back to article Internet Explorer 11 BREAKS Google, Outlook Web Access

The Windows 8.1 rollout has hit more hurdles: the new version 11 of Internet Explorer that ships with the operating system does not render Google products well and is also making life difficult for users of Microsoft's own Outlook Web Access webmail product. The latter issue is well known: Microsoft popped out some advice …

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  1. pierce

    8.1, if its ever forced as opposed to optional, will be the final straw that will move me to Linux desktops full time.

    gee, does anyone know of any Adobe Lightroom replacements that worth a darn? I shoot extensively in Canon Raw format, and /need/ lightroom for its ease in managing and easily tweaking large numbers of pictures to get optimal results.

    1. SuccessCase

      I'm no Microsft fan, but I've noticed Google are increasingly acting like Microsoft used to act. It used to be that Google as a service supplier, did their best to render well on every device. But as they are starting to offer a meta-OS layer on top of other OS's, they appear to be becoming more about disintermediating the underlying OS, and recently they have started playing silly buggers with standards so only life within their ecosystem works smoothly. They used to want YouTube to work on all devices. Now they have stopped transcoding many of the videos from formats that are not supported in the browser on iOS devices, it seems this proportion has gone-up (remember transcoding can be done dynamically to and/or a cached transcoded version triggered on request). They have implemented HTML 5 video player controls even for video formats that are supported by the native player in iOS, where those controls don't work as well and won't give full screen viewing. That's Google's perogative and potentially allows a standard code base to be used across devices, except the HTML5 controls are different across devices. Just as MS have come over all standards based (at least with regard to IE) Google have started playing silly buggers with non-standard coding exceptions which they say they can't be expected to disable or maintain for marginal devices (in which they include recent versions of IE). Make no mistake, from a company with the resources of Google, this is a deliberate disengenius approach and they are happy to disadvantage Microsoft. In each case it can be argued it's their prerogative and choice, saves money, etc. My point is that they are no longer see themselves as a company that should work hard to cater for the widest number of platforms as they used to do. So begins a new wave of standard wars, and Google seem to be finding themselves absorbed by precisely the mindset they were criticising when they made their "do no evil" pledge. User choice and convenience will suffer as a result.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Well Google's plan didn't work on me. I moved to Bing as soon as I had problems with Google - it has improved a lot since the last time I used it. Better than Google in some ways...

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          because it has a pretty homepage?

          The post is required, and must contain letters.

        2. tom dial Silver badge

          I had a search yesterday and found that Bing's results were MUCH superior to Google's - until I noticed that either Microsoft or Firefox had replaced my default search engine with ask.com. Fixing that put the world back in order with Bing giving very good results but Google's slightly, but noticeably, better.

          But I will be upgrading to Windows 8.x when I replace the laptop with a new one that doesn't come with Windows 7 downgrade rights and a factory installed Windows 7. I never have understood those who fork up good money to Microsoft (or Apple) to upgrade a perfectly usable and currently maintained OS; or, for that matter, the businesses who, even if the new OS is covered by an enterprise license subscription, incur the internal expense and user pushback.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Can you please use some punctuation signs?

        I had to make an extraordinary effort to read your comment, and only the vote count made me persist until the end. And yes, you're right in what you say, but surely you could have used some commas and split things in paragraphs?

        1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

          Re: Can you please use some punctuation signs?

          He's obviously a lawyer. They don't use punctuation in case the meaning could be interpreted in different ways. Either way it is still insane jibberish to us mere mortals who can't bill $200/hour.

          1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

            Re: Can you please use some punctuation signs?

            "He's obviously a lawyer. They don't use punctuation in case the meaning could be interpreted."

            There, FTFY.

          2. Philip Lewis

            Re: Can you please use some punctuation signs?

            Strange. I read it without problem at all.

            Maybe it's because I am slightly under the inebriative effects of a very fine Italian drop?

      3. Tom 13

        @ SuccessCase

        I've noticed it too, but that has nothing to do with the M$ frackup discussed in this article. MS compatibility-mode is most assuredly NOT standards compliant. And the code renders properly in EVERY non-MS browser. Which makes your rant about You-Tube in this context a red herring. If Google breaking MS things prods MS to actually fully and properly implement standards from ISO et al. I'm not blaming Google for breaking it.

        1. Mike Dimmick

          @ Tom 13

          The problem is, or was, Google not sending standards-compliant code to IE11, when IE11 sends its latest User-Agent string. Therefore Microsoft added Google's domains to its Compatibility View list.

