
What if this is as good as it gets? - jeffmiller
http://diveintomark.org/archives/2011/02/18/ie9-is-the-new-ie6
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chubs
I have a suspicion that they will focus heavily on ie because of windows phone
7 - they desperately need developers, and will do whatever they can to get
them on their new mobile platform, be it native or web-apps. (this all relies
on the desktop and mobile versions of ie sharing a codebase.

~~~
fleitz
I should have looked at your comment before posting my own similar comment,
but I wanted to add that the codebase sharing is almost a given. With Windows
8 being ported to ARM one can only assume it's to bring a very full
implementation of Windows to the mobile market.

~~~
Someone
_full implementation_? If I were to create Windows for ARM, I would take the
opportunity to get rid of as much ballast as possible. Examples:

\- ditch all non-Unicode APIs

\- ditch a zillion older/ancient graphics technologies

\- ditch a zillion older/ancient database access layers

\- get rid of that ROM-based font and character mode displays

\- ditch various shims for older software (yes, it would be cool to download
Visicalc from <http://www.bricklin.com/history/vcexecutable.htm> and run it,
but it is not that necessary, and my feature list would not contain a X86
emulator, anyways)

\- remove Notepad.exe from the Windows directory

~~~
zdw
\- include telnet.exe in the default install (worst vista/7 change ever from a
network debugging perspective)

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r00fus
Microsoft is becoming less and less of a gatekeeper with the rise of Firefox,
Chrome, and Safari. In 2-3 years when the next "version" of HTML gains the
public eye, they will not have a stranglehold on the web. I'd be more worried
about Apple or Google than MS (as silly as it may sound now).

~~~
schwabacher
I am less worried about Google because webkit, chromium, v8, etc. are open
source. I think Apple has a pretty good record with open standards, but they
have a big incentive to keep people buying native apps on iOS (and i guess on
OSX too now). It is definitely not in their intrest to have people easily
build cross platform mobile apps when the default is for people to build iOS
native apps first now.

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JamesNK
Microsoft is going to keep caring because the browser has become the most
important application on a computer.

If Internet Explorer is garbage then sure the average user could go download a
third party browser but they could also just jump ship to a non-Microsoft
operating system or device.

The trend over the last couple of years is users just wanting something that
works out of the box and if Microsoft wants to keep those users on Windows or
other MS devices then IE is going to have to stay competitive.

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Spines11
Hopefully, in time, people would end up just installing Firefox or Chrome.

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Locke1689
Is this what-if really worth thinking about? If and when that time comes
whoever is using IE can just switch to one of the half-dozen other browsers on
their platform.

~~~
spatulon
They could have done that when IE6 stagnated, but they didn't. Not in anything
like large enough numbers anyway.

~~~
weavejester
When IE6 stagnated, it had a market share of over 95%. So if a web developer
wanted to take advantage of new HTML/CSS features, only 5% of their users
would notice, and so it wasn't really worth the cost. This meant that all
websites had to work in IE6, so there was less incentive to switch browsers.

Now IE market share is closer to 40%, so whilst they're still the market
leader, they no longer have a majority. Even if Microsoft ceased development
on IE9 now, web developers could still use new HTML/CSS features and reach 60%
of their audience. This would mean more websites using new features, which
would result in a faster switch from IE.

