IE The Great Microsoft Blunder?

JordanL writes "Hot on the heels of the beta rollouts of IE 7, comes an editorial from John Dvorak declaring IE the biggest mistake Microsoft has ever made. From the article: 'All the work that has to go into keeping the browser afloat is time that could have been better spent on making Vista work as first advertised [...] If you were to put together a comprehensive profit-and-loss statement for IE, there would be a zero in the profits column and billions in the losses column--billions.'"

Definitely not 0 profit...

Dvorak doesn't mention what is probably the greatest profit center related to IE: MSN.com. It's highly unlikely that MSN.com would be the #3 search engine if it weren't for MSN being the default search engine for IE. It's rumored that Google averages 12 cents of revenue per query on google.com... if MSN makes even half of what Google does per query, we're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars per year in revenue. This recurring revenue stream is more than enough to justify an investment in a browser.

Other possible revenue streams for Microsoft IE include toolbar buttons and bookmarks, as well as the licensing of Internet Explorer to AOL and other companies to use as their default browser. Whether IE is profitable or not is still a mystery, but I definitely wouldn't say it has been a zero for Microsoft.

Re:Definitely not 0 profit...

Dvorak doesn't understand business. IE is a loss leader. You give out IE in order to get other stuff back. This is the kind of thing we live with all the time in marketing. Our department always "loses" money, but without our department, the business wouldn't have any customers... so are we a money sink? Dvorak, apparently, would say yes.

Re:Definitely not 0 profit...

IE is a loss leader. You give out IE in order to get other stuff back.

Microsoft bundles IE with Windows to leverage Windows' monopoly to gain marketshare for IE. Once IE has high marketshare, then Microsoft can control indirectly the website developers. Have you ever noticed how many websites are written to accommodate the bugs in IE?

Re:Definitely not 0 profit...

"the bugs in IE?"

Features, man, they're FEATURES!!

Re:Definitely not 0 profit...

From that site: "The real role of extensions is to add frivolous non-features to a browser, and in doing so provide a scape-goat for blame when the browser is at fault."

So, the tab mix plus toolbar adds frivilous non-features? The ability to reorder tabs, or "un-close" tabs should one mistakenly close the wrong one, and the ability to lock a tab in place are all non-features?

Likewise: the web developer adds other frivilous non-features: one can resize the browser window to a specific size, clear HTTP authentication, clear the cache, clear history, outline any given element type, validate HTML against standards, display HTTP headers (basically, the HTTP response code and other server information), display element metadata, highlight broken images (broken images are not always readily apparant), modify CSS on the fly, disable certain standard browser features, and so forth. Yeah, frivilous non-features, most of which are absolutely NO help at all in debugging web applications and web sites in general. Useless non-feature, I'll give you that! ;)

User agent switcher: can be used to spoof MSIE or Safari in order to make Firefox work with banks and ecommerce sites which have been hard-coded to expect one of those two browsers, despite being 100% compatible with Firefox. Yep, another useless non-feature.

DOM Inspector: an extension which adds the non-feature of being able to browse the document object model. It's not as though you actually need to know how address an element in order to manipulate it using Javascript. Yes, folks, another frivilous non-feature brought to you courtesy of a useless Firefox extension!

Colorzilla: a color picker which is obviously not useful at all for web developers.

Have fun slamming the Mozilla team, but check the above before spreading the FUD above. You should quit wasting time spreading FUD, check your facts, and criticise the Firefox folks over legitimate issues.

katse(at)biyn(dot)com

Re:Definitely not 0 profit...

Step #3 == user lock-in.

The profit there was HUGE. It still is.

Billions? Easily.

Keeping people from looking at alternatives in one field helps keep them from looking at alternatives in other fields, like their biggest cash cow - the office suite.

Now that the browser isn't sufficient to keep people locked in (and now that browser-based apps are a threat to their underlying platofrm monopoly), they wish it would die, so they can lock people in with their latest strategy - dot.net. That's why, originally, there wasn't going to be an IE7.

Re:Definitely not 0 profit?

But everything they get with this loss leader could be obtained just as easily by bundling someone else's browser and forcing the defaults. Other companies built search engines and ISP businesses without developing their own browser. I can be done. In fact, others are currently doing it better than MS.

