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Firefox support should have been written into the requirements. If this was really important, it would have been scheduled for and would have worked out of the box!
http://spaces.msn.com/members/siteexperts/Blog/...
"I expect Firefox support will come very quickly (and if not I will go over an beat them up personally :-)"
I'm sure there is a workaround and I'd think they could find it, but they may be waiting for Webkit/Safari to fix the bug first. Save them some work.
Influentials are another way to say "mavens" (if you read Malcolm Gladwell) or "connectors" or "early adopters." You know, people who go to Mind Camp. :-)
Why do they matter? They are the ones who tell all their friends and family that something is cool (and have the credibility to have their friends listen).
Another way to look at it? People who write blogs use Firefox far more often than the "real world." So, if something doesn't work well on Firefox the "influentials" will tell everyone that it sucks.
Look at what Joel Spolsky, said, for instance: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2005/11/02.... (he's DEFINITELY an influential).
And, Sanaz says that Firefox support will be turned on soon (within days, she told me). She cares about influentials (and showed up at Mind Camp too to hammer in the point).
1. If I see something really cool that really serves a great purpose to me, I'll probably start using it right away (ex. Gmail, Google Maps, Google Homepage, Audioscrobbler, del.icio.us). I will probably take the time out to fully set it up and migrate to the service.
2. If I see something with potential but not really needed at the moment, I bookmark it and try to come back to it when I get time. (ex. Google Desktop, MSN 7.0, Podcasts, RSS Feeds, Blogging). But sometimes a stellar product comes along unites you with these things like iTunes & podcasts and Google Homepage & RSS feeds. Or a new release grabs your attention, like Google Desktop.
3. If I see something kinda neat not ready for primetime, it just sorta floats by and I figure I'll revisit it when I remember. Problem is, I rarely remember these kind of things - there's tons of stuff labelled "ToRead" in my del.icio.us bookmarks that I don't get back to. (ex. Google Reader, Google Blogsearch, Google Talk, Live.com).
The other thing is, once I have signed up for one of these services, it'll be hard to get me to switch. As you've probably gathered, Google completely owns me as a customer...mostly because they've been first to provide me with great services: GMail, GMail Notifier, Google Desktop, Google Maps, Google Personal Homepage. Google Blog Search and Yahoo's Blog Search (does Microsoft have one?) came around to late, so Technornati owns my searches on the "Live" web. But Technorati is kinda finicky, so unless it gets better, some service still has a chance to grab my attention.
It's sort of unfortunate, actually. Live.com/Start.com really impressed me but the bottom line is Firefox is not really supported, so you lost my attention. On the other hand, Google Homepage just added Canadian support (http://www.google.ca/ig) and does a satisfactory job.
I just can't keep track of everything or go around migrating to the next new thing. Once you miss your chance to get my attention, it'll be hard to grab it again.
The RSS Aggregator on my BlackBerry adds an even more interesting twist: I can filter out interesting things by text during my commute to and from work (I ride the city bus).
NYT: MICROSOFT has emerged as the lead in the talks surrounding the potential sale of a stake in AMERICAN ONLINE...
Dear god, wtf is this idiocy...it's about letting people use the friggin' thing in the best way possible FOR THEM.
You make it work in as many browsers as possible, because that's what's best for ALL your customers. Not just the ones you think count the most, but all of them. If the reason something doesn't work is because of a bug in a particular browser, then you state that openly and honestly. You fail gracefully, because that's the way you would want software *you* use to fail.
A blank page is not "gracefully". Not even close. That's ridiculous. The deadline thing is is a non-excuse. Every project has deadlines. If MS wanted to impress, then there should have been a message saying "Firefox support will be delivered on X date, Safari support will be delivered within Y days of this specific bug, {bug}, being fixed in WebKit"
Instead, standard MS..."oh, we'll get to that real soon, trust us." Sorry Robert, but MS has to remember they squandered any and all trust years ago. If it's not available in code, it's bullshit. Maybe in 5-10 years of not bullshitting people, MS can get back that trust they crapped away in the 90s and early part of this century. You guys did that to yourselves, and you all know how to fix it. If you want to do it is up to you. But crap like this ain't the way to do it.
I notice, for instance, Google Earth only works on Windows. Why?
Or, that Skype came out for Windows first, why?
Or that Safari only is a Mac thing. Why?
Having an application run on only one platform is one thing but a website is a whole other story.
Well actually Webkit is based upon KHTML & KJS (the meat behing Konqueror in KDE) and WebKit is currently being used by Nokia, so technically Safari isn't just a Mac thing.
Yeah, it should be judged on the first patch. Nah. I meant the first Service Pack. Oops, not yet. It'll be in the next version, for sure. Ah, it looks like we'll have to take it out and...
