molly.com
Thursday 26 August 2004
microsoft getting smarter?
COULD MICROSOFT BE getting the hint? Check out the new home page: no more spacer gifs, from 40 tables down to 7, JavaScript sniffing gone gone gone.
A result of the multiple commentaries about Microsoft’s lack of support for standards within the IE web browser? Or criticism of their so-called “compliant” markup generated by FrontPage? Or complaints regarding the markup used on their own sites? Who knows, but something is starting to change.
While not perfect, the redesign is a bold step in the right direction. Interestingly, designer and fellow WaSP member Douglas Bowman recently showcased a rebuild of the Microsoft home page as part of an educational session. While he isn’t sure whether his highly publicized “Throwing Tables Out the Window” write-up of that process did anything to inspire the change or not, Bowman had this to say about the redesign:
Hopefully, this is just a start of what’s to come. The home page team should certainly get recognition for the progress they’ve made so far. Nice work Microsoft. Please . . . just don’t stop here.
Microsoft will continue to dodge blows from the purists, but I agree with Bowman’s thoughts and think that it’ll be the positive feedback and better performance results that’ll help get Microsoft closer to fine. I honestly have to say I didn’t think I’d see this kind of improvement for a long time to come.
Filed under: software, standards
Posted by: Molly | 04:43 | Comments (11)
Well, Microsoft usually lags behind in things. One way or the other, they had to jump on the band wagon – half-heartedly. Seems like several limbs are still hanging down, taking dust off of the street. While it truly is a step in the right direction, why not make it completely right? It’s just like Windows, old stuff from 20 years back still in the software.
While it looks like they have reduced the amount of crap in their page structure, it still looks like it’s made from crap. I don’t think that they deserve praise for spitting out less crap than before. Not until they start replacing the crap and showing at least an iota of care about web standards will they earn my respect. Coming from the world’s dominating software company, one should expect much, much more out of them.
Nice, the source looks much cleaner. It’s a pity they don’t cater to Mozilla and Opera enough (I’m talking about navigation), but it’s beta than nothing. I have a feeling they are reading Zeldamn’s or Dan Cederholm’s book and learning a little bit at a time, because the page still suffers from “classitis”.
Shall we have another round of redesigns to help ‘em out?
Today I am going to patiently sit by the window and see if I find pigs, or anything for that matter, fly by … because today is the day it will happen. :O
Microsoft catching up
Our fellow Microsoft, software company, supplier of millions of copies of Windows, Office and what not, leader in close-minded proprietary uselessness. We watched you grow and flourish, we will watch you fall, but right now we see that once again you t…
They must be congratulated on such a great effort to try and make Internet Explorer look better than Firefox. Shameful!
LOL @ #6!!!1
It looks like a polished turd if you ask me. But my opinion never matters.
hmmm