Asa Dotzler: Firefox and more

I personally ask myself the question: Are they actually DOING something? Can we be sure of that?

P.D.: Sorry asa for not being in the last Ask Asa Live...

- ShadowC

"What your silence for the last 18 months of IE 8 development tells the Web developers of the world that you don't give a shit what they've got to say about it."

This is exactly right. Asa, you nailed this one right on the head. This is something we all knew: Microsoft doesn't give a crap about anyone other than the uppermost layers of top executives at their own company. Period. Everything else is secondary. It's not about products or services or the community or anything constructive. It's all about "How do we milk the market for all it's worth with the least amount of effort? How do can we maximally leverage our monopolistic position? Can we use our huge cash reserves to put political and social pressure on our competition? Is the cost of hijacking standards bodies acceptable?"

The execs at Microsoft, like in any other public company, are rolling in the dough. They are set for life and beyond. They really don't care what happens to Microsoft. If Microsoft crashes and burns, that's fine. They are set either way. They are (and have been for a while now) at the stage of the company where the goal is to milk the company as much as possible while skating along on its previous achievements as much as possible. The execs utterly do not care what happens to it. They don't have to behave rationally. They don't have to cater to the market. They don't have to obey the laws. What's the worst that will happen? As long as they don't pull an Enron, even if they run the company into the ground, that's perfectly fine as long as they can milk it on the way to the ground.

That's the game. That's why public corporations are an abomination. But a large private corporation is not immune from this either. That's just the game at that level. Once you are set for life, it's boring to simply do good work. People start to take crazy risks. They want to flirt with breaking the law. They flirt with fraud. They want something exciting. And how exciting is it to just do a good job? And if you are already set for life, what's the point of making more money? Just so you can get higher on the Forbes list? I guess some people are motivated by that. I doubt all of them care about it.

i dunno, i agree that the lack of communication on their part is frustrating, but i don't think you, asa, are in the right position to be commenting on it. i believe the readers will be able to decide for themselves how they feel. however, i have never heard anything about ie8, so thank you for bringing that to my attention.

I agree with your point, but does it matter? Microsoft won't support new internet technologies that aren't simply necessary anyway, because it affects their core business, which is desktop based software.
Online Office won't even be able replace MS Office anytime soon, but it will be able in 10 or 15 years, and Microsoft will try everything it can to prolong that for another 5 years.
It's a very rational thing.

And: The less Microsoft listens, the more influence Mozilla will get, and that again will put Microsoft in the position that it has to support new technologies.
At one point, the Online branch of Microsoft will include the IE and will be a separate entity, not bound to anything the main Microsoft decides. The less they listen to the community, the earlier that will happen. And if that happens.

Dude, chill out. Why don't you concentrate on making your product the best it can be and not worry what those other guys are doing. Don't play their games!

I'm amazed by this post. I'm Firefox (and Mozilla) all the way but the tone and content of this post is embarrassing and counter-productive. I'd advise being civil and professional at all times. Otherwise, just keep quiet.

Mike, you must be new here.

Mike,

"I'm amazed by this post. I'm Firefox (and Mozilla) all the way but the tone and content of this post is embarrassing and counter-productive. I'd advise being civil and professional at all times. Otherwise, just keep quiet."

I am ashamed we have people like you in our society. You use the word "civil" as a code for "obedient and uncritical". Why shouldn't people express how they feel? What is the point of putting up a facade? It helps no one.

Some of us are tired of bullshit.

I don't tend to think that MS is evil and they "don't give a shit what they've got to say about it", though it is probable. Instead I think they are careless and think marketing can fix up the PR mess a few months before release. Just like IE7: after 5-6 years of silence, suddenly it's all about "we totally like dropped the ball, we want your opinion and we want it your way" and the usual noise and IE7.

We shouldn't really care that much. A 20%-30% more of market share out of MS little hands wouldn't hurt and that's precisely what they will get with their lame approach to the-people's-browser.

RyanVM: Yes, I am.

Leo:You know almost nothing about me and yet you are ashamed that there are people like me in society?

I don't use "civil" as code for "obedient and uncritical" - but feel free to say that I do - I use it to mean "civil" as in polite, not rude.