Software, whether its on the web, on the desktop or somewhere in between is judged the second it reaches the end-user. Don't like it? Then you're in the wrong business.
That's odd. Google doesn't make that distinction with its offering. So, Google supports everyone at launch and Microsoft can't? Or, worse, won't?
"Or, that Skype came out for Windows first, why?"
"Or that Safari only is a Mac thing. Why?"
All three are desktop apps designed specifically for their respective operating systems. Web tools and software are supposed to be browser- and platform-independent. Microsoft seems to have forgotten this a decade ago or so.
Hate to break it to you, but the Web is a bit more than a Windows extension. I'm still waiting for you guys to understand that. Or should I only be able to read your blog, Scoble, with IE6 on Windows XP? Look at your viewership numbers, then remove everyone that isn't using IE.
This is a good point and one that Microsoft should take to heart. When your competitors all ship supporting all browsers and you don't. You look stupid and imcompentent. At least to other developers. To customers too once they hear about it. "Is it hard to support other browsers because Microsoft stuff always requires me to use IE". "Well, Google manages to make their stuff work for everyone." If all your competitors are launching, even beta stuff, cross-browser. Can you afford not to? I guess you can if you've got 30billion in the bank and 90% marketshare. But you have to hope that lasts forever then.
> When your competitors all ship supporting all browsers and you don’t. You look stupid and imcompentent. At least to other developers. To customers too once they hear about it. “Is it hard to support other browsers because Microsoft stuff always requires me to use IE”. “Well, Google manages to make their stuff work for everyone.
This is a far better way of making the point. If Microsoft cared about it, they would have shipped it. I've shipped software before and I can tell you that we ALWAYS ship the important features.
So far, the Live initiative is a big ol' bucket of vaporware, combined with technology, products and service that were already available or announced quite some time ago, and are just being repackaged.
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archiv...
first impressions are the most important!
live.com sucked from the start then people won't go back to it.
now if you kept it a secret, finished it, and a full product launch like you should have had in 1Q06 then it would have really been a disruption!
Stefan is telling it like it is though. Lack of x-browser support has such a detrimental effect nowadays. And teamed with Microsofts previously mypoic view on browser support it appears doubly bad.
MS has to show it values x-browser support to gain those influentials (and anyone else who happens to not use IE). It is not going to achieve this by releasing initially IE-only products.
>> "Sorry, but IE is more important than Firefox is. Firefox is more important than Safari is. Safari is more important than Opera is."
Is this based on market share or on ownership of the product? What if IE was not the top dog? Would that mean MS would code for the other product first? I guess Google is lucky in this respect as it has no real browser allegiances.
Chris: Charlene Li doesn't agree with you. http://blogs.forrester.com/charleneli/2005/11/m...
As for Live itself, YAWN!
BTW, live.com (and its previous iteration, start.com) looks like an alpha of a product a 5-man startup would release, not mighty Microsoft.
Finally, in regards to web apps support for *standards* is a priority. Until then, no use releasing it. Coincidentially, I had no problems with start.com in Firefox or Camino before live.com was announced. Now they're both broken. Good work.
So she was "sick" the week before launch. ALREADY a week has passed... and all she can say is "very very soon" - or like you, "a few more days.
In my mind that adds up to two weeks late. At least.
Look, I hope she is feeling better now. I also hope Firefox support comes very soon. And I do believe it was always planned too. BUT....
It should have been done before launch. There is no excuse for the timing. Yes, I've worked under deadlines - like most all your readers. In fact, I am right now.
You know what? My deadline was moved back by 5 weeks - because OUR NUMBER ONE PRIORITY is to deliver. Not just some "demo", not just something that works on "some things".
That was a disasterous demo - and anything in the way of explanation is just lame. Worse yet, tack on "very soon"? Jeez. Bill Clinton always came off like he thought he could pull the wool over our eyes ("I didn't inhale"). You too?
Forget about "attention" or "disruption" or whatever new hot term you feel you need.... instead, how about these two - two which Microsoft is TOTALLY failing on:
Deliverables. Credibility.
As well, stop obfuscating.
Google Earth, Skype and Safari are all applications. Not web sites, applications. Again, your audience is not that dumb. Using Safari as an example is extra - special silly, because the engines underneath it are open source. Hell, if MS wanted, they could supply patches to that code that would help Safari work better with !live.com.
You can obfuscate and justify all you like, but right now, live.com and the rest of its ilk are IE and Windows only and shall remain so forever, until the precise instant you can use them in other browsers and other platforms.
You should learn from FolderShare. THey said, "The Mac client will be available by the end of this weekend." Lo, at 6:25 am central, there it is. FolderShare has, because of that promise and keeping it, more credibility than the entire Windows side of MS's house.
