Quiz Microsoft's IE Team Leader

About as timely an interview as you can get: Microsoft released Internet Explorer 7 last week, and today we're gathering questions for IE team general manager Dean Hachamovitch. As usual, please follow Slashdot interview rules when posting or moderating questions. We'll publish Dean's answers verbatim as soon as he replies.

First question

Do you prefer Internet Explorer or Firefox?

Re:First question

Did you make a wrong turn from the IMDB forums or something?

How about this...

Would you like to make available IE on other operating systems?

Re:How about this...

IE used to be available on Solaris, HP-UX, and Mac OS 9/X. Microsoft dropped support for all of those platforms. Considering that my attempts to install IE on Solaris 8 caused the CDE profile to be corrupted, I'm not sure that the lack of support is a bad thing. At the time, I found it more useful and reliable to build Mozilla nightlies.

Re:How about this...

I am not sure what cause your specific problems, but IE for Solaris was not all that bad really. Sure it didn't fit in all that well (shipped with a sizable part of the WIN32 API, including the widgets), but then, what applications actually do on a UNIX desktop even today?

It did work pretty well though, and was in my opinion a superior alternative to the horrors of the really early Mozilla project.

Re:How about this...

Yes... IE7 does run under Wine [tatanka.com.br] - so it wouldn't be too hard for Microsoft to make an official Linux/i386 version.

Re:How about other Microsoft operating systems?

Well, if IE7 works under Wine, we have an interesting paradox: it just might be cheaper to upgrade from Win2k to Linux in order to be able to run all the new MS programs which can't run under Win2k.

Something seems so very wrong here...

CSS

Why did you go half way implementing CSS instead of fully supporting standards all other browsers have for some time now.

Re:CSS

Does the IE roadmap include at any point 100% W3C compatibility, or are there features in the standard that you do not ever intend on supporting?

Re:CSS

What on earth is "100% W3C compatibility"? The W3C is an organisation, not a specification. They have published hundreds of specifications. No software would implement the lot, nobody would even want to.

You are asking a nonsensical question. A better question would be whether they plan on complete support for specific specifications, such as HTML 4.01, HTTP 1.1, CSS 2.1, DOM 2, SVG 1.1, etc.

Pointless question.

"Why did you go half way implementing CSS instead of fully supporting standards all other browsers have for some time now."

I believe that NO browser fully supports CSS. Am I wrong in this assumption? Even if you're asking them to support the standards to the same level as all other browsers the implementation would still be incomplete.

There's a built-in derogatory slant to your question. I believe that IE supports more than 50% of CSS standards, which would mean they went further than half-way. Your choice of words is subtly antagonistic.

It's not a "Have you quit beating your wife" question, but neither is it a suitable one for a serious discussion.

Re:Pointless question.

"Perhaps that is because Microsoft is a convicted predatory monopolist with a vested interest in anti-interoperability. When the anti-Microsoft conspiracy theories always end up being right on the money, maybe there really is a conspiracy going on."

We have a choice. We can either ask questions that are antagonistic, and hope some of our fellow slashdotters will pat us on the back for MS-bashing, or we can ask questions that have a hope of receiving an enlightening response from the representative of Microsoft.

Re:CSS

A better question: Are you aware that no matter what answers you give here, they will never satisfy the anti-Microsoft Slashdot crowd?

pro Open Source != anti-Microsoft ..

"A better question: Are you aware that no matter what answers you give here, they will never satisfy the anti-Microsoft Slashdot crowd?"

Why do you assume that pro Open Source equates with anti-Microsoft

was Re:CSS

Re:pro Open Source != anti-Microsoft ..

"Why do you assume that pro Open Source equates with anti-Microsoft"

The Bill Gates of Borg icon for this story?

Re:CSS

Are you aware that no matter what answers you give here, they will never satisfy the anti-Microsoft Slashdot crowd?

It's difficult to speak for everyone, but I can give my own opinion on your question.