And, of course, people are welcome to express how they feel. Notice that's what I did. I'd just advise against doing in the way that I referred to.

I too dislike bullshit - like the bullshit of someone who can say that they are ashamed that there are people like me in society when all I've done is express my opinion. Oh well.

While focusing on your (our) product and ignoring the other guys is usually good advice, I think the context here is a little different. This isn't just Company A fretting about Company B's plans. Mozilla -- and a boatload of other companies -- are very keen on keeping the Web moving forward, and when the $322 billion monopolistic elephant in the room isn't talking, people have a right to be concerned.

Firefox, Safari, and (dare I mention them!) Opera are all helping the web move in new and interesting directions, along with their posse of Mozilla- and Webkit- derived brethren. But IE is still the deadweight with a majority marketshare, even if it is declining. The silence about their intentions doesn't help the Web.

Mike,

"I too dislike bullshit - like the bullshit of someone who can say that they are ashamed that there are people like me in society when all I've done is express my opinion. Oh well."

This is all that Asa has done too. Saying that he's impolite is just your opinion. You're free to express it, but that doesn't make it true.

Mike,

"I too dislike bullshit - like the bullshit of someone who can say that they are ashamed that there are people like me in society when all I've done is express my opinion. Oh well."

This is all that Asa has done too. Saying that he's impolite is just your opinion. You're free to express it, but that doesn't make it true.

Mike,

What is a polite way to express what Asa has said that conveys precisely the same information that Asa has conveyed here? If you can come up with a better way to say it, please say what it is, because I do think it has to be said.

Are you polite to all people all the time? If yes, you're the only person I know who is like that. If not, then what is your criteria for dropping politeness?

I never expected much from IE8. The issues in Internet Explorer sit too deep and there are far too many sites relying on the wrong behavior, not much you can do about it in a year. But judging by their previous comments the IE team was at least willing to try. Now it looks like the marketing folks won and IE is being pushed into yet another feature release (I don't think they would have been that quiet if they had any rendering improvements to present). This makes sense, in the end only the features will be visible to end-users, and breaking existing sites doesn't make you exactly popular. Still, very sad...

"What is a polite way to express what Asa has said that conveys precisely the same information that Asa has conveyed here? If you can come up with a better way to say it, please say what it is, because I do think it has to be said."

Are you kidding? It's perfectly possible to argue that silence is counterproductive without ridiculously reading "I'm being talked down to as though I were a child" into the original post, and then ironically proceeding to talk down to him as though HE were the child. I don't feel particularly inclined to do so myself, because I honestly don't think it *needs* to be said, but you are welcome to do so.

And for god's sake, calling somebody on being rude isn't suppression of free speech and support of obedience. What you did was construct a rather astonishingly obvious strawman and yet somehow you decided to defend it.

Nobody is polite all the time, that doesn't mean that it's always just as good to be impolite. I'm not being particularly polite to you right now because I'm frustrated at your continued obstinance. I might end up not posting this, but if you read this I let impolitic get the best of me. It's human nature but that doesn't make it good. And anyway, it's another strawman, because Mike's politeness has very little to do with whether Asa should be more civil.

What's funny though is the weird progression:

Dean says something.
Asa responds to above negatively. This is free speech and wonderful.
Mike responds to above negatively. This is suppression of free speech and he is all that is wrong with society.
Leo responds to above negatively. This is defense of free speech against horrible fascism.
Mike responds to above negatively.
Leo responds to above negatively (twice in a row and in a somewhat mutually contradictory way). He actually points out that Asa and Mike were both stating opinions which each are free to say, without backing down from the original assertion.

Congratulations though. Compared to your post, Asa's was extremely civil.

How anyone can find Asa's post uncivil is beyond me, this is about as civil as you can get without offering Dean a cup of tea.

This is an interesting developer dilemma. On one hand it's important to make sure your product fits your end-users needs yet on the other you can never please everyone all of the time and sometimes it really is in the best interest of a product to not invite too much feedback otherwise you end up with a horse designed by committee. The ubercool kids of 37signals.com and Rails fame have quite a few blog posts that amount to "ignore the customer's requests and just make the best product you think works" as well as David Heinemeier Hansson's classic Rail's speech telling everyone making requests to "F**k off". Granted there are some nuances to their point but in a way they advocate a model of developing in the shadows, if not the complete darkness.

