janos erdelyi

i’m a huge fan of the .Net framework . i really think Microsoft did a good job with that. i don’t think they did it for us web developers though.

i’d like to go through a brief history of cases where MS has proven that web developers are the market equivalent of poop.

and don’t you think for a second that Ballmer’s famous “Developers, Developers, Developers” sweat-lodge session was talking about Web Developers. i have to break it to you – that was Application Developers.

we may as well start with the rise of Internet Explorer, and why it was both good and also very, very bad. back when the battles began – Netscape Navigator 3 was king. IE 3 was an abomination (even though i recall playing with early CSS implementation back then on IE3. trust me, it was limited). if one thing can be said about MS, it’s that it has a huge stable of talent there. the battle lines were becoming evident: the internet needed to be conquered.

and conquer they did.

IE4 was wonderful to developers. Nav4 was… well it seemed ok for a while. It still had a very large and very loyal user base, but ultimately, it was a broken browser.

i’m not going to go into great depth about the browser wars, here. suffice it to say that IE5 came out and solidified its position against the increasingly floundering Nav4. it was about this time that i started to fear some established behavior patterns on the part of Microsoft – namely, i feared a complete drop in momentum once there was no real competition.

and really, even by the time IE5 was out, there was no real competition. there was an established user base of Nav4, but no actual competition. Nav4 had issues. big ones. the type of issues that were not going to be fixed with small steps and in short bursts of time.

So MS released IE6 5–6 YEARS AGO. You see, you, as a web developer, should not have any illusion about why IE kept adding features – it wasn’t for you, the developer. it was to gain marketshare and acceptance, as well as some more systems-internal initiatives on the part of MS. i have no problem with this – so long as you understand that it’s not about being good to web dev’s.

so… as i predicted long ago, MS would get on top and then drop development.

... which they promptly did.

does anyone here remember MS declaring that there would be no IE7? does anyone else remember that as soon as Firefox usage made it to the 10% mark that large-scale IE7 development and press releases began? i do! it’s about competition, not web developers.

this alone is not enough for me to write this article. there’s more.

alrighty – back to the .Net framework. wayyyy back in the day, the web side of the .Net framework was called ‘Web Forms‘. does anyone wonder why? it’s because it was intended as a way to leverage the centralized distribution model of client-server apps which works so well with the internet. it was about making a web-based application in the style of their garden variety applications. there’s nothing wrong with this. but it’s not about web development. it’s about application development leveraging IIS.

do you wonder why you cannot use the .Net Framework 1.x version to produce XHTML-compliant sites with out-of-the-box components? do you REALLY wonder why you cannot create XHTML-compliant sites with the much newer .Net 2.0 Framework with out-of-the-box components? it’s because it’s not about you, Mr./Ms./Mrs. Web Developer.

then we get to Visual Studio 2003. seriously. for web dev? what a hassle. trying to prevent it from making virtual directories in IIS? would prefer that your site be created in the root? you know, like it might be in production? ever run into other annoying integration points with VS and IIS? personally, i got fed up with trying to make the tool work how i needed it to work. i’m the human, not the tool. i decide how i work. so i work with #develop instead.

i have heard that VS2005 is a vast improvement. but i’ve heard it from application developers. and my level of trust is low.

then comes the lack of official stand-alone Internet Explorer versions. The big offense if you ask me.

seriously? your claims about not being able to make a stand-alone are complete crap. and for us web developers who have clients, and clients we know to be predominantly IE6 users, the lack of stand-alone IE7 betas is quite unnerving. it is in the interest of my job and in the interest of my clients that my professional sites don’t turn into poop at the stroke of midnight.

so either i have to get into the install/uninstall hope game, the sacrifice-another-machine game, or the do-i-feel-like-virtual-machines-today game? i’m sure there are other games. i’m also quite sure that IT WOULD BE FAR NICER TO HAVE BOTH IE6 AND IE7 RUNNING ON MY MACHINE SO THAT I CAN TEST OUT MY SITES.

do you still think MS likes web developers? come on. some basic lip-service. even if you feel the need to tightly integrate IE7 into the OS, at least make some developer stand-alone beta. make it somehow unpalettable to the average joe. don’t let it handle updates. make it ugly (unglier? IE7 is fricken ugly). something.

i’m going to say it again though – i love the .Net Framework. i have all my custom-built controls. i don’t use VS.Net, Internet Explorer serves only as a testing tool and a Windows Update client. hooray.

so the thing i’m not sure about is: Why?

Update: just after writing my article i ran across this article which is a pretty good take on a more defined scope.