Sure, it's a bit of fun to point out an IE error visiting Bing. But the title of this post, and the uncalled-for leap to generic Microsoft bashing are pretty pathetic. The first comment (from a Microsoft employee) rightly calls the author out on this nonsense.
Give the guy a break. He (like the rest of us in web development) spends hours on end debugging obscure issues in IE, after we just spent hours making it work across Firefox and Webkit. Considering the size of Posterous, he's probably having to develop and test against IE6 daily. The Microsoft executive named in the comments (Jeff Henshaw) is likewise fielding this sort of flak daily.
I don't think it's fair to criticize a developer for venting frustration, but then give a Microsoft executive a pass when he blows out at him like that the same way in the comments of his blog.
His frustration is understandable, and I'm certainly guilty of venting at times too (after wrestling with one, or likely more, browsers!). But the fact that it is understandable doesn't mean the title of the post is any less nonsense. In my opinion the Microsoft employee is justified to point this out.
He would be fully justified if he calmly pointed it out, explained that the headline was sensationalistic and inaccurate and left it at that. Instead, he loses focus as he goes further, turning the reply into a flame:
"Meanwhile, I'll take my Posteri over to Tumblr. Maybe they have more maturity when it comes to handling the occasional bug."
That's not a constructive way to handle criticism. There was a great opportunity to take the high road here, but he ends up just tossing flames back and the whole experience becomes a net-zero shouting match. Neither of the participants in that exchange have the high moral ground here.
That first comment is biting, and painfully true. Let's not forget that just because Microsoft has tons of money that doesn't mean that the programmers behind the scenes are infallible. Bing and IE were built by programmers just like you and I.
I'm sorry, but I've seen any number of scripts throw a JS error (especially an "Object Expected" error). Maybe an element isn't there (someone missed an if(el)), maybe an analytics service threw it, etc., etc. Microsoft does some silly things, but I don't think not testing is one of them.
That's correct; I can assure you that we absolutely are testing Bing ... is there something you think we missed? Please feel free to call that out to my attention, and I'm happy to dig deeper for you.
I've noticed errors in IE 6 on Live.com and Bing, too. Silly that I spend all this time making our sites work with IE6, and Microsoft themselves have tossed it aside.
As for the general point, I couldn't agree more. I do think Microsoft has intentionally impeded the progress of the open web. They made it clear with the whole Netscape deal that shift away from desktop apps (i.e., win32) towards a system where one can access programs and accomplish tasks equally well on any desktop OS was something they sought to avoid. And why not? They essentially had an obligation to their shareholders to preserve their advantage.
One could see how their interests would be served by making web development more difficult.
Sorry, but Microsoft hasn't "tossed" IE6 aside. We still support and service it, today. Would you prefer that someone who bought a shrink-wrapped copy of Windows XP at Best Buy 6 years ago suddenly discovers that their computer/browser stopped working as it should, simply because they chose not to upgrade? Would you be happy if Toyota came by and said they refused to fix your car since it was over 5 years old and your only way out was to upgrade?
Trust me, servicing IE comes at a phenomenal cost to us; nothing would make us happier than to have to deal with a smaller matrix to deal with ...
I was referring to how Microsoft's own flagship sites has scripting errors in IE. I'm sure some part of MS still deals with IE6, and I understand why. Of course they encourage people to upgrade to IE8 when they can.
And actually... yes, I would prefer if some nimrod who is trying to install a copy of XP from 6 years ago has problems with it and understands that they need to run modern software to access the modern internet.
If Toyota was going to upgrade my car for free, as every browser is available for free, why would I have a problem with that?
Would you prefer that someone who bought a shrink-wrapped copy of Windows XP at Best Buy 6 years ago suddenly discovers that their computer/browser stopped working as it should, simply because they chose not to upgrade?
Yes.
Would you be happy if Toyota came by and said they refused to fix your car since it was over 5 years old and your only way out was to upgrade?
That is standard practice in many industries. At some point, maybe not in 5 years but more like 7-10, you will bring your Toyota to the dealership and they'll explain that the part it needs is no longer available. Your options at that point include using aftermarket or salvaged parts, likely installed by an independent mechanic, or to get a new car. Life goes on.
That is standard practice in many industries. At some point, maybe not in 5 years but more like 7-10, you will bring your Toyota to the dealership and they'll explain that the part it needs is no longer available. Your options at that point include using aftermarket or salvaged parts, likely installed by an independent mechanic, or to get a new car. Life goes on
OK, how about a television analogy? Let's say you bought a television 5 years ago, and come to find out that all the local cable and satellite providers have started to only offer HDMI connections to connect your television to. Chances are your 5 year old television doesn't support HDMI which would force you to upgrade.
Beyond being frustrated that your TV is obsolete, you probably won't chose those cable or satellite providers again in the future.
Would you prefer that someone who bought a shrink-wrapped copy of Windows XP at Best Buy 6 years ago suddenly discovers that their computer/browser stopped working as it should
Yes. Happens all the time. My Toshiba Techra A6 made in '06 will not have win7 drivers released for it - therefore no win7 for me. Life goes on.
This is especially true given that browser upgrades are free
Also - is there a good reason for why ie6 cannot be simply sandboxed into a ie9 tab? This would solve all of the 'corporation are unwilling to upgrade' arguments.
Or maybe a 'portable' version with all the dependencies bundled into one distro so that ie6 could be launched without installation?
There are standalone versions of IE6 (including IEs4Linux) hacked together for web developers, but they tend to break with updates. An official solution from Microsoft might help get corporate customers to use IE9, Firefox, or Chrome for external websites, without losing IE6 for their internal applications.
