

Microsoft mocks Internet Explorer haters in new ad [video] - vsloo
http://venturebeat.com/2012/11/29/microsoft-mocks-internet-explorer-haters/

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JoeCortopassi
This ad isn't about the merits of IE as a browser, this ad is about building a
preformed thought in the common users mind whenever they hear someone bash IE.
IE hasn't been the victim of bad PR, it has earned it's reputation through
years of blood/sweat/tears by the hands of developers. Microsoft recognizes
that they won't be able to change this attitude in the developer community,
but that they can lessen the weight a developer's opinion has amongst non-
technically minded people, which is a much larger share of users.

Like it or not, a lot of people will think of this ad first (and what it tells
them), the next time one of us tries to warn them about IE

~~~
WayneDB
With all 300 views...I doubt it will change anything at all.

(EDIT: MY opinion will say the same until that view counter says a million and
I highly doubt it will even get close. The only people who really care anyway
are the "trolls" that Microsoft is talking about!)

~~~
JackWebbHeller
Usually a video with 301 views means it's suddenly exploded virally. YouTube
'stops counting' temporarily at 300 views whilst it verifies that a video is
being legitimately viewed by many people in a short space of time, rather than
people artificially inflating their viewcount by whatever methods they can.

In a matter of minutes or hours that number will suddenly increase
significantly.

So it's an anti-spam measure. There's a short explainer here:
<http://www.seroundtable.com/youtube-301-views-15347.html>

~~~
thesis
Further confirming this, the video has 301 views and over 1800 likes, 400
dislikes.

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laumars
As I said in the other IE submission, most of the criticisms that have been
levelled against IE are technical in nature and very real (dragging their feet
on web standards, breaking their own compatibility guidelines from version to
version, etc). So portraying IE haters as having the IQ of the average YouTube
commenter just loses any credibility in the message (plus the way they fell
back on badly judged kitten memes was just cringe-worthy)

Nobody is disputing that IE has come along way. The issue isn't whether the
latest version of the browser is capable, but rather whether we'd want to get
back into bed with Microsoft given their past history. And thankfully there is
so much choice in the market now, that people can choose not to use browsers
for even the seemingly trivial reasons; such as historical prejudice.

Thus as long as there is competition in the market, I'm going to support the
platforms that have a history of promoting a free and open web.

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CrossCircuit
IE hate is well deserved. How many hundreds of thousands or millions of
productive hours have been lost due to incompabilities, bugs, etc?

That being said, Microsoft is full of talented people and they do create some
fantastic products. IE is slowly getting to a more respectable point and
hating on it so harshly seems juvenile.

~~~
fruchtose
Microsoft is attacking a straw man. The people Microsoft needs to worry about
are not trolls with too much time on their hands. The people they need to
convince are web developers frustrated by 10 years of IE that refused to
cooperate with standards and held everyone back. Even IE 9 has problems with
JS features that Firefox, Chrome, and Opera implement. Microsoft did this to
themselves, and I believe it is one of the reasons why developers are reticent
to develop for Windows Phone 7 and Windows 8.

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martin_bech
I actually kinda like the ad, because the guy could be me in a heartbeat, i
even own the same keyboard xD.

However the hate in me burns with the power of a thousand sons, when it comes
to IE. The almost constant changes of MS standards with each new version of
IE, inevitably breaks something, and will often require separate CSS styling..

And dont get me started on maintaining an app, that was built on IE6..

If I was in a room with Hitler, Osama bin Laden and the devlead for IE6, and
had a gun with only 2 bullets.. I would shoot the IE6 lead twice..

That said and done, i really hope they start to embrace the "real" standards,
as the the new development team proclaims.

~~~
Zirro
"I would shoot the IE6 lead twice.."

That's a little bit harsh, isn't it? While I would never defend it's usage
today, it wasn't that horrible at the time it was released.

However, as Microsoft decided to kill off development it soon grew too old for
it's own good.

~~~
_pferreir_
> While I would never defend it's usage today, it wasn't that horrible at the
> time it was released.

I think it was bad even considering that it was released in 2001. Not
supporting PNG alpha channel is just an example.

But I do agree that Microsoft taking so long to release IE7 made things even
worse.

------
rickmb
For me, IE is like landmines. Built as weapon to break the web rather than to
do anything constructive, and then abandoned after the war to create more
havoc for years.

