Channel 9 Forums - Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Bas — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 08:46:23 GMT

Apart from the many, many people and groups I'd like to see an interview with, the IE team has to be at the top of my list.

There's a lot of controversy about their silence, especially after Microsoft's expressed wish to upgrade IE on a regular basis. It's not so much the lack of new versions of IE, but the complete and utter silence that's irking a lot of people.

A quick dropping in with the camera to hear how they're all doing and what's happening next would be a perfect way to take away all that. And in my opinion Channel 9, being all about the conversation, would be the ideal platform for it.

Any videos with the IE team scheduled in the near future? Any chance of slipping one in ahead of the others?

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Rowan — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 09:12:40 GMT

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

cornelius — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 09:37:56 GMT

Rowan wrote:

+1

they are either working on a firefox killer and are keeping silent so not to raise our hopes

or

the team was disbanded and we will never see another IE version and they are keeping silent as theres nothing to talk about

but yea complete lack of info is disturbing

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Christian Liensberger — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 11:33:44 GMT

Rowan wrote:

+1

++ (if they are ready to do an interview!)

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Vesuvius — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 12:05:02 GMT

Oh yes, this team is certainly at the top of my list. Maybe a going deep?

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Herbie Smith — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 12:05:20 GMT

littleguru wrote:

Rowan wrote:
+1

++ (if they are ready to do an interview!)

Only when they're ready -- too many broken promises from Microsoft in the past.
Wait until they've got the finalised feature-set, at least.

Transparency appears to be a double-edged sword

Herbie

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Bas — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 12:13:11 GMT

I don't mean an interview in the sense of "tell us what features are going to be in IE8" but more one of those casual style ones that Charles did a while ago with Dr. Sneath. Just pop into the office for ten minutes, and have a casual chat. No need to reveal anything, just something that'll break the one year silence.

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Herbie Smith — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 12:16:46 GMT

Bas wrote:

I don't mean an interview in the sense of "tell us what features are going to be in IE8" but more one of those casual style ones that Charles did a while ago with Dr. Sneath. Just pop into the office for ten minutes, and have a casual chat. No need to reveal anything, just something that'll break the one year silence.

Ah, I see. More like a "Hello? Anybody home?" type of interview.
I guess that would reassure a lot of people. You could see if they all look calm and collected, or completely frazzled

Herbie

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Sven Groot — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 12:19:53 GMT

I currently know only two things about IE8:
- It's being worked on.
- It's not ready yet.

That's all they could tell me.

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Bas — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 12:27:00 GMT

Sven Groot wrote:

- It's being worked on.

Are you sure?

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Sven Groot — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 12:28:03 GMT

Bas wrote:

Sven Groot wrote:

- It's being worked on.

Are you sure?

That's what my sources say.

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Herbie Smith — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 12:40:02 GMT

Sven Groot wrote:

Bas wrote:

Sven Groot wrote:

- It's being worked on.

Are you sure?

That's what my sources say.

You have sources? Ooh, how exciting! I wish I had sources.
I have sauces, but not sources

Do they say anything else?

Herbie

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Sven Groot — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 13:03:16 GMT

Dr Herbie wrote:

You have sources? Ooh, how exciting! I wish I had sources.
I have sauces, but not sources

I have sauces too.

Basically the story is this: Eric Lawrence contacted me about a bug in Find As You Type, which I couldn't reproduce. Then he confessed to running it on an internal build of IE Next and that it was their bug.

I told him I would need access to the internal builds to check it out, but so far no luck.

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

LaBomba — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 13:05:44 GMT

Sven Groot wrote:

I told him I would need access to the internal builds to check it out, but so far no luck.

Haha, nice try though.

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Bas — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 13:19:05 GMT

Sven Groot wrote:

Basically the story is this: Eric Lawrence contacted me about a bug in Find As You Type, which I couldn't reproduce. Then he confessed to running it on an internal build of IE Next and that it was their bug.

I told him I would need access to the internal builds to check it out, but so far no luck.

If he emails you again, tell him to allow for a way to scroll a found word to the middle of the view.

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

stevo_ — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 14:07:21 GMT

ie next is just a short name right? I mean, whats after next?

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Herbie Smith — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 14:18:52 GMT

stevo_ wrote:

ie next is just a short name right? I mean, whats after next?

Could be 'Next but one"?

Here we flag for 'Next Release' and 'Next Next Release'

Herbie

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Sven Groot — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 14:24:31 GMT

creditcard wrote:

I bet most of the IE team is working on Silverlight.

I'm fairly sure that's not the same team.

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Dorian Muthig — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 14:53:03 GMT

Dr Herbie wrote:

Transparency appears to be a double-edged sword

Reminds me of something... somewhat... translucent... I think.

Wanna see something too

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Massif — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 15:02:45 GMT

creditcard wrote:

...you really don't want to take web developers by surprise.

Why? Are they dangerous?

Fictitious news source wrote:

13 killed in Web Developer Frenzy!

"They caught me by surprise, it was instinct!" Cries a web developer who cannot be named for legal reasons.
Calls for further restrictions on web developers, and a central web developer database have gained promenance over the years. This latest tragic incident will only add fuel to these demands.

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

BruceMorgan — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 16:57:00 GMT

Sven Groot wrote:

creditcard wrote:
I bet most of the IE team is working on Silverlight.

I'm fairly sure that's not the same team.

The two have nothing to do with each other from an organizational perspective.

Silverlight is off with .NET and other developer technologies in DevDiv.

IE is part of the Windows & Windows Live team, under Steven Sinofsky, and that's part of Platform & Services Division under Kevin Johnson.

Remember, folks, Microsoft has tens of thousands of poeple in product development.

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Bas — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 10:06:57 GMT

Hmm, according to LiveSide, there will be disclosures on IE8 "during the Mix08 timeframe". In other words, four months to go.

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Christian Liensberger — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 11:37:14 GMT

BruceMorgan wrote:

IE is part of the Windows & Windows Live team, under Steven Sinofsky, and that's part of Platform & Services Division under Kevin Johnson.

Remember, folks, Microsoft has tens of thousands of poeple in product development.

Steven Sinofsky...