          This list does not necessarily do the same as clicking the Compatibility View button. The button forces IE to emulate IE 7 (which is useless, in my opinion - it should emulate IE 6). The Compatibility View list can cause a custom User-Agent string to be selected for a given site, it can turn other features on or off such as back-forward caching, it also lists domains that are known to require ActiveX controls (and therefore have to load in the desktop browser rather than the 'immersive' mode), and which GPUs and drivers are known to have problems with hardware acceleration.

          IE11's User-Agent string is deliberately very different from IE10's, in order to cause more sites to send it standard-compliant code rather than code designed for IE 6. Google's code must have been detecting it incorrectly. In the current version of the compatibility list that I just retrieved, the only feature disabled for Google's domains is the back-forward cache. It's also excluded for microsoft.com.

          1. Hans 1

            Re: @ Tom 13

            >The button forces IE to emulate IE 7 (which is useless, in my opinion - it should emulate IE 6).

            I should emulate Firefox or Chrome ... IE6/IE7/IE8/IE9/IE10/IE11 still have lousy SVG support and lack xpath support .... in one word: useless.

          2. Tom 13

            Re: @ Tom 13

            You completely ignored the bit that the compatibility list is itself, NOT standards compliant. It is a kludge of duct tape, bailing twine, and bubble gum holding together the last vestiges of a very, very bad and failed policy from MS. Other systems which ARE standards compliant did not have the problem. If I created a subset of my webpage that was optimized for IE10 (or any other version for that matter), I should set a flag for that and regardless of how new the browser is, it should render with the IE10 engine. Not that I think this is EVER a good thing to do. Web pages should always be optimized for web STANDARDS. It's why we agree to them.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: @ SuccessCase

          "Recommended options" is the 1st thing to disable when setting up Windows system and IE (obviously MS is trying to make it more difficult and forces to go through all the same hoops every time they push IE update, registry fix - as usual - resolves this). Signing up for compatibility list is like giving up once rights to big brother (yeah, cause good MS will protect you). Doesn't this also mean that IE is not standard compliant? MS, please just play by rules and just render the pages as coded (and let Google or whoever just fix them if there's really a need).

        3. Graeme5

          Re: @ SuccessCase

          All good web developers know what works properly in which browser. If Google wanted to work properly in IE it would.

      4. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Won't be long before only Chrome renders many Google sites properly.

      5. Martin Budden Silver badge
        Headmaster

        disintermediating?

        Your description ("they are starting to offer a meta-OS layer on top of other OS's") sounds like they are adding an extra middle-man, not removing one. Hence, not disintermediating, but rather intermediating.

    2. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
      Linux

      Here you go

      http://www.lightzoneproject.org/

      give it a whirl.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Here you go

        Canon RAW formats support doesn't look so good for latest cameras... 6D and 70D are missing, other are copies of other profiles. Does it support lens profiles, also? DPP and Lightroom do.

        If you're in photography and don't like Windows, a Mac is a better choice than any Linux. You're bound to a single expensive hardware provider (an excellent one, anyway), but at least you still have first tier image tools.

    3. Kobus Botes
      Linux

      @Pierce - Adobe Lightroom replacements?

      Try Darktable (http://www.darktable.org/). I use it on Mageia 3 (it is in the repository, so no hassles installing) and it works a treat.

      FWIW, I use Digikam to organise, preview and tag my photos, Darktable to convert raw to tiff and Gimp for final tweaking.

    4. gerryg
      Linux

      @pierce - lightroom options

      The well regarded digiKam (see for example this review).

      Loads of tutorials online including this introduction

    5. Real Ale is Best

      does anyone know of any Adobe Lightroom replacements that worth a darn?

      Try Corel AfterShot Pro, formerly Bibble.

    6. revdjenk

      Lightzone - lightroom replacement - free and open source

      LightZone is a free, open source digital photo editor software application. It was originally developed as commercial software by the now-defunct Light Crafts. Its main purpose is to handle the workflow when handling images in various RAW formats. It is comparable to Adobe Systems's Photoshop Lightroom. (from widipedia)

      Available for linux, osx and windows.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Lightzone - lightroom replacement - free and open source

        Ask yourself why as a commercial software it brought its company to death... and such tools should be kept updated with RAW and lens profiles. This looks far behind Lightroom in such support. Frankly, a sensible user first looks for the tools it needs, than chooses the OS/hardware to run them on - and who cares if they don't make you feel a geekie.

        Going the other way round is usually silly. It's just like buying a camera and some lenses and then see if they are good for the kind of photos you need to take - if you're clever you select the right lenses and cameras for the pictures you need to take. Oh wait... just go to any camera store and you'll see how many don't do this...

    7. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      > gee, does anyone know of any Adobe Lightroom replacements that worth a darn? I shoot extensively in Canon Raw format, and /need/ lightroom for its ease in managing and easily tweaking large numbers of pictures to get optimal results.

