So I read this post and all the comments and think to myself – no one seems to be saying it! So I will… (obviously)
For more years than I can remember, Microsoft has had a habit of pushing “the enterprise” down its own path, with an obvious (to me anyway) lock-in strategy. IE over the years has shown this up time and time again. I thought Chris Jackson’s comments were a little bit dismissive of Microsoft’s responsibilities here, and I wanted to state that the reason why IE/Edge is still required by many customers is that Microsoft’s platform, especially Microsoft’s development environments have made use of the IE-specific quirks, leaving vast swathes of enterprise-developed apps depending on IE.
Even worse, so many ISV’s have jumped on the “easier to develop” enterprise software platform (started with VB back in the day, right through to .NET and its kin today) building software for sale that organizations have purchased and gotten tied into. Be it, ASP.NET, or ActiveX or Silverlight (what a mess that was) the numerous browser quirks and non-standard, undocumented esoteric behaviors in the Microsoft browsers. I think there was a time when Microsoft was trying to be the standard browser of
Three years ago, we relegated development for IE to “best-endeavour” only, that means we will put reasonable effort into fixing anything obvious but have drawn the line and doing IE/Edge specific workarounds/hacks for our software. That has sadly left some of our customers stuck with different browsers for different applications, but we do not accept that is a problem of our making, we used to feel bad when our customers would tell us “well you are not Microsoft so fall in line” – not anymore!
Now before I start to sound like I am hating on Microsoft, I must make clear that in recent years I think Microsoft has done a remarkable job, a remarkable turn-around even. Windows 10 is orders of magnitude better than any Microsoft OS before it, Edge is not terrible and mostly works, although it’s still quirky. And hats off, O365 is a winner – very nicely done team Microsoft.
Dear Microsoft, if it were up to me…
- You have the capability, the developers, and the financial resources, probably more than most other software companies in the world, go and build a world-class standards-based browser, do for your browser what you already did for C++
- Or, hurry up and develop your chromium-based browser and get shot of IE and Edge as soon as you can.
- Go and help your customers remove their technical debt in relation to IE, its not their fault entirely, you created the environment – help your customers fix it
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