MicroSoft Employees: Our Browser is Garbage

MS' idea of innovating in the browser was the creation of all that crap that would only work in their browser. We don't need them to innovate in this department; we just need them to catch up to crazy radical ideas like standards.

What's worse, is that IE has display bugs (based on W3 specifications; that is, what we refer to as "standards"). But, because versions up to IE6 would not recognize certain ways of writing CSS, IE-only workarounds were possible to make up for IE display errors. That is: write something for IE, and follow it by something that only non-IE browsers would implement. A hack, to be sure, but still a hack.

From what I understand, and I truly hope I'm wrong, IE7 will now start reading these workarounds. Luckily, only for strict doctype:

"If you are using IE7 (you are MSDN subscriber or received a copy at the PDC) you may notice major sites breaking due to the use of CSS hacks and the strict doctype."

Is that a drag, or what? The above quote is from the MSDN blog. They could have made it a whole lot easier simply by cleaning up the display bugs but *not* allowing IE7 to read the alternate methods of writing CSS.

I do hope the situation is better than all this.

but as a user I have had to go to IE alot in the past 6 months or so. Sites broken in FF or Flock. Lots of forms that fail without notice, and ActiveX controls added to otherwise standards-compliant pages, so you don't know it's broke until you assume it's an IE/FF incmpatibility and try it in IE.

For design, FF renders best for sure. But for forms these days, I'm going to IE more than ever out of necessity.

That's the legacy of web designers who designed "for IE" based on a lack of knowledge of Web history -- lacking (or denying) the knowledge that Netscape was once the market leader, they assumed that IE would always have an almost complete market share. Now it doesn't.

The rest of us (sometimes I think that's three people <grin>) designed for cross-browser compatibility, which is what we called it. Elsewhere (I hung out in SEO forums) there arose the whole Web Standards group, doing the same thing ... so there *are* sites out there that work in multiple browsers.

I fear for the IE-only designers; can you imagine telling clients that the sites you designed for them are broken in other browsers? That your lack of foresight caused them a loss of business? Or having someone else explain it to them?

I broached this subject for years, but was pooh-poohed. Unfortunately, the "it will never happen" scenario is here.

Even on a Mac there are some websites (usually it is a form issue) that I can only get to work with the Mac version of IE which is a terrible browser. That is the only reason I keep IE/Mac around.

Diane, just out of curiosity, how long have you been designing cross-browser compatible sites? I don't think of myself as a designer, so I have an excuse, but I didn't get serious about doing that until two or three years ago.

I started designing sites commercially around ... 1997-8?

At that time, Netscape had something like 80% market share and a HUGE pro-Netscape following. They were selling their Communicator suite (browser, email, composer and something else) for $129 retail but free for personal use. Then Microsoft released its browser for free and, in response, Netscape followed suit shortly thereafter -- which meant that Netscape had no income from its browser. And so went history. (I always thought Netscape should have dropped its price to $10 instead, as I thought that plenty of the pro-Netscape camp might have paid a nominal sum to support "their" browser. I'd wanted to send them an email suggesting it but, as I was just starting out, felt that an email from some little web designer in Los Angeles to a mighty Web company would be ignored. Then in stepped AOL with checkbook in hand.)

At any rate, back then I was reading everything I could get my "hands" on ... design, usability, SEO (before it was called that). And one of the mantras was "cross-browser compatibility"; one heard that drumbeat consistently and everywhere. As it made ultimate sense to me, even when major market share shifted to IE, I never dropped it.

That also meant I went kind of slow (cautiously) with implementing CSS. A couple of years ago, I decided that the time was right, or right enough, to go further with CSS. (I finally even gave up supporting NS4.x -- geez!) I've generally found that, if you design "in" a more standards-compliant browser, it's easier to make sites look identical in all modern browsers by implementing the few workarounds necessary to get around the IE display bugs.

And now we have this upcoming ridiculous scenario -- where the workarounds for IE are suddenly not going to work in IE7 ... which may or may not be so standards-compliant after all.

Sorry to all -- this is one topic that makes me, well, cranky. And publicly so. :)

Being first doesn't always mean best and IE4/5 buried them so once Netscape disappeared so did MS's need to keep advancing the product. However, now FireFox and Opera have both had sufficient time to catch up and pass them in the standards race and people not willing to wait on MS are bailing to the next best thing.

That's just how MS stole the browser business, ironic it's how they might lose it as well.

BTW, I could tell you some great tales about how MS clobbered the email industry as well as I was the development manager on the #1 Windows email product and MS bought #2 and released it for free as Outlook and email hasn't advanced whatsoever since. Ideas still on the drawing board in the early 90's still never saw the light of day after Outlook came out and never will now as there's no money to be made with the next evolution of email.

The point being, FireFox and Opera need some massive backing (YAHOO/GOOGLE/IBM) with real money on the table so there's real money to be made by the developers and start evolving this industry once again or the fate of email could befall the browser as well.

You have a point there, IncrediBILL, about Netscape -- though when it first came out, it was terrific (I thought, at least). It just didn't move fast enough over a period of time -- and people kept using NS4.x, and so there was the problem.

There's a reason why IE sucks and why it hasn't been updated. Microsoft and Bill Gates spend all their time and effort on everything but the operating system. Case in point: In challenge to iTunes, Microsoft unveils music service and other entertainment plans.

Microsoft is always playing catchup with their products. The problem with Microsoft is that they're trying to be everything to everybody. No company can do that...well maybe Google. ;-)