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Internet Explorer 8 Delayed Until 2009
Barence writes "Microsoft has confirmed that Internet Explorer 8 will not be officially released until 2009. According to a blog posting on the Internet Explorer 8 development site, a release candidate of the browser will be released in the first quarter of next year, to be followed by a final release at an unspecified date. This news comes on the same day that Google is considering bundling its Chrome browser with new PCs. Will the IE delay and Google's tactics help to steer users in Chrome's direction?"
They give it away from free and still have a huge majority of the market share.
So...
1. They don't have any financial motives to make it excellent just to keep it from being left behind.
2. As long as they keep the majority in market share developers will still develop and test with it.
All the changes and features are basically keep up features with some easy to program "innovative" stuff just to keep it on the radar. If you have done any software development you need to realize it is difficult to have a clean timeline of code especially with scope that Microsoft needs to have (Works for all Systems, Business and Personal Use, Good Security, Huge Flexibility...) In general Microsoft hates saying no to its customer so they often end up creating applications that meet all the customer request but fail to do what the customers want.
This is part of the Apple popularly surge. Apple likes to say no to a lot of good features. As they realize if it is implemented the majority may suffer to make the minority a little bit happier.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I suspect that google is not serious about chrome. Specifically, google does not see chrome as a long term product. They are simply chomping at microsoft's market share by introducing another browser into the market. The more browsers that are in the market, the more important standards become (ie's biggest weakness) and the less market share ie will have. If google really wanted to see their browser as a top dog, they would cut their 85 million dollar annual firefox donation. They are not playing to win, they are playing to have MS lose. Futhermore, if IE starts to decline, live services and ms advertising will also decline proportionally. In the end, google can care less about it's chrome, its just a UI slapped onto webkit anyways. The true agenda is to get people to question their browser and try different ones. With lower IE market share, they will see bigger ad revenues. That's more money to invent random stuff with hehe. If microsoft can keep up, then they win again, by creating a better standards complaint expirience. Standards are the opposite of vendor lock-ins ;). Oh google, you must be bored.
Trying to install linux on my microwave, but keep getting a kernel panic...
It's definitely part of the recipe for these kinds of projects. The main thing we see in big projects that are beyond a first or third iteration (like IE) is that most of the original team is gone and most of the original vision has changed, either for political reasons or for necessary course corrections, and both of which must be true for IE. Nobody on the IE team shares the exact same vision for IE. Many fragments of the IE userbase have likely caused conflicts between team members from design to production. Conflicts cause issues in every aspect of development, but also they cause turnover.
We know people were promoted out of the IE team, and promoted out of the company. In a case like Microsoft, it's been years since the first iteration, and IE has gone through so many revisions that there is a high likelihood for spaghetti code and feature creep to crush project fluidity. They have rewritten the whole thing, how many times now?
While team members wielding political weapons must be crushed on sight by worthy adversaries, it doesn't happen enough because people are afraid of repercussions. Unless you are Steve Ballmer, then you throw a chair and hit the wrong person.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
horrible at JavaScript, HTML and standard compliance With Firefox, Opera and Chrome why would a sane person even want to use IE? IE still trails almost every other browser in JavaScript performance, try it for yourself. http://nontroppo.org/timer/progressive_raytracer.html
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
I went up to Mozilla the other day for a plugin and what do I find? A login/registration screen! WTF! I am going to have to register with them too just to get a plugin? I create phony logins, but it's the principal. I'm sick of having of this registration BS. What benefit does a website gain from it? Is it an incentive for advertisers? What? It just makes the site a bigger pain in the ass.
Registration is a pain.
Well, nice word-games you're playing there but no, I'm not google's "product". They didn't make me.
Google's products are Gmail and Search, they created them and I am using them.
Google is using a fairly novel approach to monetize their products but I don't agree with you swapping the definition of "product" and "customer" for them.