Why should they abandon IE again? There is no real reason: right now with Firefox getting more popular each day

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Charles — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 13:48:37 GMT

Make no mistake, Sinofsky does believe in Transparency. It's just that he is very cautious with respect to revealing information that may or may not be relevant in the context of reality (think WinFS and several other Vista constructs that never came to be based on the realities inherent in making quality software that you also ship).

We will definitely have IE8 coverage on C9, but only when they, the IE team, have realistic things to talk about that won't set expectations improperly....

I'd hazzard to guess that the IE 8 team is very busy at work on the next great IE. I'd also state that I have no real idea what they are doing, exactly, and that's fine. The point is, they ARE doing...

C

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Christian Liensberger — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 13:55:19 GMT

Charles wrote:

Make no mistake, Sinofsky does believe in Transparency. It's just that he is very cautious with respect to revealing information that may or may not be relevant in the context of reality (think WinFS and several other Vista constructs that never came to be based on the realities inherent in making quality software that you also ship).

We will definitely have IE8 coverage on C9, but only when they, the IE team, have realistic things to talk about that won't set expectations improperly....

I'd hazzard to guess that the IE 8 team is very busy at work on the next great IE. I'd also state that I have no real idea what they are doing, exactly, and that's fine. The point is, they ARE doing...

C

No words agains Sinofsky. He DELIVERS what he says But he doesn't say much until he delivers. But it's fine. I'm in no hurry since I'm happy with IE7 as it is right now

How much do I love this minimized UI! - lovely.

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

cornelius — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 09:53:10 GMT

looks like the system works

the IE Team has heard our concerns (eventually)

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2007/12/05/internet-explorer-8.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/petel/archive/2007/12/05/ie8-and-vpc-s.aspx

please please microsoft remember your own "developers,developers,developers" pitch and actually listen to developers who are suffering immensely from current versions of Internet explorer

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

arunmib — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 10:28:42 GMT

I certainly see no reason for IE being out......
I have a doubt? What will they name IE after version 9. Will it be IE 10 or something follows IE....lets say IE X or IE Nxt or .......

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

cornelius — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 10:32:12 GMT

arunmib wrote:

I certainly see no reason for IE being out......
I have a doubt? What will they name IE after version 9. Will it be IE 10 or something follows IE....lets say IE X or IE Nxt or .......

it will be called

Internet Explorer 2030

and will come in several versions:

Internet Explorer 2030 Home Basic
Internet Explorer 2030 Home Premium
Internet Explorer 2030 Business Basic
Internet Explorer 2030 Business Pro
Internet Explorer 2030 Ultimate
Internet Explorer 2030 Media Center edition
Internet Explorer 2030 Mobile

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Charles — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 17:35:52 GMT

Be careful. You may just get what you're asking for
C

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Christian Liensberger — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 17:37:38 GMT

Charles wrote:

Be careful. You may just get what you're asking for
C

Internet Explorer for the Micro Framework?

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

arunmib — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 04:49:46 GMT

what do you think could be the problem with IE team, for not being able to deliver frequent versions? :O
AFAIK it should not be as tough as writing an OS or something like VS......any ideas anybody????[A]

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Massif — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 09:37:27 GMT

arunmib wrote:

what do you think could be the problem with IE team, for not being able to deliver frequent versions?
AFAIK it should not be as tough as writing an OS or something like VS......any ideas anybody????

A few possible reasons:

IE is the primary attack vector for most exploits.

Also, CSS is complicated. (Not sure how complicated, but supporting it is clearly hard because everyone's struggled to fully support it for years.)

And so is maintaining a runtime for scripting languages. (How long until javascript is supported under .NET and so IE can offload javascript processing to the .NET runtime? Or is that impossible?)

Also, the IE team is a lot smaller than the windows one.

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

cornelius — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 10:00:22 GMT

Massif wrote:

Also, the IE team is a lot smaller than the windows one.

thats true but why not increase the team size? Microsoft does have a bottomless pit of money to dig into

i mean either abandon IE or make it work as for last few years all IE accomplished is make it web-developers (developers developers, developers my arse!) life miserable and tarnish Microsoft's company image further

i dunno whether the marketing department at microsoft are in a bubble (with alot of happy smiling people like the vs2008 install screen) completely isolated from the outside world but damn they are doing a terrible job at PR

im sorry to be putting all the pressure on the IE team, im sure its not their fault as someone higher up in the ranks obviously needs to sit down and analyze the browser situation and maybe listen to some of the feedback people are giving

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

arunmib — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 15:03:34 GMT

Massif wrote:

Also, the IE team is a lot smaller than the windows one.

I can accept your points on the technical issues....but this last one is not acceptable. A team size is decided based on the amount of work available. If there is lot of work, they must increase the team size....

P.S: I understand that it's your view and I am not complaining or attacking you on any sort....

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

evildictaitor — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 15:14:29 GMT

cornelius wrote:

i mean either abandon IE or make it work as for last few years all IE accomplished is make it web-developers (developers developers, developers my arse!) life miserable and tarnish Microsoft's company image further

Despite what people say, IE is actually quite a feat of engineering. It generally works, it's the biggest browser in use, and it remains the only browser that you can sensibly embed in an application.

It seems to me that there are three big browsers. Firefox, IE and Opera, and they all operate differently. The reason web-developers are pissed is because they have to make a website that runs on all three. Since most people continue to ignore Opera, it's a toss of a coin between you develop for IE and you get pissed at Firefox for not being IE, or you develop for Firefox and you get pissed at IE for not being Firefox.

One of them has a Microsoft label, the other is open-sauce, and therefore must be made by people who love one another very much, and who grow flowers and hug trees, so it must be the baby-murdering devil-worshippers at Microsoft who should take the blame.

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Bas — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 17:00:32 GMT

cornelius wrote:

i mean either abandon IE or make it work

IE works just fine for me. Okay, maybe it doesn't follow standards, but standards mean nothing to me as a user, and neither do developers.

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Bent Rasmussen — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 10:18:19 GMT

Bas wrote:

cornelius wrote:

i mean either abandon IE or make it work

IE works just fine for me. Okay, maybe it doesn't follow standards, but standards mean nothing to me as a user, and neither do developers.

IE doesn't work that well for me. OK, maybe it follows standards quite well, but standards mean something to me as a developer.

