Scoble meet the IE team

Robert Scoble wants to be the relay between users/developers and the IE team.

Noble task, but be aware Scoble about the comments you are going to receive.

IE suffer so much to be abandoned by Microsoft that it's quite incredible that a team still exist in Microsoft. And apparently they work... on something.

The problem is that apparently nobody knows exactly on what. Robert claims that they want to listen, that they want our feedback on how to improve the beast.

Well, it's time, because so many things need to be done. And I am not sure that Scoble give an objective start here.
OK it's his own opinion expressed on his site, but something like this hurt a  lot:

"
Another thing that the commenters generally aren't thinking of is "how to get adoption." I keep pointing out that if we fixed the CSS and PNG issues, you still wouldn't be able to use those for years. Why? Cause consumers (and companies) really don't care about those issues and won't download a new version just cause you fixed one or two issues.

As a good example, Dean gave me a few companies with tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of desktops, that still are using IE 5.5, or older. The fear of upgrading is something that the team is working hard on too. But, that means slowing down a bit, and releasing a browser that really is compelling for people to use.
"

Well I don't know where Dean get this info, but IE 5.5 is so buggy that I can't believe people can still use it. Anyway, I disagree here because a lot of stats around the world show that IE 6 is the  most common browser actually.
And for the objectivity, well there Robert zero !

I just finished to read some of the comments on this post, and a lot of developers request W3C compliance. This is the basic thing to do.
After that I believe a couple of nice new things, like a better favorites organizer, some clean up in the GUI should be the priority.

But the question remains the same: are we sure they want to listen what we want ?

 

10 Comments

  • Are you really saying that you find it hard to believe that whole organisations are still using IE5.5? Why do you *really* find that hard to believe?

  • No I don't say they don't use it but I think the stats you can find everywhere show that the most common version is now th version 6.

  • Indeed, but there are millions of web browsers out there, so even a small % means a *lot* of users.



    I'd ditch support for old browsers in a heartbeat if I were me, but I'm not running MS.

  • Agree but I can't imagine MS debugging old browsers. I'd rather see them working on a new one better than everything done.



    Well we can dream

  • "I keep pointing out that if we fixed the CSS and PNG issues, you still wouldn't be able to use those for years. Why? Cause consumers (and companies) really don't care about those issues and won't download a new version just cause you fixed one or two issues."

    That's not an excuse for not implementing something. It's a reason to get it done sooner rather than later.

  • Darren agree with that !


  • If the next IE update is delivered through an OS service pack, then doesn't this solve the problem?



    Regarding customers using a supposedly "old" IE5.5 release. You got to be kidding right? Tens of millions are using IE4 and a combination of Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows NT. Get used to it.



  • Here.. Here...

    40% of our traffic is IE5.5 due to corporate desktop users on win 95 and NT 4.0.

    Make the next release of IE support those OS's please!

  • Yes MS need to keep support for those machines, but I believe that if they have a strong and new good release a lot of people will finally see a difference and migrate to the new version.

  • Paschal,



    What the heck does this mean - "IE suffer so much to be abandoned by Microsoft that it's quite incredible that a team still exist in Microsoft. And apparently they work... on something."? Who told you that Microsoft abandoned IE?



    Ok, you need a reality check, Paschal. You say "Well I don't know where Dean get this info, but IE 5.5 is so buggy that I can't believe people can still use it". Are you kidding? You don't think that the IE team is constantly gathering statistics regarding browser usage, etc.?



    You say "I just finished to read some of the comments on this post, and a lot of developers request W3C compliance. This is the basic thing to do." Of course it is basic and as Scoble has already pointed out, how many of the millions of users are asking for W3C compliance? How come there are no browsers that are fully W3C compliant? W3C sets standards that no browser fully supports - don't you find that at all interesting?



    You say "But the question remains the same: are we sure they want to listen what we want ?" Again, what the heck are you talking about? Of course they want to build the best browser on the market. The only way to do that is to build what the customers want. Oh yeah, *customers* does NOT translate to developers in 99% of the cases for this product so it is natural that the goals of the product do not line up 100% with what developers want.

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