How not using Internet Explorer put me out of touch and cost me dearly

https://www.blurity.com/blog/2012/07/13/how-not-using-internet-explorer-put-me-out-of-touch-and-cost-me-dearly/

by tghw • 14 years ago

330 136 14 years ago

wlesieutre• 14 years ago

I know some people have voiced concerns about Gatekeeper in 10.8, but this seems at least as bad. Especially from a normal user's perspective.

jasomill5• 14 years ago

Gatekeeper is not nearly as bad for small developers, though. Unless Microsoft has started offering, as part of a $99 MSDN subscription, the ability to generate a signed certificate that doesn't expire for five years automatically from inside Visual Studio as soon as you've signed in with your Microsoft ID.

The problem with Microsoft's strategy has always been the reliance on companies like VeriSign for whom recurring revenue from certificate renewal is a primary revenue source. And when I've had to deal with VeriSign for code-signing certificates in the past, it's easily cost more than $99 in time ("I'm sorry for the delay, but could you please fax that to us again, only this time, on official company letterhead?").

redbeard0x0a• 14 years ago

Last I checked, you didn't even need the $99 Mac Developer program to get a signing certificate. You just needed an Apple Developer Id. The $99 program allows you to submit apps to the app store and gives you access to pre-release binaries, etc.

binarycrusader• 14 years ago

Apple Developer IDs are free, as are the certificates.

briandear2• 14 years ago

Verisign is a massive scam. Their SSL certs, for example are several hundred dollars. They get away with it because the big corporate-types have "heard" of verisign and "heard" they need security.

dmethvin• 14 years ago

If you are creating a Windows binary and expect a user to download it, you should be signing the binary. Period. It's not just IE that considers unsigned downloads suspect, many antivirus programs do as well. If you are proud of your work, sign it.

tommi• 14 years ago

You forgot one step: "If you are proud of your work, then buy a certificate and sign your work"

evolve2k• 14 years ago

Anyone have opinions on good SSL certificate providers or do you agree with the authors recommendation of http://startssl.com ?

yelloblac2• 14 years ago

I totally agree that maybe people shouldn't be HAVE to buy certificates for their binaries. In that case you should be making moves towards eliminating that process, ignoring the fact that it's necessary in the current market and then being upset when you're missing 50% of your profits is a whole other story entirely.

ben0x5392• 14 years ago

Maybe I'm too proud of my work to give in to certificate blackmail??

jamesaguilar• 14 years ago

That's nice, but you can't eat dignity. :P

ascendant2• 14 years ago

Hope you're proud enough to see 50% dropoff rates like this guy then.

teuobk7• 14 years ago

True. Part of the problem was simply not knowing that signing was a thing that needed to be done.

It's obvious in hindsight, but since I hadn't released many Windows applications in the past, I didn't realize what I didn't know.

Foy• 14 years ago

Often it's what you don't know that you don't know that bites you in the ass. As long as you know that you don't know it you're on the right track.

chris_wot2• 14 years ago

I've been a vocal supporter of the "don't worry about Internet Explorer" crowd. However, in this case if you have a Windows app that you want people to use, your target market is indeed Internet Explorer users.

gmurphy• 14 years ago

In general, not using the platform your users use is a path to trouble. For example, because so many designers in the valley use Macs, we continually have to fight an OS X bias in our design process; when designing something, you tend to calibrate it against what you're used to, but when OS X is only 5% of the market, OS X-based designers of client software end up with a massive blind spot when it comes to understanding what comes naturally to the rest of the world.

One example is font and font size choices - because the system fonts and font rendering styles differ between platforms, it becomes very hard to tell what looks broken or 'not quite right' on the platform you're not used to. It's not uncommon to see sites launch with font choices that look rubbish on ClearType, but if you're not used to ClearType, it's hard to tell whether the rubbish is your fault or not.

Apple's excellent execution and Windows' (no-longer-deserved) poor reputation also mean you frequently hear excuses for this behavior like "Windows users won't care because they don't care about design" or "The Apple way is better, so we should do it that way on Windows too". Both of these are infuriating and lead to terribly designed products.

justindocanto• 14 years ago

5% of 'the market' does not translate to 5% of users on your site.

Depending on the site's demographic, as a developer, I see approx 15% Mac users making up traffic. Not to mention an ADDITIONAL 25% iPhone users. That's an average of 40% of apple traffic on the sites I work on. Some of which are getting 30k - 60k hits a month. Obviously this isnt the same stats across the board on all websites... but It is by no means FIVE percent.

einhverfr2• 14 years ago

Indeed. According to Google, something like 39% of viewers on my blog are running Windows and 9% are running IE. There are more Mac and Linux users together than there are Windows users....

