Shoutbox

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