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A new Microsoft browser?

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Re: A new Microsoft browser?

#91

Post by gaius »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #50
brickmort wrote: post #44

I don't mean to be so disparaging, but Microsoft really should just take IE out back and shoot it.

That's not really helpful. IE is no longer a shitty browser; why should it be killed off?

When IE6 came out, it was a breath of fresh air; the fastest, most stable, most featureful, most standards-compliant browser available. It was the final piece of the puzzle that let corporate developers move away from desktop apps and onto the web wholesale.

Sure it has overstayed its welcome. But I hate the revisionist attitude of some, who were still in school when all this went down.

Re: A new Microsoft browser?

#92

Post by danatkinson »

nailer wrote: post #84
emn13 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it would just waste everyone's time. Why would you intentionally want to preface the meat of an article with disclaimers like that, especially if (as you say) the disclaimers wouldn't actually affect your interpretation of the article? That's pretty much the definition of cruft.

My own personal evaluation of Spartan is beside the point. The sponsorship is relevant and should be explicitly disclosed.

This is not new information though. Every page on the QuicksBlog contains the sponsorship information at the bottom of the page.

Re: A new Microsoft browser?

#93

Post by nailer »

danatkinson wrote: post #92
nailer wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My own personal evaluation of Spartan is beside the point. The sponsorship is relevant and should be explicitly disclosed.

This is not new information though. Every page on the QuicksBlog contains the sponsorship information at the bottom of the page.

Other quirksmode articles, eg Introduction to JavaScript (front page, first article) do not take explicit positions on Microsoft technologies.

Re: A new Microsoft browser?

#94

Post by nercury »

For some reason, I immediately pictured a product rewrite gone wrong and causing two versions of the same product appear, because the new one can never catch up to the legacy quirks of first.

Re: A new Microsoft browser?

#95

Post by pcwalton »

gldalmaso wrote: post #78
junto wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any competition is good competition, no matter what the quality is. Or do you want a single monopolistic choice of Chrome to rule the world? Sorry, bit we've been there before. Embrace the variety.

Variety is good but Microsoft has an ugly history with standards and that is very hurtful to the ecosystem. They promised that they have changed in regards to that, but those are just words in the wind, time will tell on that. Also, they were lagging behind HTML5 standards for a long time, then they sort of caught up, now they are lagging behind on ECMAScript 6 features. Every time I check, it is Microsoft's fault th…

> Variety is good but Microsoft has an ugly history with standards and that is very hurtful to the ecosystem.

That's no longer the case.

> They promised that they have changed in regards to that, but those are just words in the wind, time will tell on that.

No, they aren't just words. For example, in the ES6 committee everything I've heard is that Microsoft has been doing fantastic work, right now.

> Quality implementation and standards adoption is the name of the game in the browser market. After 10+ years in that market, my opinion is that they have neither.

I don't think that's fair either. The implementation of canvas in IE9, for example, is a very high quality Direct2D-based GPU implementation. (D2D is still arguably the best widely-used GPU vector graphics implementation around.)

Re: A new Microsoft browser?

#96

Post by DougWebb »

kylegordon wrote: post #41
sharkweek wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but... I used to work for a large financial institution that wouldn't let any of us do anything to our computers so we were all stuck with outdated IE that didn't update itself automatically

That's a policy problem rather than a technical or provider problem. I bet if your employer used Chrome they'd just lock down the version of that as well, courtesy of https://support.google.com/installer/answer/146164?hl=en

As a web developer, the reason for the problem is irrelevant. If your users are using an older browser, it doesn't matter why; you still have to support it. You and they probably have little influence over changing the policy.

Re: A new Microsoft browser?

#97

Post by ben336 »

mrbig4545 wrote: post #86

lets hope they make it windows version agnostic, that way we can all start supporting ie12, instead of being shackled to ie9

Eh? IE9 isn't the latest version available for any version of Windows.

8 is the latest for XP/Vista

11 is the latest for 7/8/8.1

9 is still popular because not everybody upgrades browsers, but giving users who don't upgrade browsers a new option is unlikely to be helpful.

Communicating to them that IE is going away and that they should upgrade to a modern browser, "Spartan" or otherwise, would possibly help this situation, as the author suggests.

Re: A new Microsoft browser?

#98

Post by DougWebb »

Silhouette wrote: post #85
thomasfoster96 wrote: post #60

One of the things I really want to see is both IE and Safari move to the six weekly update cycle that Firefox and Chrome are using. IE still has a major slice of the browser market share and this probably ain't going to change soon. IE>9 have all been decent browsers for the time that they were released, although they do seem a bit out of date 6 months later. At the moment, if both Firefox and Chrome implement a new…

One of the things I really want to see is both IE and Safari move to the six weekly update cycle that Firefox and Chrome are using. Whereas I would really like IE not to do that, and ideally Firefox and Chrome to move to longer cycles (minimum 6 months, preferably annual) for their main public releases. One good reason for this is that there is no point in having browsers support new features within moments of someon…

I'll give you an upvote because I hear what you're saying; keeping up with new browser features is tough if you've got other things to do as well. But, you don't need to incorporate every new feature into your own web projects, and you don't need to follow the same rapid release cycle as the browsers.

If my project has an annual update cycle, I want to be certain that any new browser features I'd like to use are widely supported and have been tested in-the-wild for as long as possible before I commit to them. The rapid release cycles of the browsers gives me that, and also ensures that there will be blogs and StackOverflow questions providing useful documentation on the best ways to use the new features by the time I'm ready to learn about them.

Re: A new Microsoft browser?

#99

Post by icantthinkofone »

nailer wrote: post #66
rictic wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the first paragraph summarized the entire article, which is incredibly respectful of the reader's time. Presumably many sites intentionally leave this out in order to maximize revenue and "engagement."

It would save more time and avoid the appearance of impropriety if they declared their Microsoft sponsorship in the second paragraph, rather than after the article. Edit: if it's unclear, this is not accusing anyone of bias: good writing should make any involvement in the subject matter explicit. See http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appearance_of_impropriety The article is sponsored by modern.ie which is a Microsoft in…

I've read him for years. He's not afraid to rake Microsoft over the coals and has done so for years.

Re: A new Microsoft browser?

#100

Post by billyhoffman »

thomasfoster96 wrote: post #60

One of the things I really want to see is both IE and Safari move to the six weekly update cycle that Firefox and Chrome are using. IE still has a major slice of the browser market share and this probably ain't going to change soon. IE>9 have all been decent browsers for the time that they were released, although they do seem a bit out of date 6 months later. At the moment, if both Firefox and Chrome implement a new…

I firmly believe that Chrome's day one feature of in-place auto updates was one of the most important milestones in web browser development. The accelerated pace of fractional improvement and implementation of new standards (even in draft form) has been enormously powerful for the web as a whole.

IE is like the hare. It sprints ahead with each massive update, but then sleeps for a year or more, only pushing security fixes via Windows update. Chrome is the Tortoise, forever moving, always making progress.

http://zoompf.com/blog/2012/09/internet-explorer-is-the-hare...

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