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Microsoft Launches New "Get the Facts" Campaign
ko9 writes that Microsoft has re-launched its "'Get the facts' campaign, in an attempt to promote Internet Explorer 8. It contains a chart that compares IE8 to Firefox and Chrome. Needless to say, IE8 comes out as the clear winner, with MS suggesting it is the only browser to provide features like 'privacy,' 'security,' 'reliability.' It even claims to have Firefox beat in 'customizability.'"
It's pretty hilarious on all of the categories which are ties that Microsoft admits the other browsers are better, but then discounts the reasons why because, according to them, it turns out that the category doesn't matter for some reason or another so, it's a TIE!
I had to uninstall IE8 from vista because it screwed up folder views for all of Vista. For some weird reason, on some systems, IE8 causes every folder to be opened in a new window. The only fix at the time was to go back to IE7. Pretty sad when upgrading a browser downgrades your OS.
I use a program called SpiceWorks to monitor the network, run the helpdesk etc which makes heavy use of interactive content.
I notice that the very last item is about performance.
I can load up the entire inventory of my network in around 3 seconds in Chrome and Opera. It takes 11 seconds in IE8.
Not fast at all.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Why is this even being discussed. Its obviously PR. If you wanted a serious comparison go look on google for one. Honestly you don't trust the sales man to give you the best price on your car. You know he is going to fleece you. Its the same thing here.
The problem is that for every one of us developers that hates IE, there are 10 more developers who know nothing else and think this Firefox thing is some hippie fad, and are very adamant about it. Frontpage and .Net have caused immeasurable damage to the web with their completely broken markup, but if you're the kind of imbecile who knows nothing but Frontpage, your P.O.V. is that all the other browsers suck.
No matter how you slice it, it is always easier to support a single platform, than to support all of them. It just so happens that when you develop "for" Firefox, you're usually closer to that cross-browser goal than had you aimed for IE in the first place. But then once in a while, I'll forget to test my template in IE and sure enough, that's the one that breaks.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Its campaign may be rubbish, but it's working! Also, we have been pounding MS for sticking to IE6 for long enough. Now that they're trying to get users to switch to a better browser (IE8 may not be the best, but it's definitely a lot better than IE6) we pound them again. They may claim what IE8 is better than Firefox/Opera/Safari/Chrome put together, we may hate them for that, but we have to spare a bit of love for the fact that they're finally letting their users know that they can have better than IE6. Now, unless they suddenly stop supporting IE8 and put it in the WGA program, we should be thanking them.
It shouldn't be so hard to:
if (IE) {
hack IE
Download and install FF with IE skin
Set Desktop link to point FF
Set default browser to FF
Open FF to current page
Close and uninstall IE
}
I think they don't get it. And to be honest Mozilla no longer does too. Customization is great. It is (well, was) the great thing about Firefox. Once you start packing a whole load of features into the basic browser you are losing all that flexibility. That's what add-ons are for, giving the user choice, while keeping the basic browser fast and effective.
I'm not using IE8 this side of Hell freezing over. However, I do appreciate upping the ante and offering competition.
Mozilla sat on their asses in terms of efficiency and effectiveness, while they stuff the basic browser full of crap in the same way they destroyed Netscape. That's the one good thing about IE8 it kicks Mozilla up the ass.
Now maybe Mozilla can start working harder on memory leaks, multi-threading, making Firefox not suck on a Mac, and getting rid of needless bloat like the Awesome bar.
My first thought was to laugh myself silly with a touch of indignant rage.
But actually I take this a bit more seriously.. There is a well known phenomenon (that I am sure somebody else knows the name of) where people tend to believe what they read and we are not the target audience of this advertising tripe. Many people who will read this (and do not know better) will believe it and follow it and pass it on. And that irritates mes.
In this fraternity we all sit back and mock the ridiculous claims and statement in their FUD and sales - but at the end of the day they are quietly winning the war with one ill educated person swayed towards their cause after another.
I sure have no answers, but I do not feel like mocking this kind of crap anymore.
At work I use FF - but I am forced to use IE for the corporate portal because apparently only IE can possibly work on the portal, so they paid somebody to edit the script to reject all "non-approved" browsers. That is the end result of ill informed high up decisions based on fluff like this.
No, it's definitely about getting the facts. Just not all of the facts.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
Can we come up with some intelligent, thought-out responses against this? I'm picturing myself in the shoes of a non-anti-Microsoft zealot and I'm seeing nothing more than "Microsoft sucks because it does" here.
You've gotta love it that they keep pushing the word "Fact" into their FUD.
This is pathetic and infuriating at the same time, which is common with MS propaganda. As I went over the list (as well as the mythbusting bit) I laughed in a "black humor" sort of way -- it reads like a parody, kind of like something you'd read on TheOnion.
Isn't it nice that as long as you keep things just ambiguous enough, you can use the word "FACT" in an ad to state just about anything. At some point, if the law doesn't intervene, they will start positioning Google as the "Dark Corporation that spies on you", and Apple as a religious cult. I'm pretty sure they could do that now and they'd be un-sue-able.
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
Didn't someone write a Gecko ActiveX plugin a while ago? Can't you just wrap your entire page in an object tag for IE users and have them download and install the Gecko ActiveX control for rendering HTML?
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