Dvorak is right: the expense of IE development could have been spent elsewhere, and MS would be none the worse off if they bundled somebody else's browser. Actually, Spyglass WAS somebody else's browser -- MS just got carried away with modifications. On the other hand, there is some Monday morning quarterbacking going on here. MS tried to "embrace and extend" the Internet. That approach works great when you have only incomplete standards and some room to maneuver. But nobody needed MS to "extend" HTTP.

If MS knew how the world would evolve, they would never have bothered with IE. But nobody knew for sure at the time. The early browsers were resource-intensive by the standards of the day; they were designed for X-windows workstations. I can understand why MS would want to get something light enough to run on typical PC hardware. The early versions of Mosaic for Windows required Win32S and more memory than most people had. Netscape was better, but there was still plenty of room for improvement. Besides, just about every product MS ever created had to displace an entrenched competitor in order to survive. They must have thought IE would do the same -- even if they had to give it away.

I run Windows XP Pro. Occasionally I get stuck running IE when I have to visit a retarded website that requires it. The default settings of MSN and the toolbar links lasted about 90 seconds after the first boot. I never signed up for any service because of anything IE did. MS additional profit by give me IE: $0.00. Yet their reputation for security and stability lives in infamy, thanks largely to IE and ActiveX plugins that let spyware and viruses play right through.

Re:Definitely not 0 profit?

But everything they get with this loss leader could be obtained just as easily by bundling someone else's browser

Microsoft would not allow themselves to be dependent upon someone else for such a critical piece of their strategy.

Re:Definitely not 0 profit?

Microsoft wasn't giving away IE free to get ad-revenue on their home page. Microsoft was giving IE away in hopes that they could translate a monopoly in the web browser market into a monopoly in the web server market. IE wasn't intended to make money off of end-users. It was intended to make money off of big corporations. In that sense, IIS sales should go on its profit-and-loss balance sheet.

Re:Definitely not 0 profit?

Dvorak is right: the expense of IE development could have been spent elsewhere, and MS would be none the worse off if they bundled somebody else's browser.

Hmmm... tell that to Quicken or any number of other software apps which use IE for the UI solution. IE isn't just a browser - it's the HTML rendering component for the entire OS. And at the time it was first being developed, Netscape's HTML renderer wasn't componentized - which is yet another reason why they lost the browser wars and both AOL and Quicken went with IE instead of Netscape.

That's called dumping.

Microsoft bundles IE with Windows to leverage Windows' monopoly to gain marketshare for IE. Once IE has high marketshare, then Microsoft can control indirectly the website developers. Have you ever noticed how many websites are written to accommodate the bugs in IE?

I'd like to see M$ own up to such a strategy because it's against the law. It may be true and they have been convicted of it, but they had better not admit to it.

Dorvak's accusation forces M$ to admit anti-competitive practices or lose face on Wall Street. The second rate nature of both their browser and OS are now apparent. The only way to justify continued profits in the face of superior and less expensive competitors is to promise monopoly rents. Investors should be aware in either case. A company that screws it's customers is not much better to it's employees or investors.

Re:Definitely not 0 profit...

Microsoft bundles IE with Windows because you have to put some sort of web browser there and it's cheaper in the long run for them to make their own that to be reliant on a third party for such a vital component.

In order for the general consumer to be able to make the choice between available free and non free web browsers, something has to be bundled with Windows to allow them to obtain whatever they choose.

The fact that the average consumer will quite happily sit with IE because it's already there isn't Microsofts fault.

Re:Definitely not 0 profit...

From the tagging:

troll, dvorak (ie stupid idiot)

Is anybody else noticing how many aricles are being tagged "troll"? Won't make for a very good indexing mechanism is every third article has the same keyword...

Re:Definitely not 0 profit...

Dvorak doesn't understand business.

Marketoïds do not understand the *REAL* universe, the one one that's governed by physical laws and logic.

See, that's where you're an idiot. (I was going to just say wrong, but it doesn't express how I feel very well.) Marketing is all about logic. One of the key datums in marketing is that people make decisions based on emotion, not on logic. Oh sure, some people develop a logical system for evaluating purchases and then stick to it zealously, which allows them to make logical decisions, but most people vote for the better-looking candidate and buy the car that looks fast, regardless of actual suitability.

Marketing exists in the really real world, not your slashdot fantasy world. Actually, it exists here too, if you don't have adblock or something. And it wouldn't exist here if it didn't work to some degree.