If you have a monopoly, you can afford to sit back and allow technology to
stagnate. If you don't, and your competitors are constantly developing new
features, you'll lose market share rapidly unless you keep up.

~~~
StrawberryFrog
_your competitors are constantly developing new features, you'll lose market
share rapidly unless you keep up_

This, in a nutshell, is why IE9 is not oing to be "as good as it gets". To be
sympathetic to IE9, it's a good start. But _only_ a good start. The people
inside MS who plan IE must know that there's more work to do in order to keep
up with the competition, let alone speed up and overtake them. MS is used to
running marathons when they have to, not betting it all on one version.

------
fleitz
It's not as good as it gets for one simple reason. Mobile. Ms's policy when
behind is embrace and extend. They are almost behind in browser share and are
currently not in the running with win phone 7 (that could change rapidly as
their offering is on a technical level in the running). In order to compete on
mobile they will have to bring their browser upto webkit levels. They will do
this as if they lose mobile they become irrelevant in the next 10 years.
Mobile is the new desktop and desktop client + office is their bread and
butter

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amurmann
I have very little hope that IE 9 will change anything about the IE problem.
What we need is continuous releases of IE like we see it with other browsers.
I don't see anything in Ms's behavior that indicates that that's what will be
happening once IE 9 is released. It will probably take years until we see IE
10 and updates to IE 9 will only be minor bug fixes.

Some of the posts here show that people think that Microsoft loses it's
dominance if they don't deliver a better browser. It's in Microsoft's best
interest to have the average user use the worst browser possible. Yes, it's
true Microsoft has missed out on the Internet. But by providing users with a
great browser doesn't make this problem smaller, it make sit bigger. For
example Google Docs and GMail become more of an alternative to Outlook and
Office, if you have a good browser. That's not in Microsoft's interest. So the
bets strategy for Microsoft is to release a browser that's only as good as
necessary to keep the majority of users from moving away from it, but at the
same time makes web development as hard as possible. As someone else here
pointed out. MS implemented all the big prominent buzz wordy stuff like
Canvas, rounded corners, etc. All the features even non-developers might have
heard about and will make them think they are using a great modern browser
that has all the awesome flashy stuff they read about. However, many things
that actually would help taking web development to a next level like web
sockets, workers and esp. the app cache aren't there. I am pretty sure MS
could have implemented that stuff if hey had really wanted to, but that would
have supported the Internet, in which MS is very little invested, too much and
weakened their Desktop apps even more. So nothing will be happening until
everyone's unhappiness with MS's IE effort has reached a critical point again
and even then we will only get a minimum of what MS thinks they have to give
us to please the crowd.

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barista
Biten once twice shy. They have been burnt badly by ignoring internet for a
long time even though they were made aware of its importance by numerous
memos. GOOG and AAPL won't let them rest on the laurels of IE9.

~~~
kenjackson
This is revisionist history, admittedly very well propagated.

The Vista debacle caused MS to get flat footed on IE. They never ignored IE,
but their ship vehicle was reset and delayed. Which forced them to do an
intermediate release.

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jasonkester
Funny, his list of things that IE9 supports reads like a list of cool HTML5
stuff you'd want to use. The "things it doesn't support" list looks like
something he made up on the spot (though clearly they're all real things that
_somebody_ has proposed putting into web browsers.)

But it's all stuff that doesn't _belong_ in web browsers. (OK, maybe
WebSockets). If it were up to me, now would be the time to actually
_standardize_ some of those things on the first list so that they work cross
browser. Then we're done.

~~~
lukifer
History API is huge: ability to use real permalinks and back/forward in a
dynamic web app without full page reloads. (We all want to get rid of the
those damn #!hashbangs.)

WebGL opens up far more possibilities for cross-platform gaming than <canvas>
and SVG combined.

Some of the others, admittedly, are only useful in edge cases, or are just
plain pipe dreams (<device> in particular). But many are already supported by
non-IE browsers, and all the other players have clearly broadcasted their
intent to keep improving and evolving. Microsoft (AFAIK) has yet to do any
such thing.

~~~
alanh
<device> just a pipe dream? It has “broad support” and exists on some phones
already, per ppk's latest weekly roundup.
[http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2011/02/linkbait_8.h...](http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2011/02/linkbait_8.html#item18)

(Grandparent: Just because something isn’t in (all) browsers now doesn’t mean
it “doesn’t belong” or, less straw-man-ish, that it wouldn’t be useful for
some browsers to support; not all browsers need to implement everything,
that’s why we have feature detection. But having IE, still the #1 most popular
browser, on board really opens doors.)

~~~
lukifer
I wasn't aware that progress was being made; nothing would please me more than
device APIs in JavaScript. I don't know of any working implementations in the
field, though.

