Left Justified
FeedsMicrosoft Listens; But to Whom?
∞ | November 12, 2004 | Category: Web Nerdery
From an interview with Steve Vamos, Microsoft Australia’s managing director:
I don’t believe it is a true statement that IE doesn’t have the features that our customers want. We take user feedback very seriously. If you have that feedback, then you should feed it back to us because we will feed it to the product team.
Hmmm, I thought we already had. The interview contains some hilarious quotes, especially this one:
There are plenty of products out there with features we don’t have. We have plenty of features that our customers don’t use.
Sounds like a winning combo to me.
Then there’s this fine piece of marketing from the IE team. Wow, it’s just like watching Fox news during the US election — fair and unbiased.
Have Your Say
Sorry, comments are closed on this post.
“I don’t agree that just because a (competing) product has a feature that we don’t have, that feature is important,” he said. “It is not. It is only important if it is a feature the customer wants. There are plenty of products out there with features we don’t have. We have plenty of features that our customers don’t use.”
Apparently, Microsoft does not view web developers as customers. Maybe we need to stop using the IE hacks, and just put a notice on the bottom of every site we design saying that the page will not display correctly in IE because Microsoft has failed to release a browser that follows rendering standards, and then provide a link to Firefox. Of course we can`t do this with our clients` sites, but blogs would be a good place to start.
TO WHOM, not to who!!!!
Anyway, after the pedantic English lesson, I can provide you with an answer.
They listen to corporations with zillions of users who want a daft feature to suit their latest in-house application.
Why does IE support coloured scroll bars? Because a big client asked for it!
Why does IE have half-assed standards support? Because with 95% market share, the corps don’t care about compatibility with other UA’s, so MS never did it.
But we have ActiveX, and all those other security holes that make it easier to develop windows applications that run in a browser window.
Adam, you must have read my mind - My first blog entry offered my IE disclaimer…but since my most recent redesign, I inadvertently fixed the IE bug. I only wish I could put a disclaimer like that on my clients’ sites.
After reading the IE blog post, I have come to the conclusion it’s probably just to get user feedback so IE knows what it needs to fix and make better (one can only hope).
Give Microsoft enough rope and some time…they’ll hang themselves with it…
Ahahaha, what garbage. Geez.
Michael: Whoops! Oh dear, I really should have noticed that… All fixed, thanks.
Developers/Designers may not be a high priority client, but who hasn’t had numerous clients ask them about browsers, firewalls, etc?
What about those that run the IT infastructure of IE’s big clients — I wonder what browsers those guys use at home? Surely they too have an impact on the software related decisions of their employers?
MS are underestimating the strength of the movement against their browsing platform and hope they can just wave money at it later and solve the problem. They have an aweful lot of money to wave, so we’ll just have to wait and see.
What if we slipped a note to Bush telling him Microsoft is being owned by Al Queda? That would fix the problem
“The Internet? We are not interested in it” – Bill Gates, 1993
Because Microsoft knows best for their customers and clients, right? Just because you’re the walmart of the computer world, doesn’t put you in the know.
Didn’t the old Mindless Lemming have a notice at the bottom saying that it was designed for standards, and wouldn’t display correctly in IE? You should see one of my sites in IE, however, it’s now got rid of almost all of the Windows content, so there are very, very, very few Windows users, and more than 80% of the people who visit it are using Safari, which I designed it in, and the other 20% is mostly Mozilla/Firefox/Camino, all which are based on the Gecko engine, and all of which it displays as intended, then there’s the 1-2% of Mac IE users, hell to them.
I’d like to see IE 7 with the best standards support out there, and then, I could worry about some other browser, which has far less of the market share, and is far less of a problem, and I’d probably have the same attitude to it as I do to Mac IE - hell to them (the users).
