vsync - Thanks for the feedback; We have made massive improvements to the developer tools we ship with IE. Please take a minute to download & install the latest Platform Preview from here - http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/ - and give it a whirl. If you hit the F12 key, you should see the developer tools show up, and you will be able to see the tons of improvements we have made since IE8.
If you have any suggestions or comments, please reply back. There are many open channels of communication, e.g. the IEBlog, Connect, etc. but as an FYI, I will also be looking at responses in here, within news.yc
Ravi, even though Microsoft browsers make my life as a web developer a misery and I hate your employer's tactics with a passion, I appreciate you putting your head on the block here in a humble and courteous manner.
Now all your team has to do is to ship a great IE9.
We are doing all we can; no, I'm serious - this isn't a cookie cutter, "Here's $nice_boilerplate_response, now go away" thing. We are severely limited by law (both US and international) about shoving updates down people's throats when they don't want them. We are limited by law about what we can call a "Security Update", and what we cannot ... We have absolutely no control on what IT Admins decide for their corporation's intranet as well ... etc.
While it would be awesome to silently push down IE9 onto everyone, I unfortunately doubt that it is going to happen (I'm not a lawyer ...)
I'm no lawyer either, but can't you change IE9's EULA? In Google Analytics I never see a great range of Firefox and Chrome versions - they seem to update fine. 80 - 90% are on the latest version.
People who use Firefox and Chrome care about having a good browser. People who use IE are content to use what came default with their computer and might not even care about running automatic updates.
What? I'm serious--you can't compare Firefox and Chrome users to IE users on how many of them keep their browsers up to date, because FF and Chrome users by definition are people who take an active role in downloading and installing web browsers. It's a selection bias, not a slam against IE or IE users.
Chrome automagically updates itself all the time without any end-user intervention at all. IMHO, that's the surest way to keep everyone current. The problem is that corporate IT shops would never go for that because they have too many brittle 3rd party applications that could break.
Google's Chrome is currently a fringe browser and one that was never the subject of antitrust lawsuits. There's an unfortunate disparity between the two situations; understandable, but still a pain in the ass for webdevs.
See also: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2010/04/22/ie9-developer-...
If you have any suggestions or comments, please reply back. There are many open channels of communication, e.g. the IEBlog, Connect, etc. but as an FYI, I will also be looking at responses in here, within news.yc