Channel 9 Forums - Coffeehouse - IE8

Coffeehouse - IE8

Rossj — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 19:12:45 GMT

Good old Dave (sorry bout the old, just a figure of speech) hits the nail on the head ... why oh why did the IE team let him go? At least we had some feedback when Dave was involved.

From his blog..

DMassy wrote:

I do agree though that the IE team needs to start talking to the developer community on a much more consistent basis. After the release of IE7 all online chats stopped. The online chats had been taking place every month since well before IE7 was under development. After the release of IE7 the bug reporting system was withdrawn. There have been vague promises that it was only temporary but it has now been almost a year and no replacement is in sight.

The IE team does not have to give exact details of IE8 but their complete silence shows a complete lack of respect for the developer community.

I'm not personally that interested in IE8 right now, I've been disappointed once (well more than once) and I am more than happy with my alternative choices - but do you have an opinion on how quiet the IE team has been? Any chance of Rory going over to investigate?

Coffeehouse - IE8

jsampsonPC — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 19:24:21 GMT

There's no excuse for this. I doubt a visit from Rory would crack them infront of the developer-community. I appreciate Dave's honesty, and it's people like him that earn the respect of the community; not the teams themselves.

IE is just frustrating. Very few developers enjoy their jobs because of its unwillingness to comply with suggested standards. It's developer-base is small. It's not easy to develop addon's for (Just ask Sven with his find-as-you-type).

This is just ridiculous. Microsoft has the biggest purse, and yet the weakest product sometimes. All they have to do to get me, and maybe acouple of you too, interested again is to make the crap extendable with .NET code, and START LISTENING TO US!

If you guys want us to use your ephing' product, open your damn eyes and ears a little!

Coffeehouse - IE8

stevo_ — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 19:35:50 GMT

Foolish to believe Microsoft on that one.. they will only develop IE when its a benefit for them..

Expect IE8 in a couple of years, with not nearly enough improvement..

Saying that, Safari is a horrible browser, Apple needs to get off the bandwagon of 'pimping ones browser speed' and actually make a browser that works well.. I mean, god, I don't think its faster at all, but if it is, its because its only half of what other browsers are..

Its the replacement for 'IE For Mac' for me, which has to be the spawn of satan.

Coffeehouse - IE8

DMassy — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 19:43:43 GMT

It is sad. I don't know how else to say it. I only hope the management of the IE tema will wake up and start to engage with customers. That doesn't mean going Open Source. It does mean having an ongoing conversation. A conersation that has ceased since IE7 was released nearly a year ago.
-Dave
www.dmassy.com

Coffeehouse - IE8

Minh — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 19:53:21 GMT

jsampsonPC wrote:

IE is just frustrating. Very few developers enjoy their jobs because of its unwillingness to comply with suggested standards. It's developer-base is small. It's not easy to develop addon's for (Just ask Sven with his find-as-you-type).

If you think about it, making it easy to develop add-ons for IE is the worst thing you can do for the IE profit center (if there is such a thing). People will start calling MS tech support eating up profits.

Maybe the IE team is like cicadas we get here in Ohio. Only coming up from underground once every 17 years, make lots of noise, then gone again.

Don't worry guys, 17 years is only 16 years away.

Coffeehouse - IE8

jsampsonPC — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 20:14:18 GMT

Minh wrote:

jsampsonPC wrote:

IE is just frustrating. Very few developers enjoy their jobs because of its unwillingness to comply with suggested standards. It's developer-base is small. It's not easy to develop addon's for (Just ask Sven with his find-as-you-type).

If you think about it, making it easy to develop add-ons for IE is the worst thing you can do for the IE profit center (if there is such a thing). People will start calling MS tech support eating up profits.

Maybe the IE team is like cicadas we get here in Ohio. Only coming up from underground once every 17 years, make lots of noise, then gone again.

Don't worry guys, 17 years is only 16 years away.

Well, I'll put it this way - if the IE team doesn't start this "conversation" that we all desire, and IE8 is nothing what the community desires, then I'm going to give up on working with IE. Seriously. I'm going to become the biggest FireFox fanboy you guys have ever seen if this happens

Coffeehouse - IE8

Minh — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 20:19:16 GMT

jsampsonPC wrote:

Seriously. I'm going to become the biggest FireFox fanboy you guys have ever seen if this happens

No you wont
But maybe the worse thing that can happen will happen. IE loses its 80% marketshare. Maybe a split 50/50 for IE/FireFox.

Now EVERYONE will have to develop for 2 browsers Or we'll just use Silverlight 1.1.... wait a minute... MS, it's just crazy enough to work

Coffeehouse - IE8

Bas — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 20:22:45 GMT

I'm noticing that a lot of MS teams are using their 'blogs' as vehicles to post press releases. There's no conversation whatsoever. If there are comments between the pingbacks, they'll mostly be ignored.