Logic dictates that Microsoft is getting something out of maintaining IE.

P.S. I work in a marketing department but I'm a longtime and very dedicated computer geek. Look at the number of /. posts I've made if you don't believe me :P

Re:Definitely not 0 profit...

Marketing has **FUCK-ALL** to do with logic. It only plays people like some people play the piano.

If someone wants to sell some shit, and they know they can influence people, and their business is about making money, then using marketing is a logical decision.

It makes people do stupid things, like buy crap they don't need and fatten the bourgeois who peddle the made-by-slave-labour-in-China shit.

It doesn't make anyone do anything. It puts notions in the heads of the unconscious. Propaganda was the subject of my middle school english class, and ever since I've consciously examined every advertisement I don't immediately dismiss, looking for their methods and motivations. It doesn't mean I'm immune to marketing, but I am much more resistant. (Also, I think most geeks are very specification-oriented, and so they are less vulnerable to marketing in general.)

Like religion, marketing serves no useful purpose in life, and this is why marketers should be retroactively aborted.

Come do it if you can.

But more cogently, it serves to stimulate the economy. And without marketing, no one would ever sell anything anywhere but locally, so it also enables the economy.

But you seem to be defending marketoids, so you must either be one of them,

I have a supporting role in a marketing department - I query the database. I also do the website. Guess what? Websites are marketing, if they're associated with a business or product. I guess businesses and products shouldn't have webpages, huh?

or worse, you're one of those slimy bourgeois who use their services to peddle your useless crap (it must be useless, because if it was useful, it would sell itself).

Riiiiight. It would sell itself to people who might not even be aware that it exists? Marketing is about more than just convincing people that they need something that they have no use for. It's also about getting the message out about your products so that people who already have a use for what you're selling have an opportunity to find out about it, and then possibly buy it from you.

You are a classic example of why some people shouldn't be allowed to think on their own - you don't actually complete the thought.

Re:Definitely not 0 profit...

Dvorak doesn't understand business. IE is a loss leader. You give out IE in order to get other stuff back

Also chances are the IE development team are completely separate to the Vista one, and have a different skill set. By developing IE, Microsoft has an HTML engine that suits their needs, without having to rely on some third-party. If you look around Windows XP, you will soon realise how much actually relies on that engine.

The problems with Vista are probably bad management and trying to do too much in one go. If you look at one of the competitors, Apple, then you will see that they bring things out in managable increments. Sure it is $120 a year, but at least it is available and out there.

Re:Definitely not 0 profit...

MSN could be the default search engine of any browser that Microsoft decided to bundle.

Opera uses Google as a default search engine because of a smart bussiness deal.

MS could easily do the same.

Re:Definitely not 0 profit...

I don't know. I mean, if MS did bundle another browser, they could set that bundled browser to MSN.com, and reap all the same profits. It would almost have to be expected that they would. In which case, they're wasting money on IE.

The biggest problem with IE is that it is linked to the OS, which is why security exploits in IE are the biggest headache for microsoft. Hell, I love Apache. I view it as pretty secure. But there is no way in hell I'd pick up an OS where Apache was an inextricable part of the kernel. The very idea is absurd...Apache touches the internet, therefore, it is a security problem. End of story. IE touches the internet, therefore it is a security problem. Firefox, Opera, it doesn't matter. Burglars couldn't get into your house if you had no doors or windows.

I think Dvorak is 100% correct (first time for me)...If they used any other browser, they could lay half their security problems at it's feet. They could point the finger, and shake their heads, and talk about how secure their system is and how, if they built a browser, it would be completely secure and oh-so-functional. Instead they look awful, and their browser is a technological fossil.

Re:Definitely not 0 profit...

Impossible.

Microsoft has testified in court [salon.com] that IE cannot be separated from the "Core OS", whatever that means.

Therefore, what you say cannot be true :)

QED

Re:Definitely not 0 profit...

"Burglars couldn't get into your house if you had no doors or windows."

Um, if your house doesn't have windows or doors the burglars can just walk in.

Re:Definitely not 0 profit...

"Burglars couldn't get into your house if you had no doors or windows"

Technically, that's incorrect.

