XP was my idea: Windows Internet Explorer 9 is getting the Windows 7 treatment: Forcing simplicity on everyone

Friday, September 17, 2010

Windows Internet Explorer 9 is getting the Windows 7 treatment: Forcing simplicity on everyone

Another example of a browser dumbing down to compete with Google Chrome. In the not-so-distant future, we will have nothing but a bunch of Chrome clones around. Apple never gave that choice with Safari and I fear Firefox 4 going the same way though I haven't counted it out yet as addons are like magic. Maybe Opera will still remain powerful and full-featured. I guess no one but Opera can build a full-featured yet fast, performant browser which, with even software rendering is impressive. Just look at Opera's market share and it shows how much in minority, power users are. I fear the day when I will have to abandon Microsoft platforms for Linux if this simplifying trend in their software continues.Maybe the time has come already but there's no better alternative than Windows where users found the sweet spot between simple and advanced in the 90s and abundant choice. Every Microsoft product shipped since Windows Vista is limited in customizability or missing features found in its predecessor: Windows 7 and major parts of the GUI (such as the shell, Windows Explorer, Windows Search, taskbar, Start menu) are dumbed down as are Windows Media Player, Windows Virtual PC, Office 2007/2010, even Visual Studio 2010, Encarta, MapPoint, the Windows Live suite, Windows Phone 7 and now Internet Explorer 9. It's time to realize where this company is going.

1 comment:

Unknown said...: And what you said has come true. Firefox pretty much looks and feels like Google Chrome. Opera is now a rebranded Google Chrome! The settings pages of both browsers have been dumbed down beyond belief, Opera no longer has a content filter.

Who cares about Internet Explorer. I like how during the recent "death of XP" campaign, experts sometimes recommended not to use MSIE in order to make XP more secure. I thought that IE hating was done deal a long time ago.; November 2, 2014 at 11:18 AM

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Got Windows 8/7/Vista annoyances?

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Yes I know, it's a shame Microsoft software today requires third party fixes to complement and make it work properly. Don't tell me you have ignored the list of features removed in Windows Vista or in Windows 7. Were you foolish enough to believe from the reviews that Windows 7 was good and didn't make an objective comparison yourself? Were you foolish enough to dish out your hard earned cash and didn't miss any XP features in Windows 7? The software I listed above only fixes some of the usability issues and broken features but there are still many features Microsoft must fix themselves.

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I wrote hundreds of Wikipedia articles on Microsoft and Windows topics with over 5000+ contributions before realizing that Microsoft was cheating their users by removing features. I agree that software engineering is about tradeoffs but just deleting features people use and want is just ridiculous. It's all happening in the name of "simplifying" and "telemetry". I want Microsoft to acknowledge these issues which make Windows 7 unusable for serious work and fix them through hotfixes or service packs. Windows Vista and Windows 7 are not all bad, there are hundred different things to like about them, but being good only in part doesn't make the sum of parts better. What matters is the overall experience which is still degraded and sub-standard compared to Windows XP. Why Windows 7 is so successful is because it is sufficiently decent, so it works for the average user who just needs to get this job done and doesn't need perfection. It would be unfair to say don't use Windows 7 at all. I also do use it once in a while because it does have hundreds of nice improvements but it won't touch my main PC. Windows XP may not be as strong on security by default as Windows 7 or Vista are, but XP can be secured properly and is more usable than "simplified" later versions.

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