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Comment by coderdude | Hacker News Reader

I think you're being a bit unreasonable here. IE9 relies on parts of Windows that just don't exist in XP. Windows XP is ancient by software standards. Sure, Chrome et al. work in all operating systems, but you're upset at Microsoft because they don't want to support an operating system that they want people off of already. It's their decision and I'm glad they want people to upgrade. People got mad because users didn't want to get off of Windows 98 because of how dated it had become but fewer people are upset at the "Windows XP is good for a lifetime" crowd.

IE9 is coming and it's much better. When the people holding back on upgrading finally upgrade then you'll have your better Web.

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That's exactly the point- since they're holding off on upgrading their OS, potentially for a much longer time, they won't even have the option of updating their web browser. An OS upgrade is a much more monumental decision than a browser upgrade, and the inertia is much greater.

At any rate, the fact that IE9 can't backport parts of its OS dependencies is kind of an implementation detail. We're saying Webkit has no problems providing a self-contained modern browsing experience, so IE9 doesn't have to be any different.

Webkit has no problems providing an experience that the IE team thinks is subpar (in particular, lacks full 2d graphics acceleration).

Similar for Gecko: it's doing compositing acceleration on WinXP, but not 2d acceleration.

Now maybe the argument is that IE9 should support such a mode of operation. But by the same argument, Firefox should still have a supported PPC version of Firefox 4 (even though it's JIT can't generate PPC code, so JS would be interpreted and hence very slow). Some people _are_ making that argument, by the way, but the general consensus is that this sort of decision about what sort of quality they're willing to put their name on is up to the Mozilla project. Why does the IE team not get the same courtesy?

I realize that you may disagree with their quality metrics (e.g. you may think that a modern JS JIT is a must-have requirement for a modern web browser but 2d graphics acceleration is not). But it's not clear to me that this is obvious, or that this will even be true in a year.

I agree that people need to upgrade from XP and into something better than all but I understand texel's point. Upgrading to Windows 7 or a Mac involves money, upgrading to Linux is an option that most aren't ready to take. Switching those XP users to Chrome/Firefox is the most likely chance we have to get them to a level where they can use all the new web technologies we want to throw at them. And I have a personal bias too, IE9 doesn't support WebGL which the software I'm developing depends on thus IE is not an option for my users.

So the problem is actually users refusing to upgrade their OS, not Microsoft not supporting XP after 10 years. It seems like we jump on people for not upgrading anything -- except when it comes to their OS.

You are a Microsoft astroturfer, right? (Before downvoting, people, read up on this. Microsoft does it. "coderdude"'s "website" is a vaguely Microsoftian coming-soon page...)

What? I'm almost flattered that you went through so much trouble to peg me as a Microsoft astroturfer. :)

I hate Internet Explorer. Do not get me wrong on this point. I hate it with a passion. I just know that IE8 > IE6 and that MS isn't going to link to Firefox or Chrome. If everyone was on IE8 (not even IE9) I would still be a happy camper.

Also, what part of my coming soon page is Microsoftian? Now you've got me curious. (Obviously so that I can fix that so that others can't figure out my true motives.)

Edit: Aw bummer. I was kind of flattered until I realized you created that account 15 minutes ago to troll. Your other contributions to HN:

"Shut. Up."

"You ignored everything parent actually meant. Nice strawman"

This is an interesting thing for a guy who's been registered for a half hour to say.

He has only so far made like 5 comments and all were responses to me. Including "Shut. Up."

I'm pretty sure someone is just really uncomfortable with the things I'm saying so they created this account to help combat my lies.

Now I'm wondering whether it's an alt or a random passerby. Got any interesting enemies?

Nah, but there are some seriously peeved guys in here that do not want to hear what some people are saying.

I'm a web standards astroturfer, myself.

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