But above all, aesthetics [broadly] and performance outweigh most other concerns. May the best browser win...

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

cornelius — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 10:37:22 GMT

i never said IE is a bad browser:

*i like the way fonts render, makes firefox look nurdy
*i like the low resource usage compared to firefox

but even tho IE7 is a step in a right direction, it still has alot to be desired of

yes its alot more secure but until CSS and javascript is brought up to speed (yes i do realize CSS as a standard is a joke) people would never be happy (some people will never be happy just because its microsofts product)

on another not heres a crazy idea

why dont microsoft come up with a separate browser/product that only renders XAML and has .net framework built in, something thats targeted at rich applications only none of the html bagage? i dunno call it Xplorer or Silverlight on steroids

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Rowan — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 11:34:13 GMT

cornelius wrote:

*i like the way fonts render, makes firefox look nurdy

Yeh, because ClearType is only compatible with IE7! :O

/sarcasm

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

cornelius — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 11:53:32 GMT

Rowan wrote:

cornelius wrote:

*i like the way fonts render, makes firefox look nurdy

Yeh, because ClearType is only compatible with IE7!

/sarcasm

its not just cleartype, its just the way things render, i dont know im not a graphic designer, but IE7 feels "smoother" on my huge HD res panel

i currently have 3 browsers open:

*IE for surfing,
*Firefox for testing new web app (im working on since 6 this mornign )
*and opera for display ajax based server/cluster overview on the second monitor (i leave opera open for months and no issues with javascript when on other hand firefox uses over a GB of ram after a day of having the same page open, go figure)

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

PaoloM — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 00:46:17 GMT

arunmib wrote:

what do you think could be the problem with IE team, for not being able to deliver frequent versions?

Backwards compatibility.

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

You can't handle my name — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 01:10:52 GMT

bah too much of this backward compatibility .. screw backwards compatibiliy I want to see real progress!

and why not just have IE8 compatibility mode.. adds nothing new, and is practically IE7

and then IE8 fully featured, with useful tools, better support for everything, faster, easier to make plugins for, just so amazingly better than its predecessor, that who would really care about it not being backwards compatible on some things.. people would update there tools, plugins, sites etc because they would enjoy the browsers new improvements or at least the users would and then it would be no brainer. At least i wouldn't care if compatibility was broken in favour of something that was done better generally.

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

PaoloM — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 01:35:53 GMT

Koogle wrote:

.. people would update there tools, plugins, sites etc because they would enjoy the browsers new improvements or at least the users would and then it would be no brainer...

It has been shown time and time again that people will not update their sites. Hence, if a site uses features that were present in IE5 or something, we do our best (up to a point) to keep those features working.

"Do no break the web" means exactly this.

And that goes for IE, Windows, Office. BC is the first thing we think about every time we discuss a new feature.

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

BruceMorgan — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 01:51:31 GMT

And when we don't get compatibility right, you can be damn sure it's a problem for us and our users.

BTW, "backwards compatibility" is WAY too simplistic of an answer to "why don't we have more frequent IE updates". And sorry, I'm not going to give a more complex one for what should be obvious reasons.

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

LaBomba — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 06:36:14 GMT

Might as well stop posting here Bruce, until you can actually say something.

I mean that in the nicest way possible

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

AndyC — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 09:14:24 GMT

BruceMorgan wrote:

BTW, "backwards compatibility" is WAY too simplistic of an answer to "why don't we have more frequent IE updates". And sorry, I'm not going to give a more complex one for what should be obvious reasons.

Ironically, you don't have to look further than those whining commenters on the ieblog to see at least one reason. If there were a new IE release every three weeks, each of which had a subtly different feature set and none of which you could guarantee people would update to, web developers would be in some kind of versioning hell.

The other reason was the big push about ten years back to "web-enable" various apps by embedding the webbrowser control in them for all manner of functionality. It seemed like a great idea at the time, but now I'm beginning to think it was one of the worst ideas ever. It's even tempting to suggest that the webbrowser control should be forked from IE and left as it is, rendering-wise, just to cut out the issues that arise from it.

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

cornelius — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 12:29:54 GMT

i understand why backwards compatibility is important especially on intranets

ive seem apps that work in IE6 but blow up in IE7! on intranets, these apps are due to monkeys who were given a keyboard

anyways why not fork IE?

why not create a version flag? something like

if the above is spotted in a page, then render it properly with new IE8 following all todays standards

otherwise use the old engine

this way developers who follow standards say "hey mr. IE look at here, i have this nice standards compliant page for ya to chew on) if they dont follow the standard strictly its their fault

the reason this mess exists is because browsers are to lenient to muppet developers /applications who produce trash code

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

evildictaitor — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 12:47:57 GMT

I blame all of IE's and the Internet's problems on the stupid person who came up with HTML and the concept of it being an easy and forgiving standard, so that you can write the code

Header
Some paragraph blah
blah

and expect browsers to have to parse it.

HTML also includes stupid tags like and and they decided in their infinite wisdom to have seperate tags like , , rather than generalizing on and
.

The laxness of the HTML means the inertia for making a browser is absolutely phenominal, which just leads to the fact that we have only two or three monolithic browsers with gigantic codebases which struggle along, and then people have the cheek to blame the people who make the browsers when they memory leak or crash or have a bug.

The worst bit is that the HTML notation was invented after it was clear in Computer Science that it was a bad idea to have a lax format for content providers, and that if you allow computers to "guess" things they get it wrong.

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Massif — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 13:05:29 GMT

You know that you're going against the received wisdom there don't you? (The received wisdom being that HTML's "any idiot can make a website" design is one of the key factors in its success.)

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

cornelius — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 14:03:28 GMT

Massif wrote:

You know that you're going against the received wisdom there don't you? (The received wisdom being that HTML's "any idiot can make a website" design is one of the key factors in its success.)

are all the terrible myspace type pages worth the all the millions of hours in lost productivity from developers world wide?

do i have to suffer because some muppets forget to close their tags or god knows what else?

imagine if visual studio was forgiving when one forgot to put a semicolon at the end of a line?

as i said why not leave html as it is, but have the browser fork the layout engine to adhere to strict new well taught out standards, be it latest versions of html or css or whatever

or even better, scrap HTML and use XAML!

this way idiots can continue making their tag soup while good developers can sit back and enjoy more free time!

someone needs to come along and say enough lets develop a way of easily making interfaces, learning from all the mistakes of html

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

BruceMorgan — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 14:35:03 GMT

evildictaitor wrote:

I blame all of IE's and the Internet's problems on the stupid person who came up with HTML and the concept of it being an easy and forgiving standard, so that you can write the code

Header
Some paragraph blah
blah

and expect browsers to have to parse it.

