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How not using Internet Explorer put me out of touch and cost me dearly

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Re: How not using Internet Explorer put me out of touch and cost me dearly

#31

Post by briandear »

sliverstorm wrote: post #27
Hario wrote: post #10

I'm no expert on these sorts of things, but it seems like the story goes something like this: 1. Dev checks out his site using IE 2. Dev realizes that IE users were getting scary warnings about his software 3. Dev has to pay up money to a third company to make the scary warnings go away. Seems like a bad state of affairs to me.

Certification costs money, and certification is a thing in many industries. I notice nobody is banging pots about ASE certification for automotive techs? I mean, it's true, there is a difference here- the active "This software isn't certified" notification- but is that a critical distinction?

The difference is that ASE techs don't have to pay to certify each car they fix.

Re: How not using Internet Explorer put me out of touch and cost me dearly

#32

Post by ben0x539 »

jamesaguilar wrote: post #14
ben0x539 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm too proud of my work to give in to certificate blackmail??

That's nice, but you can't eat dignity. :P

That's exactly my point. This is clearly an issue of business and not "pride", so the whole "pride" argument to shame someone into a business decision is really questionable.

Re: How not using Internet Explorer put me out of touch and cost me dearly

#33

Post by briandear »

jasomill wrote: post #11
wlesieutre wrote: post #2

I know some people have voiced concerns about Gatekeeper in 10.8, but this seems at least as bad. Especially from a normal user's perspective.

Gatekeeper is not nearly as bad for small developers, though. Unless Microsoft has started offering, as part of a $99 MSDN subscription, the ability to generate a signed certificate that doesn't expire for five years automatically from inside Visual Studio as soon as you've signed in with your Microsoft ID. The problem with Microsoft's strategy has always been the reliance on companies like VeriSign for whom recurrin…

Verisign is a massive scam. Their SSL certs, for example are several hundred dollars. They get away with it because the big corporate-types have "heard" of verisign and "heard" they need security.

Re: How not using Internet Explorer put me out of touch and cost me dearly

#34

Post by barista »

tomjen3 wrote: post #13

While that is nice to know, it still smells of Raketeering to me. "that is some nice software you have there, would be a shame if users thought it was dangerous" "pay a little money to one of these approved companies and that warning will go away" If MS was serious about this only being for security they could issue the certificates for free and prove me wrong. On the other hand, why is it that about 20% of users cli…

>> it still smells of Raketeering to me

Racketeering indeed! I am sure that was the goal of the SmartScreen filter in IE. Cert vendors and MS must have colluded to add this feature so that developers of all binaries are forced to buy certs. Right?

Re: How not using Internet Explorer put me out of touch and cost me dearly

#35

Post by MichaelApproved »

Karunamon wrote: post #17
evolve2k wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone have opinions on good SSL certificate providers or do you agree with the authors recommendation of http://startssl.com ?

They do what they say they do at a decent price. However, their web interface sucks . Absolutely and completely sucks.

This is one of those times I miss the upvote counter on HN. I think it's important for the makers of StartSSL to see just how many people agree with you that their interface completely sucks. Without the counter, it just seems like one person's opinion while I bet many people agree.

Re: How not using Internet Explorer put me out of touch and cost me dearly

#36

Post by Foy »

teuobk wrote: post #8
dmethvin wrote: post #3

If you are creating a Windows binary and expect a user to download it, you should be signing the binary. Period. It's not just IE that considers unsigned downloads suspect, many antivirus programs do as well. If you are proud of your work, sign it.

True. Part of the problem was simply not knowing that signing was a thing that needed to be done. It's obvious in hindsight, but since I hadn't released many Windows applications in the past, I didn't realize what I didn't know.

Often it's what you don't know that you don't know that bites you in the ass. As long as you know that you don't know it you're on the right track.

Re: How not using Internet Explorer put me out of touch and cost me dearly

#37

Post by justindocanto »

gmurphy wrote: post #9

In general, not using the platform your users use is a path to trouble. For example, because so many designers in the valley use Macs, we continually have to fight an OS X bias in our design process; when designing something, you tend to calibrate it against what you're used to, but when OS X is only 5% of the market, OS X-based designers of client software end up with a massive blind spot when it comes to understand…

5% of 'the market' does not translate to 5% of users on your site.

Depending on the site's demographic, as a developer, I see approx 15% Mac users making up traffic. Not to mention an ADDITIONAL 25% iPhone users. That's an average of 40% of apple traffic on the sites I work on. Some of which are getting 30k - 60k hits a month. Obviously this isnt the same stats across the board on all websites... but It is by no means FIVE percent.

Re: How not using Internet Explorer put me out of touch and cost me dearly

#38

Post by sp332 »

lisper wrote: post #16

Is there a reason you don't offer deblurring as SAAS? I have a photo I'd happily pay to have deblurred, but I use a Mac.

That sounds like a completely different product. He would need to maintain infrastructure and an entire software stack under his deblurring program, design an API and/or security-hardened web interface to upload and retrieve photos, and consider bandwidth costs for every photo uploaded and downloaded.

Re: How not using Internet Explorer put me out of touch and cost me dearly

#40

Post by hobin »

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #24
tomjen3 wrote: post #13

While that is nice to know, it still smells of Raketeering to me. "that is some nice software you have there, would be a shame if users thought it was dangerous" "pay a little money to one of these approved companies and that warning will go away" If MS was serious about this only being for security they could issue the certificates for free and prove me wrong. On the other hand, why is it that about 20% of users cli…

>If MS was serious about this only being for security they could issue the certificates for free and prove me wrong. Make it too easy, and the scamware software will just get a free cert and sign apps. It takes some amount of effort, possibly by a human, to approve you to receive a cert. Even the "free" certs I've applied for have taken time and human interaction on the side of the registrar, and I'm certain those ce…

I'm unfamiliar with many of these certificates, but is there any reason such 'scamware' woudln't be able to get one even though it costs money? Because, if they still can, they the whole certification business definitely seems like a big scam to me.
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