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Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 at the height of cynicism

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Re: Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 at the height of cynicism

#3
post #2

To be fair they encourage people to upgrade from MSIE 6 and 7 too, and if they can achieve that, I'm willing to consider that a good thing.

And to be be fairer, they're not encouraging others to go out and built IE-only sites. They've just designed this site (presumable through a simple JS browser check or UA check on the server side) to only allow entry via IE8.

But still, kind of a dick move. The whole "get lost" message isn't really a good marketing move either.

Re: Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 at the height of cynicism

#5
"First, my memory isn’t so short as to have forgotten that it was Microsoft and their browser (Internet Explorer 6) that held back the web for so many years."

That's bullshit. IE6 may have sucked, but it didn't hold anything back. As Firefox proved, anyone could have come along and built a better browser and started sucking up enough market share to make it an industry again.

Re: Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 at the height of cynicism

#6

"First, my memory isn’t so short as to have forgotten that it was Microsoft and their browser (Internet Explorer 6) that held back the web for so many years." That's bullshit. IE6 may have sucked, but it didn't hold anything back. As Firefox proved, anyone could have come along and built a better browser and started sucking up enough market share to make it an industry again.

What are you talking about? They couldn't be bothered to update IE6 for years, and it still holds people back every day. How much time is wasted trying to get things to work in IE6? It's a ball an chain that web developers drag around and it slows progress by wasting their time and limiting their applications. Only recently have some websites been dropping support for IE6.

Re: Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 at the height of cynicism

#7
post #3
post #2

To be fair they encourage people to upgrade from MSIE 6 and 7 too, and if they can achieve that, I'm willing to consider that a good thing.

And to be be fairer, they're not encouraging others to go out and built IE-only sites. They've just designed this site (presumable through a simple JS browser check or UA check on the server side) to only allow entry via IE8. But still, kind of a dick move. The whole "get lost" message isn't really a good marketing move either.

How can they call FireFox 'old'? IE8 may be the best IE, but it's still a year or more behind the other browsers, and FF is very actively being developed. 3.5RC1 just came out in the past 24 hours.

Re: Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 at the height of cynicism

#8
So the author is complaining that Microsoft is restricting a contest designed to get users to download IE8 to, uh, users of IE8?

If they _didn't_ do that, why would they run a contest at all? Would having a Firefox user win the contest justify the marketing expense?

I agree that the promo is pretty thoughtless, but I'm not sure there was any thought put into this criticism either.

Re: Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 at the height of cynicism

#9

"First, my memory isn’t so short as to have forgotten that it was Microsoft and their browser (Internet Explorer 6) that held back the web for so many years." That's bullshit. IE6 may have sucked, but it didn't hold anything back. As Firefox proved, anyone could have come along and built a better browser and started sucking up enough market share to make it an industry again.

And so comes the totally unbiased voice of an ms fanboy ;)

Seriously. They employed anti competitive practices to grab market share from Netscape. Once they had completely obliterated Netscape, they decided to not update IE6 and leave users suffering.

It's like their aim with IE6 was to kill off the web. Or at least make it suck so much that webapps would be delayed for 10 years - which they pretty much achieved. Obviously that was in ms's favor - their business is desktop apps, not webapps.

Re: Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 at the height of cynicism

#10

"First, my memory isn’t so short as to have forgotten that it was Microsoft and their browser (Internet Explorer 6) that held back the web for so many years." That's bullshit. IE6 may have sucked, but it didn't hold anything back. As Firefox proved, anyone could have come along and built a better browser and started sucking up enough market share to make it an industry again.

What are you talking about? They couldn't be bothered to update IE6 for years, and it still holds people back every day. How much time is wasted trying to get things to work in IE6? It's a ball an chain that web developers drag around and it slows progress by wasting their time and limiting their applications. Only recently have some websites been dropping support for IE6.

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