HTML also includes stupid tags like and and they decided in their infinite wisdom to have seperate tags like , , rather than generalizing on and
.

The laxness of the HTML means the inertia for making a browser is absolutely phenominal, which just leads to the fact that we have only two or three monolithic browsers with gigantic codebases which struggle along, and then people have the cheek to blame the people who make the browsers when they memory leak or crash or have a bug.

The worst bit is that the HTML notation was invented after it was clear in Computer Science that it was a bad idea to have a lax format for content providers, and that if you allow computers to "guess" things they get it wrong.

The laxness of HTML means anyone can make pages. That makes HTML incredibly more approachable and powerful and ubiquitous than a rigid structured, "easy to parse" language. It's why the web happened in the first place.

But in the early days, there were many gaps in the "standard" and of course NN3 was the standard. IE3 was specifically coded to match NN3's behavior, whether it was "correct" or not. Anything else would simply have been stupid.

LaBomba wrote:

Might as well stop posting here Bruce, until you can actually say something.

I can say lots of things

What I'm not going to give is an in depth explanation of the complexity of IE's release schedule and process or discuss IE8's feature set.

For one thing, why?.   If I say "backwards compat is important!" someone is guaranteed to "chuck it, then, and F the pages that don't work!"   Yeah. That's smart.   Then I could try to convince that person forever. I think I'd just rather not go down that path. So you won't see me argue what I think to be obvious points. It's obvious why we don't release a new IE frequently.

For another thing, remember, Mary Jo is watching! Any detailed posts here from IE team members tend to get quoted (or mis-quoted on your POV) in the industry press. Those types got a lot of buzz from Al and Dave's posts on their blogs. They don't need help from me, or from other MS employees who don't know what they don't know. Part of "blog smart" is to only blog what you really do know, not what you think you know. MJ gets lots of fodder from MS employees shooting their mouths off.

And lastly, 3 years of IE blog comments and the like have made me a bit cranky. I'm far less in the mood to discuss anything IE because sadly, there are better ways for me to spend my time.

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

BruceMorgan — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 14:38:42 GMT

cornelius wrote:

as i said why not leave html as it is, but have the browser fork the layout engine to adhere to strict new well taught out standards, be it latest versions of html or css or whatever

You should read what Chris Wilson has to say about IE8.

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Rossj — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 14:48:09 GMT

BruceMorgan wrote:

And lastly, 3 years of IE blog comments and the like have made me a bit cranky.

I'm interested in your opinion on *why* most of the posts on the IE blog are so critical/hate-filled/despondent. In fact, I suspect it isn't something you'd answer, but any other Niners want to hazard a guess?

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

BruceMorgan — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 14:51:07 GMT

Rossj wrote:

BruceMorgan wrote:

And lastly, 3 years of IE blog comments and the like have made me a bit cranky.

I'm interested in your opinion on *why* most of the posts on the IE blog are so critical/hate-filled/despondent. In fact, I suspect it isn't something you'd answer, but any other Niners want to hazard a guess?

Yeah. Emotional maturity of 12 year olds. Certainly web developers have many valid critcisms, complaints, concerns.

Many of the comments express these in shall we say less than constructive ways.

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Rossj — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 14:53:33 GMT

BruceMorgan wrote:

Yeah. Emotional maturity of 12 year olds. Certainly web developers have many valid critcisms, complaints, concerns.

Many of the comments express these in shall we say less than constructive ways.

Maybe it is just frustration at being ignored?

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Sven Groot — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 14:55:25 GMT

Rossj wrote:

BruceMorgan wrote:

Yeah. Emotional maturity of 12 year olds. Certainly web developers have many valid critcisms, complaints, concerns.

Many of the comments express these in shall we say less than constructive ways.

Maybe it is just frustration at being ignored?

It's a vicious circle though; they're being ignored because they act that way.

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Bas — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 14:56:47 GMT

Rossj wrote:

BruceMorgan wrote:

Yeah. Emotional maturity of 12 year olds. Certainly web developers have many valid critcisms, complaints, concerns.

Many of the comments express these in shall we say less than constructive ways.

Maybe it is just frustration at being ignored?

Probably, but there are better ways of expressing ones frustration, right?

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Rossj — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 14:58:56 GMT

Sven Groot wrote:

Rossj wrote:

BruceMorgan wrote:

Yeah. Emotional maturity of 12 year olds. Certainly web developers have many valid critcisms, complaints, concerns.

Many of the comments express these in shall we say less than constructive ways.

Maybe it is just frustration at being ignored?

It's a vicious circle though; they're being ignored because they act that way.

I've seen people make civil comments before, but I don't think the silence helps. I was quite happy with the IE7 explanation - sorry, we've been lax, we'll start to catch up but it'll take some time. Cool, great, good luck. And then silence.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to defend nasty behaviour, but it makes no sense to put it down just to emotional insecurity. While MS puts *all attacks* of any kind down to that, they are just fueling the fire and the hatred. Engagement might be a better option?

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Rossj — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 15:02:41 GMT

Sven Groot wrote:

I definitely agree the IE team is being too silent. I say give the lot of them a Twitter account so they can give us up to the minute information on what feature they're working on. Their bosses will like that too.

A rough pointer in general directions would do right now, detail can wait a while - it isn't really like anyone wants access to trident or anything.

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Sven Groot — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 15:03:12 GMT

I definitely agree the IE team is being too silent. I say give the lot of them a Twitter account so they can give us up to the minute information on what feature they're working on. Their bosses will like that too.

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Sven Groot — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 15:03:18 GMT

It seems to me that MS is reacting to the "overpromise and underdeliver" PR disaster of the early Longhorn/Vista concepts, but now they're going too far into the oposite direction. You need to find a middleground, guys (and gals)!