When you obfuscate and justify instead of dealing in a simple and straightforward fashion, you show us that our mistrust of MS is still warranted. I cannot believe that this is what MS wants from its customers. Not even Ballmer and Gates can be THAT stupid.
a few kep points:
- live.com is meant for our users not just influentials, we have a 25% firefox userbase that is why it's important to us.
- live.com is a beta (outlined in red in our logo)
- we will be shipping improvements continuously much like we were with start.com
Having said that: Start.com and now Live.com are two of the best RSS readers I have used to date. Scott Issacs and team deserve KUDOS for such a great product. If they sucked, you "Influencials" wouldn't even care if it supported Firefox.
A promise to support Firefox "very soon" is fine with me. I can't use Firefox at work anyhow.
What I saw when I clicked on the link and refreshed 3 times.
"This space is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later."
(sigh) Scalability is key.
Sure enough, it does say beta when I go to live.com in Firefox. My mistake. When i go to live.com in safari all I get is the Windows Live logo and a search field. Nowhere does it say beta, nowhere does it say please be patient. That's all I got. That's why I assumed it wasn't beta. I could have done better homework though.
A quality web product that is theoretically for any web user does not launch without cross-browser support. I'm sorry, but this is cold hard fact.
The ADVANTAGE of web services/applications is that they CAN be cross-platorm very easily.
However, cross-platform is by no means a requirement, Mistaking an advantage for a requirement is a mistake, and one that could cost an unreasonable amount of money.
You never HAVE to do anything in business. Everything is about trade offs. In this case, not shipping Firefox support carried the trade-off of a fair amount of negative publicity, and dismissal by a large number of people, etc.
That doesn't mean it was the wrong decision. The other decisions the team made may have been (and probably were) far more important.
Firefox support is certainly important to me, because (potentially, at least until IE7 is released) I'm using Firefox. But I'm not making the mistake of dismissing Live.com or what it stands for simply because of a less-than-perfect beta launch.
I'd prefer to have transparency, "warts and all", then a closed-in, lock-down model that releases "shock and awe" products once a while. That's not useful to me, because it's far more difficult to evaulate the future usefulness and applicability of the product to me.
I don't mean to troll, but I'll happily tell anybody directly that shipping a web product that doesn't work on all major browsers is a mistake. I'll gladly tell them that if they "can't" do it, they have project management problems and/or incompetant programmers. I've done it several times before, on a personal site scale, small business scale, university scale, and worldwide multibillion dollar corporation scale. Don't even pretend it can't be done.
I'm no "influential" in this world, nor have I "disrupted" anything, but I am a web developer. I know my own turf and live.com's launch was far less than impressive.
Seems to me they're doing much the same thing, and cross platform too...even on Safari...hmm
She apologized for not getting Firefox support done. She told me (...) she got sick the week before launch so simply didn’t get it done.
It’s another reminder to me that software isn’t written by machines, it’s written by people, and when deadlines hit sometimes you can’t get it all done and have to prioritize what’s most important to get done.
If that's your conclusion, you're badly mistaken. How about this as a conclusion?
"Next time I have a "disruptive" thought like that, maybe I should make a couple of calls to find out *how come* Firefox isn't being supported *before* posting your rant."
MS
This is at least the second time it's happened since he got burned by "Post first, fact check whenever" himself, and he said he'd learned that being right was more important than being first. Even if it's a teammate.
Evidently, he passed the test, and brain-dumped that bit of knowledge.
Well, good job on killing the Internet. I mean, the web was built on a protocol that didn't have a bias to a particular piece of software or platform. The web is supposed to be a universal entity, not a tiny little republic of a few.
I'd rather the Web sticks to its roots. If Web 2.0 means fragmentation and a mirroring of desktop headaches, count me out.
Rather than grumble at the team who built it, maybe it's more the managers who deserve it, for setting unreasonable deadlines (if you're having to work 18hrs a day, it's not reasonable) and deciding to go ahead with a launch for a product that didn't actually work.
Especially when the early adoptors are going to be the more technical crowd, who are much more likely to be using a non-IE browser.
You say the 'blogosphere' is great for calling you out things Robert, well here they've done it(in a general sense, not talking about you personally), and I hope you don't try and deny it deserved it.
Building trust with people who have become disenchanted with MS is hardly helped by preventing them from using non-MS products.
have you checked netvibes.Com ? We support ie and firefox from day one.
The "we don't design for one browser argument" is specious at best when faced with the simple fact that in this case, yes, you did design for one browser.
It is OK to be late with licensing payments or negotiations with Microsoft if you've been working 18 hour days and someone got sick?
dude...MS has over SIXTY THOUSAND EMPLOYEES, and one person being sick hoses a product launch like this?
let's hope the Vista security guy/gal doesn't get dumped anytime soon
http://thomashawk.com/2005/11/windows-live-now-...
http://www.w3junkies.com/toocool/
It doesn't display if I use IE.