Microsoft Going Its Own Way On Audio/Video Specification 215
An anonymous reader writes "Several groups are currently working on specifications for plugin-free, real-time audio and video communication. The World Wide Web Consortium has one called WebRTC, rudimentary support for which is found in Chrome, Firefox, and Opera. Back in August, Microsoft announced its own specification, CU-RTC-Web, because it thought WebRTC wasn't worthwhile. W3C carried out a vote to choose between the two specs, which came out strongly in favor of WebRTC. Microsoft went ahead anyway, and it has now published a prototype for the proposed specification. 'So what's Microsoft playing at, persevering with its own spec in spite of its rejection by the WebRTC group? The company's argument is twofold. First, WebRTC simply isn't complete yet, and Microsoft believes that working on its proposal can shed light on how to solve certain problems such as handling changes in network bandwidth or keeping cellular and Wi-Fi connections open in parallel to allow easy failover from one to the other. Even if Redmond's spec isn't adopted wholesale, portions of it may still be useful. Second, the company believes that WebRTC may not be as close to real standardization as its proponents might argue.'"
Old dog (Score:2, Insightful)
And something with learning new tricks
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And something with learning new tricks
What? Microsoft is preserving an alternative format, even though there is competition, on a hypothetical, un-used format? This is not a bad thing.
It becomes a bad thing when one of these three things are true:
1: You are forced to use the lower quality format through hardware/vendor lock in
2: You are forced to use the lower quality format because of widespread adoption
or 3: When a company acquires the "rights" to the better format, and refuses to allow commercial use.
I don't see any of these things happe
Re:Old dog (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see any of these things happening at Microsoft, with this project, at this time. Sure, it may have happened in the past, but it's hardly a microsoft thing to do - all the big kids do it.
It is more a matter of history. Considering what they have done in the past, I am NOT ready to trust them. They are a pernicious monopoly that is now beginning to realize that they are threatened. They are starting to act like a cornered animal, trying to pull out many of their old monopolistic tricks out of their war chest.
Re:Old dog (Score:4, Insightful)
They are starting to act like a cornered animal, trying to pull out many of their old monopolistic tricks out of their war chest.
Or maybe they are developing what they believe is better technology in a time frame better suited to their needs. I guess you see what you want to see. Yes, they have a spotty past. If they neutered every project in fear of appearing anti-competetive, they would be dead in short order.
Re:Old dog (Score:5, Insightful)
I suppose you could be right. The odds are against it though. Microsoft is like the guy who has been married 10 times and cheated on every single bride. Now they are going to the altar again promising to be true this time. Want to bet on it?
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Get a prenump then.
I mean seriously, make them promise it will be open to all and if ever patented, an unrestricted license will be issued for commercial and private use including derivative uses (cams and other equipment) as long as it is a standard. At least for the implementation of the standard itself. Of course MS can copyright it's own products built off it.
Actually all standards should be this way so there can't be any submarine patents or anything involved.
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I mean seriously, make them promise it will be open to all and if ever patented, an unrestricted license will be issued for commercial and private use including derivative uses (cams and other equipment) as long as it is a standard.
They can't.
At heart, the difference between Microsoft's "standard" and the real one is how to support video codecs. The World Wide Web Consortium and most other stakeholders want the specification to include an open, royalty free codec. Microsoft and Apple want to be able to use any codec, including patent-encumbered ones like H264. Any standard lacking an open codec would allow vendors to restrict interoperability (eg, with free implementations whose developers can't pay the licensing fees). There are othe
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You are wrong:
1. the video codecs haven't even been decided yet for WebRTC, it could still have H.264 on the list, they were planned for the previous IETF meeting, but I guess that will now be in March
2. there are no restrictions in standards like WebRTC for applications to support additional codecs. If both parties suppot the same codec they can use that.
Re:Old dog (Score:5, Insightful)
If both parties suppot the same codec they can use that.
