Ask HN: Could we sue Microsoft for IE and wasting our time?

3 points by trebor 14y ago ↗ HN

I'm taking the idea of my co-worker and running with it a bit further.

Could we put together a class-action lawsuit against Microsoft for their line of browsers? Lets face it, anyone to ever develop or design something for a browser has had to deal with IE. And if you've had to deal with IE, then you've had some pretty bad experiences.

How much time do IE-only fallbacks take?

How much time do IE-related style adjustments take?

What about the time lost because IE doesn't fully support standards, even in an experimental way?

What about not retiring the old versions of it properly?

I don't care about money... I want compliance and a lack of hassle! Even IE9 is a big hassle. Why, today alone is ticking into the second hour of trying to "make IE work".

1 comment

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bediger 14y ago ↗

Why stop at IE? How about the Win16 -> Win32S -> Win32 thing? Holy God, that was a waste of time and effort.

Although the 8086 was Intel's idea, how about suing MSFT for using whatever dopy CPU mode that used 20-bit "segment" registers? That has to have wasted pretty much all of the 80s, and part of the 90s, in terms of people-years of effort.