Current exterior wall construction for a large portion of the housing market consists of (from the outside-in)vinyl siding, Tyvek vapor barrier, a fibrous type sheathing (sometimes no more than 1/8" thick cardboard), glass fiber insulation, and gypsum wallboard. All of these material are easily cut with a $1.99 utility knife.

You can get into most houses these days with a knife and 5 minutes by going right through the wall.

Re:Definitely not 0 profit...

As with most things in life, a good gas powered chain saw will do the job in a tenth of the time, and it's a lot more fun.

Just make sure there aren't any electrical conduit where you're making your hole. That might make it less fun.

Re:Definitely not 0 profit...

You can get into most houses these days with a knife and 5 minutes by going right through the wall.

5 minutes is 4 minutes and 50 seconds too long in a yard with a 120lb mastiff on the prowl.

Re:Definitely not 0 profit...

Well, here's another thing: Five years ago people said, "We can't migrate from Windows; all our stuff runs on Office, or some Windows-specific app." Now people say, "We can't migrate from Windows, all our web apps use Active-X controls and can only run on IE."

Chris Mattern

Re:Definitely not 0 profit...

I'm a Microsoft employee, so maybe I can shed a little bit of light on IE. I didn't work here when IE was developed, that was all way before my time, but from a cultural/business perspective, Microsoft is big on the idea of Ownership. You Own a project. You Own the code you write (or you Own your non-code deliverables, if you're not a programmer). If it's screwed up, you're the one person someone can come to and ask "How did this happen?" because you Own that item.

Yes, Microsoft could have perfectly well bundled Netscape with Windows (or even bought Netscape with pocket change) back in the 1990s and probably have done so for far less than the cost of developing IE. I think buying Netscape (in which case Netscape's web servers could have become IIS) would be the only way it would have been considered. Why we didn't go that way is an interesting question. I have no idea what the answer is.

You may have noticed that Microsoft isn't big on bundling others' software, and when they do, it's always fully branded and user-transparent. I think acquiring Netscape is the only way anyone would have considered bundling it as the official Windows browser. Who knows? Maybe we did approach Netscape about either a buyout or a branding deal and they told us to get stuffed? I've never heard anything like that, and it's not often that a company declines to be acquired by Microsoft, but I suppose it's not impossible.

Now, combine that lack of enthusiasm for bundling third-party products with the culture of Owning what you work on, and you get why (in my opinion) Microsoft would not have bundled Netscape unless it owned the company lock, stock, and barrel: you could technically lay any security problems at Netscape's feet, but our corporate culture wouldn't want to. Plus, even if we did, our customers wouldn't buy that. They'd say "You shipped it, it's your problem. Don't tell me to email Netscape for support." Anybody's customers would say that. If you sold it to them, you'd better be able to support it, even if it's a third-party product.

Finally, there's a lot of "not invented here" syndrome that runs around our company. It seems to me (I'm fairly new here, so if you've been around longer, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) if we don't have it, we're either going to buy someone who does have it or we're going to write it ourselves.

IE has certainly had its problems over the years, and has of late been feature-poor compared to other browsers. Heck, until IE 7 betas started coming out, I even used other browsers unless someone was watching, and I still most often do because I'm very used to Firefox now. However, IE 7 is honestly a good browser. Beta 1 was usable, beta 2 is slick, and both are extremely fast, render well, and have a good, minimal interface. And finally, they support tabs! That was the huge missing feature. The first time I ever used a tabbed browser was the last time I could stand to not use one. It's just that much better. IE 7 is going to be very good. Far fewer windows users will find themselves with a reason to install Firefox instead of IE7. I expect Firefox will rise to the challenge and also become better and faster and it will benefit the industry as a whole, but there's no question about it: IE 7 is raising the bar.

Overall, do I think IE was a mistake? No. It's true that I'm a n00b here, but as others have pointed out, IE was a good loss leader for our business that allows us to generate revenue in other areas, such as MSN. Was bundling it in the OS a mistake? Well, that's another issue . I hear there's a lot of decoupling of IE in Vista. You be the judge :)

Notes: I don't work on either IE or Windows, so my opinions are reasonably objective, but they do tend to support our products over the competition, naturally enough.

Re:Definitely not 0 profit...

Dvorak doesn't seem to realise that the IE development team and the Vista development team are different people. Yes, they work together on some things, but that's like saying GIMP is unnecessary, the developers' time could be better spent on Konqueror.