Maybe MS should have given the new generations of IE a new name. Rebranding
would probably have been cheaper and more effective than marketing campaigns
trying to make IE respectable.

~~~
craigvn
Sorry, you are wrong and trying to rewrite history. But this is Hackernews.

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nitochi
The thing about IE is that once they gain some market share, they start trying
to push their "own" standards, even if the community is moving in the opposite
direction. That is just the way it has been since IE6.

The ad targets haters that convince "regular users" that IE sucks...haters
needed to do that because regular users couldn't totally grasp how much their
web experience is affected for using that crappy browser and how many features
they were missing.

The fact that a lot of them do not realize how awful their experience is, is
due to countless hours of near-suicide frustration from programmers and coders
around the world trying to make IE compatible applications.

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beatpanda
Ha ha, yeah, I know, the way some people carry on, you'd think Internet
Explorer had crippled the web and added hundreds of hours to web development
projects everywhere for over a decade, or something. Jeez!

------
joejohnson
Yeah, the detractors of IE are just mindlessly posting "IE SUCKS" over and
over for no reason. It's not that the browser is seriously lacking, or that
it's been behind for so long and actively blocking open standards. It's that
the internet is dumb and people just love to hate.

~~~
jiggy2011
To be fair for every web developer with legit gripes about IE there probably
are about 100 people posting "IE SUXX" on youtube.

Most discussion of technology on the internet is just noise written by people
who don't have the slightest clue what they are talking about.

~~~
tthomas48
You forget the other side, though. There are tons of people like my in-laws
who used to get all sorts of malware thanks to IE, and once they switched to
Firefox or Chrome no longer do. There's a pretty large group of non-technical
people out there who have found not using IE makes their life more pleasant.

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marknutter
This ad might have a point if it was actually IE10 that people hated. People
hate IE 6, 7, 8, and 9, because they stalled web progress and MS did nothing
proactive to try to filter them out of the marketplace. Talk about missing the
point entirely.

~~~
wiredfool
I liked IE4 because it was pretty damn good.

I liked IE6 because it got me out of the hell that was IE4.

I liked IE8 because it got me out of the hell that was IE6.

I suspect I'm going to like IE10 because of IE8.

I'm going to hate IE10 because it's not Webkit/Gecko.

------
jiggy2011
So internet explorer is good because it is the best browser on a platform
(xbox360) that didn't have a browser before and where it doesn't have any
competition because there are no other browsers?

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forgottenpaswrd
I have to admit that I had something personal against IE:

When I stated as an entrepreneur, the banks forced me to use IE as using any
other browser will be full of incompatibility bugs. They made them on purpose.

So they forced me to use a Windows machine when I worked with Unix. I had to
spend a thousand dollars so I could use my ebank and read-write my customer's
Office documents(because MS also made very hard for Office documents for being
standardized).

When I created my site I had to spend a lot more money so it worked on the
main browser: Explorer. It was kind of hard to understand why it was so
difficult to make something that worked in all browsers, it was always
Microsoft fault there.

I calculated that I doubled my expenses because of non expected stupid
incompatibility bugs on my web site. The people that made it really cursed the
Redmon company.

The moment I could jump ship and work without Windows or Explorer I
experienced an Enlightenment, a liberation: Now I just don't hate them, I
simply don't care because I know the only reason they are doing the right
things is because they lost the monopoly in some areas and had been forced to
react.

Good for them, I prefer "don't be evil" than "embrace, extent, and extinguish"
for now.

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konstruktors
Did you guys notice the OS X hand cursor when he tweets? Here is a screenshot:
<http://imgur.com/ll0fq>

------
IanDrake
Did you notice this in the ad?

<http://www.karaokewebstandard.org/>

~~~
jeremiep
I did notice, but didn't care enough about karaoke to look it up ;)

It's all great that Microsoft is trying to push the web forward again, they
used to before IE6, but I'm not sure I like this new direction. WebGL, WebRTC
and other APIs being pushed by every other major browser vendor looks much
more promising and useful. Karaoke isn't making the web more practical,
although it's a nice feature for entertainment.

~~~
alexpenny
I believe it is a continuation of the joke. Mimicking the look of w3c
standards. It's also interesting to point out they are using google analytics

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_pferreir_
"Sucks less"? Well, that's totally going to make me feel tempted to give it a
try...

Seriously, I started my web dev career at a time when IE had a market share of
80% and... I'm OK now.

I'm glad that Microsoft decided to embrace web standards and is committed to
make IE easier to develop for but they'll have to do much more than this if
they want to be taken seriously again.