The WHS team was, and still is, pretty excellent. They engage in conversation on forums and their blog. The IE team blog is dismal, and the Live ID blog is a joke. Over 6 months between updates, and no replies to questions in comments.

Coffeehouse - IE8

Rossj — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 20:27:53 GMT

Bas wrote:

The WHS team was, and still is, pretty excellent. They engage in conversation on forums and their blog. The IE team blog is dismal, and the Live ID blog is a joke.

I guess this just goes to show how diverse Microsoft is in its approach to communication - personally I'd prefer a more unified approach but that is just me, and probably not possible.

Coffeehouse - IE8

DMassy — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 20:35:38 GMT

Bas wrote:

I'm noticing that a lot of MS teams are using their 'blogs' as vehicles to post press releases. There's no conversation whatsoever. If there are comments between the pingbacks, they'll mostly be ignored.

The WHS team was, and still is, pretty excellent. They engage in conversation on forums and their blog. The IE team blog is dismal, and the Live ID blog is a joke. Over 6 months between updates, and no replies to questions in comments.

The problem with team blogs is that they are the official word of the team. Therefore they are very careful about what they post. I agree though that some teams blogs are a complete joke. At least Eric Lawrence the creator of Fiddler and a Program Manager on the IE team does respond frequently to comments on the IE team blog even though it isn't his job.
It'd be great if there were more individual blogs from the IE team such as Chris Wilson's. Oh wait, that's really a joke too! A work based blog with an occasional entry about cats. I think people expect something a little more on topic from the IE platform architect. It appears that the IE leadership does not understand that value of clear communication and even worse the damage done when they start such communication and then stop.

-Dave
www.Dmassy.com

Coffeehouse - IE8

Harlequin — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 20:38:56 GMT

Screw the developer this and developer that. Microsoft promised us, right to our face, that they wouldn't let another IE6 blunder happen again. Having regular updates and new versions coming every so often.

Coffeehouse - IE8

jsampsonPC — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 20:50:55 GMT

DMassy wrote:

...It appears that the IE leadership does not understand that value of clear communication and even worse the damage done when they start such communication and then stop...

Reminds me of a marriage...it's like, you're getting all worked up and then BAM! She says, "I'm just not in the mood right now...".

#balls {

color: #0000FF;

}

Coffeehouse - IE8

JohnnyAwesome — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 20:57:19 GMT

I am a webcentric dev. So, browsers can be my blessing or curse.

I have hated abandoning IE as my browser of choice. Long before IE6 became long on the tooth, I was just simply floored by IE6. The things we were doing at first made me want to get an "E" tattoo, I swear! (but I am not cool enough to sport a MS tattoo. I'll leave that to Petzold).

Then as things evolved and changed, like so many others I shifted to FireFox as my target development browser. I couldn't wait for IE7. I too read all of the postings and saw community feedback and thought "This time MS is going to 'get it'!. This thing is going to rule!"

The heart break after IE7 was first installed on my machine was, I hate to admit, kind of actually real. I literally put a lot of hope into IE7 being the sh!t.

It didn't happen as we know. I am still designing for other browsers and checking IE secodnary and hacking for it.

So, when I read hear about IE8 my intial reaction is, "who cares?" I am not going to participate in any forums, offer feedback, or rush to use beta versions again. MS needs to earn me back as a developer to their browser platform.

Coffeehouse - IE8

stevo_ — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 20:59:11 GMT

Unless its a legally bound contract I don't think you could hold them to it..

The thing with Microsoft is, its an umbrella for a bunch of teams.. some teams are great.. I mean, god, Microsoft can make some seriously amazing software.. other teams are not so, sadly, they still come under the name of 'Microsoft'..

I'm sure its a ton easier to say this than it is to execute, but Microsoft really need to manage their appearance better by ensuring their teams are being the best they can..

Any direct contact I've heard from IE developers regarding why its so hard to get it right, I'm told the same thing over and over - 'hardly anything is precisely specified on the web'.. but thats it.. theres the excuse, this is why its not working.. but theres never anything to prove their looking to make it better..

Frequent updates to IE, starting a rich community between standards and other developers both developing their own internet explorer alternatives (such as firefox) or developing for the web..

Odd as it is, Microsoft are in an important lead position with the web.. and they need to be the people that get the ball rolling, for a greater thing than money making and competition.. which is so ensure the web progresses faster and helps humanity itself evolve (think of how big a thing the web and email is to modern society)..

This can't be something to be done alone, but Microsoft sure are the people with enough position and power to start a union..

