Except that they responded to none of the real concerns with IE9 being labeled as a Modern Browser, and instead listed off the same marketing drivel we've been hearing from their camp for the past year.
Yeah, Mozilla's argument seems odd. It is basically saying that IE9 is not modern because it is about on par with their shipping browser (FF3.6x) -- and lets not forget that IE9 has a better UI, better tab isolation, JS perf, and rendering perf than FF3.6x. If anything Mozilla should immediately urge all FF3.6x users to move to Chrome.
I think a more true, yet less controversial statement from Mozilla would be, FF 4 will leave IE9 (and FF3.6x) in the dust with respect to standards conformance.
I'd even agree with that. But saying that IE9 is not modern seems dishonest.
I agree with you that they are trying to be classy. The problem is that they are just plain wrong and they have no supporting evidence besides 'OMGZ WEB SOKETS.'
Some of the things they don't support aren't new, and are important for an "immersive experience"
Perfect example:
CSS transitions. It's been around a while... like 3 years.
Having no support and nothing to show for, in respect to something with an Editor's draft out from the W3C, (css transitions, for example), just proves you're really good at dragging your feet.
That's CSS animation. There's a blog post from Surfin Safari dating back to 2007 for CSS transition, and a Mozilla article dating back to 2009 (might have been implemented before that)
The only thing I see in 2007 about this is an announcement that they're going to do it. Can you find a pointer to the blog entry announcing that it is available?
> We have another cool new CSS feature to talk about: animation specified in CSS. There is a lot of ground to cover here, so we’ll start with the basics first.
There are two technologies here, though both sometimes use the word "animation" they're separate: they implemented transitions in 2007 (using transition-* properties [0]), transitions are used to smoothly go from one state to an other and they are implicit: you only say which CSS property will transition and over which duration and the browser will handle all the decisions within that scope.
CSS animations[1] were added in 2009[2]. They are related to transitions but they're explicit and keyframe-based. Much more complex, but much more flexible as well (for instance you can have back and forth movements with animations, but not with transitions).
Since the comments on Tim Sneath's original post are broken at best, I'll paste my original reply here:
First, IE9 doesn't fully support mature HTML5 and CSS3 standards. Congrats, the only tests you pass are the ones that your own department submitted to the W3C. Everyone else's show IE9's Release Candidate as having less support than other browsers released 1-2 years ago.
Second, nice job cherry-picking a single paragraph out of one of the few comments in the Hacker News thread supporting your position. You also conveniently omitted the scalding final line of that paragraph: "It's just a shame they're not providing it on XP." This is typical of your response in general: you've responded to absolutely 0 of the actual criticisms of your product, and instead decide to praise the few improvements you happened to make over IE8.
You're only providing your new browser to a small fraction of the OS market, it still doesn't support stable and mature spec features, the ones you do support are still wildly broken (canvas, ahem), and you remain silent through it all.
I had high hopes when you initially announced your plans for IE9 all those months ago. It's a damn shame they turned out to be nothing more than marketing smoke and mirrors.
The Chrome, Safari, and Firefox teams seem to be able to deliver a very good experience on XP. It's kind of lame that the Microsoft team can't deliver the same thing for an OS that they took part in building. If anyone knows XP inside out it should be the IE team. They even have access to the 'secret' APIs. And if the IE team doesn't know XP inside out they have excellent resources at Microsoft to speak to the people who do know, like Mark Russinovich, or the NT Kernel Team. IE9 not running on XP has everything to do with Microsoft internal politics and nothing to do with technical limitations of a 10 year old OS. The fact that people are still running a 10 year old OS is a testament to what the XP team has built.
I think the limitation has more to do with trying to build a richer feature-set to get users to migrate from XP to 7 (and beyond); but on the other other hand, it's not fair to complain when your ten year old OS isn't getting those newer features -- hell, they should be lucky Microsoft still supports it!
It's a 10 year old OS that still has 42% share of the market. It's still the most popular OS right now. Anyone with half a brain can see that their only reason behind not supporting IE9 on it is to try and force people to spend 100's of dollars upgrading their OS when they already have a perfectly fine and working one.
Microsoft's position seems to be to make their newest OS run the web best. Nothing wrong with that; and they've ensured a vibrant application ecosystem for XP that has led to many browser vendors supporting that OS well. XP users aren't exactly left high and dry.
Also, it's naive to think that everyone else's interests are merely to make a better browser: Google does it to get people spending more time on the internet under the assumption that they'll use Google to search and click on their ads.
