Shoutbox

Yep, apparently IE's moving.

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So, Dean, the guy who runs the Internet Explorer team, invited me out to lunch today. It's not every day that you get invited out to lunch by the guy who runs the team that makes software that hundreds of millions of people use.

What did I learn?

First. There +IS+ an Internet Explorer team.

Second. They are working feverishly on fixing security, including the latest issue where a URL can spoof another site. Many team members were called off of their Christmas vacations to work on this issue. It's proving to be difficult, more on that in a second.

Third. The team's top priority is fixing security. Windows XP Service Pack 2 will deliver a ton of protection against spyware and other things.

Fourth. The team is looking to work with community members to improve Internet Explorer. That means blogs. That means taking harsh feedback. That means having a dialog about the future that's frank and as open as possible.

Fifth. I asked about features, but was asked to not blog about that part of the meeting. They are interested in hearing about what's important to do, though, and they read this, and other, blogs and are seeing all the feedback you give them.

Now, about the darn security fixes. These are tough. Tougher than it might seem on the outside. Why? Because Internet Explorer's engine is used in several different OS's. Dozens of different languages. Thousands of different applications. Changing one line of code in the inards of Windows means potentially breaking a large number of applications. That's unacceptable to the team. So, when they change things, they need to do it in a way that doesn't break things for customers.

I'm going to work with Dean to give everyone a more intimate look inside the IE team, but that'll take more time than just meeting for lunch and writing up a blog entry.

So, the door is open. What do you want from the Internet Explorer team? Keep in mind, when having a conversation with you, I'll be asking you to think like a Microsoft executive. Why? Because that'll get you to see some of the realities of deciding on feature sets for future versions. Dean's team really has a tough job, and I didn't appreciate it until he ran me through some of the implications of changing one minor little feature.

Thanks Dean for an interesting lunch. I hope to have many conversations with you and your team, both here on the blog, and in person in the future.

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Much more info about this and all the comments (and the place where to leave them is here:
http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2004/01/14.html
(and in the recent blog posts here)
http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/

On a side note, here's why sometimes IE will only save images as BMP, directly from one of IE's developers:

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From http://weblogs.asp.net/jeffdav/archive/2003/12/08/53607.aspx
Sometimes you go to save an image from a web page and the only option available to you is BMP, even though the image is obviously not a BMP. People often wonder why, so I will tell you.

For whatever reason (perf, architectural simplicity, I dunno) the designers of mshtml decided to keep images around in memory as BMPs. When you go to save an image in IE, the first thing we do is check to see if the image is in the cache. If the image is not in the cache, the only representation we have of the image (without downloading it again) is mshtml's internal representation, which is a BMP. Mostly people see this when their cache is full. The easiest way to fix this is to clear your cache. Another symptom of this is nothing happens when you View->Source on a web page.

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that 2nd quote answered 2 of my "personal" questions about IE

Followup:

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Lots of really great comments about things you all want to see put into Internet Explorer. Some other things from yesterday. First, Dean's team is also still responsible for Outlook Express too. Second, Dean showed me his Tablet PC. On it he had every single competitive browser like Opera, Mozilla, as well as a bunch of Internet Explorer derivatives. I didn't even know about many of these. He pointed out IRider, in particular as a favorite of his. Oh, and he uses the Google toolbars (both of them).

One of the team members wrote me today with a followup question. One of the tough things that Microsoft's teams must face is whether to develop functionality themselves or rely on third-parties to do it. For instance, do we put in pop-up ad blocking, or do we just say "get the Google toolbar, cause it does it?" Keep in mind, that if we roll in new functionality, we'll hurt competitors and partners who innovated in those areas.

Along these lines, it's useful to think about Internet Explorer as two separate things. One is the engine underneath. This engine gets used all over the place inside Windows (and by other apps). It's what renders HTML inside Outlook Express, for instance. The second is the browser application. It's easier to change the application. Harder to change the engine. Why? Because so many things rely on it. Dean told me yesterday that when they release a patch, it needs to be tested in 400 different iterations. The support matrix is horrendous and something we, as users, never think about.

Another thing that the commenters generally aren't thinking of is "how to get adoption." I keep pointing out that if we fixed the CSS and PNG issues, you still wouldn't be able to use those for years. Why? Cause consumers (and companies) really don't care about those issues and won't download a new version just cause you fixed one or two issues.

