Veerle's blog

I just came across a very interesting read for us web developers (everybody else also) in a blog from a Microsoft employee (Robert Scoble). This guy is some kind of spokes person for the development team of Internet Explorer.

The interesting part of all this is that they are asking our input for future versions. In other words it's a bit like the blog from Safari developer Dave Hyatt who regularly posts progress rapports on Safari, Apple browser on MacOS X.

So what do they want from us?

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.

Sounds good isn't it ;-)

There are already over 200 comments there but in my opinion that's not enough especially if you come to think about the fact that they have more then 90% of market share. You'll also find some frustrating remarks like this one for example:

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.

So if we web developers worldwide all start to add an additional 10% in time and cost for each project and telling our clients it's because of Microsoft Internet Explorer issues, would they still be thinking this way? My guess is they will update very quickly if it costs them money. Microsoft has the power to force things on us but they only use it when they feel like it. It's not that difficult to make such an update a necessary install.

So take this opportunity and let Microsoft know that we need those CSS fixes now rather then when Longhorn is out for example. It's already years after all!!! Don't forget to look at the post of 14th of January "IE conversation is great" because it's a follow-up on this.