And if both parties cannot support the same codec, they cannot communicate. Hence the opportunity for vendors like Microsoft to Balkanise
Microsoft has stated that "a successful standard cannot be tied to individual codecs, data formats or scenarios." Instead, CU-RTC-Web will support a number of "popular media formats and codecs as well as openness to future innovation."
They want to preserve the ability to lock their customers into a proprietary "media format and codec". Same leopard. Same spots.
Re:Old dog (Score:5, Funny)
I guess you see what you want to see. Yes, they have a spotty past.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 5-10 times, and I deserve to have a gorilla throw chairs at me.
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First, Microsoft is the Newt Gingrich of software companies... wow... nice :D
Second, Why do must you call Balmer a gorilla, it insults gorillas everywhere...
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WebRTC is not a finished implementation, right?
So you are telling us that Microsoft has some good ideas to improve RTC but to do that it needs to reimplement all the protocols from scratch?
Then they are incompetent, and you should do business with more adaptable people, just in case your needs change in time.
I'm more for the malicious theory, myself. WebRTC is a standard not controlled by MS? what gain do they have by adopting it? None. What disadvantage? Their web related products become even more swappabl
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The old woman lives down the road from me has a spotty past, as well. Nine kids, none of whom shares the same father. In fact, a couple of the kids aren't even sure who their fathers are. Spotty, indeed.
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Or maybe they are developing what they believe is better technology...
LOL.
Of course they believe it's better technology. It's a Microsoft product. Whether it really is or isn't is yet to be determined. But it will be copyrighted and trademarked out the ass to better preserve corporate profits.
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I don't see any of these things happening at Microsoft, with this project, at this time. Sure, it may have happened in the past, but it's hardly a microsoft thing to do - all the big kids do it.
It is more a matter of history. Considering what they have done in the past, I am NOT ready to trust them. They are a pernicious monopoly that is now beginning to realize that they are threatened. They are starting to act like a cornered animal, trying to pull out many of their old monopolistic tricks out of their war chest.
Pfft. Who you gonna trust instead? Sony? Apple?
Pick your poison. They've all been abusive in their own special way, at once point or another.
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Pfft. Who you gonna trust instead? Sony? Apple?
Pick your poison. They've all been abusive in their own special way, at once point or another.
I just bought a made for linux laptop. On principle. I have been a mac user, since it is based on unix. But I am moving away now. The iPad walled garden creeps me out.
Oh, and about Microsoft. In 1987, NeXT introduced a unix workstation that in many ways wouldn't be terribly out of place today. It was based on BSD unix, and had some features that no operating system has even today, display Post Script for one. I only bring up NeXT as an example of the technology that was available in the mid 1980's (a
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name ONE viable alternative to Windows 95 at the time. There was none.
OS/2
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It is more a matter of history. Considering what they have done in the past, I am NOT ready to trust them.
No need to look at the past to see what Microsoft is today, present will suffice: they're creating their own walled garden with Windows 8, and the Surface RT is (and all other tablets capable of running Windows RT) have a locked bootloader, preventing the owner from running anything but Windows RT on them. As for Metro, you're going to like it... whether yo like it or not, because almost every new PC comes preinstalled with Win 8/Metro (here in Finland it's worse than in the US; because here it is indeed
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They are a pernicious monopoly that is now beginning to realize that they are threatened. They are starting to act like a cornered animal, trying to pull out many of their old monopolistic tricks out of their war chest.
Interesting this. If we consider personal computing to be revolve around of beige tower-shaped boxes and grey laptops, then yes, MS has something installed on 90%+ of devices.
