Microsoft Still Chasing the Competition With IE9

http://www.webmonkey.com/blog/Microsoft_Still_Chasing_the_Competition_with_IE9?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+(Wired%3A+Index+3+(Top+Stories+2))&utm_content=My+Yahoo

by edw519 • 17 years ago

23 19 17 years ago

webmonkey.com

msie• 17 years ago

Sigh, this browser war will never end. Please MS, just support HTML5. Why wait?

tumult3• 17 years ago

Makes Office and Windows less relevant.

qeorge3• 17 years ago

Please explain. This sounds like a kneejerk, snarky comment, but perhaps I'm wrong.

omnigoat2• 17 years ago

This post makes one incorrect statement, I think:

"And that cuts to heart of why developers and anyone with an interest in the using the web of the future today has long since lost faith in Internet Explorer: The competition continues to deliver improvements at a pace that far outstrips Internet Explorer."

The competitor's products are better, but they were waaay better before IE8 even existed. After IE9, assumedly, they'll still be better, but by far less a distance. Google is really the only company in the world that can rival Microsoft's speed in development (when it sets its mind to it). Honestly, here's what I think happened: Microsoft missed the internet-apps thing. They sort of grew, and Microsoft didn't notice for a while. Then they exploded and Microsoft was caught off-guard with a browser the developers didn't like, and a business strategy that was out-dated. But being Microsoft, and they're not dumb guys, they started improving their browser and began to write some neat cloud software (Web Office, anyone?).

You'll notice this thinking in what they concentrate on: To Microsoft, web apps are where it's at, and javascript speed is important! It makes things run better. But if you look to web standards, you'll see Microsoft talk about "real world cases", or however they put it. They don't care about 100% compliance, they don't have time. They're playing catch-up, and are focusing on the areas that will make the most difference first. It's sort of like Startup 101. My belief is that they'll continue to improve the standards, but will devote, say, %20 of their efforts to it, until their javascript engine and css rendering layout engine is humming in tune with V8 and Sunspider.

Maybe afterwards they'll decide to go with full-standards compliance, one would have to look at the development cost vs. the predicted returns, but it wouldn't be a terrible idea, really, to woo developers over from other platforms: "Yeah, our performance is the same, and we're at 100%. You can develop for us and on us with no problems, assuming the competitors follow the standards like us".

But that's probably wishful thinking.

ramanujan• 17 years ago

> Google is really the only company in the world that can rival Microsoft's speed in development (when it sets its mind to it)

I'm curious -- what MS product specifically are you thinking of here?

I think Apple at a minimum has consistently out-executed Microsoft. Nintendo, VMWare, and Facebook also all come to mind (along with any other small company that MS acquired).

The most interesting things from MS I've heard about recently are Project Natal, Pivot, and Azure.

Are you thinking of something in particular?

omnigoat2• 17 years ago

I'm thinking about the (No Internet Explorer) -> Internet Explorer 3.0 jump, which has been cited before as an example of what Microsoft is capable of when it suddenly throws the 'code red' flag (ie, Netscape and the internet are suddenly important). I can also think of Win98 -> Win98SE jump, and Visual Studio 6 -> Visual Studio 2005 (remember, they didn't start development on VS.NET/2003 until around 2000/2001).

Don't mistake speed of releases or popularity or innovation for the speed of development. Nintendo is a particularly poor example, I think, since I'm currently working with their tools... they are last-decade. I'm not even talking about the Wii's capabilities (which are Gamecube-era), I'm talking about their software: IDEs, compilers, etc. They struck gold with the Wii, but Microsoft went from (No Console) -> XBox360 within... like, 5 years? Nintendo's been playing this game for 25+ years, and without the unmitigated success of the Wii their console division would be bankrupt now (seriously!)

Microsoft's ability to develop (notably, but not limited to) software is unparalleled save for Google. Innovation, iteration, or popularization are all different matters.

thwarted2• 17 years ago

One problem with putting standards compliance at such a low priority is that then they continue to screw the developers -- in the same way they have been with previous releases. It doesn't matter if the javascript engine is fast if the page looks like crap or developers continue to spend a lot of time trying to get a consistent experience across browsers.

agazso• 17 years ago

It is wishful thinking regarding that Microsoft has currently four (IE 6, 7, 8 and the compatibility mode) slightly different implementations, and this number will only increase with their development.

The real problem is that web standards of the past (made by W3C) were overly complicated and not practical, so the browser developers had to make engineering trade-offs to implement a subset of them. So in practical sense there is no such thing as standard compliance, and this is not something Microsoft can go with.

teilo• 17 years ago

This, in part, explains why it was a good thing for Google to release Chromium to the open source community now, rather than later.

Consider: Microsoft could potentially compete in this arena. They have MinWin now. They could, if they chose, build something roughly equivalent to Chrome OS. However, they have a problem. Even IE 9 is behind the competition. In its current incarnation, it is slower than the currently available versions of Chrome, Firefox, and Safari, in everything except perhaps graphics rendering, a difference hardly noticeable. As TA notes, it is still playing catchup on standards. Microsoft boasts an Acid3 score of 32/100, and actually believes that Acid3 is to blame.

So - what happens when ChromeOS provides a viable alternative to those who are quite happy to live on the Web, use Microsoft Office Online or Google Docs, etc.? Whatever is keeping them in Windows?

As I see it, Microsoft has only one alternative: Buckle down and bring IE 9 into the HTML5/CSS3 fold. Pour their reputed brilliance into dramatically improving their Javascript engine. THEN, perhaps, with MinWin / IE9, they could go head-to-head with Chrome OS.

But you know what? Say they succeed, and successfully provide a viable alternative to ChromeOS. Google still wins. Why? Because every browser on the market is, finally, standards compliant, and a suitable canvas for all the Web App goodness that Google would like to market to everyone in the world.

sirrocco• 17 years ago

"Microsoft boasts an Acid3 score of 32/100, and actually believes that Acid3 is to blame."

Can we get a quote on that one ? I saw on PDC (it was broadcasted live ) the presenter saying that IE9 displayed was just their most recent build and that it will get better. Nothing about Acid3 being to blame.

thwarted2• 17 years ago

From http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2009/11/18/an-early-look-at... which was posted to HN a few days ago:

Some standards tests – like Acid3 – have become widely used as shorthand for standards compliance, even with some shortcomings.

I read this, at the time, as a somewhat whiny "if Acid 3 was a better test, we'd be able to pass it".

As for the "boasting", they included a screen shot. And to be honest, this score is so low, I didn't even remember what a 32/100 Acid3 result looked like, so the screenshot was useful.

CWuestefeld• 17 years ago

Microsoft needs to hit a home run with IE9, or the IE franchise is going to go the way of Geocities.

That's not necessarily true. It could be that the current version(s) of IE are good enough for what most users need, or at least that the cost of changing browsers exceeds the benefit. If that's true, then the level of performance that IE provides will prevail, and the recent standards and performance achievements of other platforms will just be sales talking points.

HTML 5, etc., does not represent user demands (at least not directly). It represents what developers want to be able to do. If our users refuse to provide the requirements for those developers' apps to run, then it's going to be the developers who have to change.

(I make no judgments about the merits of this, just observing where the balance of power lies.)

Microsoft Still Chasing the Competition With IE9

Related Stories