The First Step Is For Microsoft To Admit It Has A Problem
from the hi,-my-name-is-Microsoft-and... dept
Ars Technica brings word of a pair of interesting efforts underway over at the Mozilla Project — both aimed at improving Internet Explorer, whether Microsoft likes it or not.
You may have heard of the first one already: ScreamingMonkey has gotten some press. It aims to make the core of Firefox’s next-generation Javascript engine (originally developed by Adobe) available in IE, providing advantages in speed and standards-compliance.
The other project is a bit more recent, and a bit more far-out: it’s an IE plugin created by Mozilla developer Vladimir Vukićević that implements the HTML5 <canvas> element — something that IE’s never gotten around to supporting. Canvas allows Javascript to draw 2D graphics on the client-side. You may have stumbled across it in the form of one or another nifty in-browser FPS demo. It’s a potentially powerful tool, but, as Ars notes, one that hasn’t achieved widespread adoption by web developers due to IE’s lack of support for it.
Both of these projects are impressive pieces of technology. But unfortunately both attempts to improve IE are unlikely to succeed in the ways that their authors would like — and it’s easy to see why. It’s safe to say that IE users tend to be among the web’s least technically sophisticated. These are exactly the people who can least reasonably be expected to install modular improvements to their browser’s underlying technology. It’s hard to imagine anyone finding it easier to do this than to simply download and begin using Firefox — a task that’s already clearly too complicated for many people. And that’s to say nothing of the difficulty of getting the word out in the first place.
The right solution is the same as it’s always been: for Microsoft to fix its abysmally noncompliant browser. They wouldn’t even have to do it themselves! As Tom Raftery suggested some time ago, Microsoft could simply open-source IE. Superficially, this seems like a good fix: it’s not as if IE is a profit center for Microsoft, and Apple has already shown the viability of the approach with its open source WebKit HTML rendering engine. A bold step like that could go a long way to bolstering what has thus far been a fairly anemic stab at open source on Redmond’s part.
But of course it will never happen. As some of Raftery’s commenters pointed out, IE probably couldn’t be open sourced without revealing critical — and valuable — Windows code. More to the point, Microsoft wants a broken browser. Not supporting <canvas> means that no one will rely on it, which in turn means less competition for Microsoft’s rich client library Silverlight — created to solve the problem of missing <canvas>-like functionality (among other things). More broadly, a world of webapps that are perpetually forced to accommodate IE’s underachieving status means less time spent by users in the cloud, and consequently a bit more relevance for MS. Put simply, IE’s awfulness isn’t a bug, it’s a feature.
This is hardly an original observation, but that doesn’t make it any less true. And that means that the answer to IE’s persistence is the same as it’s always been: for Safari, Opera, Firefox et al to consistently provide a better browsing experience and thereby compel Microsoft to fix its mistakes — as it at least began to do with IE7. Unfortunately, that’s something that they’re going to have to do for themselves.
Filed Under: internet explorer, mozilla, open source, standards
Companies: microsoft
Comments on “The First Step Is For Microsoft To Admit It Has A Problem”
HTML5
I could give more credit to these posts if you would acknowledge that HTML5 and CANVAS are not standards, but suggested drafts by newly formed bodies (HTML5 is not from W3C, but rather WHATWG). Also, IE8 has support of items HTML5 draft – I don’t see why CANVAS has to be excluded and the SilverLight argument sounds a bit tin foil hat. IE8 will default to standards mode by default, a decision made after getting feedback from the community.
I don’t mind if you paint Microsoft as evil, but if you leave out relevant facts to do so it reflects poorly on you.
Re: HTML5
Both the WHATWG and the W3C HTMLWG are working on HTML5 now.
The WHATWG is composed of pretty much every browser vendor besides Microsoft. The HTMLWG is cochaired by a representative from Microsoft, Chris Wilson, for what it’s worth. While Chris Wilson, on his blog, gives some of the most candid insight you can expect to get, I rarely see real input from him on mailing lists.
While HTML5 is still in draft status, CANVAS is here to stay as there are already three interoperable implementations.