Somehow I don't think this translates to the general market.

protomyth• 14 years ago

Your Mac number is not far off from Apple's Mac percentage in the US - 12%.

eli• 14 years ago

The point isn't whether there are 5% or 15% Mac users -- it's that you're ignoring 85%+ of non-Mac users.

batgaijin2• 14 years ago

I have an android 3. Never updated it, never customized anything.

This phone is so terribly broken and nonfundtional at times you wouldn't believe me.

I decided against focusing on android mobile dev (although I'm a gnu/linux gguy because the experience is so friggin terrible, and Google is just letting the carriers molest the users at this point.

CrazedGeek• 14 years ago

Considering that Android 3.0 was never on phones...

If you mean Gingerbread (2.3), it was always rock solid when I used it. So no, I don't believe you.

recursive• 14 years ago

I use android 2.3 and it works perfectly.

jfoutz• 14 years ago

Really depends on how you divide up the market. Mac users will pay a lot for perceived quality, and they will buy upgrades. I'd point you at Wil Shipley's arguments. It might be a lot easier to get $50 from a mac user, or it might be easier to get $5 from 10 windows users. They're just very different. Doing a half assed job on either side isn't going to win you any fans.

But, yeah, if half your money comes from windows, you should really focus on windows, The growth potential there is just staggering.

achal2• 14 years ago

> font and font size choices

Agreed. I don't know if it's just me, but Helvetica looks rather bad on Windows. I've found that Segoe UI almost always looks more pleasing, and yet Helvetica is omnipresent on the web (partially because of Twitter bootstrap).

NinetyNine• 14 years ago

I can't verify this, but unless you installed Helvetica manually, windows installations won't have it and will fall back to whatever is specified next in the family (usually Arial or the default Sans Serif).

coderdude• 14 years ago

A good example of this can be found on SoundCloud. They load a placeholder image that represents the common sharing widgets and then let the real widgets load over them. The problem is that the font rendering makes it look weird on any platform except the dev platform: http://i.imgur.com/lejjI.png

aidos• 14 years ago

Oh yeah, that's an annoying one and we have that problem too. We have sharing controls that reload as you cycle through images - but the delay / iframes reloading for the share widgets looks terrible. To get around it we use fake versions like soundcloud.

jiggy20112• 14 years ago

Platform choice and fragmentation is a pain in the ass.

I develop and maintain a bunch of sites. Majority of visitors are on Windows (Many using IE/WinXP).

Servers run Linux and I can never seem to get an accurate dev environment under Windows (some libraries don't seem to behave differently there).

Also a bunch of the front-end tools that I would like to use only run on Mac.

I don't really want to keep 3 uptodate computers.

nddrylliog• 14 years ago

Why would you need to run a dev environment on Windows? Keep running your dev environment on Linux and SSH to it using Putty/Chrome secure Shell. Works like a charm :)

Hario• 14 years ago

I'm no expert on these sorts of things, but it seems like the story goes something like this:

1. Dev checks out his site using IE

2. Dev realizes that IE users were getting scary warnings about his software

3. Dev has to pay up money to a third company to make the scary warnings go away.

Seems like a bad state of affairs to me.

CamperBob22• 14 years ago

I'd love to hear how this isn't grounds for a product disparagement lawsuit. Are any attorneys familiar with SmartScreen Filter?

A couple of relevant points that may be overlooked:

1) Signing your code, even with an expensive class-3 Authenticode certificate from Verisign that allows you to sign kernel drivers, is no guarantee that IE will not accuse you of distributing potential malware.

2) Contrary to various postings by Microsoft, there appears to be no avenue for appealing IE's poor judgement calls. This happened to me a few months ago -- again, with a signed .exe -- and all of the links on microsoft.com that I followed to submit my download to a whitelist went nowhere useful.

3) Mentioned in the article but worth emphasizing: the ridiculous "This application is not commonly downloaded" criterion almost seems designed to penalize smaller vendors who release frequent updates.

This SmartScreen bullshit is one of those cases where if you're not outraged, you're either not paying attention, or you're profiting from the scam somehow.

ascendant2• 14 years ago

Do you have a better idea? Signature-based malware scanning is a joke and a half. I know CA"s can be gamed but unless you're proposing a better solution then don't complain.

caf• 14 years ago

The "commonly downloaded" criterion seems especially odd. "We only stop unsuccessful malware"?

sliverstorm• 14 years ago

Certification costs money, and certification is a thing in many industries. I notice nobody is banging pots about ASE certification for automotive techs?

I mean, it's true, there is a difference here- the active "This software isn't certified" notification- but is that a critical distinction?

briandear2• 14 years ago

The difference is that ASE techs don't have to pay to certify each car they fix.

r00fus• 14 years ago

So what's better? The App Store model, where you pay 30% + $99/year to sell your apps? Or paying for a certificate to prove your software's originator identity? Even OSX will likely soon make buying outside the Mac App Store cumbersome. About the only "free" market is Android or the Web.

