Blogging Ottinger (tim)

In Enderle’s report on IE 7 he applauds the older browser:

Strangely enough, even though other browsers like Firefox, Opera, and Netscape have advanced in features substantially, IE6 has held its own and has at times taken market share back from the new browsers. This is largely because of compatibility. Companies, particularly for internal sites, often default to IE and the other browsers just didn’t work as well, forcing folks to grudgingly use IE some of the time.

Well, that’s right as far as it goes, except that the quality that let IE work with those sites is not compatibility, it is incompatibility. Microsoft wins no points for building systems that follow standards. Using the usual embrace and extend strategy, Microsoft built a browser that was intentionally incompatible with the HTML standards, and followed by building tools for webmasters, tools which produce broken web sites that only work when viewed from IE. This way, Microsoft leveraged the network effect to enforce and extende their would-be monopoly on web site development.

Now, most of us already know all about this, and it probably didn’t have to be stated in the review. Enderle seems to be crossing the minefield of IE criticism, avoiding the point in order to produce a positive review. He managed to do this by comparing the IE7 browser mostly with IE6, so that IE7 can be reported as a step forward for Microsoft. I tip my hat to this clever bit of faint praise:

… compared to IE6, version 7 is light years ahead.

He also chooses not to mention that the features are mostly those that have been in Firefox for quite a while (esp if you consider not supporting ActiveX a feature, as I do. In fact, Firefox mostly escapes notice, Though this statement is clearly included:

Microsoft had to close a huge gap and many will still say accurately that there are advantages in some of the other browsers in one or more areas

Mr E also manages to avoid mentioning that MS has argued against tabbed browsing, doubting it was something customers wanted. It’s not their biggest miss to date. This is from an article two years ago (emphasis added):

“If there are features in our products that are sub-par or need to be added then I have great confidence that we are an organisation that responds pretty quickly and effectively to that,” said Vamos.
Microsoft’s English reiterated that features such as tabbed browsing were not important to IE users.
“I don’t believe it is a true statement that IE doesn’t have the features that our customers want. We take user feedback very seriously. If you have that feedback then you should feed it back to us because we will feed it to the product team,” said English.

I guess two years is still pretty quick and effective … for an IE upgrade.
This is the browser that tries to play catch-up with the browsers we’re already using, and we’ll see how successful it is.

Frankly, I would like to see it continue to lose market share though it would be nice to have IE as an option if Microsoft continues to drop all the current browser incompatibilities (something they are working on, since IE5) so that people don’t have to take more dire measures. Thankfully, the IE world is reportedly making big steps in the right direction. I hope so.

That would be a real upgrade.