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Bas — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 15:06:33 GMT

I'd just like to see a "we're not dead" message pop up every once in a while to show that they realize the community is grumbling.

Then again, the whole "we will deliver" Ultimate Extra's disaster wasn't too great either.

Sven Groot wrote:

It seems to me that MS is reacting to the "overpromise and underdeliver" PR disaster of the early Longhorn/Vista concepts, but now they're going too far into the oposite direction. You need to find a middleground, guys (and gals)!

This worked wonders for the new Zune, though.

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

cornelius — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 15:13:51 GMT

came across this interesting blog post

http://home.jondavis.net:880/blog/post/2007/12/Option-Of-The-Unthinkable-Boycott-Internet-Explorer.aspx

It also reminds us that Microsoft has completely forgotten that Internet Explorer is a development platform. Not only that, but it is a Windows-only development platform, one that Microsoft should care deeply about for their own proprietary sake. And development platforms, as was demonstrated in Visual Studio, demand early communication.

the article is well written and i feel same way as the author

But now I am feeling such an aching burden in my heart. I feel like Microsoft's complacency has developed into betrayal. They don't care about client-side web developers anymore, I feel, not unless those are Silverlight folks.

also this here is new

http://www.sitepoint.com/article/ie-standards-chris-wilson

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

BruceMorgan — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 15:15:53 GMT

Rossj wrote:

I've seen people make civil comments before, but I don't think the silence helps. I was quite happy with the IE7 explanation - sorry, we've been lax, we'll start to catch up but it'll take some time. Cool, great, good luck. And then silence.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to defend nasty behaviour, but it makes no sense to put it down just to emotional insecurity. While MS puts *all attacks* of any kind down to that, they are just fueling the fire and the hatred. Engagement might be a better option?

What sort of engagement would help?

I don't think it's more of the "we've heard you, we're working on it, stay tuned" that Dave remembers so fondly.

No, I think people want deep, meaningful, real engagement rather than chat sessions where 80% of the questions can't be answered.

We're not ready for that yet. But as Dean said on the IEBlog, "You will hear a lot more from us soon on this blog and in other places."

As to the "we're not dead", well, that's obvious. Remember my earlier comment about not bothering to argue obvious points.

Anyone with half an hour can find out that not only are we not dead, you can get all sorts of obvious clues as to what we're working on. Just look at the job descriptions for the IE team on MS Careers. Just having open heads should tell you we're not dead. Just reading any of the bland MS spokesperson comments should say "they're not dead". Just reading any of EricLaw's comments on the IEBlog should say we're not dead. Just reading Chris Wilson's various interviews should tell you the direction we're going.

Put some effort into it, and you shall be rewarded. Otherwise, patience is required.

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Rossj — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 15:49:27 GMT

BruceMorgan wrote:

I don't think it's more of the "we've heard you, we're working on it, stay tuned" that Dave remembers so fondly.

No, I think people want deep, meaningful, real engagement rather than chat sessions where 80% of the questions can't be answered.

We're not ready for that yet. But as Dean said on the IEBlog, "You will hear a lot more from us soon on this blog and in other places."

Agreed, but while we wait it would be great to know if I can spend more time looking at using CSS 3, or whether I can start looking at using the Canvas element more widely. I doubt I'll ever be able to use SVG natively in IE ( ) but a note to that effect would be great. I (personally) don't want deep detail right now, but just a blanket statement that "We're looking into improving our CSS implementation, and looking forwards towards HTML 5 - and no we won't be pushing silverlight integrated into the browser at installation".

BruceMorgan wrote:

Anyone with half an hour can find out that not only are we not dead, you can get all sorts of obvious clues as to what we're working on. Just look at the job descriptions for the IE team on MS Careers.   Put some effort into it, and you shall be rewarded. Otherwise, patience is required.

I'd rather have it from the horses mouth as it were, rather than guessing or jumping to conclusions. I'm not going to make plans on job adverts for people with experience of security and/or telemetry. With IE being the only one not implementing (to my knowledge) the features I want to use - it is the IE team I am going to focus on...

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Rossj — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 15:55:07 GMT

BruceMorgan wrote:

Rossj wrote:
... but while we wait it would be great to know if I can spend more time looking at using CSS 3, or whether I can start looking at using the Canvas element more widely. I doubt I'll ever be able to use SVG natively in IE ( ) but a note to that effect would be great. I (personally) don't want deep detail right now, but just a blanket statement that "We're looking into improving our CSS implementation, and looking forwards towards HTML 5 - and no we won't be pushing silverlight integrated into the browser at installation".

IMHO, blanket statements are not effective communication tools. They just beg more questions. We make vague high level statements, then we have a chat session, then people ask detailed questions, we can't anwer them, and there is dissatifaction.

Okay, point taken. How about a rough timescale? We'll be ready to talk in Feb ... or Jan ... or whatever?

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

BruceMorgan — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 15:56:57 GMT

Rossj wrote:

... but while we wait it would be great to know if I can spend more time looking at using CSS 3, or whether I can start looking at using the Canvas element more widely. I doubt I'll ever be able to use SVG natively in IE ( ) but a note to that effect would be great. I (personally) don't want deep detail right now, but just a blanket statement that "We're looking into improving our CSS implementation, and looking forwards towards HTML 5 - and no we won't be pushing silverlight integrated into the browser at installation".

IMHO, blanket statements are not effective communication tools. They just beg more questions. We make vague high level statements, then we have a chat session, then people ask detailed questions, we can't anwer them, and there is dissatifaction. But they do satisfy a need.

Rossj wrote:

BruceMorgan wrote:
Anyone with half an hour can find out that not only are we not dead, you can get all sorts of obvious clues as to what we're working on. Just look at the job descriptions for the IE team on MS Careers.   Put some effort into it, and you shall be rewarded. Otherwise, patience is required.

I'd rather have it from the horses mouth as it were, rather than guessing or jumping to conclusions. I'm not going to make plans on job adverts for people with experience of security and/or telemetry.

My point wasn't about making plans. It was to respond to the hyperventilated blogosphere "Does the IE team even exist?" meme.

That's self-evident to anyone who puts even a modicum of effort into their quest.