What's new?

When has Microsoft ever delevered a product "as promised"?

Re:What's new?

LOL!!

C'mon, didn't you ever use the TRS-80 BASIC interpreter? Didn't everyone? It worked great, and was a MS product, IIRC. I think it was Micro-Soft basic 4.5 from what I remember. :) It worked exactly as promised.

I never used the BASIC compiler for the PC, but I think it was supposed to be pretty cool. Again it worked as promised. Of course, it was cloned from an IBM product, but then what's new?

Oh, wait - you already said that.

Nevermind.

Microsofts biggest blunder?

As usual, Dvorak is on crack.

I'm not sure what he means by biggest, but microsoft's stupidist blunder was Bob [guidebookgallery.org] and its most expensive blunder was the Cairo project [computerworld.com] (Cairo was later renamed and one of its most important element, OFS, is still nowhere in sight).

Internet exporer was not so much of a blunder as an expensive way to kill off Netscape (they were a much bigger threat then Dvorak makes out.

(the OT part) Still, at least Microsoft Bob was not a completely wasted effort - after all, you still have Rover the retriever [guidebookgallery.org] to help you with searching in XP - and we all know that was worth waiting 10 years for...

Re:Microsofts biggest blunder?

As usual, Dvorak is on crack. And he is not sharing which is a crime.

IE is just a shell around libraries which do parsing of content and rendering. These are used throughout Windows including Outlook, parts of Office, the Windows Update infrastructure, etc. These have to be accounted for when making a loss/profit assessment. If it was not for IE, Outlook would have never reached its near universal penetration. Where Outlook and IE go, Office, Exchange, Departamental intranet servers on IIS with HTML written by people on crack follow. All of these depend on IE in one form or another. All of these are commercial products and cost a pretty penny.

IE may be a loss, but it is a classic example of a well executed loss leader. If it was not for IE most of the remaining MSFT clutter would have had to be considerably better quality and less expensive to actually sell.

Re:Microsofts biggest blunder?

From my blog: http://jambarama.blogspot.com/2006/03/how-microsof t-got-ie-to-be-de-facto.html [blogspot.com]

Why did Microsoft care what browser people used?
Operating systems can be replaced by higher level operating systems. BIOS stood for (used to, they changed it in the 90s) basic integrated operating system. BIOS was a full on (but limited) OS. Microsoft figured out how to use BIOS to boot DOS, a higher level OS. Later they figured out how to get DOS to boot Windows. Thus they knew operating systems could be replaced, they'd done it: BIOS > DOS > Windows (until they jettisoned DOS in 2000).

They were afraid the internet was going to do this again. And Netscape would be basically an OS on top of Windows. The problem was this: if everyone develops for Netscape, not for Windows, then Windows wouldn't matter (just like who makes your BIOS doesn't matter now). Microsoft was terrified that Windows would get built over. Then they couldn't charge much for Windows (because it wouldn't be that important). So they did their darndest to kill Netscape and force IE on everyone else.

Getting rid of the Apple Problem
Macintosh threatened to throw a wrench in their plans. Even if Apple went out of business, someone would buy it up and still offer Macs. Because there was another viable platform, many early developers felt they should work for compatibility with both Mac and Windows. There was no IE for Macintosh and even if there had been, Microsoft needed a way to get Mac users to use it. If IE wasn't default for all major platforms, IE wouldn't be the standard, it would be a standard.*

Luck was on Microsft's side. They had been killing Apple's revenue for sometime and Apple was willing to partner with anyone to survive. For Microsoft it was worth $150 million to make IE the de facto standard that it remains to this day. For Apple is was worth accepting IE to survive to try and fight again.

So what about Netscape?
Tying means using one product to sell another. Tying is like selling a copier and forcing (contractually or with technology) the consumer to get the copier serviced by you as well. This example is an actual case - Kodak did this. Tying is not bundling (for example selling Office rather than Excel or Powerpoint alone. Bundling is fine). Tying is per se illegal - if you are found to be tying, you are wrong, no debate - bundling is fine.

I don't think there was any doubt in Microsoft's mind that bolting IE to the OS was "tying." The problem for Microsoft was that permanently bolting IE to Windows (and making it default) was the only way to unseat the current king of the internet, Netscape. It worked. And then they got slapped with an anti-trust suit for guess what... tying.

