

A Modern Browser - etaty
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/tims/archive/2011/02/15/a-modern-browser.aspx

======
Pewpewarrows
Since the comments on Tim Sneath's original post are broken at best, I'll
paste my original reply here:

First, IE9 doesn't fully support mature HTML5 and CSS3 standards. Congrats,
the only tests you pass are the ones that your own department submitted to the
W3C. Everyone else's show IE9's Release Candidate as having less support than
other browsers released 1-2 years ago.

Second, nice job cherry-picking a single paragraph out of one of the few
comments in the Hacker News thread supporting your position. You also
conveniently omitted the scalding final line of that paragraph: "It's just a
shame they're not providing it on XP." This is typical of your response in
general: you've responded to absolutely 0 of the actual criticisms of your
product, and instead decide to praise the few improvements you happened to
make over IE8.

You're only providing your new browser to a small fraction of the OS market,
it still doesn't support stable and mature spec features, the ones you do
support are still wildly broken (canvas, _ahem_ ), and you remain silent
through it all.

I had high hopes when you initially announced your plans for IE9 all those
months ago. It's a damn shame they turned out to be nothing more than
marketing smoke and mirrors.

~~~
fname
_You're only providing your new browser to a small fraction of the OS market_

I still fail to grasp the argument of IE9 not being released for XP. I mean,
the OS is ten years old, upgrade already.

~~~
thaumaturgy
I have a _huge_ number of clients that are still actively using XP. The fact
is, XP, for many people, is good enough. The only reason they're upgrading at
all is purely due to attrition -- their old computer dies and they replace it
with something running W7.

And this is ignoring my corporate clients, who are using software that is
integral to their business, that hasn't been updated in years and does not run
correctly on Windows 7.

The "always be upgrading" mentality in the computer industry is a _serious_
problem for end-users.

~~~
barista
Unlike Chrome that is automatically "always upgrading" itself. End users here
seem to love that :p

~~~
dspillett
But unlike the Windows upgrade cycle, this costs nothing.

Even though there are usually feature updates mixed in with the bug fixes and
security issues, many people (especially non-techie people) lump the Chrome
updates in with OS updates as a necessary part of maintenance like changing
the oil in a car.

Upgrading Windows beyond XP currently adds very little of significance to most
people though, particularly corporates with many many desktops to upgrade (and
people to support when they do) and home users with limited cash.

From a designers point of view the "just upgrade already" argument can't wash.
We can't force our users to upgrade there OS (we can only just get away with
cajoling them into upgrading their browser or occasionally (but increasingly)
choosing an alternative (though this is less of an option for corporates for
the usual reasons).

The accusation is that MS is trying to make IE9 one of the reasons to upgrade
(and therefore pay for that upgrade). This is the same accusation levelled at
them with DX10 and later, and it is equally correct (and equally
understandable from their commercial PoV). In the case of the browser though
this is seen as more onerous because your internet access method is more
ingrained in your life and much more potentially damaging when there are
security issues.

A large client of hours (a major bank) is rolling out IE8 to their users (who
are currently stuck on IE6) in a few months time. If IE9 had promised XP
support they might have planned to roll that out instead, though a little
delayed as they would need to wait for at least the RCs to start their main
roll-out testing - so IE9 not being available on XP is definitely going to
have an effect on the number of people still using the irritations that are
IE6/7/8 in corporate environments.

------
tmcw
From the linked "Download Squad" "thinking"

> Don't be mesmerized by the tawdry typography, though: with juicy propaganda
> it's always what isn't said that matters. There is no mention of IE9's
> hyperspeed JavaScript engine, Chakra. There's no mention of pinned tabs or
> per-process tabs or Tracking Protection Lists. It feels a bit like a
> scrawny, bespectacled geek throwing stones at a fat billionaire with three
> trophy wives -- the nerd is probably right, but the pimp doesn't really
> care.

the next paragraph, somehow, begins with

> There's no doubt that Firefox 4 implements a broader range of Web
> technologies -- and don't get us wrong, it is an excellent browser -- but
> more stuff doesn't necessarily equate to better stuff.

This is what passes for logic nowadays?

------
rsoto
I don't understand how they can defend that position. Yeah, it's their job and
they might be very proud of their work, but they can't be that dumb.

Haven't they learned the lesson? Everytime they try to come with something,
the community backfires even harder. Let's just remember what happened with
the IE9 team[1] and the Hotmail team[2] on reddit's AMA.

1:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/related/dkk3l/iama_we_are_membe...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/related/dkk3l/iama_we_are_members_of_the_ie9_product_team_here/)
2:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/ej32l/we_are_the_hotma...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/ej32l/we_are_the_hotmail_development_team_lets_talk/?limit=500)

------
necolas
The elephant in the room is Google Chrome.

Both IE9 and Firefox 4 (I think) lack Chrome's automatic updates. They simply
cannot bring new features and bug fixes to users as quickly as Chrome can.

