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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.'"
They'd be no secret about what I'd be doing if I was running the Internet Explorer 8 team. Here's a few things I'd do:
For bonus points, do all this faster and with less memory than Internet Explorer 7 takes.
This is a fairly modest list but if they fixed all of that, Internet Explorer would be a joy to develop against. Hell, I might even consider replacing Firefox as my default browser on Windows. However, as much as we can collectively dream, you know they'll rejig the interface slightly, crank up the version number by one and call it a day.
Microsoft is a text-book example of a market failure. Nearly every other browser has Internet Explorer boxed off in terms of functionality, security and speed. The only reason it is the world's number one browser is because it comes pre-installed with WIndows.
As a program Internet Explorer is simply trash. I simply hate it. Actually I fucking despise it. It is a big ball of shit. It's the ugly building in the middle of a city that everyone wants torn down but it just sits there damaging the community's spirit.
I once joked with a colleague that Internet Explorer has probably wiped billions off pounds off the world economy. I laughed, paused for a moment, and realised it's probably completely true. What could the world have done with all those countless hours hacking their CSS to support the trash that is Internet Explorer?
Doesn't it make you depressed?
Simon
Tell me something...it's still "We, the people"... right?
At my company we've had to just drop IE for now, and push out Firefox on all clients.
This is OK for our internal users, but impossible for any external site because of the installed base of legacy CRAP.
Microsoft need to fix:
- CSS support
- DOM support in their javascript implementation
- XHTML support
- SVG rendering
Only then will we ever look at IE again.
We also need to be clear on the patent situation surrounding technologies such as Silverlight on platforms other than Windows, before we invest any time and effort in such technologies. We don't want to end up supporting a technology that Microsoft plan on attacking on non-windows platforms.
Microsoft are making a fool of themselves with IE, and severely damaging their reputation with developers. I hope they will offer an upgrade of internet explorer for Windows 2000, XP, and Vista when they have finally sorted out their shoddy rendering library. Internet Explorer 7 was a poor attempt at improving what remains the worst web browser that is still considered current (at least by some).
Actually I thought the perfect description of IE 7 was "response to Firefox." Seriously, I don't think IE 7 existed as a serious, active project until Firefox started claiming significant percentages of the browser market, and most of the UI additions are ripped straight from Firefox. But, in the case of IE 8, this time there isn't really anything obvious to rip from Firefox--maybe integrated spellchecker? If they try to offer an easy-to-install plugin system (I'm assuming IE 7 doesn't have one already. If it does, forgive me--I've used IE 7 a grand total of maybe 15 minutes), the results will be a security disaster.
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."
IE uses easy-to-install plugins...haven't you ever worked on someones machine with 15 search bars?
Microsoft is a business. Keeping IE non-compliant with standards makes them money. If they complied with standards then all the Web pages and applications would soon do the same, which means there would be nothing stopping companies with Web apps from migrating to something cheaper than Windows and Office. MS's strategy is called "tying" and is illegal for companies with monopoly influence in a market, but MS still makes more money breaking the law and paying off politicians than it does complying with the law, so we're screwed. IE will never be compliant with the specs unless MS loses their monopoly influence.
Not only is this completely missing the point (people want 3 column layout, and they HAVE to implement them anyway with tedious gesticulations), but you're posting on a site with a 3 column layout, for fuck's sake!
Navigation on the right, content and comments in the middle, links and tools on the right. No, that's not a newspaper layout (which have more than 3 columns, in case you've never opened one!), and it makes at least some fucking sense.