I suppose if you're selling to the Windows market, the App Store will be required in a few years as Metro becomes the dominant Windows UI (and Metro apps have to be sold in the Microsoft App Store).

lucian1900• 14 years ago

Or desktop linux.

lini• 14 years ago

In windows 8 the smartscreen filter is part if the OS and not just IE. Even if you download unsigned code with another browser, trying to run it will result in the same nasty warnings.

tomjen35• 14 years ago

While that is nice to know, it still smells of Raketeering to me.

"that is some nice software you have there, would be a shame if users thought it was dangerous"

"pay a little money to one of these approved companies and that warning will go away"

If MS was serious about this only being for security they could issue the certificates for free and prove me wrong.

On the other hand, why is it that about 20% of users click past BOTH of these EXTREEMLY scary warnings? Don't they read them at all?

Karunamon4• 14 years ago

>it still smells of Raketeering to me.

Congratulations - you have been enlightened to the state of PKI as it stands today. (I.e. a complete fucking scam).

praxulus2• 14 years ago

I'm afraid I haven't been enlightened. How else can the PKI be structured while providing the same amount of security?

Is public/private key cryptography itself fundamentally flawed? What's the alternative?

SomeCallMeTim2• 14 years ago

>If MS was serious about this only being for security they could issue the certificates for free and prove me wrong.

Make it too easy, and the scamware software will just get a free cert and sign apps.

It takes some amount of effort, possibly by a human, to approve you to receive a cert.

Even the "free" certs I've applied for have taken time and human interaction on the side of the registrar, and I'm certain those certs are offered as loss-leaders for their other products.

hobin• 14 years ago

I'm unfamiliar with many of these certificates, but is there any reason such 'scamware' woudln't be able to get one even though it costs money? Because, if they still can, they the whole certification business definitely seems like a big scam to me.

Turing_Machine3• 14 years ago

Apple gives out free developer id certificates. There's no reason Microsoft couldn't do the same.

barista• 14 years ago

>> it still smells of Raketeering to me

Racketeering indeed! I am sure that was the goal of the SmartScreen filter in IE. Cert vendors and MS must have colluded to add this feature so that developers of all binaries are forced to buy certs. Right?

CapitalistCartr• 14 years ago

As the saying goes, "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions." Welcome to the 'law' of unintended consequences.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_consequences

tomjen35• 14 years ago

If not, why not include the option of a free cert for each windows/compiler download?

That way even those who ship free software would sign it and thereby make windows safer.

But of course MS isn't interested in that when they can get paid for it.

PotatoEngineer• 14 years ago

Many users have figured out that if they click the OK button (or maybe the Cancel button), the dialog goes away. In this case, they know that they get what they want (downloaded file) if they hit the right buttons; they've probably hit exactly this before, on innocuous programs, and don't trust the warning messages.

Or we might just have a bunch of reasonably-savvy users that have realized that lack of a signature is not the same as untrustworthy software.

lisper• 14 years ago

Is there a reason you don't offer deblurring as SAAS? I have a photo I'd happily pay to have deblurred, but I use a Mac.

sp332• 14 years ago

That sounds like a completely different product. He would need to maintain infrastructure and an entire software stack under his deblurring program, design an API and/or security-hardened web interface to upload and retrieve photos, and consider bandwidth costs for every photo uploaded and downloaded.

teuobk7• 14 years ago

Pretty much spot on. Deblurring is extremely CPU intensive, so it would take a lot of hardware on the server side. Or, I could do something like a CUDA port, but then that would mean owning and grooming my own servers, since decent GPUs are still rare beasts on leased dedicated servers.

The more likely route for Mac support is to release a native OS X version, since the GUI is written in Python and the underlying deconvolution stuff is written in portable C++.

simonbrown3• 14 years ago

Also, people might be worried about uploading private photos.

krobertson• 14 years ago

Better subject: "How not testing my website with all browsers, even IE, and ignoring metrics for months cost me dearly"

qntmfred2• 14 years ago

I was browsing HN on my WP7 and this link gave me a "We're having trouble with this site's security certificate" message

jasomill5• 14 years ago

That's probably because the news.ycombinator.com certificate is rooted an Entrust certificate thumbprinted "‎50 30 06 ...", trusted by Windows [1] but not Windows Phone [2].

Yet another reason Apple's "one and only one way to do it" approach to code signing certificates may not be such a bad idea after all.

[1] http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/2...