During the trial a Princeton computer scientist got the Windows code via a court order and found that by removing two lines of code (from the source of Win98) you could get rid of IE. So Netscape presented this in court. Microsoft's rebuttal was a video, showing that by removing these two lines of code Windows crashed. When the prosecutors looked into this they found this was two different videos spliced together (thanks Ballmer). Guess what?

They were found guilty. Judge Penfield Jackson was furious. He'd been annoyed by Bill Gates' irritated deposition. Gates had been ornery and not very helpful, but this put Jackson over the top. So Jackson wrote a scathing decision and Microsoft was supposed to be split into three companies. Because this decision was so harsh when the change of administration came, they refused to enforce it.

So Microsoft won. They got IE to be the standard everyone uses when developing for the web and no penalties for it (if you don't think IE is the de facto standard, make your site incompatible with IE and, unless it is slashdot, don't expect to get much return traffic). Microsoft now has new pressure again - from alternate web browsers and from alternate opera

the new IE7 Beta 2

I just installed it a few minutes ago, and am using it now. Bleh. The interface is still pretty horrible. Is this supposed to be the final layout? UnBELIEVABLY bad! What are their UI people smoking? Or did they hire some Opera UI people?

And the ClearType on by default is ridiculous. :(

At least I didn't do any stupid IE hacks with the sites I've developed for work - so everything works fine, except now with ClearType on by default, all the text looks bold, so many of our text links simply look like regular text. Nice UI move there, MS. *grumpy*

Re:the new IE7 Beta 2

Text links should be underlined. That's the convention.

Re:the new IE7 Beta 2

Text links were underlined because content and presentation were not separate in the original HTML. Now, it is. There's no longer any reason for it to be so, especially since by using user style sheets, you can make them flash purple and blue and outline them with a dotted cyan line if you want to. Further, text was underlined for links because while emphasis for the sake of emphasis is disposable, designation of links is not, and underlines are available in more places than italics or bold. Pretty much every glass terminal has underlines, but not all of them have both bold and italic - plenty of them have one or the other but not both. Text isn't shown in two sizes in lynx for the same reason - xterms and vt100 can handle that kind of thing, but how many other terminals do that?

Re:the new IE7 Beta 2

If I had mod points I'd mod you up - the Internet Explorer 7 interface is atrociously bad. I am not a Microsoft basher (I don't love them, but I find it hard to work up a good hate for them too), but this design will confuse the hell out of people. What's with eliminating the standard menus that every other Windows program uses? This will just confuse the hell out of users, without any countervailing benefit!

The interface for IE 7 was not thought through at all.

Re:the new IE7 Beta 2

What's with eliminating the standard menus that every other Windows program uses?

You can enable them!. Look here! [lmame-bug.com]. The menu is placed between the address bar and the tab bar. The tab and the address bar are both related with the page you're viewing, the menu is not. It's probably the worst place to put such menu: you want to keep such elements in the same place. But hey, this is microsoft - some reviewer will argue that it has sense.

The UI of IE7 was designed very carefully. They just don't know to do it right. Look at the the latest paul thurrot's vista review:

http://www.winsupersite.com/images/reviews/vista_5 342_rev5_02.jpg [winsupersite.com]
http://www.winsupersite.com/images/reviews/vista_5 342_rev5_08.jpg [winsupersite.com]
(Try to guess which is the active window)

http://www.winsupersite.com/images/reviews/vista_5 342_rev5_01.jpg [winsupersite.com]
("File operations"! great!)

I've enought problems to make people understand XP (why the extension->program associations are placed under "carpet options"???? Why i need to look at the taskwork's properties to delete the list of recently opened files in the start menu??? Why some visual effects are on the "my pc->properties" window, others in the display's properties and some duplicated in both?? Oh, and wait: in IE7 beta 2 you configure cd-auto-startup in IE's advanced properties). I can't wait for vista, it looks like they'd be trying to be better than mac os x but they keep falling in the second-system syndrome. It's so bad when it comes to usability that is laughable - most of the people knows windows just because they're taugh the basic operations in the school.

Look at how many XP/office training courses are in your city. It's so fucking bad that people can make money with it.

Re:the new IE7 Beta 2

What's with eliminating the standard menus that every other Windows program uses?

Oh, they're eliminating those too.

