I'm still not sure what the point of all this is. Any developer worth their salt already knows that IE9 is more or less a small step forward but still far short of what it needs to be and of what FF/Chrome have accomplished ages ago. Any non-technical user won't be reading this article and won't give a damn about IE vs. FF vs. Chrome, as long as their internets work.
Why keep up the pissing match? Who are they talking to?
The point is that Microsoft has been terrible at this since 1999.
They consistently do their own thing instead of going with standards, and they are always behind the curve. They seem to be trying to catch up with standards but have been unable to make any sort of impressive progress. To be honest, if they've put five years into it and are still so far behind, they need to fire some people.
Does anyone actually consider IE to be a valid contender for browsers? Personally, I gave up years ago.
> To be honest, if they've put five years into it and are still so far behind, they need to fire some people.
You are assuming Microsoft wants to adhere to standards. I find it more likely their strategy is to fragment the market because the day web applications become the norm, as opposed to desktop applications, they become OS-independent and Microsoft will have its main advantage (the Windows software ecosystem) negated.
I'm not sure MS are that dumb §. They know apps are moving to the web, and they want to be sure that Google and Apple don't control that experience.
They know IE9 is a bit crap, and they'll release an IE10 with proper history API, gradients, transforms and the rest when they can. They'll have a working web office someday too.
In the meantime they'll pimp IE9, the Office 'web apps' and other substandard ones to their customers until their kickass version 3 products come out.
§ Withstanding there are probably a few people in MS who really still love fat client.
The issues are quite noticeable for someone that isn't heavily invested in web apps. Most of HN is - and that's why they prefer to ignore them.
But let's look at the market... Have web apps displaced desktop apps? No. Have they displaced mobile apps (as per HN mantra 90% of iPhone apps could be web apps)? Not even close.
Now why is this? It's because web apps offer a significantly poorer user experience across the board.
* with all the progress that's been made in performance, web apps are slower than native apps and will continue to be. There is only so much that you can offload from JS.
* web-apps don't have access to the platform's entire range of graphics capabilities, including standard widgets, animations and so on.
* web apps don't have access to special platform functionality such as GPS, sensors, camera, etc.
Furthermore, the biggest mobile players have all started to invest in native mobile apps to the detriment of web apps. Including Google. It's in their interest to lock-in users to their platform, even more so since Android became a major player.
These issues can be worked around eventually (maybe).
The core issues with web apps can't be worked around:
1. Web apps are using a text-transfer protocol with a pile of hacks on top to make it stateful. To this day engineers are still working on solving this problem (web sockets, web sql, etc). They can't solve it.
2. One does not own web apps, one merely rents them.
I think you're generally right that native apps are better than web apps. I have a few points to pick at, but don't take that as disagreement.
* web apps don't have access to special platform functionality such as GPS, sensors, camera, etc.*
Take a look at PhoneGap. This is definitely becoming less of an issue, and I wouldn't be surprised to see even more progress on it.
Including Google. It's in their interest to lock-in users to their platform, even more so since Android became a major player.
I can't speak for others, but Google's native apps are merely frontends to their web service. I regularly switch between the native and web versions of both GMail and Google Reader on my phone. There's slightly different feature sets (syncing/refreshing tends to be no issue on the web, but it's kind of weird on the native apps. The UI is better on the native apps. I can open links in background tabs for the web, but I have to switch apps for native, etc), but I could completely stop using the native apps with 0 issue.
Other than that, I strongly agree. I've never had to worry about my internet being slow or down to use a native app, and I know I can use them years later with no issue.
The fact that three people consider HN to be an application is nothing short of mind-boggling. I guess if this is the case, I've been doing webapps since before HN was even invented. We used to call them web sites back then though...
> 1. Web apps are using a text-transfer protocol with a pile of hacks on top to make it stateful. To this day engineers are still working on solving this problem (web sockets, web sql, etc). They can't solve it.
I am curious - why would the protocol need to be stateful? What are you trying to accomplish?
> 2. One does not own web apps, one merely rents them.
No. You can buy apps and host them on your own servers, on your own PCs.
It's in their best interest, too, like for WP7 or Windows 8 for ARM. Otherwise, both WP7 and Windows ARM for tablets will be less appealing for consumers because they won't have enough apps.
Unless, of course, the whole Windows on ARM thing is just vaporware to show customers "look - you don't have to switch away from Windows when you switch to ARM" hopping this delays customers looking into alternatives in the x86 space.
Exactly... you, and every other serious developer. That IE is garbage is obvious to anybody who's done web development for more than a month. So why is Mozilla even bothering with these technical articles? IE lost to developers years ago, and IE9 won't change that.
I guess I'm just confused as to why this article, and the other similar ones from this past week, are even news.
> So why is Mozilla even bothering with these technical articles?
Because they need to educate the clueless who decide to make their internal web applications IE-dependent. Making an internal web app IE-only is one of the most common and crippling mistakes corporate IT makes.
As a FF user, I wish they would adopt the same security improvements that IE has, instead of writing lame posts about canvases and shadows. i.e: automatically running under a restricted account and tab-as-process.
The point is that people listening to microsoft's PR will think that IE 9 is as modern as the next browser and that is clearly not true. As a web developer I want to use the new technologies and as long as there is a major share of IE users I just can't.
I listened to Microsoft's PR (which seemed to have some technical basis) and spent time asking MS about HTML5 history API out of genuine need, then wondering why there was no info, even when I asked MS directly. Ditto transforms.
Any non-technical user won't be reading this article and won't give a damn about IE vs. FF vs. Chrome, as long as their internets work.
Not giving a damn isn't the same as not being affected by. IE slows down innovation and productivity on the web. Everyone's internets are worse for it, and it's a ball-and-chain everyone's paying to drag behind us.. whether or not everyone's aware of it.
Why keep up the pissing match? Who are they talking to?