I agree, and it's not just Joel; there's tons of Microsofties that I know (me included) that are pretty active on news.yc, even if only lurking without real accounts/profiles, but on read-only mode.
As an aside, I submitted this post a little bit earlier and did not get a single upvote on mine. I think that is kind of an interesting case study on the snowball effect, where in two parallel worlds the exact same article / title could get 1 vote or 50+ votes depending on subtle variables, such as the time of submission or if one other person notices it at the right time.
Ugh! I hit a similar problem in Chrome beta, where I could only recurse 20 levels deep when calling functions across frames ( eg top.window.foo() ) before it blew up.
Apparently, enough people are interested in this particular bug to vote it up. It was news to me at least. Hopefully next time I'll find my own article in Google and remember, since it wasn't a very Google friendly problem before.
Okay. I apologize for my outburst. I'm just a pretty disgruntled IE user (but only for testing sites) and wish Microsoft would just switch the whole thing over to webkit and be done with it.
Hopefully, IE9 won't disappoint - trust me, we're working really hard on it :) If you wish to share with me what problems exactly you're facing with IE, and I'm happy to hear you out. My profile page has my contact info.
Because of the work I do in web development, I am an Ubuntu Linux user. I only use IE for testing sites so that I see what they look like in that browser. IE8 was a big step forward, but compatibility mode really put a kink in things such that on everything I'm having to add this tag:
Also, the delay on supporting CSS3 stuff like border-radius and text and box shadow has been disappointing. As of the release of Opera 10.50 today, even Opera has finally caught up to support the most popular CSS3 stuff. Now only IE8 drags its feet.
I wish Microsoft would release point releases sooner, rather than hold up and release major releases. This makes it easier to accommodate the subtle changes in the browser as things go.
One of the great things about the open source browsers is that the bug teams on those browsers listen for the most part, and get bug and security fixes out there sooner, while Microsoft simply drags their feet.
I don't like the way the buttons are arranged in the IE browser. With Firefox I can move things around to how I like things and can even change the look of those buttons.
I really, really like Firebug and use it in my work. IE needs something like that. Especially the ability to move my mouse around, click something, and immediately know what it's called, see the CSS, and can even try changes on the CSS. This was how I was able to retheme ProjectPier (ProjectPier.org) with a custom theme, while it is not easy to do in IE.
Often in web development, I need to clear web history, caching, cookies, etc. Ever try and do that on IE8? You wait forever over something that should be performed instantly like other browsers.
The Advanced tab is goofy. It has a window I cannot stretch and so I have to use the horizontal scroller. It has so many items in there, and everyone usually needs to get into that if they're a developer, that you can't help but wonder why it wasn't implemented in a series of tabs.
Many of the other IE8 problems are discussed here:
Last, I don't think Microsoft is pushing hard enough to get people off of IE6. I keep bumping into clients who still run it and I bruise my head on the table.
Have you tried the developer tools in IE8? It has functionality similar to "Inspect Element" in Firebug. I'm not sure if you can change the CSS on the fly via a javascript command line, but it seems like the developer tools in IE8 are at least the best they have been (as well they should be).
That said, my personal experience with internet explorer has been everything but elegant and their consistent lag in standard compliance is extremely annoying. Most over anything is their extremely misleading ad campaigns about IE8 (although that not development's fault).
Today at work I got an e-mail from IT urging the office to use anything but IE due to a new security bug that could compromise the entire system. Go figure.
Well, I can say that IE8 was a huge step forward, but if they listen to what I have said in my last post (that you responded to here), then that pretty much would solve a lot of problems that most developers have with it. I'm willing to give them another chance. However, here's the thing for me:
- Firefox comes with great addons, so even though it's slower than Chrome, it's still got me. Plus, Firefox renders form elements just slightly better for me in my opinion than Chrome does.
- I like Chrome a lot, however, for W3C and CSS3 compliance, for stability, and for raw speed. I would switch to it as my primary browser because of those reasons if it weren't for the fact that I just stated here about form element rendering and that it needs a few more critical addons. For instance, I use FireFTP like crazy, as well as adblock, Flashblock, and FireBug. I hear that much of this is coming, so Chrome may be my primary browser later on.
So, even if IE9 or IE10 turns out to be a pure delight as far as W3C and CSS3 compliance, it still has speed issues to overcome versus Chrome, infrequent release issues, cross-platform issues (Mac, Linux, Windows), etc.
But here's another thing, Microsoft hasn't been very nice to the F/OSS community. They have thrown a lot of mud up about patent infringement and junk, and I don't like software patents at all. They have been exposed in the Halloween docs and on Groklaw. So, the odds of me, an Ubuntu Linux user using a future IE release made for Linux -- well, that would be slim to none.
Thanks for mentioning your issues with Microsoft regarding patent infringement, the Halloween documents, etc. I occasionally have conversations with co-workers about why the F/OSS community has so much animosity towards Microsoft and it really helps when I can give examples other than personal anecdote.
To be honest, the issue here for me is not that you are a GNU/Linux user. The issue is that you are likely represented by this pie chart: http://makariolewis.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/web-desig... - we need to make the yellow, purple, and cyan slices much smaller. Right?
If you're a startup and you're having technical issues with Microsoft software, please reach out to me. I'm here to help :D