I agree with you that I don’t believe SilverLight is meant to be a proprietary alternative to CANVAS. But I do agree with the notion that MS intentionally slows the progress of IE because it can.
Re: HTML5
This article does not paint MS as evil, just inept and more than a little pathetic.
They have had almost 30 years in the business and are still out performed and out of touch.
Canvas? Compete with Silverlight? Please.
In addition to what Mr. Neel said, I feel that it should be noted that canvas is, in no way, competition for Silverlight or Flash. Honestly, how on earth could you compare a bitmap surface to something that’s designed from the ground up to power rich web applications?
Yeah, you might be able to do the same, or at least similar, things using nothing more than canvas and a good JavaScript, but it would take considerable amounts of time and effort to do the exact same thing in Silverlight or Flash, not to mention that there’s no way you’d ever see the same performance.
What critical Microsoft code would be revealed?
“..IE probably couldn’t be open sourced without revealing critical — and valuable — Windows code…”
What type of code would this be? And since they give IE away why would it matter anyway.
AFter all these years is there anything not known about Windows code?
Re: What critical Microsoft code would be revealed?
IE is bonded to windows at the molecular level. you can’t remove it from windows. this is how they pushed netscape out of the market and what has landed them in trouble with the EU, along with windows media player.
MS understands the power of free all too well. they are the best example of loss leadership in software to date:
IE is free but only runs on windows and macOS (and for a short time, solaris). apple wanted to dump IE for netscape in the 90’s and MS threatened to stop making office for the mac in retalliation. IE is the easiest to code for and get script and components to work correctly in (because of its molecular bonding to windows) so most of the web recommended it instead of anything else. giving IE away creates demand for windows.
IIS/ASP are bundled into server versions of windows and could be considered free in much the same way as IE. again, they are easy to develop with/for and so a lot of companies end up buying windows server. again, a free product that you can’t get without buying a version of windows.
Canvas & MS Code
@Jon Barnett: It doesn’t matter how many versions of Canvas there are, it doesn’t have widespread use. If they’re going to try this they should at least wait for HTML5 to be finalized since MS will implement it properly.
@Dave: People don’t actually have MS code and even if they did they couldn’t do anything with it without being sued back into the stone age by MS lawyers. And this is one case they wouldn’t loose as the law is on their side.
Re: Canvas & MS Code
Dark Shroud said:
*snorts coffee out through nose*
Open sourcing IE
Apple did not open source WebKit. Apple used the already open source KHTML engine (from the KDE project) and modified it it. They had no choice but to keep it open source. I know you did not explicitly state that they did, in fact, create it THEN open source it, but the context you put it in implied it:
“Microsoft could simply open-source IE. Superficially, this seems like a good fix: it’s not as if IE is a profit center for Microsoft, and Apple has already shown the viability of the approach with its open source WebKit HTML rendering engine.”
If Microsoft was to really follow in Apple’s footsteps they would just ditch Trident all-together, use WebKit instead and then add hooks into it to run ActiveX (which already runs as a separate process from the browser).
Please, please read up on Silverlight
Look, I dislike Microsoft as much as anyone. Especially in the browser context, the are somewhere between incompetent and nefarious.
But comparing Canvas to Silverlight is so ignorant that it makes it hard to take the rest of the post seriously. Canvas is a 2D graphics solution for browsers. Silverlight is a port of the WPF presentation system to web applications, designed to allow people to easily move applications back and forth between the web and the desktop, or at least to be able to re-use large chunks of code and expertise.
Silverlight and WPF (being the same thing, really) both rely on XML definitions of user interfaces and the mechanisms by which the UI interacts with the underlying code. They’re also both designed with modern UI standards in mind, so things like gradients and skins come for free, and of course with the UI designed in XML it can be programmatically updated easily.
Me, I’m not a fan of Silverlight. Gaining Windows desktop compatibility in web applications just doesn’t seem that valuable, and to the extent that HTML/CSS/AJAX can’t do what we need, I’d rather see those standards-based technologies built out.