I used to like IE5. Whether I disliked Microsoft or not, it was a superior browser in its day. The problem is, that the standards that Microsoft helped create all those years ago are not actually supported by Microsoft today. To use the example I pointed out in my own question, IE's lack of DOM 2 Events support means that there is absolutely no way to write DHTML code that works in both IE and Firefox. Yet, I can easily write code that works in Firefox, Safari, and Opera.

Is there any reason for this dichotomy? Yes and no. Code can be made to work across the major non-IE browsers, because they all provide at least basic support for the W3C standards. IE has its own attachEvent() model that is (obviously) incompatible at a code level, and subtly incompatible at the behavior level. All that microsoft needs to do is to lay a parallel API that supports the W3C standard, and I would be a happy fellow. Yet they haven't done that, won't do that, and I have NO IDEA WHY.

So I continue to write code that works in Firefox, Safari, and Opera, then special patches to make it work in IE. From where I'm sitting, I just want the problem to go away. If Microsoft fixes their browser, then I'll be happy. If Microsoft can't do that, then I will carry the "Down With IE!" torch until their browser is irrelevant in the market. Then I'll also be happy.

Basically, my web browser opinion is not one based on my feelings about Microsoft. I just want a market were I can target a single standard is all. If Microsoft abuses their Web Browser monopoly to stand in the way of that, then it is my duty as a web developer* to help smash that monopoly.

* What happened to the "Developers, developers, developers" jingle, hmm? Are we important, or aren't we?

Re:CSS

A better question:

Do you have any plans to support CSS 2.1 *when it's finished*?

Re:CSS

Throwing percentages and numbers around are dangerous questions that will either not be moderated up or even if they are, and they are selected for questioning to IE developers, will likely be dismissed as arbitrary. It's better to ask in terms of generalities, so my suggestion would be something along the lines of the following:

Browser comeptition is likely to continue in the marketplace, and as such, the feature sets of browsers will vary in order to appeal to a certain user base. Firefox has become something of the de facto standard for developers, to the extent that many web designers follow the practice of "design with FF in mind" while adding scripting and such to correct for what are commonly referred to as IE tweaks. Given this environment, there are 5 germane questions to ask:

1. Does the Microsoft vision for IE7 place it in comeptition with Firefox as the browser of choice for developers?

2. If so, what feature sets will IE7 have that can compete with Firefox and the open source community, and will those features include increased recognition and compliance with W3C standards?

3. Often times I find myself opening IE for simply Microsoft functions that I otherwise cannot do in my browser of choice. Will cross-based browser support ever occur for common Microsoft functions like Windows and Office updates?

4. As IE7 goes public as an update for those in a post-Windows 2000 environment, are there plans to make this upgrade available for businesses that still rely on those features of the Windows 2000 family of clients and servers?

5. Finally, as some businesses rely on certain functionalities embedded in IE6 that are no longer there in IE7, are there plans to allow for dual instances of IE6 and IE7 in the future to allow for software and program compatability for businesses and their 3rd party vendors?

Re:CSS

4. As IE7 goes public as an update for those in a post-Windows 2000 environment, are there plans to make this upgrade available for businesses that still rely on those features of the Windows 2000 family of clients and servers?

Please add this one to the list if the others do not make it. I still do not understand ignoring W2k support with Firefox breathing down Microsoft's neck.

So I can buy new hardware and new OS in order to get anti-phishing and tab support, or I can download Firefox for free???

Evil Plan?

As someone who has developed for multiple browsers, it really seems like there is a secret ploy at Microsoft to keep IE relatively incompatible with other browsers.

Is this purposeful? If not, what is the reason?

Re:Evil Plan?

Just wondering, but what kind of answer are you expecting here? "Dang, yes, you caught us in our secret ploy! Oh well, back to the drawing board!" :)

IE's design goals

I've seen it mentioned (by Chris Wilson, amongst others) that IE7 was never going to pass the ACID2 tests when it shipped. Although as a web developer, that's not a situation I'm particularly pleased about, I'm mostly OK with it. I can appreciate that some aspects of the browsing experience will be propritized above others. However, I don't think I've ever seen a clear statement from Microsoft that 100% HTML and CSS compliance is even a goal. Can you comment on that?

