Statements by Ben English

News.com just posted Microsoft says Firefox not a threat to IE. In this article, Ben English, Microsoft's Security and Management Product Manager states:

"I don't believe it is a true statement that IE doesn't have the features that our customers want," he said. "We take user feedback very seriously. If you have that feedback, then you should feed it back to us because we will feed it to the product team."

I guess that those of us who have spent countless hours blogging, posting, emailing and complaining about things in IE are not Microsoft customers.  After all IE has all "the features that our (Microsoft) customers want".

Oh, yea! Wait! I use Firefox now... so I guess you're right! If I want the features and abilities that IE isn't going to provide, then I will be a Firefox customer not a Microsoft one.

Oh silly me.



FDB

I know right?  Such a dumb statement.

IE is a free product, it doesn't hurt Microsoft to lose customers.

Maurits wrote:

IE is a free product, it doesn't hurt Microsoft to lose customers.

Thats not quite true, because if everyone uses ie, then they can charge for all the tools for say active x, windows 2003 sales could be affected.

Also if programs written in vs 2003, start looking odd in new dominant browsers then people might look at alternative languages.

Tom

Tom Malone wrote:

Maurits wrote:IE is a free product, it doesn't hurt Microsoft to lose customers.

Thats not quite true, because if everyone uses ie, then they can charge for all the tools for say active x, windows 2003 sales could be affected.

Also if programs written in vs 2003, start looking odd in new dominant browsers then people might look at alternative languages.

Tom

Given that hypothetical argument though it would force Microsoft to work with other people.  I've long thought Microsoft should forget about another release and work with the FF guys getting new features in on their merits rather than just because they can.  It'd be nice to see Microsoft taking part in a wider community where they themselves were not the focal point.  I don't think the interaction on SenderID/SPF or whatever is a good example.

What I find interesting that ASP.NET 2.0 will produce valid XHTML 1.1, and that the VS2005 designers are pedantic about standards to the point of knowing significantly more about CSS than IE itself does.

Maybe some of the people from the Visual WebDeveloper 2005 team should transfer to the IE team after VS is done?

Sven Groot wrote:

What I find interesting that ASP.NET 2.0 will produce valid XHTML 1.1, and that the VS2005 designers are pedantic about standards to the point of knowing significantly more about CSS than IE itself does.

Maybe some of the people from the Visual WebDeveloper 2005 team should transfer to the IE team after VS is done?

Amen