Microsoft Sends Flowers To Internet Explorer 6 Funeral 151
Several readers have written with a fun followup to yesterday's IE6 funeral. Apparently Microsoft, in a rare moment of self-jest, took the time to send flowers, condolences, and a promise to meet at MIX. The card reads: "Thanks for the good times IE6, see you all @ MIX when we show a little piece of IE Heaven. The Internet Explorer Team @ Microsoft."
The flowers I'd send (Score:4, Interesting)
And you can send me dead flowers every morning
Send me dead flower by the snail mail
Say it with dead flowers at my wedding
And I won't forget to put roses on your grave
No I won't forget to put roses on your grave
Re:Translation (Score:5, Interesting)
Not true. I actually know what the announcement is going to be, and it's going to make a lot of people who visit sites like Slashdot happy (or surprised).
Here's a hint: it's about supporting a standard that no one thought Microsoft would support.
Maybe a new version as well..
Re:IE 9 perhaps? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't. They openly ignore standards, because they don't see it as necessary. I was at an event where the IE team lead (this was a month or two before IE8's release) gave a talk and was answering questions. He said that IE8 will support "most" of CSS 3. Someone asked why not all of it, he replied to the effect that they don't think the parts they left out "mattered". When asked how it did on the ACID test, they said that it didn't matter, because that test doesn't test anything that's necessary (and it requires things that they didn't see a reason for)... Keep in mind, this was a developer, not a manager. So unless management has it so ingrained in their heads that "This IS the only way", these decisions are being made at the development team level... And you wonder why IE sucks so hard in comparison (and is a thorn in the side of every web developer). It's not that they don't follow standards. It's that they purposely don't follow them... They know better, but make the rational choice to be different. I have no pity for someone who thinks like that...
Scapegoating 101 (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think this is self-jest. Microsoft and IE team love this... the current message is "yes IE6 is broken, you should upgrade to IE8/9 because it's much better". Except that it isn't. So the funeral flowers serve them well, because they can pretend the real problem is with IE6, where in fact the problem is with them.
Microsoft has been using this "network admins don't upgrade from IE6, it's not our fault" type of argument for too long as an excuse for the mess they keep putting web standards into.
If everybody suddenly upgraded to the latest and greatest IE8/9 we would still be in the same place regarding IE not following web standards. We would be free of "IE6 doesn't have a clue about the box model". But we would be at "IE8 doesn't support canvas (or proper event bubble)". Just so 9 years from now they will be sending flowers to the IE8 funeral and saying sorry for not supporting canvas...
A proper solution for Microsoft now would be to completely ditch IE backend, use one of the current available libraries like Webkit, and put in place an IE frontend that can have IE6/7/8 tabs and a proper standard backend (defaulting to the proper backend). Any other move on this area coming from Microsoft seems to be either evilness or PR (which I think it's the case).
Re:Scapegoating 101 (Score:3, Interesting)