Is it your goal to render a standards compliant website correctly in all cases, or are you just aiming to implement those parts of the spec that are used by the majority of your customers? Naturally, I can understand prioritizing the things that are hitting your customers above those that are rarely used in the real world, but part of the reason the some of them aren't used in the real world is down to lack of browser support. I find it incredibly frustrating that some of my site layouts have to be butchered just to get them to work in the commonly used browsers. If IE fails to render a compliant page according to the spec, can you commit to actively tracking it as a bug with a view to fixing it in a future release of IE, even if it only affects a handful of people?

Re:IE's design goals

Most developers I've talked to said they're going to drop ACID because of IE7 issues.

This needs to be answered

Why are you so gay? And why do you allow IE to destroy the fucking internet?

MOD PARENT UP!

"Why are you so gay? And why do you allow IE to destroy the fucking internet?"

This is an important question. We don't want people to view the average slashdotter as able to participate in a calm, reasonable discussion. We need to be viewed as zealots, collectively frothing at the mouth.

I'd even like to see this question include just for humour.

Re:MOD PARENT UP!

We don't want people to view the average slashdotter as able to participate in a calm, reasonable discussion.

Actually, I can understand outbursts like grand parent, seeing how the opposing force (Microsoft) slimily smiles and puts forward their arguments in a way that, to an uneducated person, might seem reasonable. Politicians seem to be a frequent target, since having them take the right desicions means better business for Microsoft, thought it to the rest of us means less choice, less freedom and worse technology. Heh, the feeling you get is that if they were to decide freely, we wouldn't be allowed to run whatever software we like, particularly not operating systems! That causes frustration, you know.

A question

Would you like to see a universal architecture so that all rendering engines* worked in all web browsers, and all plugins** worked with all rendering engines? *Gecko, mshtml etc **Free and non-free - flash, mplayer and the like

Re:A question

There is such a standard [wikipedia.org] for plugins, and Opera, Safari, Konqueror and all Mozilla-based browsers support it. Microsoft used to support it, but an update included in SP 2 for IE 5.5 removed support in favor of their own ActiveX-based plugin architecture, hoping that the added work needed to maintain two versions of their plugins would cause plugin makers to drop support for other browsers than IE. Who said abuse of monopoly power?

Prediction:

90% of the questions posted by slashdot will fall into one of two categories (or maybe both): 1) Why is Microsoft the Evil Empire and what are you doing to stop this (like using Firefox) and 2) What the fuck is up with your CSS support, dude?

Re:Prediction:

I'll add another prediction: That lots of people won't read and follow this note in the Slashdot Interview FAQ [slashdot.org]:

You can ask as many questions as you'd like!

But please, only ask one question per submitted comment.

You can ask a compound (multi-part) question, but if you make your question so complicated that no one's sure what you're asking, it's less likely to be moderated up. If you have several burning questions, take a minute to organize your thoughts and separate them into multiple comments.

- Robin

Interface

The new version of IE makes it much harder to work with certain critical aspects of the browser. While I like some aspects of the new browser, some of the interface changes make it much more difficult to work with, and this will keep me firmly in the Firefox camp for now. For example, bookmarks now require many more clicks to access, especially if you use links nested in folders. Also, most interface elements can not be moved around as was previously possible (and is currently possible in Firefox.) The menu bar itself is hidden, and when exposed, appears in the middle of the browser controls! Why go to so much trouble to make essential elements of the program difficult for users to access?

Re:Interface

I second this inquiry wholeheartedly. The new layout deviates from standard Windows UI design (menu bar at top, always) and doesn't even allow you to resort to your own needs. This has made me, in the 3 days I've had IE7 on my machine, contemplate removal of the app and a return to IE6 despite it's outdated features.