As a good example, Dean gave me a few companies with tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of desktops, that still are using IE 5.5, or older. The fear of upgrading is something that the team is working hard on too. But, that means slowing down a bit, and releasing a browser that really is compelling for people to use.

One last thing, I find it very interesting that none of the commenters talked about what they'd like to see the IE team do with RSS or Atom syndication formats. Every presidential campaign website/weblog has RSS now. Yet I don't think people are looking at RSS as something that the Web browser should deal with. Why is that?

Anyway, great ideas. Keep em coming.

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http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2004/01/14.html#a6186

AND

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The IE conversation
Got lots of interesting conversations going on here. I was linked to by MetaFilter and the Web Standards Org.

One comment that I saw was "I doubt the Internet Explorer team is reading this." Nothing could be further from the truth.

One thing I've been interested in is to see how few comments I've actually gotten. Yeah, 100 on one thread and 60 on another is pretty good for me. But, for a product with more than 100,000,000 users? For something where MetaFilter and the Web Standards Org pointed at me? For a day when I had 4000 readers or so?

This is one problem with weblogs. The message is amplified cause it's online. And because it's individual people who took the time out to leave a comment. But, when I take this feedback to execs, they are gonna compare it to feedback they get from the CTO at Procter and Gamble, or GM, or our other customers. Folks who pay us big bucks. Then they'll compare it to feedback they get from our user testing labs. You know, mom and dad. I'll be honest. I've never had someone in an airport ask me "how come you guys can't make a standards-compliant browser." I have had tons of people ask me "how come you can't keep spyware from happening?"

See, that's how priorities on teams get set. And I sure can't argue with that approach, even though it occassionally frustrates the bejeebers out of me cause my feature requests are low on the list of things to do.

Some days I totally understand what it's like to be a campaign manager for a presidential candidate. You take the feedback from people and try to please everyone. Sometimes that job is impossible.

But, I'll keep trying. I want many of the same things my commenters want. You might have missed this, but I've been playing with CSS positioning and styles here as well and I'm just as frustrated as many of you are.

One thing I'm happy about is that Dean (the guy who runs the Internet Explorer team) is smart, passionate about the Web, and is very knowledgeable about the marketplace and what's going on in it.

The conversation has started. Now it'll be interesting to see where it goes

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http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2004/01/15.html#a6187

Guido, your posts are too long Anyway, I'd like to talk to Dean. I'd say to him looooots of things

They are not my posts... they are quotes

And I wonder why it wasn't mentioned in Neowin... let's see if they approve my submission

Interesting stuff, thanks for posting it.

Anti spyware features would be great, i see so many friends who dont know much about computers with loads of spyware these days . Mostly because they just clicking their way trough a site, and then when they click something that looks interesting... *BWHAM*... gator installed.

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Originally posted by MenthiX
Interesting stuff, thanks for posting it.

Anti spyware features would be great, i see so many friends who dont know much about computers with loads of spyware these days . Mostly because they just clicking their way trough a site, and then when they click something that looks interesting... *BWHAM*... gator installed.

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There's not really much to improve in that matter... I mean, active X IS necessary --- the download in a temp folder and install requirement of other browsers' plugins is just a nuisance for new users.

It's not IE problem that people click "Yes, I want to install this thing that I don't know what it is"

Agreed, and if this is added, then I would like an options to not install it. (but knowing MS...hmmm....) Cause I don't like programs that decide for me what I see or not. But indeed, for newbies this would be a great help, but I think oldbies will be annoyed by it...

I wouldnt mind if you have to install it, i mean we're talking anti-spyware here.... shit that fucks up your pc, nobody wants that.

Guido: true about the click yes thingie, but there are also sites the abuse security bugs to put spyware on your pc and stuff. Also the click yes thingies can be improved to if you ask me, sometimes it just isn't clear what your installing, and even if you click no some sites make them popping up again and again.... such things should be stopped.

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Originally posted by MenthiX
I wouldnt mind if you have to install it, i mean we're talking anti-spyware here.... shit that fucks up your pc, nobody wants that.

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I would (unless you can choose to not to install it) because:
A) it's bigger filesize
B) spyware firms will find away around it
C) think before you do something and don't click on YES on everything on sites or set autoaccept or something in your settings... I never had spyware on my PC (I don't use any kind of anti-spyware/block thing and I'm constantly browsing the web)
oh.. and D) something like this already exist -> "non-trusted sites" in internet-options