Business arguments aside, I really wish they would support IE9 on XP. If indeed IE9 has better web standards support than its predecessors, I, as a web developer, want IE users to switch.
It's hard enough to convince users to upgrade their browser. If you ALSO have to convince them to upgrade their OS, there's basically 0 chance of that happening.
I'm not saying MS is or isn't making the right decision for their business. I'm just saying that IE9 is a lot less exciting for web developers if it's got this big roadblock to adoption.
To claim that people are being _forced_ to upgrade is a tad extreme. IE9 is using newer APIs to enable better performance and functionality in the default OS browser giving users _one more_ reason to upgrade. What is wrong with Microsoft trying to incentivise their users to upgrade to their newest OS?
It's a 10 year old OS with a 42% marketshare because Microsoft has been one of the better, if not the best company out there supporting their old products, much more so than Apple. Microsoft worked very hard to maintain backward compatibility for newer OSes and to avoid newer products breaking on their older OSes. Really.
If Microsoft had stopped supporting their olders OSes, stopped backporting new features and just shipped security updates, the figures would probably have been different.
Ask yourself: What incentive does Microsoft have to support users who paid them $15 for an OEM license a decade ago? I genuinely don't get this entitlement the users of legacy-Windows seem to have here. I've yet to see users of Slackware 8 cause massive uproar because Compiz haven't been backported to their 2001 OS. So what's different about XP?
If the mentality that "people are using the old product so Microsoft should fully support old product and backport and make everything work there" were to rule, basically Microsoft would go bankrupt since nobody would ever need to buy a new product from them. That's not how you become one of the worlds biggest software-companies and that's not how you get your OS supported in the future.
Microsoft may have themselves to blame for the remaining large Windows XP userbase having provided too good support in the past, but that in no way translates into obligations to keep on doing that in the future.
They've continued selling it, that's why they have to support it. It was all very convenient for them to offer it cheap to fend of Linux on netbooks because Vista sucked, so they can honour the implicit bargain they offered.
It's not that they "can't" but they "aren't". It's probably because Microsoft wants XP users to see all the new stuffs Microsoft is making for Windows 7. Microsoft is hoping that those users to change or try the newer OS. After all, IE9 is just an enabler to Microsoft's core businesses (http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-we-are-focusin...)
I wonder if it might also be that Microsoft has 1st-party knowledge of its own OS, and this biases them towards depending on specific new features of the OS in their applications, whereas Google et al have a 3rd-party mentality of just looking at the most obvious and stable APIs.
I doubt that's the case. When Microsoft needs something to be done, they would do it. If you discard all the technical mind and just think with a typical business mind, calculating the resources and cost to develop the new IE9 on XP, which is 10 years old, you wouldn't really invest your resource, time, and money to develop IE9 on XP. Plus, if IE9 is supported on XP, it will give "hope" and "hint" that Microsoft still cares about Windows XP.
Chrome, unlike IE, jumped into browser war really late. What this means is that they need to support as many platform as possible to gain every possible percent of the usage metrics. In the end, the percentage number of the usage metrics is the key indicator of success.
It's not an enabler, it's a threat to their core business. That's why they don't produce a modern browser, just like they "can" do spell-checking in the browser, but aren't because the web threatens their Office monopoly.
Why would you expect a modern browser from a company that is frightened of the web?
Good enough for what? Good enough to be exploited by a script kiddie in 10 seconds? Mozilla and Google are doing no one any favors by support XP.
It's like adding sweetener to poison. You may think you're doing good by making the poison taste good. But rather you should be encouraging people not to eat poison.
XP is ten years old. I don't know anyone on any other platform, including my friends using Linux, who is still using a 10 year old build of the product.
I think that says more about what the Linux and OS X teams were able to achieve 10 years ago than it does anything about XP.
Yes, if the primary objective of your OS is to avoid exploits by script kiddies than you should probably choose something like OpenBSD, or Linux SE with a very hardened profile. XP probably isn't a good choice of OS if your primary objective is protection from script kiddies. As long as you aren't pissing people off on 4chan, or dealing in sensitive data you should be fine with XP.
However, if your needs include surfing the web, email, using an Office productivity suite, and playing a triple A game title, and are willing to install something like Microsoft Security Essentials then you'll be reasonably protected from viruses, and have the ability to complete your day-to-day tasks and goof off at the end of the day.