You can spend 1-2 years working on a major release, but if the competition is
rolling out automatic updates every 6 weeks, you're at a major disadvantage.

~~~
moxiemk1
Microsoft has had automatic updates for years now, I believe. Firefox seems to
have no problem prompting me to update it when its required.

I'm not sure I understand what disadvantage they're at?

~~~
SpikeGronim
The difference is that I notice when Windows updates, and I don't notice each
time that Chrome updates.

~~~
barista
And is that a good thing or bad? For me, its scary. It means I won't know when
and how things will break. What if some eople have turned off automatic
updates and never receive the new update? It just creates thousands of
configurations for a web developer to worry about. And what if its a legacy
application that is no longer maintained? Who is going to fix that just
because Google just decided to automatically update their browser?

I absolutely hate the auto-update feature of chrome.

~~~
stanleydrew
"What if some eople have turned off automatic updates and never receive the
new update?"

You can't turn off automatic updates in Chrome.

"It just creates thousands of configurations for a web developer to worry
about."

Absolutely the opposite. I don't know why this is so hard to see. When users
aren't given the option to update, they all end up with the same version. So
there is literally only one configuration to worry about.

------
tzenes
Does Tim Sneath, not realize that "modern browser" was just the rhetoric Paul
Rouget was using to classify HTML5 support (and JS api, CSS3, etc)?

Who cares what you define "modern browser" to be? Rouget's point that IE9
still doesn't support the feature set that FF3.6 did is a valid concern.

Will MS push for larger feature set support? Will I have webworkers on IE9?
What about javascript strict mode? When do I get SMIL Animations?

These are the questions I care about, not "what does modern browser mean?"

------
natmaster
"Modern browsers enable rich, immersive experiences.."

To use their own example:

[http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Graphics/VideoCity/Default...](http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Graphics/VideoCity/Default.html)

vs

[http://videos-cdn.mozilla.net/serv/mozhacks/flight-of-the-
na...](http://videos-cdn.mozilla.net/serv/mozhacks/flight-of-the-navigator/)

Which one is more 'modern'?

~~~
geuis
Not really sure. The MS one runs extremely slow in Chrome 10 (dev build), but
the Flight of the Navigator never finishes loading at all.

~~~
natmaster
Sounds like Chrome isn't a "modern browser" then.

------
juiceandjuice
Some of the things they don't support aren't new, and are important for an
"immersive experience"

Perfect example: CSS transitions. It's been around a while... like 3 years.

Having no support and nothing to show for, in respect to something with an
Editor's draft out from the W3C, (css transitions, for example), just proves
you're really good at dragging your feet.

~~~
kenjackson
It looks like CSS transitions just showed up in 2009
(<http://www.webkit.org/blog/324/css-animation-2/>)

And even then it was just a proprietary vendor extension. It's not like it was
part of the draft standard at that tmie.

If MS adds a new feature to IE, does that start the clock on when everyone
else needs to implement it?

~~~
juiceandjuice
That's CSS animation. There's a blog post from Surfin Safari dating back to
2007 for CSS transition, and a Mozilla article dating back to 2009 (might have
been implemented before that)

So... two implementations older than 2 years.

~~~
kenjackson
The only thing I see in 2007 about this is an announcement that they're going
to do it. Can you find a pointer to the blog entry announcing that it is
available?

~~~
masklinn
<http://www.webkit.org/blog/138/css-animation/>

> We have another cool new CSS feature to talk about: animation specified in
> CSS. There is a lot of ground to cover here, so we’ll start with the basics
> first.

There are two technologies here, though both sometimes use the word
"animation" they're separate: they implemented transitions in 2007 (using
transition-* properties [0]), transitions are used to smoothly go from one
state to an other and _they are implicit_ : you only say which CSS property
will transition and over which duration and the browser will handle all the
decisions within that scope.

CSS animations[1] were added in 2009[2]. They are related to transitions but
they're explicit and keyframe-based. Much more complex, but much more flexible
as well (for instance you can have back and forth movements with animations,
but not with transitions).

[0] <http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-transitions/>

[1] <http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-animations/>

[2] <http://www.webkit.org/blog/324/css-animation-2/>

~~~
kenjackson
Thanks.

------
AndyKelley
In order to get to the content, I had to click "Continue" on a window that
said, "This site is insecure. Are you sure you want to continue?" Once I
passed that, I got to see the "Agree to Legal Terms" page. I didn't want to
read legal terms, I wanted to read about "A Modern Browser," so I don't know
how many more obstructions there were after that.

Just thought it was kind of ironic.

------
sergimansilla
This post is incredibly vague, and it is missing the point. First of all, it
doesn't explain the huge lack of standards in IE9 that Paul Roget mentions.
And second, it forgets that IE has a really awful record on making browsers
(IE has been the biggest drag on the web being more usable and modern for the
last 10 years).

At least Paul's post gives a tangible and definition of what 'modern' means in
form of checklist points that are easy to prove true or false just by looking
at the browser implementation. How do you measure 'modern', Microsoft? You
will have to do better than saying it is 'faster' and that provides 'rich,
immersive experiences'.

Mozilla hasn't stopped pushing the web to its boundaries and making a big
effort to put standards first during all these years. And there is no doubt
that the new Firefox will be a much better browser than the new IE (check out
the beta).

Also, where is the strict mode in IE9?

------
eitland
The real takeaway from this story seems to be that Microsoft reads and
responds to #HN