Please remember Microsoft web developers are human, like you and I. Ask around, they all HATE ie,much more than you could know. It's an embarassment and joke inside the company.
The IE development team however are not human. They are monsters.
I certainly aren't human after having to deal with nasty comments on IEBlog over the years ... and I guess now, unfortunately, even on news.yc ... I guess I should be happy it hasn't deteriorated to death threats in here yet (like it has at other places) :/
Given the level of effort it takes us as web developers to support IE, I don't think you can fault people for expressing their frustration every once in a while. IE is the greatest source of dev-rage in web development. I personally appreciate the level of attention that IE has been getting lately, but we're still fighting with the old versions, waiting for them to drop off.
It's not fair at all to take it out on individuals on the IE team or do something stupid like threaten physical violence (and I'd fully support someone being called out for that), but letting people rant at your organization as a whole keeps people sane. Leaving Posterous because a designer finally hit a boiling point in frustration? That's just as bad.
FWIW, I can appreciate how hard it is to work on a team where you're fighting both the legacy of your old products and the decades-old impression of Microsoft as anti-web. Every version reduces the amount of frustration we encounter and every version that drops off makes us all that much happier. We're glad to see IE join the forefront of the browser race again. :)
I personally appreciate the level of attention that IE has been getting lately, but we're still fighting with the old versions, waiting for them to drop off
You can't really fault Microsoft because IE6 has yet to drop off. To their credit, Microsoft has made large strides in getting users to upgrade, but as reported in the past a lot of corporate customers are unwilling to upgrade. I'm sure a lot of people on the IE team would like to see IE6 die as much as the rest of us.
It's hard not to fault 'them' (the organization, Microsoft) because it was the years of inaction on the part of the executive that left IE6 as the foremost release for so long. It's not the fault of the current IE team and possibly the executives in the chain of command over the web clients, but it most certainly is the fault of the organization.
It's at least partly the fault of the US government that tried to dismantle the company over developing a free browser. If it was your software company, would you get right to work on the next version after that?
I'm curious as to why you think that; do you have a personal experience with one or more of the team members, is it based solely on their product, is it their handling of public relations, etc.? Make no mistake, IE as a product/team/etc. (and MS in general) have made a lot of mistakes, but "monster" is both ambiguous in meaning and quite damning without any context.
Yeah, just throwing in non standard random crap like XMLHttpRequest. No good will ever come from this experimentation without a guiding standards body.
I honestly don't think that was the point at all. Yes, XHR allowed for AJAX to follow, and was rather revolutionary. That said, the original implementation was very tied not just to MSIE, but to ActiveX and, by extension, to the Windows platform. It was not even in principle possible for Mozilla, Opera and others to implement XHR as originally implemented by MS, since to do so would require implementing ActiveX support. Rather, cross-browser support for XHR required developing a second, incompatible API. Similar concerns hold back implementing support for MSIE's "filter" CSS properties and several other such experiments.
> It was not even in principle possible for Mozilla, Opera and others to implement XHR as originally implemented by MS, since to do so would require implementing ActiveX support.
Incorrect. The code to create an XHR object in IE looked something like this:
var xhr = new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP.6.0");
Any browser could absolutely have supported creating XHR objects in this manner without being forced to support ActiveX.
Right up until MS changed their implementation, say to version 7. MSIE's implementation of XHR exposed internal details of the ActiveX-based implementation which were subject to change-- it was never meant to be an external API, but rather, to enable features in Outlook Web Access. Thus, any third-party implementation would have to involve making a list of special magic strings to recognize in the ActiveXObject() call, then delegate to code that attempts to replicate internal implementation details of the given ActiveX object.
Microsoft did stuff the Microsoft way. There's no question that there are horrible bugs people have to deal with due to crazy implementations.
Inhuman monsters is way way over the top. The IE team can take credit for plenty of bugs, but they can also take credit for some pretty neat things as well.
This is kind of absurd. Scripts are throwing errors all the time on the biggest of websites. The only people who notice them are the ones with their debuggers enabled. This might not even be due to MS.
Is this an error that the average user will see while using the site normally, or is it a silent error that you will only see if you check your debugger? If it's in the latter category, it's only a bug in a fairly academic sense. If silent, meaningless JS errors are what it takes to make the site work across browsers, I would not consider that a failure of testing. To the contrary, it's efficient allocation of testing resources.
Coincidentally, IE's Test Manager just posted on the IE Blog about how we've been dealing with incoming bug reports/feedback during IE8 and IE9. I would encourage everyone to read it, and submit pro-active, actionable bugs, especially the Microsoft haters: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2010/04/28/product-feedback...
In addition, I remain always available to the news.yc community (see my profile for my contact info) if you have IE issues to debug. Please don't hesitate to drop me a line!
When somebody is frustrated, you forget that a company is run by people too.
I used to work for a company where the web site was too buggy. We (the developers) want to make the site stable but are not given resources and time by the management to do so. Our users were complaining and it was frustrating for us because there was not much we can do.
Microsoft is not a machine that churns out software. You may not agree with some of its practices but there are people in Microsoft that actually believe that they are doing something good for the internet as a whole.
All I could think while reading this was "what a sarcastic, snide jerk". He sees one javascript error and not only concludes that MS does no testing of Bing in IE, but decides to trumpet that "fact" on his personal blog. I think / thought posterous was cool, but knowing someone so childish is in charge of it sours it a bit.
