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Microsoft Considered Renaming Internet Explorer To Escape Its Reputation
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft's Internet Explorer engineering team told a Reddit gathering that discussions about a name change have taken place and could happen again. From the article: "Microsoft has had "passionate" discussions about renaming Internet Explorer to distance the browser from its tarnished image, according to answers from members of the developer team given in a reddit Ask Me Anything session today. In spite of significant investment in the browser—with the result that Internet Explorer 11 is really quite good—many still regard the browser with contempt, soured on it by the lengthy period of neglect that came after the release of the once-dominant version 6. Microsoft has been working to court developers and get them to give the browser a second look, but the company still faces an uphill challenge."
They can't name it after Steve Ballmer either, Chrome is already taken by google.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
...feel Microsoft's pain.
After you push a substandard product for so long, nobody will buy your stuff even when it is improved to the point of being superior to the competition. The stink just will not wash off.
I'm perfectly willing to believe that the core IE engine is much improved from its terrible days of the past when it was intentionally non-standards-compliant, slow, and insecure.
However, I ask this as someone who hasn't touched it in many years: does it support adblock, noscript, ghostery, and httpseverywhere? If not, then I would not call it "quite good" no matter how much the core has improved. Those features are essential for using the modern web.
McDonald's is happy to introduce the all-white-meat chicken McNugget!
Wait ... what the fuck was in it before?
...and stop trying to take over the internet by adding proprietary extensions to said standards. Stop trying to push MS server or development products by tweaking the browser to work better with said products.
The browser wars are over. MS won the battle but is loosing the war. They need to drop the insurgency and learn to play nice if they want to play at all.
And they should lie in it. Microsoft's monopoly in IE was one of the principal causes of stagnation in the industry during the mid 2000s.
Then again, that stagnation arguably led to some great innovations by others in the industry, which is why we've witnessed the mobile revolution and downfall of IE since.
Microsoft was always playing the "short game" - after all, it was always about announcing the latest vapour-ware, future plans to pre-emptively ward off competitors, etc. to keep the stock price up, We saw how that played out in both the phone and tablet markets, which is where both current and future growth is.
"Never interfere with your opponent when he's making a mistake." Sure, the opponents often didn't have the resources to interfere significantly, but there's one resource Microsoft couldn't control - time. The accumulation of mistakes over time hurt them badly. Thank Ballmer. Also thank Gates for making sure Ballmer was CEO way past his best-before date. Just goes to show, we all bear the seeds of our own destruction.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
As much as Enterprise customers like to push the "it has to work on IE" crap (because they're usually working with lazy IT departments or legacy applications written by people with less interest in standards compliance than me), in reality that shouldn't be my job for writing a web application. I code to the standards or I use libraries and frameworks that code to the standards. These work in Firefox, Safari, and Chrome with minimal modification (assuming I'm not using a cutting-edge new feature like web audio, notifications, or O.o()) and impressive consistency.
They never work in IE without modification.
That's not my fault. That will never be my fault.
If you want to court developers, you go out there with IE, pick apps that have not gotten IE-fixing mods, and YOU (Micro$oft) fix the browser to the standards-compliant web applications already out there.
I'm sick of and done with working around your messes for the last 15 years.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
Don't forget fucking over the original developers in the process. Microsoft negotiated the price down to $2 million by agreeing to pay royalties to Spyglass for each copy sold... Then turned around and gave the product away for free. Spyglass should have worked a better deal, sure, but it was a dick move by Microsoft.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!