~~~
arctangent
The author of the linked article manages to be wrong twice by referring to HN
as "YCombinator" - confusing the company with the forum, and misspelling the
name of the company (which I believe should have a space in it).

Only MS can make so many errors within such a limited window of opportunity
;-)

~~~
jokermatt999
I can't speak for Microsoft, but I tend to refer to Hacker News as Y
Combinator News simply to avoid misunderstandings. It's easier to get the name
wrong than to explain "No, not that kind of hacker. There's a non-pejorative
definition as well...."

------
Garbage
Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft should drop IE and start using Webkit ?

------
bkhl
Honestly, I don't understand why so many people are frustrated about what
defines the modern browsers. If you are not happy about a product, you don't
have to use it. If you don't use it, the manufacturer will know that something
is wrong.

Plus, the word, modern, is so vague. As Microsoft did, it can mean totally
different things to different people. HTML5 isn't standard, yet. There is very
little number of websites that fully utilize the capabilities of HTML5.

Now, go grab a cup of coffee and do something more productive :)

~~~
JeremyBanks
I don't think most are concerned with IE9 because they'll be using it
themselves. It's more than they'll have to develop to support it, and if
Microsoft put a reasonable effort into this it would mean much less work for
web developers.

------
nkassis
"Modern browsers enable rich, immersive experiences that could hitherto only
be delivered through a plug-in or native application. They can blend video,
vector and raster graphics, audio and text seamlessly without sacrificing
performance."

Ok, when can we expect WebGL support then?

------
twodayslate
Seems to be a good answer to me. I want something that works and is fast. I
could care less what technology it is using... as long as it does what I want
it to do.

------
smoody
why can't 'modern' also mean 'compatible?'

------
sid0
HTML5 is descriptive, _not prescriptive_ , so the complaint about features not
being ready doesn't make sense. They're ready _when browsers ship them._

~~~
masklinn
To be fair, HTML5 is a mix: a mix of stuff which already exists and was
standardized (from a number of browsers) and of _new_ stuff which was built
from ground up for the occasion.

~~~
sid0
And yet the new stuff is ready only when at least two implementations ship it.
This currently means at least two out of Gecko, WebKit and Opera. Does
Microsoft really never want to be one of the two?

------
diamondhead
Am I seeing right? An IE developer is claiming that modern browsers implement
features/standards when they are ready?! What are we talking about, is this
about the web that Microsoft had been trying to block for years? How dare!

------
dermatthias
For me, a modern browser is one that runs on all the three major operating
systems: Linux, MacOS and Windows. And not just on one of them.

~~~
jawee
A browser can be fully modern and platform specific; I fail to see your
argument. Could a browser not be specifically developed for Haiku, Mac OS 9,
or any other current or legacy platform and still be a modern browser even if
it has the full feature set of Chrome?

------
us
In this case, Microsoft is staying classy. Mozilla, just barking to be the
loudest dog on the playground. Sad...

~~~
Pewpewarrows
Except that they responded to none of the real concerns with IE9 being labeled
as a Modern Browser, and instead listed off the same marketing drivel we've
been hearing from their camp for the past year.

~~~
kenjackson
They did respond. They said Mozilla's definition is wrong. No use arguing
using the definition your opponent has if you don't agree with it.

~~~
yuhong
And I do agree. Firefox 3.x I'd consider relatively modern.

~~~
kenjackson
Yeah, Mozilla's argument seems odd. It is basically saying that IE9 is _not
modern_ because it is about on par with their shipping browser (FF3.6x) -- and
lets not forget that IE9 has a better UI, better tab isolation, JS perf, and
rendering perf than FF3.6x. If anything Mozilla should immediately urge all
FF3.6x users to move to Chrome.

I think a more true, yet less controversial statement from Mozilla would be,
FF 4 will leave IE9 (and FF3.6x) in the dust with respect to standards
conformance.

I'd even agree with that. But saying that IE9 is not modern seems dishonest.

~~~
billybob
Sure. In one sense, anything is "modern" if it's developed this year,
regardless of its feature set. So modern is probably the wrong word.

But the argument that a version of IE which hasn't even come out yet doesn't
have features that other browsers have had for years are valid points.

I guess "IE9 sucks" was deemed not to be tactful enough.