[2] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg521150(v=VS.92).as...

qntmfred2• 14 years ago

blurity.com gave me the cert error, not HN.

kuhn• 14 years ago

Thanks for sharing the numbers. Great to see the process by which you worked out how much it was costing you. Good wakeup call really. Shame it took you so long to cotton on.

g-garron• 14 years ago

I like how you found a good side to this story, instead of being criticizing what the writer should or should not know.

vegas2• 14 years ago

How not watching four hours of television a day put me out out of touch and was really awesome.

vegas2• 14 years ago

Seriously, this gets downvoted?

keithnoizu• 14 years ago

Although ~half of your revenue came from the IE users the numbers may not significantly improve after resolving this issue as the ie users that completed downloads are also the IE users invested enough in the application to download it despite the ie warning.

jmboling• 14 years ago

If you care about your product you have to draw a line somewhere. The more developers that take a stance and don't support the criminal negligence of IE's support of broadly accepted standards the sooner we can all eliminate needless time costs of making sites agnostic to the point of stupidity.

dbattaglia• 14 years ago

Huh? The issue was with an .exe not being digitally signed and IE's scary warning that it might be malware. Very similar to what Apple are going to do in 10.8 (Gatekeeper).

fluxon3• 14 years ago

On the subject of conversion rates, the Download and Buy links are separate, with no mention of an unregistered trial or watermarked demo mode. That uncertainty might be affecting your tryout rate. If the "Download" button said "Try it!", then the certainty that there is some usable trial would be higher. Side note: I notice that the (watermarked) saved images lack EXIF info - is that preserved in the registered version? This is very important for many photographers...

teuobk7• 14 years ago

I've done some A/B testing with various download button labels, but I should probably go back and do it again now that I've switched from a 30-day trial model to a watermarked-demo model. As for preserving EXIF data, I think that should be an easy change, so I'm going to add that one to the feature list.

Thanks for the suggestions!

rwallace• 14 years ago

Does it make any difference if you wrap the executable in a zip file, or does IE look inside the zip file and raise an alarm anyway?

teuobk7• 14 years ago

That's an interesting question, so I gave it a try just now.

On Windows 7 with IE 9, there were no warnings presented when downloading the zip file containing the unsigned installer executable. When the installer was extracted from the archive and run after the download completed, I got the standard Windows security warning about "The publisher could not be verified", which was far less scary that the SmartScreen warning.

So yes, it looks like that could be a viable work-around.

raam86• 14 years ago

You have created the perfect layman meter. I can't of any of my friends or collegues who would even consider searching for such a program since in blurring can not be done. Didnt use your program but this can be proved mathamatically. These people will never use explorer and even if they would, They are the kind if crowd who actually reads error messages.

On the other hand you have my grandma,aunt. Random old folks who fall into the red messege = panic & insta call super urgent call to me.

So yea far more layman are using IE Sent from android.

As for the cert. When you know about you simply explaon this on the page.

tghw• 14 years ago

If I'm understanding you correctly, you think only laypeople would search for such a thing because more knowledgeable people think that what the program is doing is mathematically impossible? Sounds like a classic example of thinking you know more than you do, and trying to look at the world as binary, black and white.

In actuality, images have a wide range of sharpness. In this case, Blurity can improve the image. (Using mathematics no less!) Will it be perfectly sharp? No, not always, but it will be better. And that's something people will pay for. Even experts.

simonbrown3• 14 years ago

This reminds me of: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2009/10/23/the-ie-css-bug-which-cos...

lelele• 14 years ago

Reworded: "How not putting yourself into your customer's shoes while you are testing your software will cost you dearly."

gubatron• 14 years ago

yup, Microsoft and the companies issuing certificates have been at this for over a year, we had to get a certificate last year when we saw this issue.

It's a nice money maker for them getting all those yearly certificates, some charging several hundreds of dollars per year.

alan_cx• 14 years ago

Just generally, and very simplistically.... buy this or we scare away your customers.

Errr, um, sort of.....well.... Mafia protection racket, yes?

Put it this way. What is the first thing that springs to mind when some one is scaring off your customers demanding, sorry, politely implying a payment to stop?

Yes, yes, yes, I know. Security, user safety, lots of lovely logical arguments for it, Im sure there are plenty. But strip it back to basics and, well, there it is. I presume since MS is a big huge "evil" business which probably funds some political rodent its all cosy and legal.

Its more complicated, right?

Maascamp• 14 years ago

Or maybe cost of doing business? I mean, I can self sign SSL certs, so why does the browser give me warnings on https URLs? Mozilla must be arm in arm with Verisign. I'm shocked an open source company could be this evil. I will never browse the internet with Firefox again. I hope they get burnt for this.

NOTE: All of the above was sarcasm

scosman• 14 years ago

Ahh the irony! (the linked article has a SSL warning on IE9 on WinPhone) https://dl.dropbox.com/u/9906763/IMG_7965.JPG

drucken• 14 years ago

Just zip it.

How not using Internet Explorer put me out of touch and cost me dearly

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