Have you seen Windows Messenger Live Beta? Or Windows Media Player 10? They are moving towards having the three or four most important actions in the tool bar (like "Change the color scheme of this window" or "Get your own space on Spaces"), and everything else is accessed from a "menu" button hidden up there with minimize, and close.

Personally, I'm mixed on this idea: I hate having to try to find the menu, and wonder where in there they have hidden what I want to do. On the other hand, I've noticed that the stripped down versions of IE, Word, etc. on my PDA have only a small number of menu items, and it's really nice not having all that extra crap.

Reading over what I just wrote, I had a thought: maybe I hate the new candy look and hiding the standard menus. I also hate product bloat. There, that's better, when I put it that way, MS can't do anything right.

E.

Re:ClearType isn't the problem

To echo the sibling comment; cleartype does much more than subpixel font rendering. It also affects spacing and kerning, among other things. On a sufficiently high-resolution display, cleartype looks better on a CRT than the normal font-smoothing algorithm, but to be fair it does make some colorful crap show up around the edges of text. However, that tendency can be reduced with the cleartype tuner.

Re:Nobody can resist propagating FUD.

What are their UI people smoking? Or did they hire some Opera UI people?

Opera is the most customisable interface I've ever encountered, and not just browsers.

Fair play. I was referring more to the IE7 interface compared with the goofy default layout of Opera's UI. You're very correct in how customizable Opera's UI is - although it's often EXTREMELY obfuscated as to how to customize many things. Nevertheless, what you want to customize can almost always be done in Opera, though it'll take some requests for help in the forums.

Not so with IE7, as far as I can tell. I can add, remove, and rearrange stuff on the toolbar, but I can't move the toolbar into different locations, as I could with previous versions of IE.

I'm hoping this isn't the final UI form. If it is, then it's taken several large steps backwards in UI customizability from previous versions of IE.

It's not like it's a big deal to me, since even with all its nifty new features (well, new to IE), I'll still be using Firefox, but the ClearType issue fucking up font display is going to mess with the usability of some of the sites I've designed, which is really irritating.

As far as Opera, I'm eagerly awaiting the final release of 9. I'm hoping I can customize it enough to use it as my main email client, as I freaking hate Thunderbird (and Outlook and Outlook Express, and, and, and...) I'd like the Hugin and Munin [opera.com] scripts updated for version 9.

Don't Reply

DO NOT REPLY TO THIS STORY. Dvorak is not that stupid. He's just tweaking the tech community to see if he can get a response. To date, the tech community has been as predictable as Marty McFly.

If you really want to understand Dvorak, pick apart the post I made [slashdot.org] on his last big story. I think you'll understand him a lot better if you can take a clinical look at his sudden and inexplicable leaps of logic. It's what he does, and he's damn good at it.

I know its hard to resist the Dvorak trolling, but you need to consider one thing: He's not listening to you. He doesn't even care about your opinion. His crazy theories are keeping the money flowing, and that's good enough. Arguing with his drivel is simply wasting your time.

Reply: Yes, he is that stupid.

Dvorak has been the classical asshole industry columnist for a long time — and he is that stupid. This isn't even the stupidest thing he's said. I first realized how stupid he was back in 1983, when he made some silly pronouncements about the secret plans of a company I was working for. It was painfully obvious that he hadn't the slightest understanding of the technology we sold. Why he continues to get published is one of the great mysteries of our time.

Re:Reply: Yes, he is that stupid.

Dvorak is also the idiot who whined about how the Windows Idle Process was using 98% of CPU time and causing his computer to thrash. He simply doesn't have a clue. Why Slashdot isn't just rejecting submissions out flat that contain the word 'Dvorak' is a mystery (I mean they could even do it with a regular expression).

Re:Reply: Yes, he is that stupid.

...Why Slashdot isn't just rejecting submissions out flat that contain the word 'Dvorak' is a mystery...

( * Read More... * 249 of 299 comments )

If they hadn't

John Dvorak declaring IE the biggest mistake Microsoft has ever made. From the article: 'All the work that has to go into keeping the browser afloat is time that could have been better spent on making Vista work as first advertised [...] If you were to put together a comprehensive profit-and-loss statement for IE, there would be a zero in the profits column and billions in the losses column--billions.'"

Yes, but we don't know what would have happened had they left netscape to dominate the market. Netscape might have taken over the world by now and enslaved us all!

