arm and one leg, please.
Customers: I dunno, that seems kinda steep.
MS: Our software has all the latest new features.
Customers: How does it compare against Linux and OSX?
MS: You can't play the latest and coolest games with all that inferior software. That'll be one arm and one leg, please.
Customers: I was thinking that your product could be improved by...
MS: That's a great idea! We're always looking out for our users' best interests. [deliberately fails to make note of the suggestion] That'll be one arm and one leg, please.
Customers: Ok, then. [empties pockets]
MS: Thank you! Would you like to buy a service contract for the low, low, price of your remaining limbs and your head?

Re:In a perfect world

[brusk]

There is a fine line between courage and stupidity. You appear to be prepared to cross it.

Just when they had it working...

[Okonomiyaki]

"They seem to have lost the transparency that they had."

It took them 10 years to finally get PNGs working properly and now they're going to be broken again?