If however we consider personal computing to be made up of x% "PCs" and a growing share of mobile phones and tablets where MS is a challenger, then how can we see these new formats MS wants to push as an attempt to leverage a monopoly on the desktop rather than an attempt to improve their products in a changing personal computing mark
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Re:Old dog (Score:5, Informative)
Or 4, they think they can get away with screwing everyone else and taking control of a potentially very lucrative market, like they did with:
* Internet Explorer and their custom implementations of HTML/CSS
* Their custom windows-only version of Java
* OpenXML and their subverting an entire standards body to get it ratified as a 'Standard' just so they could go after special government contracts requiring an open format, without having to give up control of the office suite space.
* Custom extensions to LDAP to hinder interoperability with Active Directory.
* Countless other things that anyone could find doing a few searches of Microsoft's history.
There's a reason Microsoft's catch phrase is "Embrace. Extend. Extinguish." and it's sad that, like an abused spouse, people keep giving Microsoft another chance because, "They will do better this time."
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Or 4, they think they can get away with screwing everyone else and taking control of a potentially very lucrative market, like they did with: * Internet Explorer and their custom implementations of HTML/CSS * Their custom windows-only version of Java * OpenXML and their subverting an entire standards body to get it ratified as a 'Standard' just so they could go after special government contracts requiring an open format, without having to give up control of the office suite space. * Custom extensions to LDAP to hinder interoperability with Active Directory. * Countless other things that anyone could find doing a few searches of Microsoft's history.
There's a reason Microsoft's catch phrase is "Embrace. Extend. Extinguish." and it's sad that, like an abused spouse, people keep giving Microsoft another chance because, "They will do better this time."
Thank you. Well said.
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Many of those things involved using another standard and not complying with it.
If Microsoft makes their own formats, that's called competition. Thankfully, IE is not ruler of the Internet any longer, and it's arguable that Windows isn't, either.
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What? Microsoft is preserving an alternative format
Is this a typo? I'm not sure, since persevering doesn't fit in the sentence. Microsoft is preserving nothing. The article is about Microsoft persevering with alternative standards.
Microsoft pushing formats is almost always a bad thing. The OOXML debacle is evidence of this - MS were pushing a shitty open format purely to compete with legitimate formats being proposed - they had no interest in it becoming a standard, they just wanted to protect Office,
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Microsoft Going Its Own Way On Audio/Video Specification
And I too am going my own way. I almost never use Microsoft products, and intend to keep it that way. Bye bye, Microsoft.
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this isn't a new trick.
creating their own standard to shoot down the competing standard is microsoft's standard technique.
How shocking (Score:2)
Are we supposed to be surprised by this?
Does anybody even care (Score:4, Funny)
Does anybody even care what Microsoft does these days? They even seem to fail at being evil, though they still try.
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Does anybody even care what Microsoft does these days? They even seem to fail at being evil, though they still try.
Yep. IE is still the most popular browser in the world. g.statcounter.com may say otherwise but others such as netappliances say 55% of everyone on the net including tablet and phone users use Internet Explorer.
Regardless you can't ignore it. If IE wont support it you can't use it PERIOD. Until IE gets below 5% marketshare no sane business will dare cut them off. IT would be like owning a restaurant and telling 1 out of 10 users to leave and go fuck themselves. You will be out of business fast.
So this is a
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IE is still the most popular browser in the world.
No it isn't, it fell off that perch years ago. Nobody uses Microsoft's browser by choice. Face it, Microsoft's sun is setting. Don't let the chair hit you on the way out.
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IE is still the most popular browser in the world.
No it isn't, it fell off that perch years ago. Nobody uses Microsoft's browser by choice. Face it, Microsoft's sun is setting. Don't let the chair hit you on the way out.
I think statistics say otherwise [arstechnica.com]. Remember, most people do not hang out on slashdot and are into browsers. Ask any webmaster here who writes internet sites that average people or businesses use? They will say 50 to 60% still use IE. It still sets the standards if you want to be paid by anyone to attract users sadly.