Re:Interface

Agreed, the UI for IE7 is strange. If this is a hint of Vista I expect Mac and Linux will pick up a few desktop users afer the release.

FYI this reg setting will move the menu bar to the top.

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Toolbar\WebBrowser]
"ITBar7Position"=dword:00000001

Standardized Compliance Tests

How important is it to Microsoft to ensure that IE passes acknowledged tests of compliane (i.e. Acid2) at the cost of sacrificing newer and possibly more exciting/efficient proprietary technologies?

Best/Future Features

What are the best features of IE7 that sets it above the competition, what features are perhaps lacking and are you currently working on adding these?

My Question

Well, I can't think of a real Slashdot-headed question to ask, so I'll go for the entertaining rather than socially relevant:

Presumably, throughout this development process for IE7, your team has had their nose to the grind-wheel, so to speak. What sort of things did you do to chill out and relax? Were there any in-office perks, like pool tables or whatnot? And were you actually all in the same office, or did some members of the team have to telecommute from far-off lands, like Oregon?

IE8?

If you adopt FireFox 2.0 as IE8, your boss would be impressed with how much you improved the product in a very short time. My question is: would you take the extra time to remove CSS features from IE8? Thank you and God Bless.

IE7 release time

Why did IE7 take such a long time to release after IE6?

Follow up

If you had more time, is there a new feature you would have liked to include in IE7?

DOM 2 Events

One of the stated purposes of IE7 was to better support the W3C standards, and (presumably) to increase compatibility among W3C-compliant browsers. Yet despite multiple requests for DOM 2 Events support, the IE team decided to overlook this support [mozillazine.org]. Currently, IE is the only major browser lacking DOM Events support. Which is a major issue, as IE's attachEvent() design means that special code must be written for IE compatibility.

As someone who's been forced into using runtime patches (example [lachy.id.au]) to increase IE's compatibility with DHTML code, I feel compelled to ask: Why has the IE team ignored this critical standard?

Re:Not just the Events module...

While I agree that missing the Events module is definitely the BIGGEST problem, it's certainly not the ONLY problem, which is mostly what I was trying to get out. Also, I'm a fucktard and didn't preview my comment before posting (it's the only time I've ever not previewed a comment on Slashdot, I swear ;)) and Slashcode wiped out a bunch of what I was saying.

What I MEANT to write was:
* Tables that are created dynamically will not appear unless elements are added to <tbody> -- in other words, using DOM to write <table><tr><td>content</td><tr><table> does not display anything, even though <tbody> is optional.
* getElementsByTagName('object').item(0).getElements ByTagName('param') returns EVERY <param> IN THE ENTIRE DOCUMENT, not just ones under the requested object. Yikes!

As far as the navigator.plugins is concerned, it's definitely possible that it's a fragment of the browser wars, but that would be rather weird (except as an intentional attempt to sabotage Netscape Plugins API in order to push ActiveX -- something I find much more plausible than "fixing Netscape-only sites"). An empty nagivator.plugins would be just as easy to detect as one that didn't exist, and if something depended on it being there so that it could find a plugin, the site still wouldn't work in IE.

As an aside, between my last post and now, I ran some JavaScript unit tests from the W3C Compatibility Test Suite.

http://www.w3.org/2003/02/06-dom-support.html [w3.org]

DOM Conformance Test Suites
==========
DOM Core 1
----------
Internet Explorer 7 (37.95% failure)
Tests: 224
Errors: 4
Failures: 85

Opera 9.02 (11.34% failure)
Tests: 238
Errors: 12
Failures: 27

Firefox 1.5.0.7 (5.88% failure)
Tests: 238
Errors: 15
Failures: 14
==========
DOM Core 2
----------
Internet Explorer 7 (45.45% failure)
Tests: 11
Errors: 2
Failures: 5

Opera 9.02 (36.36% failure)
Tests: 11
Errors: 0
Failures: 4

Firefox 1.5.0.7 (18.18% failure)
Tests: 11
Errors: 0
Failures: 2
==========
DOM HTML 2
----------
Internet Explorer 7 (8.47% failure)
Tests: 685
Errors: 16
Failures: 58

Firefox 1.5.0.7 (1.31% failure)
Tests: 685
Errors: 0
Failures: 9

Opera 9.02
I tried about 20 times to get Opera to
complete this test, and it would constantly
fail to load files and Retry did nothing.
Oh, well. I'd guesstimate the failures are
probably around 2-3%.