But wow. Canvas as some kind of competitor for Silverlight? Really? That’s just a cringe-worthy demonstration of ignorance. You might as well talk about how a street sign is a potential substitute for international commerce. Ouch.
Open sourcing IE won't happen
This just won’t happen. MS find it arduous to update their browser anyway. They have support contracts with many large companies and government departments; those companies have stacks of badly written (often internal) web applications and Microsoft have few ways of evaluating how a proposed “compliance fix” to IE will affect all those support contracts. While that doesn’t prevent them releasing source, it will prevent them accepting many of the proposed patches, I guess.
There is a second important reason too. MS will not willingly permit themselves to simply become the commoditised substrate of the Internet-driven world.
A better play would be for Microsoft to push the market more firmly towards rich clients and make use of its extensive experience and dominance in the fat-client-tools market to build a good developer base for Silverlight. As long as they handle the API design and backward-compatibility issues more adroitly with Silverlight than they did HTML, they’re in a much better position. In fact you could argue that the worrying move would be more or less the opposite of the news this article opened with – what if Microsoft released a closed-source Silverlight plugin for Mozilla?
why invest?
As a web-applications developer, IE is a nightmare. I could talk about the petty differences and ridiculous bugs that come from the poor non-standard way IE implements CSS and JavaScript attributes (specifically the same attribute having wildly different effects on different HTML elements). However, you made the point yourself. IE has the non-tech savvy market cornered. At this point, I highly doubt that Microsoft could get back any Firefox user. So why bother to invest? As long as your major social networks and retailers continue to hack their code apart for IE compatibility, IE’s target demographic will never learn better.
Developers vs Viewers - IE doesn't help
I’ve been a web developer since 1993. Yes, it’s been that long and I’ve seen the web technology grow by leaps and bounds. Some good, most bad.
Back in the day, we surfers would get upset by websites which placed tons of images on the website, forcing us to wait. But we also had to do it using 14.4 or 56k modems.
Now that broadband’s around, it seems people don’t mind seeing sites with “loading” written on them (and more pages are removing the skip option).
Back then, Netscape dominated the web world. Mozilla had a bland browser and a few others tried to break into the Netscape world, but didn’t quite make it (some are still around, such as Opera).
Enter Microsoft who not only took over the browser market (by incorporating the browser into their operating system) but made it such that mom and pop had to do nothing more than click a few buttons to access the internet (helpful when setting up internet connectivity).
Netscape withered and died (but continues to fight with over-coded browser add-ons) and IE did little changing.
That is, until a browser called Firefox entered the market. Microsoft is now on version “8” of its browser, being forced to make changes as many developers complain about the inability for IE to render pages correctly.
There’s a small problem with this and that most developers don’t know how to code pages at all anymore. Sure, they may think they can, but they don’t. Poor design leads to poor layout which leads to poor coding.
I’ve taught many people how to code pages and it’s amazing how people walk in thinking they know what they’re doing. What’s worse is that HTML seems to be treated as a “dead language” because so many people try to circumvent what it was designed to do.
Macromedia introduced Flash as a way to enhance web pages, but the “enhancement” has pushed beyond pages looking good, it’s all about IP and how “stealing” images is something people don’t want to happen.
HTML has grown to incorporate new tags which do nothing more than push the design from displaying information to making a website look pretty. Add in CSS, and it pushes further people developing bad, bad code.
Especially now that most people code for IE only, because it’s the most used browser. Don’t take my word for it, go look for yourself.
While images do make a website look decent, it should never, ever be the focus of the website. Information is the focus and people tend to forget this. Amazon (as an example) has learned from this mistake and has pushed its pages back to what they should be by removing crap that not only confuses customers, but presents a poorly designed website when people have to wait for pages to load.
Wal-mart, Target, and other retailers have also learned from Amazon’s mistakes.
But the entertainment industry has much, much more to learn from because it figures people want to wait for a Flash site. They’ll state people actually visit the site, so they keep doing it but little do they realize there’s a difference between a visit and a visitor actually staying.
