Al, I agree with you wholeheartedly about the web, and specifically even the scripting language of the web, evolving. (Continuing to evolve? Restarting to evolve?). My point IS, in fact, around partisanship and ES4.
Chris Wilson
· 2 years ago
And I saw the title of your last post, "Lunch with the Dean" and clicked on it expecting something else. :)
Al Billings
· 2 years ago
Yeah, I realized after I posted that someone might read it as "Lunch with Dean" (as in Dean Hachamovitch, the head of IE).
I get points for using "gnomic" and "brevity" in posts. It's like blog bingo.
As to your agreement about moving languages forward and the web, I understand your point of view to some degree but I also wonder if you and the IE team, as a whole, are in agreement. Have there been proposals in what IE would like to do in moving these things forward from the IE6 implementation, which is where IE is largely at right now?
Chris Wilson
· 2 years ago
Come on, Al, it's been a year and a half since you left. You don't really know where IE is right now, only where IE7 is right now. :)
Al Billings
· 2 years ago
That's right. You know why that is? Because the IE team refuses to communicate with anyone on what they have been doing for the last year or what they are doing in the future. Makes it a nice blank canvas to look at past behavior or current comments from people in bodies and project.
I know from people in the company and ex-IE people that not a lot went on for a while after IE7 shipped that was working towards a shipping product but you guys need to actually start talking to people if you don't want people to fall back on the "Microsoft is trying to control the web (to our detriment)" mentality... Seriously.
Al Billings
· 2 years ago
Oh, by the way, we're shipping a Firefox 3 Beta soon. Can you comment on when an IE 8 (or IE 7.5) Beta will be released?
Rowan
· 2 years ago
> You don’t really know where IE is right now, only where IE7 is right now. :)
Keep digging your hole. :)
Speaking of Firefox 3, I've been using the alpha exclusively for the past couple of months without a [critical] problem. It's fun to stumble upon new features each day, today's build changed the favicon's appearance so that it looks more like part of the UI. Recently full-page zoom was added, I only found it by accident a few days ago.
One of my favourite features though, is the ability to 'search' instantly in the address bar.
I'm impressed with Firefox's stability and reliability.
RJ
· 2 years ago
"Oh, by the way, we’re shipping a Firefox 3 Beta soon. Can you comment on when an IE 8 (or IE 7.5) Beta will be released?"
$5 says we get IE8 announcements and/or info within 2 days of the FF3 beta.
Is the IE codebase really as messy as I've heard (unsubstantiated rumour from a friend of a friend at the moment)? And if so why don't Microsoft just use Gecko and add their own Chrome (NiH withstanding)?
Al Billings
· 2 years ago
Since I've recently been (vaguely) threatened with comments that I may be violating my Microsoft NDA with my insider posts about IE, I must refuse to comment about what I know about the codebase. I'm not a code jockey though so it would be all impressions from having worked with developers and logged bugs over many years in IE.
Al Billings
· 2 years ago
As to why Microsoft won't use Gecko, from their point of view, why would they use someone else's software that isn't under their control?
RJ
· 2 years ago
Yes, I saw the NDA comment - sounds like a diversion to get you to keep quiet, :(
Fair comment about the codebase, and I don't think anyone would be surprised by internal bug metrics given the public ones :)
Thank you for your attempts to get the IE team to discuss IE8 more widely - something even Dave Massy seems to have trouble doing .. unfortunately my confidence in IE8 is already shattered so it will always be 'that other browser that we'll fix last'.
Chris Wilson
· 2 years ago
Keep Al quiet? Umm, no.
Al Billings
· 2 years ago
I'm not sure if that's possible.
I should be clear to everyone that I consider Chris a friend of mine. We've worked together at two different companies and were both on IE during IE4 together. While I may give the IE team crap about various things or have various desires for openness or communication, it isn't a personal issue with anyone there, especially Chris.
RJ
· 2 years ago
Yup - understood, but I am harsh sometimes with my friends too, especially when I believe they may be doing the wrong thing .I think it is fairly widely understood that Chris isn't responsible for every decision made by the IE team. It is just unfortunate that he is currently the public face. Sorry if I gave the impression that I either thought it was personal or that it should be - it's business it should *never* be personal.
And given the fairly widespread reaction to the post, I guess we can all understand why they don't post more information on IE8 as no matter what they post you can be fairly confident they'll get slammed by someone. I'd still like to know though so I can make decisions, or start to, for the future - at the moment I have to consider decisions based on IE7 even thought it won't be the targetted platform :(
Akshay125
· 1 year ago
I am really loving the new ECMAScript, however I agree that IE needs to take a more practical approach and focus on supporting already well-established standards
All Comments
Al, I agree with you wholeheartedly about the web, and specifically even the scripting language of the web, evolving. (Continuing to evolve? Restarting to evolve?). My point IS, in fact, around partisanship and ES4.
I get points for using "gnomic" and "brevity" in posts. It's like blog bingo.
As to your agreement about moving languages forward and the web, I understand your point of view to some degree but I also wonder if you and the IE team, as a whole, are in agreement. Have there been proposals in what IE would like to do in moving these things forward from the IE6 implementation, which is where IE is largely at right now?
I know from people in the company and ex-IE people that not a lot went on for a while after IE7 shipped that was working towards a shipping product but you guys need to actually start talking to people if you don't want people to fall back on the "Microsoft is trying to control the web (to our detriment)" mentality... Seriously.
Keep digging your hole. :)
Speaking of Firefox 3, I've been using the alpha exclusively for the past couple of months without a [critical] problem. It's fun to stumble upon new features each day, today's build changed the favicon's appearance so that it looks more like part of the UI. Recently full-page zoom was added, I only found it by accident a few days ago.
One of my favourite features though, is the ability to 'search' instantly in the address bar.
I'm impressed with Firefox's stability and reliability.
$5 says we get IE8 announcements and/or info within 2 days of the FF3 beta.
Is the IE codebase really as messy as I've heard (unsubstantiated rumour from a friend of a friend at the moment)? And if so why don't Microsoft just use Gecko and add their own Chrome (NiH withstanding)?
Fair comment about the codebase, and I don't think anyone would be surprised by internal bug metrics given the public ones :)
Thank you for your attempts to get the IE team to discuss IE8 more widely - something even Dave Massy seems to have trouble doing .. unfortunately my confidence in IE8 is already shattered so it will always be 'that other browser that we'll fix last'.
I should be clear to everyone that I consider Chris a friend of mine. We've worked together at two different companies and were both on IE during IE4 together. While I may give the IE team crap about various things or have various desires for openness or communication, it isn't a personal issue with anyone there, especially Chris.
And given the fairly widespread reaction to the post, I guess we can all understand why they don't post more information on IE8 as no matter what they post you can be fairly confident they'll get slammed by someone. I'd still like to know though so I can make decisions, or start to, for the future - at the moment I have to consider decisions based on IE7 even thought it won't be the targetted platform :(