[Javascript] Debugger

Hakan M. hakan at backbase.com
Thu Nov 20 08:24:15 CST 2003


Gee, did I hit a hotspot there?

> Well, if you have a look at MSXML, you see that it it is actually one 
> of the better XML engines. As for PNG, I have a hard time justifying 
> that deficiency... 


You have a "hard time" justifying the lack of PNG-support, eight years 
after the promise was made to support it? Do you even KNOW what the 
PNG-format is, and its benefits over existing (GIF) web graphic formats? 
For someone so furiously defending multinational megacorporations and 
their lack of interest in the end user developers, you sure seem to have 
a funny view on the GIF patent issues.

MSXML is not the browser, my friend. It's a ActiveX-plugin for the 
browser. The browser doesn't even understand the xhtml-mimetype. Sure, 
Microsoft have great, huge libraries for anything you want, but that has 
nothing to do with their browser. I have a really hard time justifying 
the use of plugins/htc-files to get normal browser behaviour, but maybe 
that's just me.

> They don't put an army of developers on it because there is simply no 
> way they could charge money for the product (not now, after Netscape's 
> death and all), and without any possibility to bring in money, they 
> see no reason to further develop it unless they can extend it in ways 
> that in turn allows them to make money.

I didn't say they SHOULD put an army of developers on it. I said they 
HAVE an army of developers. PNG-support, for example, would take one 
developer a few hours with one of the many free (but stable!) 
PNG-libraries to implement. They don't need the army of developers to 
implement one little thing, that would make the browser much more 
appriciated. If they're not doing this deliberately, it only leaves us 
with one choice - their developers don't have the skills to do it.

> If it weren't for Microsoft, you would not at all have the CSS specs 
> to the level you have it today. They can make a push for a technology, 
> sometimes. And if you haven't noticed, ie6w is three years old, which 
> makes XHTML a fringe technology that was only a year old at release time.

I think what you're saying is "if it weren't for the browser wars and 
Netscape, Microsoft wouldn't have cared about the end user developers at 
all". XHTML became a RECOMMENDATION in 2000, the first draft appeared in 
1998, if I recall correctly.

I can counter by saying "If it weren't for Microsoft, we would not have 
these browser incompatibilities we have today." It makes just as much sense.

> The moving of the browser development into the OS development group in 
> Longhorn suggests that they are now considering the browser to be a 
> core technology of the underlying OS instead of just a separate 
> application, but perhaps it means that some of the OS development 
> money goes to the browser development group. That the Longhorn 
> versions we have seen so far are running ie6.05w instead of ie7w 
> speaks against that, however. 

They are NOW considering that? So IE is currently not a core technology 
of Windows? Ever guessed why the patches for IE are along the lines of 
"prevent any newbie hacker from any part of the world to take complete 
control over your computer and wife" instead of "added correct 
calculation of margins"? Ever guessed why you can't run older versions 
of IE on new versions of Windows (you can, but not the way it's 
"supposed" to be run)

IE is not in control over I/O operations on kernel level, sure, but 
anything that exposes the operating system to such a massive range of 
attacks by only being installed is taking enough part in the OS, if you 
ask me. It's funny that you think this is a GOOD thing.

> I'm tired of Microsoft bashing when the arguments are 

With an audience like you, who needs better arguments.




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