The IE codeset isn’t going to change not because of developer concerns, but because of consumer ignorance. Hell, most consumers don’t even realize that ActiveX is the reason why they get viruses so they don’t even know to turn it off (by design by Microsoft). Instead, Microsoft pushes a lackluster (but at least helpful) “defender” app to help protect these people.
I’ve never had a problem developing pages for IE, Netscape, Opera, or Firefox because I stick to absolute basics. Using new “formats” which aren’t supported by all browsers is not a professional thing to do.
This “hatred” of Microsoft is unfounded. Granted, they make mistakes (as all companies do), but you’ve got to hand it to them by giving away a free browser and opening up the internet to millions.
Because without these millions, most of you developers wouldn’t have a job. Of course, neither would I.
Before you all continue bitching about the lack of IE’s ability to keep up with the times, please bear in mind regardless of what browser you prefer, what foundation you code for, or how well you design a page, it ultimately comes down to the user of the page.
Because it’s them who don’t give a damn about the canvas tag, ScreamingMonkey, or any other “code requirements/standardizations” you may want.
All they want is the INFORMATION on your page.
Keep it simple and you won’t have any problems at all.
Re: Developers vs Viewers - IE doesn't help
“While images do make a website look decent, it should never, ever be the focus of the website. Information is the focus and people tend to forget this.”
I have been in web developed for about a decade and agree with much of what you say (especially about HTML I myself consider it pretty close to dead). However, I would take some issue with the statement above. Images are information and can be every bit as useful (if not more so) for expressing information to a user, then text can be. To see them as somehow seperate (text passes information and images just make things look good) is a short sighted and limited approach.
Re: Re: Developers vs Viewers - IE doesn't help
Beyond just that, viewing the web as strictly a way to get information is so very far behind the times. I don’t know how you can be a web developer and not have noticed that the web is now also a way to deploy complex applications. Broadly speaking, many applications are fundamentally about information, but the web is now much more than a platform for getting information from the provider to the user.
Re: Re: Re: Developers vs Viewers - IE doesn't help
“the web is now also a way to deploy complex applications.”
Precisely my point, actually. Now don’t get me wrong to say I don’t think it’s right, not at all. But with the introduction of application distribution comes the need for supporting those applications, especially to be “cross platform”.
ActiveX is a perfect example of this, as some developers use it extensively while others try for a more “common” approach only to find out the very programming isn’t support in the same manner between browsers.
This is growing exponentially as many web applications are requiring installs just to get them to work. Take into consideration that non-compliant browsers enter the mix and it becomes a coding nightmare leading many down a very slippery slope.
Anyone here remember pages which used to read “I’m sorry, but this site doesn’t support {browser here}!” We’re treading on this in the very same manner but instead of the nasty gram, we generally just don’t get to see/use the app in question.
Innovative ideas prop up daily when it comes to the internet but trying to force browser companies to be “compliant” with the idea’s premise is absurd especially when the app hasn’t proved itself.
Why do you think it takes so long for committees to “agree” on a standardization?
Microsoft has never played well with others and even Mozilla has its limitations. Add Safari, Opera, and other browsers and developing for an “application” can become tedious, which is why sticking with the basics is best.
On a side note, my web developing days are numbered. I have reached a point where it’s no longer fun (or profitable). I support a few clients, but recently told them to find someone else.
I just don’t agree with the “web rules” of today to spend hours designing a page so that people can post immature comments or stupid, useless videos.
Especially in a world where people just don’t read anymore.
Anyway, have fun, developers. Hope that IE8 gets you closer to what you want, but don’t bank on it.
least likely, or perhaps most?
i’m sure i must disagree with this part:
“These are exactly the people who can least reasonably be expected to install modular improvements to their browser’s underlying technology.”
i think most ie users would be only too happy to ‘click here to install missing plugin’ without a thought as to where it might be coming from.
smarty pants
Oh my gosh, there are like smart people reading this website.
Coooolllll!
Um, wow. Have you, um, actually coded anything in the past 5 years? ’cause html4 deprecates the presentational tags like <b>, <u>, and <center>. You’re not supposed to use them anymore. They’ve been deprecated for years. People still use them, sure, but it shows you as quite a bit behind the times when you call them “new” tags.