Personally, I find that Win7 + VMWare + Ubuntu 10 suite my needs best unless I'm doing iOS development in which case I use OS X + VMWare + Win7 + Ubuntu. I've had issues running OS X inside VMWare so I just use another machine for iOS dev.
Could I do the same thing I use Win 7 for with XP? Definitely, I suspect it may be tight on RAM as I don't think VMWare supports PAE, but other than the 32-bit memory limitation it would work perfectly fine. I bet I could meet all my needs with XP 64-bit edition.
Mozilla, Google and Apple are actually doing about 42% of computer users a favor by support the OS they have chosen to run. It's not up to you to dictate what people should prioritize in their choice of computer software and hardware. They could be more secure upgrading to Win 7 or Linux but I bet they feel it's not worth the trade off.
or dealing in sensitive data you should be fine with XP.
That's a pretty broad statement. Most people using a computer are dealing with data that is sensitive to them.
In any case though if you're doing dev work it does matter less. Although there are some things I like a lot more post-XP:
1) Video driver in user mode. Nothing beats watching your video driver die, you get a two second pause, and then its back. In XP you were down for the count.
2) Reliability monitor.
3) Much improved RDP support. Including WPF support and streaming video/audio. This allows me to work anywhere against my main dev box and it feels almost exactly like I'm on the actual machine.
4) Libraries allow me to have a different logical view than the physical structure of files.
This just a subset of the types of things that when I go back to an XP machine I realize I miss.
It's about attack surface. Microsoft can't go on supporting security updates and patches for all its operating systems forever. People need to move on so a modern platform can be provided with a minimized attack surface that the security team can concentrate on. If I were tasked with maintaining patches for XP SP4.9 2017 I would probably just shoot myself.
I have a huge number of clients that are still actively using XP. The fact is, XP, for many people, is good enough. The only reason they're upgrading at all is purely due to attrition -- their old computer dies and they replace it with something running W7.
And this is ignoring my corporate clients, who are using software that is integral to their business, that hasn't been updated in years and does not run correctly on Windows 7.
The "always be upgrading" mentality in the computer industry is a serious problem for end-users.
But unlike the Windows upgrade cycle, this costs nothing.
Even though there are usually feature updates mixed in with the bug fixes and security issues, many people (especially non-techie people) lump the Chrome updates in with OS updates as a necessary part of maintenance like changing the oil in a car.
Upgrading Windows beyond XP currently adds very little of significance to most people though, particularly corporates with many many desktops to upgrade (and people to support when they do) and home users with limited cash.
From a designers point of view the "just upgrade already" argument can't wash. We can't force our users to upgrade there OS (we can only just get away with cajoling them into upgrading their browser or occasionally (but increasingly) choosing an alternative (though this is less of an option for corporates for the usual reasons).
The accusation is that MS is trying to make IE9 one of the reasons to upgrade (and therefore pay for that upgrade). This is the same accusation levelled at them with DX10 and later, and it is equally correct (and equally understandable from their commercial PoV). In the case of the browser though this is seen as more onerous because your internet access method is more ingrained in your life and much more potentially damaging when there are security issues.
A large client of hours (a major bank) is rolling out IE8 to their users (who are currently stuck on IE6) in a few months time. If IE9 had promised XP support they might have planned to roll that out instead, though a little delayed as they would need to wait for at least the RCs to start their main roll-out testing - so IE9 not being available on XP is definitely going to have an effect on the number of people still using the irritations that are IE6/7/8 in corporate environments.
And this is ignoring my corporate clients, who are using software that is integral to their business, that hasn't been updated in years and does not run correctly on Windows 7.
Not refuting the rest of your point, but Windows 7 comes with "XP mode". It's literally a virtual machine running Windows XP.
Saying something which works in Windows XP "doesn't work" in Windows 7 is obviously misguided or wrong.
> I still fail to grasp the argument of IE9 not being released for XP. I mean, the OS is ten years old, upgrade already.
Other browsers show that it is technically possible to support XP, without limiting your product on Vista/7. This would be even more true for Microsoft.
So the reason Microsoft does not support IE9 on XP, is apparently to encourage upgrading from XP.
In other words, Microsoft's IE roadmap is determined, in this case, more from Microsoft's overall agenda and interests, rather than what is good for IE and IE's users.
> Other browsers show that it is technically possible to support XP, without limiting your product on Vista/7
I think that other browsers show it is possible to run using only the APIs that were available in Windows XP without using any of the new snazziness that is Vista/7.
