[whatwg] Suggested changes to Web Forms 2.0, 2004-07-01 working

[Matthew Raymond]

Jim Ley wrote:
>>   I don't care how many programmers they hire, it's not in their best
>>interests to make web apps more viable, 
> 
> Sure it is, that's how they won the browser war, web-apps weren't
> viable on other browser platforms, now they are though, this means IE
> to keep its dominant position has to improve.  That pretty much looks
> to me what they're doing.

    Right now, the biggest things driving browser migration are popups 
and adware/malware. These are the only problems that Microsoft has 
clearly stated it will address. Longhorn will beta in the beginning of 
2005, so all Microsoft really has to do is hang on to a majority browser 
share for a few more years until XAML takes off.

    History has shown us that as long as people aren't driven from IE in 
some way (such as with a program that installs itself without asking and 
bombards you with ads every time you open IE) people are not going to 
change their browsers. Therefore, IE has to do relatively little in 
comparison to other companies in order to hold their marketshare. They 
could leave the rendering engine primarily "as is" (which is probably 
going to be the case, since they're throwing the word "backward 
compatibility" around like it was a justification for poor standards 
support) for years to come and loose only a few percentage points of 
marketshare.

>>nor have they stated that they
>>will improve IE in any way that would make web apps more viable.
> 
> No, lots of companies don't make premature announcements, it helps
> manage expectations.

    Microsoft employees have outright refused in interviews to state 
anything about improvements to CSS support. Whether that's "manag[ing] 
expectations" or not, it's certainly no reason to believe they're going 
to make any meaningful improvements to their CSS support.