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

DMassy — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 16:44:36 GMT

Rossj wrote:

BruceMorgan wrote:

Rossj wrote:
... but while we wait it would be great to know if I can spend more time looking at using CSS 3, or whether I can start looking at using the Canvas element more widely. I doubt I'll ever be able to use SVG natively in IE ( ) but a note to that effect would be great. I (personally) don't want deep detail right now, but just a blanket statement that "We're looking into improving our CSS implementation, and looking forwards towards HTML 5 - and no we won't be pushing silverlight integrated into the browser at installation".

IMHO, blanket statements are not effective communication tools. They just beg more questions. We make vague high level statements, then we have a chat session, then people ask detailed questions, we can't anwer them, and there is dissatifaction.

Okay, point taken. How about a rough timescale? We'll be ready to talk in Feb ... or Jan ... or whatever?

Bruce,
I'd argue that the silence has been much more damaging than the situation where "We make vague high level statements, then we have a chat session, then people ask detailed questions, we can't anwer them, and there is dissatifaction. " The dissatisfaction being voiced in the comments on the IE team blog is greater than I've ever seen it. Some of the comments show huge misunderstanding amongst the web developer community that could be dispelled by constant repetition of the fact that the IE team knows it has work to do and hopes to address the key issues that cause the web developers pain.
Silence means no customer engagement, leaving customers feeling ignored and even leading to silly speculation that the team doesn't really exist. It's very important that customers are heard within the team and feel they are being heard. When customers feel they are being ignored they feel insulted and you lose their trust.
I'm sure IE8 will be amazing and win back some of that trust, and I really hope the team does deliver. However it'd be a lot easier to regain trust if there was an ongoing dialog with customers, even if it was only "We hear you and our goal is to ease the pain". I at least hope that is still the goal of the IE team

Cheers
-Dave
www.dmassy.com

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

cornelius — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 17:15:02 GMT

DMassy wrote:

Silence means no customer engagement, leaving customers feeling ignored and even leading to silly speculation that the team doesn't really exist. It's very important that customers are heard within the team and feel they are being heard. When customers feel they are being ignored they feel insulted and you lose their trust.
I'm sure IE8 will be amazing and win back some of that trust, and I really hope the team does deliver. However it'd be a lot easier to regain trust if there was an ongoing dialog with customers, even if it was only "We hear you and our goal is to ease the pain". I at least hope that is still the goal of the IE team

Cheers
-Dave
www.dmassy.com

your right isnt the whole point of channel9 is to give insight into microsoft

to be more "open"

i mean one can get some very detailed info and lots of posts from lets say Silverlight team, which until 2.0 ships will remain in the realm of toy to play with

while on the other hand theres deafening silence from IE team who actually have a product thats used by millions of people

what are people expect to think when presented with above situation?

the fact that there questions and emotions and facts being raised means people still do care about IE, it be very disturbing day for they IE team when no one cares anymore (tho with such a large market share its unlikely to be anytime soon) or even worse they either have to join another team or loose their jobs

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

DMassy — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 18:04:54 GMT

creditcard wrote:

Internet Explorer 8 should have better CSS2 support (and pass the Acid2 test). Microsoft also needs to get involved with HTML5 because right now Google is ruling the show in HTML5 participation. Like it or not HTML5 will become a standard and will likely be implemented by every web browser other then Internet Explorer. Microsoft needs to stop trying to build proprietary technologies on top of the web because they will fail and waste their time in the end. Silverlight is a waste of time just like DirectAnimation was before then. The web is an open platform get used to it Microsoft.

What about Flash? That's not open but is very successful.
Sliverlight is aimed at Flash not HTML. It has an uphill struggle...

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

evildictaitor — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 18:17:42 GMT

creditcard wrote:

Silverlight is a waste of time just like DirectAnimation was before then. The web is an open platform get used to it Microsoft.

You sound like corona_coder when you say things like that.

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

You can't handle my name — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 18:31:41 GMT

PaoloM wrote:

It has been shown time and time again that people will not update their sites. Hence, if a site uses features that were present in IE5 or something, we do our best (up to a point) to keep those features working.

"Do not break the web" means exactly this.

you know I find the web getting more broken by the fact that more users/developers are dumping the IE browser/engine in favour of using another browser with more developer support, not just in the sites built to run better on it, but also the useful browser exstensions that go towards increased user browsing satisfaction.

I coudn't care less about visting some site built using IE5 features.. quite obviously if the site is that old then it most likely isn't getting any updates anyway, and if the infomation on it was that important i'd just use an older/compatible browser etc to get the infomation or find the infomation else where..

I'm more interested in visting modern and upto date sites. Thats not to say i don't understand your need to keep in some compability..and how it important in some situations, but for me I think some things are better broken in favour of something that is better overall, so long as it is actually better.

BruceMorgan wrote:

And when we don't get compatibility right, you can be damn sure it's a problem for us and our users.

you kow I think when users start screaming about compatibility issues and how you haven't got compability done right. Thats when I think you've for more other important issues to be having a good hard look at and sorting out.

I get the impression you guys spend far too much time wasted on looking at combatility issues when the competition is just moving ahead and is looking better with each and every more frequent update.

Its like xbox360 I wouldn't buy it to play an older game, but if the newer games made for it weren't actually any better than an older game, than thats when I'd start moaning about compatibility.

My point being is that IE8 needs to start making some strides in improving display performance(transparent .png etc,) page rendering, making it easier for developers to build plugins and extend the browser cabilities... just generally actually giving users/developers a reason to come back. I don't really care if IE8 doesn't come with a better GUI or add better features with more cusomiziblity, built spell checker, split view tabs, mouse gestures, etc all those power features.. noo don't expect that or even expect to be anygood besed on IE7 efforts.. but I do hope for the 'trident rendering engine' to be a lot better.