Remember these users are grandmas, 40 year old moms, accountants in the office with locked computers, redneck Joe Six Packs, and little kids at home whose teacher showed them that little blue e =
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Hmmm... I am a gray-haired, 50+, joe sixpack redneck, and I don't use MickeySoft at all. I prefer to have control of my purchases (including 'puters), and I support truly open standards.
Okay, I lied. Most nights, a six pack doesn't cut it for me. My native american name is "Ten Beers".
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Lots of IE users are people browsing from work, who have no choice as to what browser they can use...
I see a significant difference in browser stats between a porn site (which you would assume has very few people browsing from work) and other sites with various content. I see IE users at ~15% on the pornsite (which places it third after firefox and chrome) but somewhere between 30 and 40 on other sites.
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Sorry Bubba but I do use IE by choice. The 64bit on Win7-64 due to improved security and because the FF Devs gave out the excuse that there wasn't any 64bit plug-ins that mattered. WTF are they smoking as I want some of it. Seriously, Flash has be 64bit for 18+ months, thus their argument is bogus. Then they decided to completely stop work on the 64bit version of Firefox until we screamed load enough at them to get back to work. No, I use IE because Firefox stinks. For those area's where I need the add-on f
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Let me know how slashdot works with IE 9 on changing the comment threshold? I have to go into IE 8 compatibility mode to change it.
Slashdot being broken on some browser or another is practically normal; I don't think it can be used to gauge standards compatibility.
On the other hand, all the JS here does make for a pretty good stress test. I recall Opera dying a lot because of that, but it's really their problem to fix.
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Anyone using java to configure a cisco router is doing it wrong...
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So how does the fact that "Nobody uses Microsoft's browser by choice" changes the fact that it is the most used browser in the world?
Also I use it by choice and know many people who do too.
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The reasons are many to use IE:
1. A few uses microsofts brower since they work at microsoft and are forced too.
2. Other uses it because their company forces them
3. Some because they are forced to use them for some webb sites they use.
4. Other uses it because they don't know better.
5. Some dont really surf the web so they don't bother to download a great browser.
6. Some are masochists.
IE users fall into one or more of these six categories.
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You're being nice. 4. Others use it because they are mentally retarded.
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Does anybody even care what Microsoft does these days? They even seem to fail at being evil, though they still try.
Microsoft is akin to Dr Evil kidnapping Mitt Romney only to find out not only will the Republicans not pay the million dollars for his return but his own family won't. Trying to force a standard now is the same as trying to capture the water supply in a bucket full of holes. Apples pulls it off only because the axis of evil, iDevices/iTunes, that the world spins on. Every time Microsoft has tried to do similar things it's failed. Microsoft said software rules the world and Apple said it was hardware. In the
Business as usual for Microsoft... (Score:4, Informative)
Microsoft has followed this path from the beginning with standards: Adopt, adapt, expand and control.
Always adding something "extra" so that other software that actually follows the standard doesn't work quite right with stuff built to Microsoft's "standard" so that the stuff built to actually follow the world standard looks inferior. :(
--Tomas
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Noone really uses FAT - everyone uses VFAT and Microsoft require alla companies who uses VFAT to pay them for a license.
That way noone can do a free software version of it.
It's their way to stop free software.
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The problem is even worse with exFAT...
There are plenty of perfectly capable and open filesystems, most of which are much better than fat/exfat and some designed specifically for flash storage among other things...
And yet the world is forced to use an inferior and patent encumbered filesystem because MS refuse to support anything else.
This is pretty crazy... (Score:2)
This is pretty crazy...
Microsoft owns Skype. Skype's technology is half of the Opus codec. Opus is what WebRTC is supposed to use. So why isn't Microsoft all over this?
Re:This is pretty crazy... (Score:4, Interesting)
According to some articles I've read it is very hard to port the Skype protocol (or other protocols) to WebRTC because WebRTC is relatively high level. MS's proposal is for a lower level API that would allow different protocols to be implemented over it including Skype. They argue that higher level API would be provided through libraries.