It's like the difference between saying, well, I can write my browser to use Carbon on OSX and it works fine even on OS9, but nobody inside of Apple would write a new product not using Cocoa. If I'm getting the metaphors correct -- apologies to Apple folks if I missed it. I'm an old MSFT developer at heart.
In any case, it's exactly the same as asking modern Safari to run on OS9. But OS9 is considered so bad nobody should use it, whereas WinXP is still considered reasonable, relative to the other operating systems currently in use.
Firefox uses plenty of new Vista/7 APIs. If you abstract the implementations out suitably, you can easily support both the old XP APIs and the new Vista/7 ones.
> I still fail to grasp the argument of IE9 not being released for XP. I mean, the OS is ten years old, upgrade already.
Trying telling that to our corporate clients.
Or a home user on a limited budget, who doesn't want to switch to Linux because their games won't run and doesn't want to switch browser because they think they'll have to relearn stuff.
First paragraph can be read as response to "not providing on XP". Microsoft tends to invent new (and ostensibly better, really just more unusable) API for 2D graphics acceleration with each version of Windows since 3.1. And IE9 seems to be their flagship application for current iteration of this 2D graphics API madness.
A browser can be fully modern and platform specific; I fail to see your argument. Could a browser not be specifically developed for Haiku, Mac OS 9, or any other current or legacy platform and still be a modern browser even if it has the full feature set of Chrome?
> Don't be mesmerized by the tawdry typography, though: with juicy propaganda it's always what isn't said that matters. There is no mention of IE9's hyperspeed JavaScript engine, Chakra. There's no mention of pinned tabs or per-process tabs or Tracking Protection Lists. It feels a bit like a scrawny, bespectacled geek throwing stones at a fat billionaire with three trophy wives -- the nerd is probably right, but the pimp doesn't really care.
the next paragraph, somehow, begins with
> There's no doubt that Firefox 4 implements a broader range of Web technologies -- and don't get us wrong, it is an excellent browser -- but more stuff doesn't necessarily equate to better stuff.
To be fair, HTML5 is a mix: a mix of stuff which already exists and was standardized (from a number of browsers) and of new stuff which was built from ground up for the occasion.
And yet the new stuff is ready only when at least two implementations ship it. This currently means at least two out of Gecko, WebKit and Opera. Does Microsoft really never want to be one of the two?
In order to get to the content, I had to click "Continue" on a window that said, "This site is insecure. Are you sure you want to continue?" Once I passed that, I got to see the "Agree to Legal Terms" page. I didn't want to read legal terms, I wanted to read about "A Modern Browser," so I don't know how many more obstructions there were after that.
Both IE9 and Firefox 4 (I think) lack Chrome's automatic updates. They simply cannot bring new features and bug fixes to users as quickly as Chrome can.
You can spend 1-2 years working on a major release, but if the competition is rolling out automatic updates every 6 weeks, you're at a major disadvantage.
The thing is that people think of browsers as a single market with all browsers competing directly with each other.
In reality, I think we're starting to get to a point where browsers are differentiating and targeting different groups of users. Chrome uses automatic updates to drive innovation and chase after the "power user" types who care about HTML5 and having the latest and greatest. On the other hand IE needs to maintain its core user base which is enterprise and business users where stability and support are far more important than <canvas> support. Automatic updates would be a horrible idea of IE because it would alienate these users.
Hopefully people are starting to realize that there is not one "best" browser, there are a number of different browsers, each with their own perks and downsides, and it's down to each individual user to pick the one that best suits their needs.
And is that a good thing or bad? For me, its scary. It means I won't know when and how things will break. What if some eople have turned off automatic updates and never receive the new update? It just creates thousands of configurations for a web developer to worry about. And what if its a legacy application that is no longer maintained? Who is going to fix that just because Google just decided to automatically update their browser?
I absolutely hate the auto-update feature of chrome.
I may be wrong, but deactivating automatic updates is not something a normal user would know how to do, since probably he doesn't even realize, that their Chrome browser is constantly being updated.
Those who do deactivate the auto updates are more tech savvy users, who will probably be careful to update it manually from time to time, as they realize the advantages of upgraded software in terms of performance and security.
I absolutely love the auto-update feature of chrome and wish more software had it. It has made developing webapps for Chrome much easier. I never have to care about old Chrome versions, like I do for IE and Firefox.
