Minh’s Notes

Human-readable chicken scratch

Minh Nguyễn
August 5th, 2003
Mozilla
#93

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Defining Abandonment

[Update] Much of this entry doesn’t even apply anymore, because this entry has been moved from its original home. But the message still pertains.

Michael Moyer, a regular reader of this blog (if ever there were such a person), points out that the “Microsoft is abondoning you” message, the one that shows up when you view this blog in IE, is not quite true. For those good netizens among you who use a better browser, the message says:

“You are using Microsoft Internet Explorer right now. Depending on your level of computer literacy, you may know it as ‘The Internet.’ But the Internet is much more than Internet Explorer. You should consider using a better browser, such as , instead.

“Microsoft Internet Explorer does not support modern Web technologies, which this website and many others make extensive use of. Microsoft has stopped updating Internet Explorer with new features and bugfixes. The only things you can expect from Internet Explorer in the future are more holes in its ‘security.’

Microsoft has abandoned you. Why continue patronizing them?

Michael asserts that Microsoft isn’t really abandoning you, because Microsoft will update its browser, with the next release of Windows, codenamed Longhorn. While Microsoft may decide to tweak the UI a little more, I don’t believe that Microsoft will make any more improvements to its rendering engine (except maybe for some proprietary technologies like SmartTags). I think the remaining changes to IE will only be to make the program fit in with Longhorn’s new interface, and to make the program fit in with the company’s MSN business model.

Notice how I didn’t mention anything about updating the browser to make it more secure (and I’m talking about invalid certificates here), or a half-decent download manager, or tabbed browsing, or popup blocking, or… The fact is, Microsoft might never implement these.

That’s what I call abandonment.