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| How not using IE put me out of touch and cost me dearly |
| By Thom Holwerda on 2012-07-13 23:47:27 |
| "It's never good to scare away your customers. It's even worse if you don't realize you're doing it. That was me. Like most folks in the developer community, it's been years since I last used Internet Explorer as my daily browser. Oh sure, we all keep copies around for web development work, but Firefox, Chrome, and Safari now rule the web roost. Unfortunately, that was not the case with the Blurity userbase." Wise lesson from Jeff Keacher. |
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| Comment by ssokolow |
| By ssokolow on 2012-07-14 01:21:23 |
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That sort of thing is why, on sites with money involved, I try to borrow a Windows machine to interaction-test every link at least once per version of IE using IETester. (Or the better VirtualPC VHDs Microsoft offers, if the owner is OK with it) If/when I get the non-POSIX compatibility on my non-web projects mature enough to release Windows binaries, I'll probably either find a way to bypass those warnings (eg. checking if a Zipped EXE passes through) or only offer source for projects written in languages like Python or put up a big notice saying that it costs money I don't have to shut up IE's safety warnings. (Let naive users assume Microsoft is running some kind of protection racket for all I care. I only sell my time, not products of it which can be duplicated at no cost and were probably written for my own personal use anyway) Edited 2012-07-14 01:25 UTC |
 - Score: 3 |
| Think about the children |
| By jburnett on 2012-07-14 03:30:50 |
| My first child will be here very soon. After reading this, I know I'm going to train her with IE and not those other browsers. I want her to be fearless with her computer, and all the scary false positives with IE will be great training ground for recklessly ignoring pointless, panic inducing signage. |
| - Score: 7 |
| Safari Sucks |
| By sherriffwoody on 2012-07-14 06:28:36 |
| I can't believe you rate Safari. Its terribly slow and its UI is a pain to use. Whats with hiding the minimize, maximise and close buttons in circles 2 pixels across. Everybody i know with a Mac deprecate it to the background and load Chrome or some other browser and do nothing but complain about how slow Safari is. |
| - Score: 1 |
| RE: Think about the children |
| By WorknMan on 2012-07-14 08:23:42 |
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> I want her to be fearless with her computer, and all the scary false positives with IE will be great training ground for recklessly ignoring pointless, panic inducing signage. LOL, I would say those pointless, panic inducing dialogs might be a lawsuit waiting to happen. If I were a developer releasing commercial software, and then found out IE was flagging my software as possibly being harmful, thereby causing users to abandon the installation and probably costing me money, I would be pretty pissed. I mean, this could not even really be considered as a false positive. |
| - Score: 5 |
| It's his own fault... not a wise lesson... |
| By george.n on 2012-07-14 09:26:59 |
| When you have an important aspect on your site that plays directly with your bottom line - you regularly have to check and test the delivery method to ensure it works on every update (your product, your software, your browser, your site code etc.) - not months later. It has nothing to do with lack of using one browser over another. |
| - Score: 3 |
| RE: So, |
| By WereCatf on 2012-07-14 12:39:35 |
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> Why would you develop a product for some browser that you prefer while the customers uses something else? Did you even read the thing? His application has nothing to do with browser, it is a local executable. The only issue here is that IE thinks the installer is malicious, something the developer had to work around. His application itself works just fine and since the other browsers do not use the hair-brained SmartScreen-filter IE uses he didn't know of the issue. > Seems way out line, not professional and no need to say more about that (well, I would if you were employed by me). If I were employed by you I'd quite likely be really desperate about finding a better job if you can't even grasp such an easy article as the one here. |
| - Score: 8 |
| RE[2]: Think about the children |
| By WereCatf on 2012-07-14 12:42:09 |
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> LOL, I would say those pointless, panic inducing dialogs might be a lawsuit waiting to happen. The scary thing is how easy it is to get rid of those, just sign your executable! O_o What's to stop malware authors and similar from signing their executables and thus avoiding SmartScreen? Heck, how many times has it already happened? |
| - Score: 7 |
| RE[3]: Think about the children |
| By Neolander on 2012-07-14 12:58:03 |
| I've had for some time this feeling that software signing really only benefits the signing companies who make people pay for the privilege. The failures of Comodo and Diginotar goes to show what centralized signing authorities are actually worth, but I'm sure that Microsoft must make tons of money by having people pay for the privilege of disabling scary warnings... |
| - Score: 7 |
| RE[2]: So, |
| By JAlexoid on 2012-07-14 19:52:55 |
| His target market is non-technical Windows users. His issue isn't the dumb SmartScreen(fooled by an SSL?), but rather not knowing his target market. |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE[3]: Think about the children |
| By tanzam75 on 2012-07-14 23:33:46 |
|
A measure need not be technically foolproof to be useful. From a game theory standpoint, the certificate requirement will disproportionately affect malware authors. Once a certificate is blacklisted, all other malware signed with the certificate will also get blocked. Thus, malware authors only have a limited time window in which to reuse a certificate before it becomes invalid. They essentially have to buy a new certificate every few malware strain released. Contrast this to the present situation, in which they can release as many variants as they want, for free. Even when one of the strains is detected, the antivirus signature may not block the other strains. In contrast, non-malware software publishers only need to buy one certificate for all their software -- every release, every hotfix. |
| - Score: 3 |
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