As for Firefox being no threat to IE, it most certainly is, with more and more people switching, I spent all the time I had at home on Tuesday last week - the day Firefox 1.0 came out, converting people, and my “Operation Firefox” was very successful, I converted over 10 people that day alone, in about 10 hours, sure, I was extremely bored of going over the cons of IE by the end of that, and although I still don’t use it myself on my Mac, I recommend it to Windows users, although, typically, I use Mozilla 1.8a4 on my Windows, when that rarely goes online.
Now, enough of this, my longest ever comment on LJ, but one small note, this does seem a bit small after writing all this.
It certainly did Geoffrey - “This site is designed for good browsers, it will not display properly in Internet Explorer” That footer message was my version of the good old JS alert of “This site requires Internet Explorer 5 or higher. Please upgrade". You’re right about the micro comment textarea – all those problems will be solved with version two, which I won’t have time to code until February at the earliest
Brady: Funny you should mention walmart – I read yesterday that they have an insane amount of sales data stored away; double the internet worth!!! Apparently sales of strawberry pop-tarts go up when there is a hurricane…
Are you planning on waiting for WordPress version 1.3 for LJ 2?
I will be waiting for WP 1.3, but that isn’t holding me up. I’m just too busy to give version 2 the time it needs so as to not create something of a lesser quality than this design.
Hint: Fluid width and lots of graphics don’t mix easily…:-|
I know what you mean about fluid designs and graphics… Annoying++. On one of my sites, the edge of the image was meant to be the same, so I chopped off 1px at the edge, saved it, and repeated it, allowing me to get it all the way to the edge of the window, although, knowing you, you’ll be doing something far more complex.
As one of the development managers on the IE team, it really pained me to see this article (it wasn’t an interview, it was reporting what supposedly was said to attendees at a “security roundtable discussion", whatever that is…)
Vamos and English have no connection to the IE team whatsoever, so whatever they said, it’s not informed or influential. Meaningless.
Regarding feedback, we’re listening to our blog comments, various emails, various blogs and other websites (like the PNG petition), and the IE Wiki on Channel9.
- Bruce
Mirco-shaft
Thats all I have to say.
Bruce: Thanks for your direct feedback; and thank you even more for proving me wrong! Seeing members of the IE team ‘out in the wild’, so to speak, makes me feel far less concerned about the sort of hoops developers will have to jump through when your new platform is released. (That’s not a stab at IE — all browsers have their own ‘hoops’)
That is an interesting article. I have had on my blog since I wrote the original design, “This site is not designed for Internet Explorer. Please use a real browser.” It still works for the most part in IE, but it isn’t my primary focus. It is interesting to see where things have gone, I remember back in the day when it was the “hip” thing to put those “designed for IE” logos on your site.
I agree; IE should have full png support, standars-compliancy, etc… I don’t have anything against the people who work on IE (they are hard working people too). But, in all honesty, when listening more to the general public (ie. non-web affiliated people, which don’t really know what they are talking about), will provide you with feedback like “Can you make it shinier?” Web developers, which make up the smaller portion of people who use the web, and in turn give feedback, will give feedback that is useful, like png support. The average user doesn’t know what a png is. But will it benefit him/her if it was fully supported? Of course it will. The same goes for being standards-compliant. Just my 2 cents.
And I love the website! Awesome look and feel.
Nine out of Ten people browsing the web, are using Internet Explorer. The #1 concern of all users of IE, based on what I’m reading, appears to be security.
This is why FireFox is beginning to take hold. It’s not the features. It’s the security that is of most concern, such as spyware removal.
Microsoft is now responding, but I think they may be too late. Last I read, Firefox carries 5% of the market share. That’s HUGE growth for this small company, and a real threat to Microsoft!
FireFox is small, privately owned, with only 20 employees or so, at least I think that’s the case. In any event, it might be time for those guys to start thinking about ramping up and going public. It’s the stuff, that DREAMS are made out of, and a real win for alternative choices.
Honestly, The only thing I care about is the fact I have to make the site I create “TRY” to work on the two major platforms.
I don’t know witch one its is..and don’t really care. But im a little tired of basically having to make a site twice so it show correctly in either.