And CSS promoting bad coding? Seriously, what the hell? CSS frees us from those horrifying nested table layouts that we were all forced to use in the old days. We’re this close to being able to create any website with a purely semantic structure and have it look however we want. You cleanly separate things out: content and structure go in the html, appearance goes in the CSS. This is good coding, and it makes sites so much easier to code.
Finally, no one who knows what the hell they’re doing codes for IE only. Firefox takes up somewhere between 15% and 20% of the browser market (more if your audience is rather technical). This is a market section that cannot be ignored. Of course a lot of ‘webdesigners’ are blithering idiots who couldn’t fight their way out of a for loop, but that’s neither here nor there. There are incompetent morons in any field.
“Most people” don’t code for IE anymore (again, this statement speaks of someone without recent practical experience). We code more or less to the standards, and then supply fixes where IE screws up. Luckily we don’t even have to really *know* the standards, as just coding toward Firefox takes you 95% of the way there.
Re: Re:
“Um, wow. Have you, um, actually coded anything in the past 5 years? ’cause html4 deprecates the presentational tags like , , and . You’re not supposed to use them anymore. They’ve been deprecated for years. People still use them, sure, but it shows you as quite a bit behind the times when you call them “new” tags.
And CSS promoting bad coding? Seriously, what the hell?”
I think you mistook my statement. Yes, one is not supposed to use those codes but many still do, especially the font tag.
I sure as heck wouldn’t say CSS promotes bad code at all. If anything, CSS was a welcome to web page coding. Again, though, people don’t use CSS well because they’re using attributes not supported in all browsers.
That’s the “bad code” I was referring to.
Re: Re: pretentious fail
no offense, but it makes me point and laugh when someone who claims to be a web designer (and a long time veteran) fails to use plain text mode and the tags he is referencing bold the rest of his comments…
“But unfortunately both attempts to improve IE are unlikely to succeed in the ways that their authors would like — and it’s easy to see why. It’s safe to say that IE users tend to be among the web’s least technically sophisticated. These are exactly the people who can least reasonably be expected to install modular improvements to their browser’s underlying technology.”
I agree that it is exactly this reason why more people don’t have Firefox – but thats why a plug-in can succeed where a an entire browser will not. Flash is a plug-in, and almost everyone who is regularly on the internet will have it installed, either for IE or FF. When a user visits a site the requires Canvas, they click a few boxes and it installs – exactly like Flash.
If you’ve ever worked a helpdesk or some kind of computer tech support, you’ll know this: You can’t *stop* the average user from installing or clicking on anything that comes up when they visit a web page.
Closed Systems are better
IMHO, Closed systems are better for content providers and content developers. Open systems are marginally better for cusumers in that they give consumers an easier way to change, which is always good. However, I believe the customer experience suffers greatly on the internet because of this.
See my response on my blog:
http://www.brainloaf.com/index.html
I think folks are reading a bit too much into the Silverlight/canvas comparison. I’m quite aware that Silverlight is vastly more powerful than canvas — obviously no one is going to be doing video with a Javascript codec anytime soon, for instance (at least, I hope they aren’t).
But it should be clear that the canvas, audio and video tags represent the beginnings of standards-based efforts to sidestep proprietary rich client libraries like Silverlight and Flash. My point was simply that, to the extent that it can, Microsoft is likely to do its best to push its users toward its own proprietary solutions rather than supporting and working to improve open standards.
Re: Re:
How else do you expect us to read it? After all, this is what you typed:
You specifically said that canvas could be inferred as competing with Silverlight.
Also, you seem to be ignoring the fact that HTML5 is still a draft, not a standard. Don’t you think Microsoft should concentrate on making their web browser compliant with current web technologies (you know, like they ARE doing) as opposed to something that isn’t even complete yet?
And, incidentally, while it’s true that WebKit has its roots in KHTML, it’s now pretty obviously its own project — look, there’s a website and everything! Apple’s involvement makes it a much more appropriate comparison in this case than the Konqueror project would be, which is why I mentioned it. The point is not that Apple wrote the original code, but rather that they have had success using an open source model to sustain the rendering engine powering their free-with-OS browser.