I'd say there's a pretty serious fucking problem when nearly 38% of DOM Core 1 functionality is BROKEN.

Doing WebSite development.

Doing some WebSite development I found that with IE 6 (I havent been able to test IE 7 Yet) I always had to wander away from the standards and the only reason I have gotten is that MS just doesn't like them. Is IE 7 going to make sure that they follow the stands much more closely so when I make HTML and I test it in IE, Firefox, Safari and Opera they all look the same, I normally get the Last 3 to work without much fighting but IE always decided to do it differently. Giving us New Windows Only features is not useful for the developers, but following the standards is. As well our custerms weither they know it or not like it better when we follow the standards (Less junk and warning messages, Or misaligned stuff).

Simple questions

IE has a dominating command of the market, although Firefox is slowly making inroads, due to innovations such as tabbed browsing that IE has had to incorporate to maintain that command. But where are the IE innovations? Why can't the IE team get ahead of the curve on Firefox? Is there anything you consider an innovation that is unique to IE that would plausibly be something the browser market would have to incorporate to stay competitive?

Why ditch platform conventions

One of the biggest complaints [browserden.co.uk] about IE7 is that it does not obey the standard user interface guidelines for Windows XP. As an update that'll be pushed to users automatically [msdn.com] next month do you not consider it a bad idea to break platform conventions?

There is a workaround [enhanceie.com] that involves editing the registry to get the menu bar in the correct place but why is this not implemented as part of toolbar customisation?

Microsoft jisallim aklak

What do you make of all this pro-Firefox, anti-IE digital jihadism?

IE7 + Win2k

Why haven't you guys hacked IE7 to run on Win2k minus the WinXP SP2-dependant security features?

It's not like it'd be any less secure than IE6 on Win2k.

How much of SpyGlass is left in IE7?

As I recall, Microsoft licensed SpyGlass browser code as the basis for Internet Explorer. Is there any of it left, or have you finally rewritten all the IE code?

Re:How much of SpyGlass is left in IE7?

IIRC, Microsoft's license with Spyglass was: We will agree to pay you a set amount for every copy of Internet Explorer that we sell. Then they went and gave it away, so that they weren't selling it. It's either genius or insanity, depending on how you look at it...

Re:How much of SpyGlass is left in IE7?

IE7 is the first release that does not mention Spyglass Mosaic in the about box.

Now that transparency and CSS is fully implemented

...when will you come to SVG?

My shot

What do you consider the greatest weakness of Firefox?

IE 8

A simple question: What are you planning to implement for the next IE version, be it IE 8 or IE 7.5 or whatever?

Does this mark a faster release cycle?

I realize, of course, that any answer you give to this question may not be valid a couple years down the road, but as of now:

Does the release of IE7 mark the beginning of a more aggressive development/release cycle for Internet Explorer? That is, we are all aware of various aspects of CSS, for example, that are not currently supported in IE (though kudos on all the progress in this direction you've made): can we expect updates to IE, either as service packs, point releases, or new versions, that will provide better standards support in the relatively near future? Or will we be limited to security fixes for the foreseeable future, as with IE6?

IE7 and Vista

Did any new Windows Vista technologies influence the development of IE7?

IE vs. Firefox

Besides matching some of the features in Firefox (ie. tabbed browsing), what are some others to look forward to in IE7 that an avid Firefox user such as myself would find useful?

Moo

Is "Hachamovitch" your real name, or a nickname for how IE is put together?

Security

One of IE7's revolutionary features was supposed to be security, although it took less t