I think i'd rather count on an IE shell/third party browser replacements like Maxthon, IE7pro avant, etc that just use the IE engine, while those developers can focus on taking on user feature requests and adding them in to browser to more finer degree with a better polish. Not to mention getting a decent customizable GUI right, but i'm talking about M2 there
"Another classic example is the IE download notification window, which loves to pop up, steal the focus, and tell you the great news: your download is complete! Oh, and your newly downloaded file is copying to its destination! Hooray! Unfortunately, this very same download notification dialog also contains a "Cancel" button. Guess which button just so happens to have the focus when this pops up? Why you'd want to cancel a download after it is complete is a mystery to me, but I've inadvertently pressed the space bar on this dialog more than once." from http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/ quoted for convenience.

would it be so hard to add just basic download manager like firefox.. i know some would just get a fully featured download manger anyway but this should be sorted out right?

And one last thing that I definitly want to see improved..

how something so simple could be released with IE7 and feel like it didn't even get the slightest bit of attention..says it all really

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Bas — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 18:40:22 GMT

evildictaitor wrote:

creditcard wrote:
Silverlight is a waste of time just like DirectAnimation was before then. The web is an open platform get used to it Microsoft.

You sound like corona_coder when you say things like that.

Predicting doom for Microsoft... Just listing a bunch of baseless statements without coming to a real point... yeah, I think you're on to something here.

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

evildictaitor — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 19:18:27 GMT

BruceMorgan wrote:

The laxness of HTML means anyone can make pages. That makes HTML incredibly more approachable and powerful and ubiquitous than a rigid structured, "easy to parse" language. It's why the web happened in the first place.

I know that's the usual response, and I'm sure the original intention of HTML, but I suspect that now-a-days it's simply untrue. Having a lax standard means that different browsers interpret the same stuff differently, wheras a stricter (but also complete) standard would mean that Firefox and IE and Opera et. al. would be able to unambiguously give the same result for each webpage.

I'm not saying that IE should (or could) change this, and I'm not just "having a go", but it does seem to me that until a stricter standard appears, webdesigners will be spending lots of time coding around the browsers, rather than concentrating on the content and design that they ought to be.

Ironically I think that in this, the multi-browser era of computing, the laxness of HTML is an obstacle to getting into webdesign.

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

BruceMorgan — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 19:32:27 GMT

evildictaitor wrote:

BruceMorgan wrote:

The laxness of HTML means anyone can make pages. That makes HTML incredibly more approachable and powerful and ubiquitous than a rigid structured, "easy to parse" language. It's why the web happened in the first place.

I know that's the usual response, and I'm sure the original intention of HTML, but I suspect that now-a-days it's simply untrue.

No, it's still totally true.   Myspace wouldn't be nearly so popular if modifying your page required "real" software development skills and knowledge.

HTML is still incredibly scalable. A little kid can make a working webpage with only knowing a couple tags and angle brackets.   A professional web developer can do amazing web applications knowing the full spectrum of web technologies. And most people can play in the middle.

Don't underestimate how powerful and important it is to keep both the high and low end of the scale working.

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Rossj — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 19:32:58 GMT

Even with the lax interpretation other browsers do manage to render correctly, it is more the case that it becomes an issue when a browser vendor decides to totally ignore what is specified in the spec and re-interpret it in bizarre ways*.

* The button bug seems to be getting the most publicity on the IE blog, but getElementById is my personal fave....

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

GoddersUK — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 20:00:28 GMT

Koogle wrote:

And one last thing that I definitly want to see improved..

how something so simple could be released with IE7 and feel like it didn't even get the slightest bit of attention..says it all really

That's one of the things I miss most when I use linux.

I can't seem to make it do that.

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

evildictaitor — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 20:08:43 GMT

BruceMorgan wrote:

No, it's still totally true.   Myspace wouldn't be nearly so popular if modifying your page required "real" software development skills and knowledge.

HTML is still incredibly scalable. A little kid can make a working webpage with only knowing a couple tags and angle brackets.   A professional web developer can do amazing web applications knowing the full spectrum of web technologies. And most people can play in the middle.

Don't underestimate how powerful and important it is to keep both the high and low end of the scale working.

I applaud everyone from MySpace who takes up webdevelopment as a result of playing around with "MySpace codes".

The thing for me is not "standards compliance" or "CSS compliance" (who's to say what's "right" and what isn't?) but rather just for some consistency across the browsers.

When IE5 and IE6 were the only browser in town, the Internet was a utopia of consistency. Writing a website meant getting content and wrapping it with informative tags such as "
" and "
", and the Internet was bliss.

The joint abominations that were Macromedia Flash and Javascript now mean that automatically parsing a webpage is horrendous, and for the partially sighted or fully blind, using the Internet is a joke.

Since then HTML has increased in volume to the attrocity that it is today, where all sites are big, and getting them to render properly is less like putting a round peg through a square hole, as trying to bash three melons through a square, triangle and circular hole respectively with a hammer.

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

evildictaitor — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 20:25:23 GMT

creditcard wrote:

Flash came a long time ago (before the existance of most web standards), and I wouldn't call it "very successful". As much as Adobe pushes it on developers, and the fact that it is installed on something like 98% of all internet facing computers, the fact that it's fully compiled bytecode and runs on almost all computing platforms, it is still mostly used for advertisements and cartoon animations made by 16-year olds. The only real success of Flash lately is as a glorified video player. Hopefully Flash will die one day too.

Either HTML must replace what Flash does, or another technology must replace it.

Here's me voting for Silverlight to overtake the God-forsaken horribleness that is Flash.

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Bas — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 20:28:39 GMT

creditcard wrote:

it is still mostly used for advertisements and cartoon animations made by 16-year olds.

This is the very definition of very successful.

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Bas — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 20:31:12 GMT

evildictaitor wrote:

Here's me voting for Silverlight to overtake the God-forsaken horribleness that is Flash.

I want interfaces created in Silverlight to behave -exactly- like desktop interfaces. This includes text selection, right mouse button support, et cetera. That'd completely blow me away as a mature web development platform..

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Bas — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 20:40:44 GMT

creditcard wrote:

Bas wrote:

evildictaitor wrote:

Here's me voting for Silverlight to overtake the God-forsaken horribleness that is Flash.

I want interfaces created in Silverlight to behave -exactly- like desktop interfaces. This includes text selection, right mouse button support, et cetera. That'd completely blow me away as a mature web development platform..

What you are looking for is System.Windows.Forms.

Web development.

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

W3bbo — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 20:47:48 GMT

BruceMorgan wrote:

Don't underestimate how powerful and important it is to keep both the high and low end of the scale working.