Thank god for IE.

Dvorak is right, except...

Dvorak might have a point here, but for one thing: as long as people see IE as the default web browser, the idea that Windows is the only choice in operating systems is reinforced. Take the browser out of Microsoft's hands, and a lot of questions about how much we really need this Windows thing are raised. Those questions exist anyway, but the dominance of IE makes people less likely to ask them.

Dvorak, same as usual, all wet

Maybe sd should stop parrotting every dang fool thing Dvorak writes or says?

I suspect the coding effort in IE is about 3% of that invested in XP and Vista. Where does he get the $billions cost from? A web browser is a biggish program, but many lone hackers have written one in under one person/year.

Can we please have a moratorium on Dvorak's BS...

IE is a huge success:

The Web was threatening to become a client independent client platform.

Netscape looked like it would make a ton of money.

Microsoft had no significant web presence as a portal.

Now?

MSN is a huge portal.

Netscape is dead

And the web is a significant client-independant-client, as long as that client is Internet Explorer, which only runs on Windows...

IE preseved Microsoft's monopoly, killed a huge potential competitor, and has made microsoft a signiciant player in the Portal business.

Hardly a failure.

Why not make it the ultimate test of .NET?

I don't understand why Microsoft doesn't just rewrite Internet Explorer in .NET. They can leave the existing rendering engine behind as a legacy component and work on a new IE that can take advantage of .NET's security mechanisms. Not only would it be a good excuse for a clean break, but it would also give them a chance to show off what .NET can do for desktop apps.

You need evil to have good?

I think credit should be given to IE and Microsoft for inspiring the next generation of browsers. I mean, if it weren't for Internet Explorer setting the bar in browser features and functionality, we wouldn't have such a great open source push for a great new browser platform such as Firefox or Opera.

Imagine if Microsoft's only competition was Netscape :-(

What is he on?

From the parent:
All the work that has to go into keeping the browser afloat is time that could have been better spent on making Vista work as first advertised [...] If you were to put together a comprehensive profit-and-loss statement for IE, there would be a zero in the profits column and billions in the losses column--billions.'"

In all honestly, its a headline I would love to read. I absolutely can not stand the crap software or the tactics put out by that company. However, I will not dignifiy Dvorak with the ad revenue of clicking to his article and will instead take apart his weak qoute from the Slashdot story...

Dvorak, quite simily, is an idiot or is on something. I'll go with the former. First off, on any given development project, there is a finite number of developers that you can through at it before productivity begins to go down. As such, it makes sense for a company like Microsoft with BILLIONS AND BILLIONS of dollars laying around to create other teams to do other things. The utter failure of Vista has nothing at all to do with IE and all its associated problems.

Ok, so now that we've dealt with how the two could not possibly be linked lets look at the reason d'etre for IE. IE has probably not DIRECTLY generated any revenue for Microsoft, however indirectly its been a cash cow. Had MS not used illegal predatory practices and bundled IE with Windows and given it away for free, MS would have steadily lost a foothold in the OS market by giving Netscape the browser edge. Even more servers would be UNIX based Apache (or Netscape) web servers and MS and its operating system would have been completely commoditized faster than its already happening. Every major web page that "works best with IE #.##" means another desktop that is not running Linux or OS X or whatever other great alternative we would have found. Its absolutely assinine to question why MS "keeps their browser afloat".

Well, there goes 15 minutes of my life, rebuffing Dvorak, when I could have been doing something more productive like watching dust settle on my finger nails. Stupid me.

He he ...

I see Slashdot's tagging system has become sort of a working dictionary in cases. The current tags say:

[+] dvorak, ie, troll, stupid, idiot

Why, yes, he's all of those things!!

Amazing this new fangled technology -- how does it know?

Mythical Man Month

Because we all know that the only problem with Vista was that there wasn't enough people working on it...

The tags sum it up nicely

[+] troll, stupid, dvorak, ie, idiot (tagging beta)

Huh?

This is the first sensible statement, and the first intelligent article that I have read from John Dvorak in the last twenty years.

New project: fix Slashdotter to filter out Dvorak

Great, I've found a new project to work on while on my train-trips home: alter the Slashdotter firefox plugin so that it filters out any post containing the regex "[jJ]onh [dD]vorak". Also any post made by Zonk.