WTF are they thinking OTD: M$ Borgware

by tigtog on November 20, 2009

Why in the name of all that’s noodly does Microsoft produce, with Internet Explorer 8, a browser that is even less standards-compliant than IE7?

Sites I built as standards-compliant, with added IE hacks that tricked IE7 into rendering it properly, no longer look fine viewed in IE8. POSS* indeed.

Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?

* Piece Of Shit Software

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Tagged as: Borgware, M$, POSS, standards-compliant, WTF were they thinking?

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This article was written by tigtog

tigtog (aka Viv) lives in Sydney, Australia: husband, 2 kids, cat, house, garden, just enough wine-racks and (sigh) far too few bookshelves. Viv web-wrangles for hire and edits Gagging For It (Oz Comedy News). tigtog is the founder of Hoyden About Town and Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog.

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{ 16 comments }

1 Nacey November 20, 2009 at 7:45 pm: Because Microsoft hate you, Tigtog.
2 tigtog November 20, 2009 at 7:50 pm: They do! And all I’ve ever done is bag their bloatware on occasion – it’s not like I’ve made it my life mission!
3 Meg Thornton November 20, 2009 at 9:23 pm: I think the answer has more to do with the way M$ have never really adapted to the notion of having to share the browser market with anyone else. Yes, okay, there were web browsers long before Internet Exploder came along, but once IE had been produced, surely everyone should have switched over to the M$ borgware, and left all the other producers of software to fade into well-deserved obscurity. That persons like myself choose to use programs like Firefox and Thunderbird (rather than IE and Outlook) is something of an affront. So of course M$ decide to “embrace and extend” (translation: ignore and subvert) the existing standards, and force people into using their software.

I can see it’s going to be back to the good old days of “This page is best viewed with $BROWSER” (translation: if you don’t have the right browser, go read something else). If nothing else, it provides a nice easy filter for pretentious crap.
4 Lauredhel November 20, 2009 at 9:32 pm: The strategy to sew up market share by being the only browser that renders in a certain way can only work out if most websites out there design specifically for your browser. If more “best viewed with” notices start to read not “Best viewed with Internet Explorer 8″, but “Best viewed with anything but Internet Explorer”… maybe things will eventually change.
5 TimT November 21, 2009 at 12:00 am: Except Microsoft keep on trying to supersede their own products and out compete themselves? And this seems to happen with every Microsoft product. At work we’re having problems with IE6, apparently along with the rest of the world. AND there was the kafuffle a year or two back about the latest Microsoft Word creating documents (docx) that older versions of MW (doc) weren’t able to open.

Here’s a possibility: they’re stupid. Just stupid.
6 meloukhia November 21, 2009 at 2:27 am: IE gives me such a case of the arghs. I think that M$ just hates the Internet.
meloukhia´s last blog ..Thursday Night Popular Mechanics
7 Helen November 21, 2009 at 9:43 am: If more “best viewed with” notices start to read not “Best viewed with Internet Explorer 8?, but “Best viewed with anything but Internet Explorer”…

Twisty at IBTP used to have a delightful version of that disclaimer, “Never view this website in Microsoft IE”. I don’t think it’s there any more.
8 tigtog November 21, 2009 at 9:54 am: I’m looking into a hack for a message that will only display to people who are viewing the site in IE.
9 bartogian November 21, 2009 at 10:30 am: It is possible to get a message to only display to people viewing in IE.

For example this is done at http://cricketslime.net/wc.html (go to view source to see how they do it).

[Disclaimer: I hope this actually works, I haven't checked it for a couple of years and don't have a copy of IE handy to check with.]
10 meloukhia November 21, 2009 at 10:31 am: The other frustrating thing is that a lot of IE users, ahem, do not update their browser. So even if one were to fix things for IE8, there’d be problems in IE7, IE6, etc etc. (This seems to be an especially large problem with people Internetting from work, because some workplaces NEVER update their browsers.) It’s somewhat irksome when people report display problems and then tell me they’re using, say, a browser version which was released six years ago or something.
meloukhia´s last blog ..We’re Doing This Wrong
11 Peta November 21, 2009 at 10:59 am: Today (prompted by this post), I finally downloaded Mozilla Firefox, installed it and set it as my default browser.
12 tigtog November 21, 2009 at 2:43 pm: Goodonya, Peta. I hope you find that lots of sites are thusly improved for you.
13 Helen November 21, 2009 at 6:50 pm: I’m looking into a hack for a message that will only display to people who are viewing the site in IE.

What you’re looking for is a browser sniffer – there should be info on how to set that up in most web design manuals, or there useter. Otherwise I’d just google it to see what’s out there.
14 tigtog November 21, 2009 at 8:24 pm: Thanks for the appropriate jargon, Helen.
15 makomk November 24, 2009 at 3:14 am: tigtog: probably the added hacks to make the site work in IE. Microsoft have a charming habit of late of fixing the non-standards compliance that makes the hacks work, without actually fixing the underlying problem that requires them in the first place. So, whenever a new IE is released, a whole bunch of IE compatibility hacks don’t have any effect despite still being needed. It’s like the Red Queen’s race – you have to run as fast as you can just to stay put.
16 calyx November 28, 2009 at 8:21 pm: Gack, Microsoft browsers. They were the bane of my life at one stage. Such bullies regarding standards.