Microsoft.com website UI quirks | The Coffeehouse

sushovande
Smiley Face Sharp

I noticed a few things about the microsoft homepage which in my opinion reduces the polish of the site.

Further, in the first Silverlight ad, the name is spelled Deepak_Chopra, with an underscore Tongue Out

EDIT: happens in both FFX3 and IE8

W3bbo
The Master of Baiters

Sloppiness on the designers part. At least it's waay better than the last design.

Ever noticed how the quality of the site design is proportional to how long it lasts? The base design (with the blocky sidebar) they had from 2002 until 2006 lasted 4 years, the Vista-ish one lasted just over a year.

CKurt
while( ( !succeed=try() ) ) { }

I think the menu still need's some work indeed! The menu on www.windowslive.com of www.windows.com is so much more beautifull

littleguru
<3 Seattle

In reply to CKurt

#Nov 16th, 2008 @ 12:32 PM

WindowsLive.com is very very nice. I like this style.

joechung

In reply to littleguru

#Nov 16th, 2008 @ 1:46 PM

The blame for the current microsoft.com menu's sloppiness is all mine, not the designer's.

Deepak_Chopra is a "user ID"-like version of his name, hence the underscore. That's just a guess though. I didn't do the Silverlight bit.

sushovande
Smiley Face Sharp

In reply to joechung

#Nov 16th, 2008 @ 5:12 PM

Thanks for the reply, joechung! Take your time with the menu - it's just a minor point.
I love the new design!

Ion Todirel
buuu

In reply to littleguru

#Nov 16th, 2008 @ 1:46 PM

yeah, I agree, it's still needs more polish but definitely better than it's microsoft.com counterpart

hmmm, I'm wondering how the "unfinished" menu ended like that in the production site, I mean for something as important as that there surely must be specs, and someone surely is checking if the specs are implemented correctly? or maybe for Microsoft their freaking own web site is not that important as we think, who knows...

elmer
I'm on my very last life.

Safari and Chrome sure don't seem to get any love from this site... while Opera only gets slightly more.

joechung

In reply to elmer

#Nov 16th, 2008 @ 9:03 PM

WebKit has bugs which prevent it from rendering the menu correctly. As soon as they fix those bugs, I can re-enable the menu. I logged the bug with them via Safari's Report a site feature.

The other problem with the menu (for WebKit and Opera) has to do with Silverlight not rendering correctly in windowless mode. Since Silverlight isn't officially supported on WebKit on Windows or Opera, there's not much I can do about it except to ask the Silverlight team to consider supporting WebKit on Windows and Opera in a future release.

elmer
I'm on my very last life.

In reply to joechung

#Nov 16th, 2008 @ 9:08 PM

Not sure what you are seeing, but for me...

Safari & Chrome (Webkit) - No Menu, Blank Feature panel.

Opera - Menu works, Blank Feature panel.

Lucky that nobody uses iPhones or Nokias to acess the web...

joechung

In reply to elmer

#Nov 16th, 2008 @ 9:29 PM

No menu on WebKit : WebKit bug that prevents it from rendering the menu properly (explicitly disabled in the script for now). The current behavior for WebKit should be for each menu item to be a link to a separate page with the flyout menu links.

Blank Feature panel : Silverlight doesn't support windowless mode correctly on Opera and WebKit (for Windows). For whatever reason, Silverlight is implemented in such a way that the plugin will still "work" on Opera wnd Windows (for Windows) even though it doesn't work correctly and isn't officially supported by Microsoft.

elmer
I'm on my very last life.

In reply to joechung

#Nov 16th, 2008 @ 9:34 PM

Yes, I understand that you have a problem, but you are making it the reader's problem, instead of yours to resolve.

I'm not trying to be combatative here, but this is microsoft.com... surely you should provide the appropriate work-around (sniff the browser/platform/version if needs be) to give the user a experience that emulates the intention as closely as possible.

There are plenty of ASP.NET menu solutions that work just fine accross multiple platforms... e.g. Telerik's menus work with Safari.

http://demos.telerik.com/aspnet/prometheus/Menu/Examples/MultiColumnMenu/DefaultCS.aspx

As for the silverlight thing... again... this is not the reader's problem, it's microsoft's problem to provide them with an experience that makes them want to use the site... the browser/plaform doesn't correctly support silverlight... ok, detect it and provide a flash option... you don't have flash... ok, detect it and provide a base html option.

You can't just effectively tell all Webkit/Opera users that the need to use IE or FireFox with Sliverlight, to access the main site at Microsoft.

Please accept as constructive criticism, not intended to be a personal attack.