As for the not maintained applications, I think users should stop using them (and upgrading to a maintained alternative). Old applications should not be the reason for not upgrading the platform under which the app runs.
"What if some eople have turned off automatic updates and never receive the new update?"
You can't turn off automatic updates in Chrome.
"It just creates thousands of configurations for a web developer to worry about."
Absolutely the opposite. I don't know why this is so hard to see. When users aren't given the option to update, they all end up with the same version. So there is literally only one configuration to worry about.
It is good for my mother. She fell 37 Windows Updates behind because she canceled them. Chrome is stable and most UI changes are configurable, what's to argue with? Google's disciplined six week cycle[1] is what makes Chrome get better faster. It is good for you, the browser consumer/developer.
> The difference is that I notice when Windows updates, and I don't notice each time that Chrome updates.
Erm... the preferred configuration is unprompted and unattended installation of Windows updates, you only "notice" them in the sense that you see a Windows Update icon appearing and disappearing in the notification bar if you're there at your set update times.
I also notice the performance problem Win updates incur. Maybe Chrome does have a performance during its updates but I have yet to realize it. Perception is everything.
You've missed the point. It's not the automatic updates by themselves, it's the manner in which they're built (fast, simple, unobtrusive) combined with the 6 week release cycle. With that pace of development, and a deployment system that works, you have an extremely modern browser with little fragmentation among versions.
When was the last time Microsoft automatically updated IE to patch CSS bugs or add new implementations? Never, I believe. Chrome is patching bugs and adding new implementations pretty much every 6 weeks.
It's a shame that Microsoft haven't been using Windows Update to update their browser more regularly and so away with these large development cycles.
Seems to be a good answer to me. I want something that works and is fast. I could care less what technology it is using... as long as it does what I want it to do.
I don't understand how they can defend that position. Yeah, it's their job and they might be very proud of their work, but they can't be that dumb.
Haven't they learned the lesson? Everytime they try to come with something, the community backfires even harder. Let's just remember what happened with the IE9 team[1] and the Hotmail team[2] on reddit's AMA.
Honestly, I don't understand why so many people are frustrated about what defines the modern browsers. If you are not happy about a product, you don't have to use it. If you don't use it, the manufacturer will know that something is wrong.
Plus, the word, modern, is so vague. As Microsoft did, it can mean totally different things to different people. HTML5 isn't standard, yet. There is very little number of websites that fully utilize the capabilities of HTML5.
Now, go grab a cup of coffee and do something more productive :)
I don't think most are concerned with IE9 because they'll be using it themselves. It's more than they'll have to develop to support it, and if Microsoft put a reasonable effort into this it would mean much less work for web developers.
"Modern browsers enable rich, immersive experiences that could hitherto only be delivered through a plug-in or native application. They can blend video, vector and raster graphics, audio and text seamlessly without sacrificing performance."
The author of the linked article manages to be wrong twice by referring to HN as "YCombinator" - confusing the company with the forum, and misspelling the name of the company (which I believe should have a space in it).
Only MS can make so many errors within such a limited window of opportunity ;-)
I can't speak for Microsoft, but I tend to refer to Hacker News as Y Combinator News simply to avoid misunderstandings. It's easier to get the name wrong than to explain "No, not that kind of hacker. There's a non-pejorative definition as well...."
Am I seeing right? An IE developer is claiming that modern browsers implement features/standards when they are ready?! What are we talking about, is this about the web that Microsoft had been trying to block for years? How dare!
This post is incredibly vague, and it is missing the point. First of all, it doesn't explain the huge lack of standards in IE9 that Paul Roget mentions. And second, it forgets that IE has a really awful record on making browsers (IE has been the biggest drag on the web being more usable and modern for the last 10 years).
At least Paul's post gives a tangible and definition of what 'modern' means in form of checklist points that are easy to prove true or false just by looking at the browser implementation. How do you measure 'modern', Microsoft? You will have to do better than saying it is 'faster' and that provides 'rich, immersive experiences'.
Mozilla hasn't stopped pushing the web to its boundaries and making a big effort to put standards first during all these years. And there is no doubt that the new Firefox will be a much better browser than the new IE (check out the beta).
90 comments
[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 167 ms ] threadI think a more true, yet less controversial statement from Mozilla would be, FF 4 will leave IE9 (and FF3.6x) in the dust with respect to standards conformance.
I'd even agree with that. But saying that IE9 is not modern seems dishonest.