I think you’re continuing to insist on the comparison being perfectly symmetric when clearly it’s not. By way of analogy, I might’ve said that Microsoft discourages the use of OpenGL because it would prefer that people use DirectX. The two libraries are clearly not functionally equivalent — DX does a ton more stuff than OGL — but the functionality of one is fully implemented by the other, and people might turn to one or the other interchangeably for many simple, common tasks. As a result, OGL’s marketshare clearly has an impact on DX’s, even though it, by itself, can’t do nearly as much as DX.
I hope this clears things up. I apologize if the initial comparison was unclear, but at this point it seems a bit as though you’re willfully misunderstanding me.
To your other point: I understand that HTML5 is a draft. But as others pointed out, canvas is already supported in several browsers and is obviously here to stay. The specific state of various proposals at W3C and WHATWG is not only deadly boring, it is, in this case, largely irrelevant. And it’s a complete straw man to imply that progress on a browser needs to halt until existing standards are fully implemented. Should progress on Mozilla stop until it passes ACID3? Clearly not.
Re: Re:
See, the thing that I still don’t get is how you figure that the canvas, video, and audio tags are supposed to compete with solutions like Silverlight and Flash. The only thing I’m reading in your posts is that Microsoft isn’t implementing them solely because they’re trying to push Silverlight over open standards.
I really don’t buy that. If Microsoft were trying to push Silverlight onto the masses, their best bet would be to appeal to people who might use Adobe Flash (hence the reason I’ve been referring to canvas’s “competitors” as “Silverlight/Flash”). Flash’s feature set is far closer to Silverlight’s than a mix of canvas/audio/video, and it’s almost an essential part of any Internet browsing experience. Considering that support for Flash is showing up on game consoles, portable game systems, and phones now, it would only make sense to try and compete with that.
As for your second point, what I was trying to say is that it’s unrealistic to assume that Microsoft would be concentrating on adding draft features to a browser that’s finally becoming compliant with the current standards. Sorry for not being a bit more clear about that, I didn’t intend to throw down a straw man argument (I’m not too fond of them, after all).
I checked Microsoft’s IEBlog earlier and saw a few posts related to HTML5. The developers are indicating that they’re working to support it, presumably for the final release. The following was posted by Dean Hachamovitch when IE8 beta 1 was announced:
At this point, we don’t know what’s going to be in the final IE8 release, so it’s really not fair to fault Microsoft for not supporting it just yet. If, after saying things like that, HTML5 support is in shambles then, hell, I’ll blog my feelings about it right along with you. Right now, I think it would be best to just wait and see (on a related note, IE8 beta 2 is due out this month).
If IE is so bad, behind the times and just plain sux, WHY isn’t it ignored altogether? There are dozens of web browsers that are 100X better to use. IE should be left behind, like 8-Track tapes, Web TV and Rubik’s Cube.
Re: Re:
One of the reasons why it’s not being ignored is because it’s the only browser for Windows that can be tightly controlled and locked down by administrators (via Group Policy) without a great deal of time investment. Second, it’s installed on Windows systems by default unless the user specifically removes it.
And finally, the browser is improving. The IE team is doing some phenomenal work now to do what it should have done years ago. It’s finally becoming compliant with current standards and the public release of IE8 beta can even pass Acid2.
IE8 is a huge step forward for the IE rendering engine and, arguably, is what IE7 should have been. Wait until it’s released in its final incarnation before you talk about how badly it “sux.”
Granted, I’ll probably still be using Firefox after IE8 is released, but it’d be good to know that Microsoft has a browser worth supporting again.
ie
I no longer support IE in any of my sites. I simple force a splash that says get firefox or dont come to …….com.
And for the above guy that says rubik is dead http://www.worldcubeassociation.org/
Re: ie
Some people don’t have a choice. Schools and companies often restrict what a person can install on his or her company computer.
Also, what’s your forced splash going to do for future, more standards compliant versions of IE? Prevent them from entering altogether even though the browser can actually handle your page?