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The 11% for IE11 challenge

blogs.windows.com

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Re: The 11% for IE11 challenge

#21

Post by AaronFriel »

Zelphyr wrote: post #9
xradionut wrote: post #6

Here's a challenge: It would be nice if Microsoft would fix the issues with IE11. Like all the sites that work with IE10, that don't work anymore with IE11. Their solution was to issue an IE11 upgrade blocker with a shitty manual install routine.

Internet Explorer has been and continues to be hostile to the web. It easily makes my job as a web developer at least 50% more difficult which translates into costing my employer more money. As far as I'm concerned, we as developers need to make a concerted effort to force Microsoft to either adopt WebKit or release a version of IE that is 100% standards compliant.

Diversity of implementations on the web is vital for continued innovation. Though it's less important that IE stick with the Trident engine now that Blink and WebKit 2 have diverged, we should celebrate progress and encourage participation in the standards process - things IE has gotten a lot better about especially in the last two iterations.

> has been and continues to be hostile to the web

I'm going to have to dispute "continues to be": http://caniuse.com/#compare=ie+11,firefox+25,chrome+31

You have to scroll down quite a ways before you find feature differences between the browsers, and it's not quite clear which (except maybe Chrome) is the best. If we remove feature drafts, it's a good deal closer.

Now, regarding has been: http://caniuse.com/#compare=ie+6,ie+7,ie+8,ie+11

Well, there's no contest there. IE8 being the last supported browser on XP is a harsh reality for web developers. :(

Re: The 11% for IE11 challenge

#22

Post by jawns »

justgar wrote: post #14
jawns wrote: post #2

The blog and the 11% for IE11 landing page both imply that if you complete the challenge, you will win the prizes described. For instance, the blog entry says: "If you can get 11% better page load performance from your site, we'll send you and your team some 11 goodness." I'm no lawyer, but that sounds like a valid unilateral contract to me. Similarly, the landing page says: "Show us how you got 11% better page load…

@jawns. We have updated the blog post to clarify. I encourage you to try out the new tools and I hope the perf testing is worth the pizza+.

Thanks. I hope you'll also update the landing page of the challenge.

A little more feedback, which I hope you'll take as constructive:

As I said above, there's quite a difference between "if you do this, you'll win this" and "if you're one of the first 11 people in the United States to do this, you'll win this."

As I see it, if I have any chance of winning the prize, I've got to drop everything right now and scramble to complete the challenge, and even then, who knows how many other people are doing the same thing?

So, my incentive has just dropped from, "This is exciting! I have a decent shot at getting pizza!" to "It's extremely unlikely that I'll win. Why bother?"

I would therefore suggest that you look for ways to increase the value proposition to developers. I'm not saying you have to spend millions -- but maybe find some creative ways to reward developers outside of the first 11, such as by featuring some of the success stories on your blog.

Re: The 11% for IE11 challenge

#25

Post by hacknat »

nwh wrote: post #16

Doesn't make up for the fact that I spent most of my time writing workaround for the stupid rendering bugs their "30% faster" browser introduces. Even just basic CSS layouts and constantly wrong in IE.

I know, I don't care if they are objectively the best browser (I doubt they are), my grudge against them runs too deep. I want them to fail. Does that make me a bad person?

Re: The 11% for IE11 challenge

#27

Post by lambda »

Aardwolf wrote: post #3

Am I the only person who is sensitive to JPEG artifacts? Look at this image from the article. Why did they use such low quality JPEG? http://blogs.windows.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver...

Wow. No, you're not the only one. Those are some of the worst compression artifacts I've seen in an actual image that wasn't just a compression demo that I've seen in years.

Re: The 11% for IE11 challenge

#28

Post by justgar »

jawns wrote: post #22
justgar wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@jawns. We have updated the blog post to clarify. I encourage you to try out the new tools and I hope the perf testing is worth the pizza+.

Thanks. I hope you'll also update the landing page of the challenge. A little more feedback, which I hope you'll take as constructive: As I said above, there's quite a difference between "if you do this, you'll win this" and "if you're one of the first 11 people in the United States to do this, you'll win this." As I see it, if I have any chance of winning the prize, I've got to drop everything right now and scramble…

You bet. Feedback well taken jawns and thanks! This has been live for 2 hours so I still think you have an opportunity here.

Re: The 11% for IE11 challenge

#29

Post by harpastum »

Aardwolf wrote: post #3

Am I the only person who is sensitive to JPEG artifacts? Look at this image from the article. Why did they use such low quality JPEG? http://blogs.windows.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver...

JPEG from article, 18,873 bytes:

http://blogs.windows.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver...

PNG grabbed from actual site: 19,764 bytes:

http://f.cl.ly/items/3w3k2O3n0y0v2W0L1p40/lossless.png

About the same size, much better looking.

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