But the argument that a version of IE which hasn't even come out yet doesn't have features that other browsers have had for years are valid points.
I guess "IE9 sucks" was deemed not to be tactful enough.
http://www.inspiredgeek.com/2011/02/07/mozilla-plans-to-rele...
Perfect example: CSS transitions. It's been around a while... like 3 years.
Having no support and nothing to show for, in respect to something with an Editor's draft out from the W3C, (css transitions, for example), just proves you're really good at dragging your feet.
And even then it was just a proprietary vendor extension. It's not like it was part of the draft standard at that tmie.
If MS adds a new feature to IE, does that start the clock on when everyone else needs to implement it?
So... two implementations older than 2 years.
> We have another cool new CSS feature to talk about: animation specified in CSS. There is a lot of ground to cover here, so we’ll start with the basics first.
There are two technologies here, though both sometimes use the word "animation" they're separate: they implemented transitions in 2007 (using transition-* properties [0]), transitions are used to smoothly go from one state to an other and they are implicit: you only say which CSS property will transition and over which duration and the browser will handle all the decisions within that scope.
CSS animations[1] were added in 2009[2]. They are related to transitions but they're explicit and keyframe-based. Much more complex, but much more flexible as well (for instance you can have back and forth movements with animations, but not with transitions).
[0] http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-transitions/
[1] http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-animations/
[2] http://www.webkit.org/blog/324/css-animation-2/
First, IE9 doesn't fully support mature HTML5 and CSS3 standards. Congrats, the only tests you pass are the ones that your own department submitted to the W3C. Everyone else's show IE9's Release Candidate as having less support than other browsers released 1-2 years ago.
Second, nice job cherry-picking a single paragraph out of one of the few comments in the Hacker News thread supporting your position. You also conveniently omitted the scalding final line of that paragraph: "It's just a shame they're not providing it on XP." This is typical of your response in general: you've responded to absolutely 0 of the actual criticisms of your product, and instead decide to praise the few improvements you happened to make over IE8.
You're only providing your new browser to a small fraction of the OS market, it still doesn't support stable and mature spec features, the ones you do support are still wildly broken (canvas, ahem), and you remain silent through it all.
I had high hopes when you initially announced your plans for IE9 all those months ago. It's a damn shame they turned out to be nothing more than marketing smoke and mirrors.
I still fail to grasp the argument of IE9 not being released for XP. I mean, the OS is ten years old, upgrade already.
You're pulling at straws here. Microsoft's position is obvious, and it's not to make a better browser for the sake of a better browser.
Also, it's naive to think that everyone else's interests are merely to make a better browser: Google does it to get people spending more time on the internet under the assumption that they'll use Google to search and click on their ads.
It's hard enough to convince users to upgrade their browser. If you ALSO have to convince them to upgrade their OS, there's basically 0 chance of that happening.
I'm not saying MS is or isn't making the right decision for their business. I'm just saying that IE9 is a lot less exciting for web developers if it's got this big roadblock to adoption.
If Microsoft had stopped supporting their olders OSes, stopped backporting new features and just shipped security updates, the figures would probably have been different.
Ask yourself: What incentive does Microsoft have to support users who paid them $15 for an OEM license a decade ago? I genuinely don't get this entitlement the users of legacy-Windows seem to have here. I've yet to see users of Slackware 8 cause massive uproar because Compiz haven't been backported to their 2001 OS. So what's different about XP?
If the mentality that "people are using the old product so Microsoft should fully support old product and backport and make everything work there" were to rule, basically Microsoft would go bankrupt since nobody would ever need to buy a new product from them. That's not how you become one of the worlds biggest software-companies and that's not how you get your OS supported in the future.
Microsoft may have themselves to blame for the remaining large Windows XP userbase having provided too good support in the past, but that in no way translates into obligations to keep on doing that in the future.
Chrome, unlike IE, jumped into browser war really late. What this means is that they need to support as many platform as possible to gain every possible percent of the usage metrics. In the end, the percentage number of the usage metrics is the key indicator of success.
Why would you expect a modern browser from a company that is frightened of the web?
It's like adding sweetener to poison. You may think you're doing good by making the poison taste good. But rather you should be encouraging people not to eat poison.
XP is ten years old. I don't know anyone on any other platform, including my friends using Linux, who is still using a 10 year old build of the product.
