Why Microsoft can't?

Why the biggest player on the market is not able to develop decent web browser?

Do somebody knows really what’s the matter? I believe MS doesn’t even care about Internet Explorer at all, or they do the worst job in the world if “a bunch of guys from Norway” or open source project is ahead of them for a decade.

I’m not angry at the moment, but I’m really thinking about NOT supporting IE7 AND IE8. No :first-child? Even IE9 not supporting text-shadow? No border-images? Come on!

I don’t want to insult but do you know any EXPERIENCED pc users who use IE? I’m wondering how many SMART people use IE and how many of them are just front-enders doing tests or people searching for Firefox or Opera after formating? How many of them are school PCs? How many users are from poor countries in Asia, Africa or South America? How many of them are younger than 12 or older than 65? (I guess MOST OF THEM)

According to w3schools about 30% of Internet users still use IE. Many of these PCs are infected (because there are tons of exploits especially for IEs - check Secunia), wouldn’t it be better if some companies will block IE users?

I don’t want small bloggers or company sites to block IE connections because I know it WILL kill them and IE users will go somewhere else but I’d block every IE request to Facebook for example. Twitter too. Maybe Digg? Myspace? It’s risky for Google because of Bing (they will never block IE ;)).

What do you think? Maybe not about “blocking” IE but about NOT supporting it at all or partial support?

yes

me

:cool:

i’ve been using computers professionally – i.e. getting paid – since 1971, and i’ve written css since netscape 4 and ie4

and i ~love~ ie8

I don’t have any issues with IE7+ and IE is my default browser for everything.

I provide validated xhtml strict and css and very rarely nowadays run into browser incompatibility issues.

I support IE7+, FF2+, Opera 9+, Safari for Windows and Chrome.

I want you both dead :smiley:

No, seriously, IE7? It’s over 4 years old. Why do people even bother about IE6 or 7? Do you support also 800x600 screens? They were popular when IE7 got released :wink:

Come on. I can understand people who drive ancient cars, but few years old browsers? IE7 has at least 2 good documented highly critical, never fixed bugs that allow attackers to FULL system access from remote and the only way to prevent these attacks is to “avoid sites that you don’t know” or “do not browse untrusted ones”. Antivirus won’t help. Firewall won’t help. Nothing will.

IE8 also has one highly critical and one less critical hole (and this one will be never fixed because is known since the day IE8 was released, but nobody cared).

For example Opera has no unfixed critical holes for over a decade…

So it’s not even about standards - you like your Internet Explorer like a man can like a woman - especially the easy one. But don’t forget your woman has AIDS. And it will cause trouble, sooner or later.

And about standards - there are no “issues” with IE7 or 8? Right click even on sitepoint.com. Choose source. Figure out what “<!-- alex’s ie specific styles –>” stands for. And all the stylesheets below? :smiley:

And that’s nothing compared to messy markup caused by IE compatibility (without last-child for example you still have to add different class for your last elements etc. etc.). Lots of superfluous ids, classes or even elements (and I’m not even starting talk about html5shiv…).

Additionally IE eats loads of memory and is SLOW (especially when it comes to JavaScript). So are you guys masochists or what? :smiley:

I disagree :slight_smile:

but don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to get you or anyone else to change your preferred browser.

everyone can choose whatever browser they are most comfortable with and I will continue to use IE as I see fit regardles of what browsers other people prefer to use until it gives me a valid reason to change to another default browser.

of course – since that’s what i use myself

:smiley:

Confess, Rudy… you looooove going against trends :lol:

As a browser, any will do… but it would be great if IE had a wider support for CSS as other browsers do. But I guess we will have to wait a few years more sigh

Microsoft has never been an innovator. Everything Microsoft has ever done has been thought up by others outside the company. Microsoft did not invent DOS, they resold it. Microsoft did not come up with the concept of a windowed GUI, Xerox did. Microsoft was blindsided by the internet and licensed their first browser. Microsoft did not innovate the video game platform, cell phones, multimedia software, search engines, or anything.

What Microsoft does well is use their operating system dominance to put the squeeze on those that do innovate. How many times has Microsoft copied something and failed to overtake the market? Think Silverlight versus Adobe Flash. Think about how the default search engine in IE was MSN. There are countless examples.

Microsoft is nothing more than a big bully that steals other people’s ideas and uses its heft via its operating system monopoly to stifle innovation. If not for Firefox, most people would still be using IE6. The only reason Microsoft started developing IE again is because Firefox produced a superior browser that was stealing market share.

Computer technology has always built on previous technology. Look at linux, for the most part linux is a direct copy of unix. Like most technology companies Microsoft has done it’s share of innovation as well as improving other technology. And they’ve done it pretty well, making a lot of other people jealous along the way.

$00000000000.02

I agree with you but I don’t think that Linux is really a good example. Linux was created because Unix was unfamiliar to most users and they wanted it to be popular. That was not going to happen with a black screen OS. It needed to have the graphic GUI that Windows and Macintosh had so the learning curve was not so hard.

Basing your software on top on another is one thing. You recognized that it is based on it and you add something on top of it (in the case of Linux,the graphic interface)

Microsoft doesn’t base their software… they do an exact copy although I have to say that they are great to improve user experience. And, of course, they would never say that what they do is based on someone else’s software… :slight_smile:

Over the past couple of years Microsoft have done pretty well in coming into markets with dominating forces. The Xbox is a highly successful console, even when they joined a saturated market with Nintendo and Sega the big powerhouses, and Sony looking to spend big on their console. Windows Phone 7 is also about to join a saturated market with iOS and Android, and so far it seems that WP7 might do pretty well for itself.

I don’t think Internet Explorer will be good for a while, simply because it’s designed by a large company with its own intentions. If I were Microsoft I’d go as far as to rewrite Internet Explorer from scratch, making it as upgradeable and extensible as possible. Microsoft won’t produce a good browser until they take it out of the politics within Microsoft and look upon the project with new eyes.

I stopped using IE right before version 7 came out and it was all FireFox from there, now mostly Chrome. I have no clue what the difference between IE 6, 7, 8, or 9 are besides maybe the GUI a little. They all seem bulky to me. (I don’t think I used 9 though)

I know FireFox is bulky too (compared to Chrome), but Explorer has a strange unique MS bulky feeling to it.

I get the exact same thing when I use any version of IE. I don’t know if I would describe it as a bulkiness, but it definitely feels clunky. Pages in Firefox just work for me, whereas in IE it’s almost like I’m trying to do a deal with the devil every single time I check.

It is funny how FF used to be quite light when it started, and now is really bulky. Of course, I love it. You can’t have too many interest plug-ins :lol:

I hope that Chrome doesn’t follow the same path though.

I agree with this. They are indeed bullies, they’ve been great at dominating the operating system, but any company that bullies, steals, and squeezes falls eventually. They are basically hanging on by their os.

Anyway, back to why they won’t change. I don’t think it’s because they are “uncapable” of making one just as good as other mainstream browsers, if they really wanted to copy them they could easily. But the answer is THEY DON’T WANT TO. My reasoning behind WHY they wouldn’t is because sites were designing specifically for ie6 for a period… and forgetting about other browsers. Which means if it looks sh*tty in other browsers, and not theirs, it’s good for microsoft. So I basically look at microsoft as “what’s best in our interest”, not “what’s best in the user’s interest and how can we change people’s experiences for the better”. OS groups do this, but not big money makers like microsoft. Don’t take that as ALL big money makers, google for instance isn’t like this at all. Their goal is to change the world for the better and business model is to do that first, make money second. So few companies are like this, that’s why I love and trust google applications so much.