Real Microsoft name for new spec (Score:2)
FU-RTC-Web
Maybe this is the reason (Score:3, Informative)
* Anything but FLAC and Codec2 (because FLAC doesn't compress and Codec2 is voice-only and ultra-low-bandwidth).
Re:Maybe this is the reason (Score:5, Informative)
FLAC does compress it just uses lossless compression.
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I think it comes from the fact that just about _everything_ uses compression now, by default. When was the last time you watched a video that was not compressed? I'll give you a hint... it's probably never. Image formats have used lossless compression forever, too - Windows 3.1 used Run length encoding [wikipedia.org] on bitmaps, for example. Obviously, GIFs and PNGs are lossless compressed.
There's a difference when you're using RAR/zip though. Lossy compression is pretty sub-optimal if you're compressing anything th
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By default: My network doesn't use compression and my disks don't use compression. My audio recording rig doesn't use compression. The action of the "Submit" button under this form does not use compression. Nor does a document saved in OOXML. Not does BitTorrent. Et cetera.
Oh, wait. I guess you meant "just about _everything_" as in "audio, video, or graphical media that has been prepped for efficient digital
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I watched some video that was not compressed just a few weeks ago, a Laserdisc edition of Blade Runner.
And a sampled digital signal is not "compressed"? Seems to me that 44.1kHz is "compressed" compared to 48kHz. Since there exists no sampling that doesn't have rate +1, *all* digital that is rendered from analog is "compressed" at least from my definition of compressed. Something filmed natively in digital isn't "compressed" until it's compressed.
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*ahem*
The video information on a Laserdisc is always analog. Sometimes, the audio is as well.
So I'm not really sure what you are going on about, at least in the context of what you quoted.
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Coming from you that sounds a little odd. When my file halves in size, I can't think of it as anything but compressed.
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WebRTC has Opus, the Open Source audio codec that can outperform MP3 and pretty much any audio codec*.
Hmm... I'd like to see solid evidence of this. Outperforming mp3 isn't difficult, obviously; but I had a hard time finding evidence it's been compared against anything but lower bit rate (e.g. 64kbps) AAC, for example. I'd like to see comparisons with both at 128 or higher, if this is really one codec to rule them all, so to speak, as seems to be the claim [octasic.com].
In some ways the chatter around this seems similar to what went on with WebM. Being open source carries a lot of weight with people here on Slashdot, und
Re:Maybe this is the reason (Score:5, Informative)
Bruce, Microsoft contributed the SILK codec used in Skype to the Opus project and released any related patents royalty free. I would have a hard time trusting MS if they told me the sky was blue, but they basically made the low bitrate capability of Opus legally doable.
As for those who are posting their scepticism about the opus codec's quality, the IETF standardised Opus as RFC 6716 and is making it a mandatory to implement codec for WebRTC based on it's proven performance at every applicable bitrate.
For quality comparison info:
http://opus-codec.org/comparison/ [opus-codec.org]
RFC 6716:
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716 [ietf.org]
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If you don't make the codec part of the standard, then it is no real standard... You can technically comply with it but implement a codec that noone else supports, thus being completely and utterly useless.
What you need to do is mandate codecs now, and then release a revision of the standard in the future which supports others.
It worked well for SSL with encryption ciphers, there have been numerous revisions to add support for newer ciphers such as AES.
You may also find that the protocol itself needs updati
"the company believes".... (Score:2)
the company will make sure that WebRTC may not be as close to real standardization as its proponents might argue.
There, fixed it for you.
Annoyingly, they're correct... (Score:2)
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I've been balls deep in WebRTC server-side implementation for 2 months, and oh my god THE HORROR. I'll try to keep this short.