Yes, if the primary objective of your OS is to avoid exploits by script kiddies than you should probably choose something like OpenBSD, or Linux SE with a very hardened profile. XP probably isn't a good choice of OS if your primary objective is protection from script kiddies. As long as you aren't pissing people off on 4chan, or dealing in sensitive data you should be fine with XP.
However, if your needs include surfing the web, email, using an Office productivity suite, and playing a triple A game title, and are willing to install something like Microsoft Security Essentials then you'll be reasonably protected from viruses, and have the ability to complete your day-to-day tasks and goof off at the end of the day.
Personally, I find that Win7 + VMWare + Ubuntu 10 suite my needs best unless I'm doing iOS development in which case I use OS X + VMWare + Win7 + Ubuntu. I've had issues running OS X inside VMWare so I just use another machine for iOS dev.
Could I do the same thing I use Win 7 for with XP? Definitely, I suspect it may be tight on RAM as I don't think VMWare supports PAE, but other than the 32-bit memory limitation it would work perfectly fine. I bet I could meet all my needs with XP 64-bit edition.
Mozilla, Google and Apple are actually doing about 42% of computer users a favor by support the OS they have chosen to run. It's not up to you to dictate what people should prioritize in their choice of computer software and hardware. They could be more secure upgrading to Win 7 or Linux but I bet they feel it's not worth the trade off.
That's a pretty broad statement. Most people using a computer are dealing with data that is sensitive to them.
In any case though if you're doing dev work it does matter less. Although there are some things I like a lot more post-XP:
1) Video driver in user mode. Nothing beats watching your video driver die, you get a two second pause, and then its back. In XP you were down for the count.
2) Reliability monitor.
3) Much improved RDP support. Including WPF support and streaming video/audio. This allows me to work anywhere against my main dev box and it feels almost exactly like I'm on the actual machine.
4) Libraries allow me to have a different logical view than the physical structure of files.
This just a subset of the types of things that when I go back to an XP machine I realize I miss.
And this is ignoring my corporate clients, who are using software that is integral to their business, that hasn't been updated in years and does not run correctly on Windows 7.
The "always be upgrading" mentality in the computer industry is a serious problem for end-users.
Even though there are usually feature updates mixed in with the bug fixes and security issues, many people (especially non-techie people) lump the Chrome updates in with OS updates as a necessary part of maintenance like changing the oil in a car.
Upgrading Windows beyond XP currently adds very little of significance to most people though, particularly corporates with many many desktops to upgrade (and people to support when they do) and home users with limited cash.
From a designers point of view the "just upgrade already" argument can't wash. We can't force our users to upgrade there OS (we can only just get away with cajoling them into upgrading their browser or occasionally (but increasingly) choosing an alternative (though this is less of an option for corporates for the usual reasons).
The accusation is that MS is trying to make IE9 one of the reasons to upgrade (and therefore pay for that upgrade). This is the same accusation levelled at them with DX10 and later, and it is equally correct (and equally understandable from their commercial PoV). In the case of the browser though this is seen as more onerous because your internet access method is more ingrained in your life and much more potentially damaging when there are security issues.
A large client of hours (a major bank) is rolling out IE8 to their users (who are currently stuck on IE6) in a few months time. If IE9 had promised XP support they might have planned to roll that out instead, though a little delayed as they would need to wait for at least the RCs to start their main roll-out testing - so IE9 not being available on XP is definitely going to have an effect on the number of people still using the irritations that are IE6/7/8 in corporate environments.
Not refuting the rest of your point, but Windows 7 comes with "XP mode". It's literally a virtual machine running Windows XP.
Saying something which works in Windows XP "doesn't work" in Windows 7 is obviously misguided or wrong.
That is not a native solution, it's just a workaround.
Other browsers show that it is technically possible to support XP, without limiting your product on Vista/7. This would be even more true for Microsoft.
So the reason Microsoft does not support IE9 on XP, is apparently to encourage upgrading from XP.
In other words, Microsoft's IE roadmap is determined, in this case, more from Microsoft's overall agenda and interests, rather than what is good for IE and IE's users.
I think that other browsers show it is possible to run using only the APIs that were available in Windows XP without using any of the new snazziness that is Vista/7.
It's like the difference between saying, well, I can write my browser to use Carbon on OSX and it works fine even on OS9, but nobody inside of Apple would write a new product not using Cocoa. If I'm getting the metaphors correct -- apologies to Apple folks if I missed it. I'm an old MSFT developer at heart.
