IE11 on Windows 8.1 - Google Search loads in legacy mode • Hacker News Board

Re: IE11 on Windows 8.1 - Google Search loads in legacy mode

#31

Post by Tobani » Sat, Oct 19, 2013, 5:17 PM UTC

rschmitty wrote: post #14

mischanix wrote: post #7

"Hey, if we make Google uglier, maybe people will use Bing!" "Probably not, but let's mess with 'em anyway."

Unless it was google.. "Hey, if we make Google uglier, maybe people will use Chrome!" "Probably, they are used to IE not working" Not sure who had the slip-up, but evil works both ways :P

It looks like the preview releases of IE11 work fine. MS Changed a default value between preview and release versions.

I'm going to choose to apply Hanlon's Razor in this situation.

-How often do people who have to do something to detect chrome/firefox version? Unless you are doing something with bleeding-edge experimental APIs probably, never.

-How often do people have to do something for a specific version of IE? All the time.

Chrome & Firefox have been mostly compatible for the past 20 major versions. IE has yet to make two consecutive versions compatible with each other.

Also worth noting: Firefox and Chrome support more versions of Windows than Microsoft's past 3 Browser releases have.

Again I don't this is necessarily a distinct case of anybody trying to be evil. This is just a symptom of a bigger problem.

Re: IE11 on Windows 8.1 - Google Search loads in legacy mode

#32

Post by joshstrange » Sat, Oct 19, 2013, 5:25 PM UTC

reybango wrote: post #30

3825 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I try to err on the side of caution as well but there is no way to do that in this case. Microsoft is clearly at fault. Adding someone to a "compatibility list" is a unilateral action Microsoft took. If it works fine without being on compatibility mode, don't add it to your compatibility mode list.

If it had worked fine, it would never have been added in the first place. We don't add sites arbitrarily to the list. It's based on actual compat testing. Also every site on the list can request to be removed so if Google had tested in IE11 and discovered all was great, it's very easy for them to contact us to remove them from the list.

What about the quote from the article:

> I'll tell you more guys. I've updated to windows 8.1 on my tablet a month ago through MSND subscription and Google search worked just fine. Looks like this problem appeared after public availability of Windows 8.1. So I believe it's something that Google or Microsoft should figure out.

How could they have tested as they were not on the list until, what appears to be, the public release?

Re: IE11 on Windows 8.1 - Google Search loads in legacy mode

#33

Post by kevinxucs » Sat, Oct 19, 2013, 5:29 PM UTC

nodata wrote: post #9

kevinxucs wrote: post #5

Wow, I am soooooooooooo surprised.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6576521 seems to indicate this isn't caused by Google.

Gosh, nobody understands what I am saying?

Re: IE11 on Windows 8.1 - Google Search loads in legacy mode

#34

Post by joombar » Sat, Oct 19, 2013, 5:31 PM UTC

cbr wrote: post #26

IE11 normally sends "Trident/7.0" and not "MSIE". Apparently Microsoft has added "google.com" to the Compatibility View List [1], which means IE11 now sends Google a User Agent that does include "MSIE". Google is interpreting this to mean it's an old version of IE, and sending the legacy view. You can manually disable the CVL, but then other sites that Microsoft has determined need old versions of IE won't work. I su…

Two different user agent strings for one version of one browser? That can change at any moment based on a list the site authors don't control? There's no way that'd ever confuse things!

Re: IE11 on Windows 8.1 - Google Search loads in legacy mode

#35

Post by kevinxucs » Sat, Oct 19, 2013, 5:32 PM UTC

kevinxucs wrote: post #5

Wow, I am soooooooooooo surprised.

You guys all love IE so much or what?

Re: IE11 on Windows 8.1 - Google Search loads in legacy mode

#36

Post by Touche » Sat, Oct 19, 2013, 5:38 PM UTC

cbr wrote: post #26

IE11 normally sends "Trident/7.0" and not "MSIE". Apparently Microsoft has added "google.com" to the Compatibility View List [1], which means IE11 now sends Google a User Agent that does include "MSIE". Google is interpreting this to mean it's an old version of IE, and sending the legacy view. You can manually disable the CVL, but then other sites that Microsoft has determined need old versions of IE won't work. I su…

Why does the entire web community agree that feature detection is the way to go and UA sniffing is bad, but time after time shows that Google does it on nearly all of their products?

Re: IE11 on Windows 8.1 - Google Search loads in legacy mode

#37

Post by reybango » Sat, Oct 19, 2013, 5:39 PM UTC

joshstrange wrote: post #32

reybango wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it had worked fine, it would never have been added in the first place. We don't add sites arbitrarily to the list. It's based on actual compat testing. Also every site on the list can request to be removed so if Google had tested in IE11 and discovered all was great, it's very easy for them to contact us to remove them from the list.

What about the quote from the article: > I'll tell you more guys. I've updated to windows 8.1 on my tablet a month ago through MSND subscription and Google search worked just fine. Looks like this problem appeared after public availability of Windows 8.1. So I believe it's something that Google or Microsoft should figure out. How could they have tested as they were not on the list until, what appears to be, the publi…

Google's been on the list well before the public GA release of IE11 to ensure compatibility.

Re: IE11 on Windows 8.1 - Google Search loads in legacy mode

#38

Post by AaronFriel » Sat, Oct 19, 2013, 5:50 PM UTC

AaronFriel wrote: post #18

enscr wrote: post #17

So nobody @ MSFT has access to Google.com before shipping off the product. Given that a typical engineer is so addicted to 'googling' all through the day, this would've been noticed.

(Strike this, see note below) This problem just started in the last 24 hours - Google rendered fine and was my default search engine for over a month running the 8.1 RTM, and for a few months before that running the 8.1 Preview. This isn't MSFT's fuck up unless Google is doing feature detection and IE11 is presenting itself as not supporting some trivial HTML5 feature. Edit: I stand corrected - it looks like somethin…

Edit2: I'm not convinced of the above anymore. It doesn't look like the IE compat list is abnormal, but it could be a fluke interaction between Google and IE11.

On the other hand, it's very strange that it suddenly occurred in the past day, when I've been running 8.1 release for over a month.

Re: IE11 on Windows 8.1 - Google Search loads in legacy mode

#39

Post by dangrossman » Sat, Oct 19, 2013, 5:57 PM UTC

It looks to have been fixed already. I'm on Win8.1, with IE11, and get the same Google homepage I get in Chrome. I haven't touched any settings.

Re: IE11 on Windows 8.1 - Google Search loads in legacy mode

#40

Post by Dylan16807 » Sat, Oct 19, 2013, 5:59 PM UTC

cbr wrote: post #26

IE11 normally sends "Trident/7.0" and not "MSIE". Apparently Microsoft has added "google.com" to the Compatibility View List [1], which means IE11 now sends Google a User Agent that does include "MSIE". Google is interpreting this to mean it's an old version of IE, and sending the legacy view. You can manually disable the CVL, but then other sites that Microsoft has determined need old versions of IE won't work. I su…

I'm pretty comfortable always blaming UA sniffing when there is an interaction between it and something else that causes problems.

It sounds like Microsoft screwed up their list, but IE saying 'MSIE' is not a bug by any stretch of the imaginations. The bad code here is all on Google's end.