A bunch of telephony stalwarts were brought together to come up with some standards for interoperable, extendable, browser-based real-time media communications. To achieve this aim, they've taken several dozen existing standards & RFCs, and extended / contorted / selectively ignored / creatively implemented them such that they've inherited two decades of digital telephony industr
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Surely Microsoft was involved in the WebRTC spec but then again, for 20 something years they have opposed open standards and felt doing it their own way, and usually a Windows-only way, was how they played. This
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The ability to use differing codecs is how you allow a standard set in stone to remain relevant for longer than 30 seconds. As for HTML5 video, I'm not sure what you issue is with it, but our websites use it just fine.
Do you think it was stupid of the HTML spec to allow the img tag to use more than just .bmp? I for one am glad it allows .gif, .jpg, and .png as well. Each of those have their own strengths, and we use different formats depending on which format gives us the best experience. I don't see ho
Board Meeting at MSFT HQ (Score:2, Funny)
"But, how will it work?"
"Lots of security holes. compatible with IE only, and make damn well sure that they can't remove it from the OS."
Great job, Microsoft, add another junk program that takes up our precious CPU.
hedging bets (Score:2, Insightful)
So now not only will there be separate internets (Score:3)
Multi-Media on the Web is FUCKED (Score:5, Interesting)
In the post Flash era we are taking HUGE steps back. In-browser support for Video Codecs are neither here nor there, where we quite literally have to encode to two or even three standards. But, at least we have Wowza that can stream to various standards and Codecs. Audio is no better, with Google and Apple are using the Web Audio API while Firefox is committed to the Audio Data API, which has NOTHING in common with the Webkit standard. And the built in audio player on the Android Browser? WHAT. A. FUCKING. JOKE. And of course Apple's "HTTP Live Streaming" is NOT at all suited for actual Live Streaming. The latency is terrible!
And then we have Real Time Communication, an area that Flash excelled at with and RTMP and AMF, as well as various servers such as FMS, Wowza and SmartFox capable of facilitating chat rooms, multi-player games, even MMORPGs.
Getting data and devices streaming FROM THE BROWSER just isn't there. The support is incomplete, undecided and very much in flux. We are quite literally still a few years out from a standard and usable platform across browsers. And now we have Microsoft wading in to offer what will surely be a typical Proprietary Solution only available to Microsoft Partners and Licensees.
Frankly, this rush to kill Flash has been a self-centered money grab to try to take away the video market from Adobe and HAS FUCKED the users, leaving them with a broken internet and competing standards.
The hype of HTML5 has been years coming, with Steve Jobs and legions of techies on slashdot and other sites calling for the death of Flash.
Yet here we are, years out and we don't have anywhere near what we had with Multi-Media and Real Time Communication in 2005 with Flash.
How anyone can sit here and look at the current state of affairs and not see it as a monumental clusterfuck that is HOLDING BACK the progress and innovation we were promised with HTML5 is beyond me.
Media streaming is the clusterfuck (Score:3)
"How anyone can sit here and look at the current state of affairs and not see it as a monumental clusterfuck that is HOLDING BACK the progress and innovation we were promised with HTML5 is beyond me."
If you're going to rant about taking a huge step backward, look no further than media streaming. Media streaming, where every time you want to watch the SAME video you have to download it again, wastes bandwidth, a much more precious resource than the 32GB micro-SD card you slip into your smartphone, much less
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If you don't have the bandwidth to stream, you don't have the bandwidth to instantly watch a video unless you want to proactively keep an archive of everything you could possibly want to watch. And if you do have the bandwidth, who cares? Most the effort is in laying down fat enough pipes on the last mile, sure you add a little more traffic to the aggregate at your ISP's central but really that's pretty marginal. They still have to maintain the line and all the other tools no matter how much data flows thro
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And of course Apple's "HTTP Live Streaming" is NOT at all suited for actual Live Streaming. The latency is terrible!
Huh? Unless the latency is somewhere beyond 60 seconds (which doesn't seem likely), it's fine. Otherwise you're fundamentally misunderstanding what Apple HTTP Live Streaming is for. It's aimed at broadcast live events one way (such as a TV channel), NOT real time video chat or conferencing.