Coffeehouse - IE8

Elmer — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 23:05:31 GMT

jsampsonPC wrote:

Well, I'll put it this way - if the IE team doesn't start this "conversation" that we all desire, and IE8 is nothing what the community desires, then I'm going to give up on working with IE. Seriously. I'm going to become the biggest FireFox fanboy you guys have ever seen if this happens

I'm already there. I would consider myself to be essentially an MS-centric developer, but like all other MS-centric devs I know, I can recognise a good product when I see one, and I now use FireFox as my primary web-dev target.

FireFox is now my "correct" version, and IE is now a "compromised" version -- while Safari is a "retarded" version and Opera is an "eccentric" version

It shouldn't take a genius to work out what the developer community wants... there is a template for MS to copy... FireFox.

How hard can it be for MS to figure this out out..? Interact with the dev community and get the plumbing sorted first, to make the thing competitive with FireFox and to get the support of web-devs... and *THEN* differentiate it with service and gui features for the end-users.

I tend to view MS's approach to IE as being akin to reorganising the deck-chairs on the Titanic.

Coffeehouse - IE8

W3bbo — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 23:24:51 GMT

Minh wrote:

Now EVERYONE will have to develop for 2 browsers

I'd just like to remind everyone that you're meant to develop to the formal specification, not to any particular implementation.

Coffeehouse - IE8

Minh — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 23:37:47 GMT

W3bbo wrote:

Minh wrote:
Now EVERYONE will have to develop for 2 browsers

I'd just like to remind everyone that you're meant to develop to the formal specification, not to any particular implementation.

IE has formal specs

Coffeehouse - IE8

figuerres — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 00:52:55 GMT

DMassy wrote:

It is sad. I don't know how else to say it. I only hope the management of the IE tema will wake up and start to engage with customers. That doesn't mean going Open Source. It does mean having an ongoing conversation. A conersation that has ceased since IE7 was released nearly a year ago.
-Dave
www.dmassy.com

WOW !

well I have to say that I see some common signs of what I think are the same illness all over MSFT.

in general:

too many different directions.

too many different projects.

too many captains.

no real clear "General" , no single clear "long term plan"

plenty of good ideas, good projects ....

but like a large band / orchestra with out a conductor you tend to get noise not music.

I hope I am wrong and that MSFT gets it together ...

look at some of the posts here about the C9 Team and C9 V 4

other projects, trying to make some super software for 4-5 sites.
two ways to fix that:

a) focus on one site and get it done.
b) expand the team.

I would pick "A" but that's me.

Coffeehouse - IE8

LaBomba — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 02:26:23 GMT

It's not surprising, you could tell quite often that even when certain members of the IE team (except for Dave Massy) posted here on C9 by the tone of their posts, they weren't too interested in what anybody else had to say.

They're hardcore geeks, and they have a narrow mindset on what they think is right, they're not really prepared to listen to others. They'll do what they think is best.

When you don't have to earn the marketshare...I suppose that's how you'll behave.

Like a bunch of spoiled brats.

The end.

Somebody from the IE team care to respond...or are you guys too busy trying to copy Firefox?

Coffeehouse - IE8

PaoloM — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 03:14:21 GMT

Do you seriously expect any kind of reply to that trash?

Coffeehouse - IE8

DigitalDud — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 03:21:25 GMT

I'm sure the IE team has done their market research. Just because they're not blogging to the community at large, who are a bunch of jerks anyway, doesn't mean they don't know what people want in the browser.

Coffeehouse - IE8

Rossj — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 07:54:59 GMT

DigitalDud wrote:

I'm sure the IE team has done their market research. Just because they're not blogging to the community at large, who are a bunch of jerks anyway, doesn't mean they don't know what people want in the browser.

If they knew what people wanted, FF would have no marketshare, after all if you have the perfect browser already with your OS - why go to the trouble of changing to a third-party one? And how can they know what people want if they don't communicate with them.

Why make the pretence at creating blogs to be more transparent and communicative and then just close them up when you have shipped your product? People (devs specifically) DO want to know what is coming so that they can make strategic decisions for the future and at the moment NOBODY outside the IE team knows what is coming down the pipe.

In defense of the IE team they have put up with sooo much cr@p and nasty comments that from a more personal angle I can 100% understand why nobody would want to put themselves through that.

Dave, I'd be interested to know a little about how the IE team was structured - is there one single person who has the final decision on any particular feature, or is it more of a committee?

Coffeehouse - IE8

DMassy — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 14:04:42 GMT

Rossj wrote:

DigitalDud wrote:
I'm sure the IE team has done their market research. Just because they're not blogging to the community at large, who are a bunch of jerks anyway, doesn't mean they don't know what people want in the browser.

If they knew what people wanted, FF would have no marketshare, after all if you have the perfect browser already with your OS - why go to the trouble of changing to a third-party one? And how can they know what people want if they don't communicate with them.

