Ask HN: Why isn't Internet Explorer better? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why isn't Internet Explorer better?

13 pointslionhearted7 comments

I haven't used IE in ages, except to check what a website looks like in it. Probably most people here are the same way.

Reading another IE-bashing thread on here, I stopped and had to ask something - why isn't IE any better?

You can say with IE6 that they had the complete market share, no competition, and got complacent. And then, you could say they were playing catchup.

But why haven't they caught up now? Microsoft's core strength was quickly emulating a new kind of software once the concept was proven and the demand was there.

Have they lost that mojo? Is their personnel not as good as competition? Do they not want to copy? Some mix of unwillingness or inability...?

So yeah, I don't get it. Microsoft has billions of dollars and IE is one of their core programs that normal people using Windows use a lot. Why isn't Internet Explorer better?

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From a technical point of view, it's pretty hard to catch up with established competitors especially when they are very good. Though they did catch up in some areas, they also omitted many features and spec implementations that their competitors have already done, and giving the excuse that they did it because those specs weren't ready enough.

But if you really want to know why hasn't Microsoft pushed the development of IE more over the years, I'd say it's politics. The Windows OS thrives because of native software, and most of the native software works only on Windows. So from their point of view, it's not a very good idea to help push the web forward to make (web) apps cross-platform.

The reason why they might've changed their mind a bit lately, is because they also have cloud offerings now, and they'd rather have enterprise (mostly) customers continue to use IE instead of moving to a competitor's browser.

But it seems they still don't really want to go fully cross-platform. This is not obvious yet, but I think we'll see it with IE10, where they want to tie the hardware acceleration to the Windows OS. That's why they've started marketing the idea of "native HTML5" lately, which basically means HTML5 that is hardware accelerated through DirectX, which of course works only on Windows. All their competitors have adopted WebGL for 3D content, but they'll probably try to promote their DirectX and Windows-only solution, instead.

I have two theories on this. First, it has to be a hard team to attract talent to. Good programmers are passionate programmers, and its hard to be passionate about something constantly being ridiculed.

Second reason is that I still think parts of MS see the web as a threat. Until they have a stronghold on a 2nd platform (mobile/tablets, gaming, web (SL), servers or enterprise), they aren't likely to do anything which could undermine their only platform.

IE9 has made some nice improvements, but I also ask myself why it still lags behind in so many ways.

For example, if I were writing this comment in IE9, I would not be able to see what spelling errors I made. It's 2011, and IE still does not have spell checking on text elements.

The IE9 GUI has also become unresponsive for me for double digit seconds several times.

There are literally dozens of little annoyances like these.

How these glaring issues continue to exist really is a good question. I think some of the other posts on this subject probably hit the nail on the head: Microsoft doesn't want the browser too good (since replacing native apps with web apps helps out competing operating systems), but at the same time, can't allow their browser to get too far behind, because with or without Microsoft's blessing, the web has made huge market advances.

Thus, they kind of catch up, making their browser just barely good enough for most people, but always fairly mediocre. It's the only reasonable explanation I can think of.

Its not about the product. Its about the vision. Microsoft made its billions using proprietary software. Turns out its not that simple in the free universe we call the Internet. Its Open Source. Its everything Microsoft is not. IE just isn't in its "element".

Once Microsoft won the browser wars and Netscape was out the picture there was little reason to continue improving it. The development of IE was merely a hedge against an all-internet software paradigm, the exact one that is now threatening to end Microsoft for good.

I haven't thought about it too much, but I want to throw in Second-System Effect in there. IE was originally made to be part of the OS, after which they had to rip it out and make it its own product. I imagine the separation and rewrites slowed them down drastically.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect

Note also the relevant "See Also" candidates.

> Is their personnel not as good as competition?

That would be my guess.

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