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Video Promises IE Sucks ... Less: Does Microsoft Finally Get It?

This article is more than 10 years old.

I am that guy. The one in Microsoft's video released yesterday, which is closing in on a half-million views already. I don't go trolling the Internet but I did tell my students several times this semester: If you leave with a certainty from this class, it is that IE sucks. I am forced to use a classroom computer that is locked down to IE9. It has rendered feckless more than half of the innovative digital projects to which I want to expose students.

I know that some of the perceptions of IE are unfair. Most aren't. I've seen the multiple IE exceptions written into code (sometimes with side notes cursing the browser). It continues to be relevant because of preloads on the most-used operating system in the world. And that for years has slowed progress for both web developers and Microsoft. I mean, come on, one geek was driven to sing about his IE woes. That should never happen.

But let's set aside the past for a moment. IE10 is here and there's one simple reason I am willing to (ever so slightly) reopen my mind. Good reports don't hurt, but honestly, my lack of trust in Microsoft's browser won't be quickly repaired by good reviews. The reason is more fundamental than that.

IE's ubiquity rendered it, to use a football analogy, a browser that played well between the 20s.  It employed the best-offense-is-a-defense strategy, which is understandable when you were once an empire.

But this video is different. It's funny. That alone is a significant departure. For years, as Ashley Vance of Bloomberg Businessweek put it earlier this year, "Microsoft used to make fun of itself in a cringeworthy fashion." Why does good humor matter? One, because it acknowledges that technology is fully part of our lives now, not just the business end of them. It also shows creativity in a way that connects to a broader audience. And that portends innovation.

But way, way more importantly, Microsoft seems to get it. That's the one simple reason I am willing to listen.

Microsoft's slogan for years was, "Your potential. Our passion." But both potential and passion were exactly the problem for a browser that really meant, "Your habits. Our position." I left IE, and eventually the Microsoft OS, because it was so pointlessly mediocre in an era when useful amazement was common. I lost interest.

But at the end of the video, when the final lines read, "IE Sucks ... Less" followed by one simple word: "Progress," Microsoft is talking to me and I can't help but pay attention.