One question comes to mind, what are people going to do with any information given about IE8? What does knowing it may or may not have feature X do? What does even knowing the time-frame offer? Nothing. Even if IE8 comes out tomorrow you'll still have to developer web-pages for IE6 and IE7 for those corporations on a delayed rollout. Even if IE8 has the best CSS-support out there you'll still have to worry about other browsers and older versions of IE. In effect knowing more details about IE only feeds the information whores in us, it doesn't do anything to alter our work flow. It's not like you can stop developing for IE since it is still the dominant web-browser.

I didn't find Dean's IE8 post to be condescending in the least, bereft of details yes, but not condescending though I did find Asa's a bit of a pout. Of course I could have just been turned off by the Texas-style "you all" that peppered the post. Living in Texas for 10 years was quite enough of that phrase for me.

Shawn,

"The ubercool kids of 37signals.com and Rails fame have quite a few blog posts that amount to "ignore the customer's requests and just make the best product you think works" as well as David Heinemeier Hansson's classic Rail's speech telling everyone making requests to "F**k off". Granted there are some nuances to their point but in a way they advocate a model of developing in the shadows, if not the complete darkness."

Everything depends on what you are developing. If you're developing a clever clock gizmo, by all means keep it secret. If you are developing infrastructure that will be used by 80% of all people, infrastructure that is supposed to be standardized, then NO, you don't get to keep it a secret. There are different levels of obligation based on your level of involvement in the community. If you are doing something that affects everyone, you cannot keep quiet about it.

Of course Microsoft is welcome to continue to behave as they have. They will eventually destroy themselves. But while we wait for their inevitable self-destruction, we suffer. And obviously we don't want to suffer. And frankly, it would be better if Microsoft stop being psychopathic and start cooperating with the community, even if that means Microsoft will not self-destruct.

Hello Asa,

"It's not the lack of action that people are concerned about. It's the lack of communication."

I have to disagree with you. As a web author, I am much more concerned on/about lack of action than on/about lack of communication. People are complaining mostly, utterly, over-convincingly about bugs, incorrect implementations, lack of compliance and correctness, specification violations occuring in IE 6 and IE 7 than about anything else. So, fixing, correcting those is what really matters here. Of course, having more communication (and a publicly accessible roadmap of some sorts) would help but it is still action, fixing, corrections on precised, defined targets and goals that people want. Chris Wilson said clearly a few times (in 2005 and 2006) that the next IE would better meet/comply with W3C web standards: I can find the exact quotes if we need to go this far.
"there's not like some deep secret about what we're doing with IE." Bill Gates

The major corrective measures, improvements may be furthermore important, difficult to carry out if the browser software is closely intricated into, interrelated with, interdependent on many other software products (.NET, Web Expression, Outlook Express, Word).

The bugs to fix in Internet Explorer 7 are all listed at (or linked to) my website, Asa:

http://www.gtalbot.org/BrowserBugsSection/MSIE7Bugs/

The second problem with communication is that a huge corporation, even an open-source one, can not have a full, permanent, optimal, transparent talk with the developers community and a 2-way (reciprocal) communication when such communication would involve
a) thousands of people with various levels of expertise (just imagine the volume of data to tackle) and
b) a huge, important noise versus signal ratio.

Handling and managing endless discussion with thousands of people can certainly involve (as in co$t) a lot of time, typing hands, energy, motivation, ... which could be better invested into addressing the roots of the complaints, requests, web authors revolt, etc. Microsoft (and its IE dev. team) does not need to maintain a lot of channels opened anyway once it knows what it has to do and what it has to achieve.
The silence embargo on IE 8 was decided by Bill Gates himself: he is ultimately the only responsible for such decision.

Regards,

Gérard Talbot

Sorry, but I'm a HUGE Firefox fan and am not really that big on IE7 (though I did give it its fair shake after release) but I also hate when people (even Microsoft) are attacked unduly. Correct me if I am wrong, but I think Robert O'Callahan did seem to speculate at the possibility of inaction here: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roc/archives/2007/11/intranet_explor.html > With all due respect, if it insults one's intelligence to suggest that one has considered inaction, what does it suggest to actually think it?