------
digitalpacman
I used to love IE simply for OnMouseEnter and OnMouseOut... made JS dragging
techniques super easy, compared to other browsers, but still couldn't use it
cause they were the only ones so, pfft. I stood by them till Chrome came out.
I preferred Microsofts decisions of how the web should be rendered over w3c.

~~~
acchow
I'm a fairly young developer so managed to avoid the IE6 problems.

Can you elaborate on which MS decisions you preferred over w3c?

~~~
jakejake
The infamous IE box model is one thing where you could debate that one or the
other was preferable.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Thanks to box-sizing we can finally have both, but thing haven't always been
like this.

~~~
jakejake
didn't know that one - thanks!

------
antihero
I think a good response to this would be a four hour live-coding session of
trying to get shit to be backwards compatible with 6, 7, and 8.

Oh wait, I can't test your browser without a VM because I didn't buy your OS?
Fuck you.

------
untog
Where is this ad going to be shown? Because, honestly, IE isn't that vilified
outside of tech circles. My parents and friends happily use it without a
second thought.

------
27182818284
It is an example of a symptom that has presented itself because of an
underlying disease rotting away the core of Microsoft.

~~~
stephengillie
Do you mean the constant chorus of individuals who enjoy putting down MS for
fun?

Or do you mean an internal cause?

~~~
jeremiep
I think both sides are equally bad here.

Bashing MS just for fun isn't very smart (for all their sins, there's a few
good things coming out of Redmond - and Microsoft Research is just fantastic
for the most part), but Microsoft is just lowering itself to the level of
their critics here.

While a large part of the public has a biased opinion of Microsoft, Microsoft
also has a biased opinion of their users - otherwise their marketing wouldn't
feel so out-of-touch. I don't see any winners here.

~~~
vsloo
Found it interesting how they chose to portray the person doing the hating as
well.

------
_sentient
Follow up video is here, just for kicks:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=d...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dAecpAcyFCw)

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leecGoimik7
wishful thinking, MS... nobody gives a damn about your browser anymore

~~~
Zirro
As I understand it the problem they're trying to tackle here is the opposite.
That is, that some people still give too much of "a damn" about their browser
and convince normal users to move away from it.

~~~
glenra
When I see an IE ad my first reaction is: "Wait, MS is still making a browser?
How odd. Did not know that."

The reaction after that is: "Hmph. I wonder if it runs on any OS I run. (brief
google) Nope, I guess not!"

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SkyMarshal
Lmao:

 _> IE implements HTML6.

> and 7, 8, and 9._

Oh, if only.

Good ad though, but they're still not there yet.

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mobweb
So the message of this ad is that the new IE sucks _less_ than it's
predecessors? That's what I took away from it.

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JagMicker
If you can't beat 'em, mock 'em!

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CamperBob2
"Comments are disabled for this video."

What else is there to say, really?

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mtgx
This was just submitted a few hours ago:

[http://cbateman.com/blog/whats-missing-in-internet-
explorer-...](http://cbateman.com/blog/whats-missing-in-internet-explorer-10)

That's probably not even the full list of what's missing in IE10, as html5test
puts IE10 way below the others in HTML5 features:

<http://html5test.com/results/desktop.html>

I wouldn't hold my breath for WebGL appearing even in IE11. Whatever Microsoft
is saying, the "security" of WebGL is not the main reason why Microsoft is not
the adopting it - not even close. Just like security is also not the main
reason why Apple is not allowing other JS engines on iOS.

The security reason is used mainly as a "reasonable" excuse to cover for the
_real_ reason why they aren't implementing it (they obviously don't want
OpenGL to gain anymore traction that it has already gained in mobile and
Linux). If security would be an excuse to not implement something, we'd
probably still be in the dark ages of the web. Consider Flash, it's one of the
least secure pieces of software out there, and yet it's also what enabled
video on the web for everyone. It's the reason Youtube exists today.

The lack of support for XP, which is still like 40% of the market, means
Chrome is still by far the most secure browser on XP, which is something
companies who aren't going to get new PC's and Windows licenses anytime soon
should start considering.

No full screen API, no Web Audio API, and no WebRTC (and no Opus either) are
also very regrettable omissions from IE10, and it will be another year or two
before it will get them. Who knows how far ahead Chrome and Firefox will be by
then.

~~~
warfangle
I'd bet that they will never support webgl in IE -- it competes too directly
with the windows/xbox360 directx gaming ecosystem.

