- From: Matthew Raymond <mattraymond@earthlink.net>
- Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 15:03:45 -0400
Jim Ley wrote:
>> I don't care how many programmers they hire, it's not in their best
>>interests to make web apps more viable,
>
> Sure it is, that's how they won the browser war, web-apps weren't
> viable on other browser platforms, now they are though, this means IE
> to keep its dominant position has to improve. That pretty much looks
> to me what they're doing.
Right now, the biggest things driving browser migration are popups
and adware/malware. These are the only problems that Microsoft has
clearly stated it will address. Longhorn will beta in the beginning of
2005, so all Microsoft really has to do is hang on to a majority browser
share for a few more years until XAML takes off.
History has shown us that as long as people aren't driven from IE in
some way (such as with a program that installs itself without asking and
bombards you with ads every time you open IE) people are not going to
change their browsers. Therefore, IE has to do relatively little in
comparison to other companies in order to hold their marketshare. They
could leave the rendering engine primarily "as is" (which is probably
going to be the case, since they're throwing the word "backward
compatibility" around like it was a justification for poor standards
support) for years to come and loose only a few percentage points of
marketshare.
>>nor have they stated that they
>>will improve IE in any way that would make web apps more viable.
>
> No, lots of companies don't make premature announcements, it helps
> manage expectations.
Microsoft employees have outright refused in interviews to state
anything about improvements to CSS support. Whether that's "manag[ing]
expectations" or not, it's certainly no reason to believe they're going
to make any meaningful improvements to their CSS support.
Received on Thursday, 19 August 2004 12:03:45 UTC