Thing is, the "low end" (i.e. tag soup) only works when UA implementations are advised on how to work with broken markup (typical of MySpace-related phenomemon, previously Angelfire/Tripod). But if there comes along a specification with explicit rules on how to handle bad markup, then Authoring programs have no incentive to make "correct" markup.

I think with HTML5 and XHTML2.0, UAs should display a "This page's markup is not well-formed" message in the Information bar or something. This doesn't break backwards compatibility (and the myspace-types can still churn out Frontpage/Dreamweaver-generated HTML4.01) and websites created by people wanting to be the best can be the best (since how many % of wannabe web developers/designers have even used the W3C validator or code by hand?)

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Bas — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 21:09:23 GMT

creditcard wrote:

So what you are looking for is System.Windows.Forms inside of a web browser? Why not reduce the overhead of your application and remove the need for the web browser entirely?

Yes please!

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

evildictaitor — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 22:07:41 GMT

creditcard wrote:

No problem. The amazing ability to write Windows applications without the need for a web browser has been part of the Windows SDK since Windows 1.0. Kind of like XMLHttpRequest which is like 10 years old, maybe one day this amazing and unheard of ability of creating applications which do not need a web browser will one day be utilized.

Oh, if only everybody wrote applications like that.

Sadly they suffer from a couple of drawbacks: You cannot benefit from the vast amounts of data that only a webserver can provide, you cannot interact with others on the same project, you cannot upgrade seamlessly, you cannot get your application to the user without an installation and they cannot guarrantee that when it's delievered it won't do Bad Things^TM without the code-execution prevention mechanisms of Flash and Silverlight.

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Rossj — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 22:19:43 GMT

evildictaitor wrote:

Either HTML must replace what Flash does, or another technology must replace it.

Here's me voting for Silverlight to overtake the God-forsaken horribleness that is Flash.

I think the former is the most likely and it is already making steps in that direction.

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

evildictaitor — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 01:34:16 GMT

creditcard wrote:

Of course you can, in fact, the general point XML (and by extension the REST architecture) and XHTML is to allow data (which is often served by a webserver), to be effectively used by a client application.

It depends how fine-grained you want to have access to the general execution engine. If you're fine with users downloading the code that runs, then goahead with REST and XML data transfer. If you need your inner workings to be secret (such as in Google Apps) or for lots of small massive-data bindings, you might need your app to basically be a front-end on a webserver elsewhere.

creditcard wrote:

Nonsense. If you mean developers interacting on the same project that is nonsense, that is what software engineering and source control systems are for, and I don't see any real advantage to web applications in this collaboration. If you are talking about end users interacting, I don't see any advantage either in this regard, except perhaps the simple nature of developing HTML pages which is not transfered over to Flash or Silverlight development.

I mean end-users, not developers. I see no need for development to migrate to a web-based platform at this time.
You seem close to conceding there that HTML pages do allow for collaboration through use of appropriate web-technologies, and Flash and Silverlight are designed to complement, rather than replace this.

creditcard wrote:

Flash itself has suffered from many vulnerabilities and it's existence on your machine decreases the overall security of the system. .NET is not exactly immune to vulnerabilities but it does have some pretty fine grained access control via application domains.

Well, that's Flash's problem. No (currently released) system is immune to vunerabilities, and while I'm sure the .NET framework is no exception, their reliance on managed code rather than pseudo-byte code means that while it is easy to "crash" the app, the potential for you to do Bad Things through security vunerabilities is very much lessened.

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

evildictaitor — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 01:48:37 GMT

creditcard wrote:

Wow what a bunch of patent nonsense. You have no clue on how .NET works or what "managed code" or bytecode is. In fact, ironically Silverlight 2 is built with the .NET framework.

Yes. I have absolutely no idea about the .NET framework, or managed code or bytecode. Oops. Hands up, you got me. Yes. No knowledge of it whatsoever. I've never even seen ECMA-335 and the MSIL language.

Imagine you seeing through me like that. Shucks. It must all be a terrible mistake, you see, me and all of that complicated maths involved with designing and implementing managed code and the .NET framework - waaaay over my head.

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

evildictaitor — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 01:55:23 GMT

creditcard wrote:

Apparently so. I mean, you suck at law, you seem to suck at computers, you suck at debating, what are you good at evildictaitor? I mean, you must be good at something!

I think this post wins irony of the year.

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Bas — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 08:14:44 GMT

creditcard wrote:

No problem. The amazing ability to write Windows applications without the need for a web browser has been part of the Windows SDK since Windows 1.0. Kind of like XMLHttpRequest which is like 10 years old, maybe one day this amazing and unheard of ability of creating applications which do not need a web browser will one day be utilized.

You don't seem to understand what web applications are, do you?

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

cornelius — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 17:10:21 GMT

more talk on the subject over at sitepoint (biggest web developer site)

http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=518419

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

PaoloM — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 18:19:44 GMT

creditcard wrote:

Bas wrote:

creditcard wrote:
No problem. The amazing ability to write Windows applications without the need for a web browser has been part of the Windows SDK since Windows 1.0. Kind of like XMLHttpRequest which is like 10 years old, maybe one day this amazing and unheard of ability of creating applications which do not need a web browser will one day be utilized.

You don't seem to understand what web applications are, do you?

Right back at you.

Stop being an idiot. Your answer clearly shows that you completely misunderstood the point, so just own up to it and be an adult, for a change.

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Elmer — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 12:25:52 GMT

I see that Opera has it's neck in a knot about IE and is revisiting the old "awww.. Mom... it's not FAIR... make them unbundle IE !!" argument again... this time with the EU.

http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/en/2007/12/13/

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Charles — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 20:07:59 GMT

Your wish is our command

http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=367207

Enjoy!
C

Coffeehouse - IE Team Interview?

Bas — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 20:24:07 GMT

From the IEBlog:

IEBlog wrote:

For IE8, we want to communicate facts, not aspirations. We’re posting this information now because we have real working code checked in and we’re confident about delivering it in the final product. We’re listening to the feedback about IE, and at the same time, we are committed to responsible disclosure and setting expectations properly. Now that we’ve run the test on multiple machines and seen it work, we’re excited to be able to share definitive information.

Nice!