Stuff like Facetime is NOT Apple HTTP Live Streaming, because again, according to TFM that's not what HTTP Live Streaming is for.
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And now we have Microsoft wading in to offer what will surely be a typical Proprietary Solution only available to Microsoft Partners and Licensees.
Did you even RTFS? It's so proprietary it was submitted [interopera...ridges.com] to W3C for consideration.
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Mozilla is actively implementing the Web Audio API, for what it's worth.
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The fact is flash sucked at all those things because:
1. It's bloated, it's slow, it's buggy as hell. It's so bad that browsers now have a plugin-wrapper to prevent it from crashing the entire browser.
2. It's closed, so it can't easily be ported to other platforms.. basically, flashterbated sites are only going to work well on windows, poorly on linux and mac, and not at all on anything else. Useless.. might as well just distribute OS specific binaries and be done with it..
I'm glad flash is dying. It's st
The REAL reason? (Score:5, Insightful)
How about the REAL reason Microsoft went their own way?
Because they want to control the plan form so that if they successfully gain traction, they can start locking everyone else out. Just like they do with everything else.
WebRTC isn't just browsers. (Score:2)
WebRTC isn't just for browsers, but ATAs [obihai.com] is well.
Plugin vs. built-in (Score:3)
Why should *any* codec at all be built in?
Make them ALL plugins. For really popular formats, just ship the plugin with the browser by default. Browsers are bloated enough as they are - trim the binary down to the minimum possible, and only load the plugins when they are needed. This also forces the browser developer to optimize the codec plugin path well enough to stream live video, instead of optimizing the builtins and leaving the plugin ones with half-baked support.
It would also allow users to remove support for formats they don't like/want/need. Apple fans could delete everything except aac, Microsofties could delete everything except their own. RMS could delete all the non-'Free' ones.
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It would also allow users to remove support for formats they don't like/want/need. Apple fans could delete everything except aac, Microsofties could delete everything except their own. RMS could delete all the non-'Free' ones.
The point of standards is to enable interoperability - precisely the thing that's missing in your "perfect world" as described, by design.
Microsoft going own way on spec? (Score:2)
You mean to say that Microsoft is not adopting an existing specification but designing it's own proprietary one? Get outta here! I don't believe it!
Like they haven't done that before. :P
CU-RTC-Web? (Score:2)
Oh come now! If you really want a standard to take hold, you'll need a much catchier name..
How about, "Plays For Sure II: This time we really mean it!*
* until some soon to be announced EOL date.
Here we go again. (Score:2)
1. Looking at VBscript and Silverlight/Moonlight, it will essentially fail - alternatives exist (Javascript, Flash) that are equally viable and more widely supported.
2. Some idiots will use MS-only tech ANYWAY, breaking support for anything but the Windows platform and alienating a substantial user base.
3. If the spec is open (looking at dot net), some open source group will produce their own version to permit interoperability with other p
MS and the battered wife syndrom (Score:2)
connection? I think so.
Re:Good luck with that MS (Score:5, Insightful)
No one use IE any more.
Sure they do. They don't have the majority numbers they used to have back in the old Netscape days, but they still have market share. Any web developer worth their salt will at least use IE for testing purposes (if you're developing websites, not testing in IE for whatever reason, then you suck as a developer). I also know several people personally who use IE because it's what they're used to, and they're not power users (they have difficulty learning unfamiliar programs on their own). Even after I've spoken to them and advocated the use of Firefox (or of late, I'd advocate Chrome), they chose to continue using IE.
I'm not saying that IE is the best browser out there (although they have made great strides in standards compliance and security since the days of IE6), but to state "no one uses IE anymore" with no facts to back it up is simply short-sighted and borderline zealous.