Why make the pretence at creating blogs to be more transparent and communicative and then just close them up when you have shipped your product? People (devs specifically) DO want to know what is coming so that they can make strategic decisions for the future and at the moment NOBODY outside the IE team knows what is coming down the pipe.

In defense of the IE team they have put up with sooo much cr@p and nasty comments that from a more personal angle I can 100% understand why nobody would want to put themselves through that.

Dave, I'd be interested to know a little about how the IE team was structured - is there one single person who has the final decision on any particular feature, or is it more of a committee?

As with every group at Microsoft I've ever encountered groups of people are involved in nearly every decision. Clearly though there is someone at the top who has to make a decision if there is deadlock and may need to make tradeoffs about what resources are focused on what areas. They never make such decisions in isolation though.
-Dave
www.dmassy.com

Coffeehouse - IE8

Sven Groot — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 14:22:13 GMT

Rossj wrote:

DigitalDud wrote:
I'm sure the IE team has done their market research. Just because they're not blogging to the community at large, who are a bunch of jerks anyway, doesn't mean they don't know what people want in the browser.

If they knew what people wanted, FF would have no marketshare

That's not true, because it assumes that everybody wants the same thing.

Coffeehouse - IE8

jsampsonPC — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 14:33:35 GMT

Sven Groot wrote:

Rossj wrote:

DigitalDud wrote:
I'm sure the IE team has done their market research. Just because they're not blogging to the community at large, who are a bunch of jerks anyway, doesn't mean they don't know what people want in the browser.

If they knew what people wanted, FF would have no marketshare

That's not true, because it assumes that everybody wants the same thing.

True - and I don't want IE to mimic firefox, because then firefox will always be one step ahead. I want IE to start THINKING. Use the billion-dollar-brains the good Bill gave you!

Coffeehouse - IE8

Bent Rasmussen — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 20:04:27 GMT

jsampsonPC wrote:

True - and I don't want IE to mimic firefox, because then firefox will always be one step ahead. I want IE to start THINKING. Use the billion-dollar-brains the good Bill gave you!

They did.

They came up with Avalon.

They then resurrected the IE team from the dead, developed IE 7, developed Silverlight, and have new versions of IE and Silverlight in progress.

Recent signs seem to indicate a more genuine interest in web standards. But I'm guessing HTML/CSS/DOM et al are also somewhat being seen as a "necessary evil", so to speak, as the main energy is put into Avalon and Silverlight, the true next generation technologies*. After all, they were developed because HTML/CSS/DOM etc were not up to the task.

And I have to agree with that. It's a patchwork of technologies whereas Avalon and Silverlight are uniqely integrated and thought-out as a whole from the beginning.

Avalon being the Windows premium experience and Silverlight being the cross-platform, cross-browser "web thingy".

I wouldn't mind some more resources being put into browser development though. HTML and friends aren't going away anytime soon and we'd all like it to be a great experience while we use it. I've had a lot of crashes or freezes on last.fm, I'm hoping the crash reporting system will catch it and IE 8 will be more stable.

And by the way Dave - how I miss your cool presentation videos. But your videos were a bit too cool for their own good.

* I'm looking forward to the next-next generation. I'm thinking it'll maybe be a functional language implementation with a high level of abstraction and device independence as well as specialization. We'll see when it arrives.

Coffeehouse - IE8

GoddersUK — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 13:54:19 GMT

Look who picked up on this thread...

Coffeehouse - IE8

GoddersUK — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 15:35:33 GMT

Just found this.

I haven't listened to the interview(which looks interesting) but the post is interesting.

Coffeehouse - IE8

Tom Servo — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 17:35:31 GMT

PaoloM wrote:

Do you seriously expect any kind of reply to that trash?

What trash? Better not be saying the Massy quotes, because kool-aid and all that.

Coffeehouse - IE8

PaoloM — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 18:34:53 GMT

Tom Servo wrote:

PaoloM wrote:
Do you seriously expect any kind of reply to that trash?

What trash? Better not be saying the Massy quotes, because kool-aid and all that.

My post was after LaBomba's one.

And no disrespect for Dave at all, but the fact that someone leaves Microsoft doesn't make him automatically a saint or something.

Again, this is not directed to Dave in this case, but I saw too many times people leaving a company and suddenly their cred going thru the roof even if they kept saying the same things...

Coffeehouse - IE8

Christian Liensberger — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 18:47:45 GMT

I hope we get an easier way to develop extensions for IE8 Perhaps even in .NET - who knows - perhaps somebody solves this "one CLR version per process" thing... who knows...

Coffeehouse - IE8

Bas — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 07:34:01 GMT

Agreed. Give me an "IE Extension" project in Visual Studio that lets me interact with the browser in C# through a nice set of classes. Of course, as Sven explained, the one CLR per process thing is a stumbling block, but hey, they're Microsoft, they own all the technologies at play here. Make them work for us.