In any case, it's exactly the same as asking modern Safari to run on OS9. But OS9 is considered so bad nobody should use it, whereas WinXP is still considered reasonable, relative to the other operating systems currently in use.
Trying telling that to our corporate clients.
Or a home user on a limited budget, who doesn't want to switch to Linux because their games won't run and doesn't want to switch browser because they think they'll have to relearn stuff.
To use their own example:
http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Graphics/VideoCity/Default...
vs
http://videos-cdn.mozilla.net/serv/mozhacks/flight-of-the-na...
Which one is more 'modern'?
> Don't be mesmerized by the tawdry typography, though: with juicy propaganda it's always what isn't said that matters. There is no mention of IE9's hyperspeed JavaScript engine, Chakra. There's no mention of pinned tabs or per-process tabs or Tracking Protection Lists. It feels a bit like a scrawny, bespectacled geek throwing stones at a fat billionaire with three trophy wives -- the nerd is probably right, but the pimp doesn't really care.
the next paragraph, somehow, begins with
> There's no doubt that Firefox 4 implements a broader range of Web technologies -- and don't get us wrong, it is an excellent browser -- but more stuff doesn't necessarily equate to better stuff.
This is what passes for logic nowadays?
Who cares what you define "modern browser" to be? Rouget's point that IE9 still doesn't support the feature set that FF3.6 did is a valid concern.
Will MS push for larger feature set support? Will I have webworkers on IE9? What about javascript strict mode? When do I get SMIL Animations?
These are the questions I care about, not "what does modern browser mean?"
Just thought it was kind of ironic.
Both IE9 and Firefox 4 (I think) lack Chrome's automatic updates. They simply cannot bring new features and bug fixes to users as quickly as Chrome can.
You can spend 1-2 years working on a major release, but if the competition is rolling out automatic updates every 6 weeks, you're at a major disadvantage.
In reality, I think we're starting to get to a point where browsers are differentiating and targeting different groups of users. Chrome uses automatic updates to drive innovation and chase after the "power user" types who care about HTML5 and having the latest and greatest. On the other hand IE needs to maintain its core user base which is enterprise and business users where stability and support are far more important than <canvas> support. Automatic updates would be a horrible idea of IE because it would alienate these users.
Hopefully people are starting to realize that there is not one "best" browser, there are a number of different browsers, each with their own perks and downsides, and it's down to each individual user to pick the one that best suits their needs.
I'm not sure I understand what disadvantage they're at?
I absolutely hate the auto-update feature of chrome.
As for the not maintained applications, I think users should stop using them (and upgrading to a maintained alternative). Old applications should not be the reason for not upgrading the platform under which the app runs.
You can't turn off automatic updates in Chrome.
"It just creates thousands of configurations for a web developer to worry about."
Absolutely the opposite. I don't know why this is so hard to see. When users aren't given the option to update, they all end up with the same version. So there is literally only one configuration to worry about.
1. http://google-chrome-browser.com/how-google-speeds-chrome-re...
Erm... the preferred configuration is unprompted and unattended installation of Windows updates, you only "notice" them in the sense that you see a Windows Update icon appearing and disappearing in the notification bar if you're there at your set update times.
It's a shame that Microsoft haven't been using Windows Update to update their browser more regularly and so away with these large development cycles.
Haven't they learned the lesson? Everytime they try to come with something, the community backfires even harder. Let's just remember what happened with the IE9 team[1] and the Hotmail team[2] on reddit's AMA.
1: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/related/dkk3l/iama_we_are_membe... 2: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/ej32l/we_are_the_hotma...
They're not dumb - they're full of shit, just like always.
Plus, the word, modern, is so vague. As Microsoft did, it can mean totally different things to different people. HTML5 isn't standard, yet. There is very little number of websites that fully utilize the capabilities of HTML5.
Now, go grab a cup of coffee and do something more productive :)
Ok, when can we expect WebGL support then?
Only MS can make so many errors within such a limited window of opportunity ;-)
At least Paul's post gives a tangible and definition of what 'modern' means in form of checklist points that are easy to prove true or false just by looking at the browser implementation. How do you measure 'modern', Microsoft? You will have to do better than saying it is 'faster' and that provides 'rich, immersive experiences'.
Mozilla hasn't stopped pushing the web to its boundaries and making a big effort to put standards first during all these years. And there is no doubt that the new Firefox will be a much better browser than the new IE (check out the beta).
Also, where is the strict mode in IE9?