Re:Good luck with that MS (Score:5, Insightful)
Any web developer worth their salt will at least use IE for testing purposes
If you write to the standards you don't need to test in IE any more than any other browser.
If IE can't handle standard code, its somebody else's problem.
Re:Good luck with that MS (Score:5, Insightful)
If IE can't handle standard code, its somebody else's problem.
Spoken like a man without clients/customers...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If IE can't handle standard code, its somebody else's problem.
It is your problem when someone using IE browses your website and the site doesn't look or work well.
Who are they going to think is an idiot, you or Microsoft? After all, most other sites they browse work fine in IE...
Re: (Score:3)
Please note that I did say Write to the Standard.
MS handles the standard just as well as any other browser.
Testing is key (Score:3)
Please note that I did say Write to the Standard.
MS handles the standard just as well as any other browser.
That means nothing as to how a site works though, you can "write to standards" all day long, but it's very easy to misunderstand a standard, or to simply have bugs that only surface on one browser because THEY misunderstood standards. You still have to test even when "writing to standards".
Re:Testing is key (Score:4, Informative)
Look up the various implementations of the standards for dealing with the offline manifest file. In this particular case, Mozilla actually caches the file (which defeats the purpose of having the offline manifest triggering updates) and Chrome and IE don't. You basically have to reconfigure your server to work around Mozilla's interpretation of the standard.
It's not only the definition of the standard, but the interpretation of the standard by each browser......and then the interpretation by the developer coding to a standard.
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Ours. We only support IE 9+, any older and we'll send you Chrome Frame so we don't have have to worry about the stupidness that is IE 7/8.
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Even if you were right (and you are not) many people consider "writing to the standards" to mean "it works in Chrome and Firefox" and this is definitely not what it means.
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If you write to the standards you don't need to test in IE any more than any other browser.
Clients don't care if a site is standards-compliant, they care if their potential customers will look at their site and see a hot mess. If you can give them something attractive and standards-compliant, so much the better.
Re: (Score:2)
If you write to the standards you don't need to test in IE any more than any other browser.
Clients don't care if a site is standards-compliant, they care if their potential customers will look at their site and see a hot mess. If you can give them something attractive and standards-compliant, so much the better.
They do care if one delivers a site that isn't 100% in IE, however (or any other browser for that matter). That's why I don't get the mentality of those who actively block IE just for being IE. I remember a site a few years back that had loads of info about the 6581 SID chip, and what struck me as odd was that it actively blocked IE users. Now, at the time, that could reasonably be explained by saying "IE isn't standards compliant", but nowadays that argument doesn't hold much water with me. Even though I u
Re: (Score:2)
You've lost the mobile war, you've lost the browser war and you're going to lose the OS war soon enough.
No one use IE any more.
You don't get out much. While it doesn't have the market share it once did a lot of organizations/companies still use it as their standard browser. It also isn't all that bad these days. I use all three major browsers but tend to use Chrome more than others, but IE is not going away any time soon.
Re:obligatory xkcd (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Not IE only (Score:4, Informative)
The issue MS has with WebRTC is that they cannot easily and reliably port the Skype protocol over to WebRTC because WebRTC is relatively high level. They propose lower level API that would allow more kinds of protocols to be implemented. They argue that higher level API would come through libraries. The WebRTC proponents argue that the core use case of WebRTC is browser to browser communication and as such the API should be higher level and if you want to do browser to Skype for example you are screwed. Frankly I think they are full of shit.
Re:Not IE only (Score:4, Informative)
The WebRTC guys. Lower level API makes more sense in this case for interop with existing apps. The WebRTC guys seem to think that everything should be in the browser anyway so other software be damned.
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Why should all browsers change to communicate with Skype, instead Skype to communicate with browsers?
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Microsoft's distaste for all of the issues with SIP/SDP are one of the reasons they have largely not leveraged themselves as a VoIP vendor.
Doesn't Lync (nee Office Communicator) use SIP for VoIP?