      You could always give Wine a go. YMMV but it's getting better every day.

      Go for the most up-to-date version you can.

    8. Listman

      Have you looked at http://rawtherapee.com/

    9. Neil Lewis

      One word. DigiKam.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Junk is

    what junk does

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Junk is

      And what an incredible piece of junk is Microsoft's testing regime if they find out an issue with Google's websites after the release? Are all Microsoft drones obliged to use Bing? What were they testing against, an old cache of Geocities?

      1. tom dial Silver badge

        Re: Junk is

        Why would you think they found out about it after release?

      2. JDX Gold badge

        Re: Junk is

        How do you know Google didn't change something after the release?

        1. Martin Budden Silver badge

          Re: Junk is

          I'm pretty sure Google didn't change something to break it *on purpose* after the release; Google wants as many people as possible to use their search.

  3. Raphael

    Add some citrix portals to the broken list

    I tried logging in to one of our clients this morning on IE11.....had to switch it to compatibility view (after I found the damn button) to get the site to render anything.

  4. Captain DaFt

    Yeesh!

    Ballmer's certainly setting a high note for his exit from MS, ain't he?

    His pet project seems to have turned from Metro to Modern, to Merde!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "from Metro to Modern, to Merde!"

      Meltdown?

      1. Philip Lewis
        Headmaster

        Re: "from Metro to Modern, to Merde!"

        "alliteration" - the repetition of a particular sound in the prominent lifts (or stressed syllables) of a series of words or phrases.

        -- wiki

  5. mafoo
    FAIL

    Standards compliant

    IE 6 is dead!

    LONG LIVE IE 11!

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Fortunately I have never used Explorer on a regular basis because it has a long-term history of not following standards. Over many years I have encountered websites which would not display properly when using other browsers and concluded that those websites had been written for Explorer specifically using MS methods. If the website creators had followed industry standards for HTML etc. then the pages would have been fine in all browsers except Explorer !

    It would be interesting to make a list of all the standards that MS has broken over the years - just take Word for example which even breaks its own by changing formats every few years !

    1. Christian Berger

      Well it used to be that only new and "fringe" technologies broke compatibility or were discontinued. Examples of that were "Windows for Pen Computing" or "Silverlight".

      The important stuff used to be backwards compatible for decades. Some companies still run DOS-based software for business critical things. It just works. Win16 and Win32 were other examples of technologies which were taken for granted.

      The point is, Microsoft gained a bad reputation for all their "new stuff" while they gained a decent reputation for keeping a base win16 or win32 program running for years. Now they throw out the old stuff with good reputation while not providing any alternative with a decent reputation.

      1. Roo

        "The point is, Microsoft gained a bad reputation for all their "new stuff" while they gained a decent reputation for keeping a base win16 or win32 program running for years."

        I think you have that backwards. MS deservedly gained a reputation for punting rubbish APIs and ABIs with Win16 & Win32, the only people who claimed they were good were people who never used anything else. ;)

        1. Christian Berger

          "I think you have that backwards. MS deservedly gained a reputation for punting rubbish APIs and ABIs with Win16 & Win32, the only people who claimed they were good were people who never used anything else. ;)"

          Absolutely, I should have put that more precisely. Win16 & Win32 weren't good, but they were stable. That's what I wanted to say.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "just take Word for example which even breaks its own by changing formats every few years "

      Word has just Doc and Docx as native formats as far as I know - and still supports saving in both. As Docx is now extensible, I doubt you will see a new format anytime soon.....

      1. plrndl
        Linux

        @07:47 GMT Anonymous Coward

        MS change their file formats regularly to force business users to upgrade to the latest version of office (so they can read new versions of old formats). Extensibility and other capabilities of the format has nothing to do with it.

        ".doc" is not a format, it's a name. The format has changed frequently.

      2. Not That Andrew
        FAIL

        I take it you haven't come tried to open many complex word documents created in Offce 2007 in Office 2010 or Office 2013, then. The results can be unpleasant and it occurs far to frequently for it just to be corrupted documents.

      3. oldcoder

        You assume the interpreter for that "new format" doesn't change, making that "new format" just another old format.

        http://xkcd.com/927/

      4. Kunari

        The .Doc underlying format change many times over the years. Pre-Office 2003, nearly every version of Office changed the formatting of .Doc files. While the file extension stayed the same, the actual format of the file was different and wasn't always able to open .doc files saved in older versions of Office.

      5. Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

        Multiple doc formats

        "Word has just Doc and Docx as native formats as far as I know - and still supports saving in both. As Docx is now extensible, I doubt you will see a new format anytime soon....."

        Yeah, that is mistaken. .doc is just whatever format Word happened to use at the moment. It had one format for Word for DOS, one for Word <6, one for Word 6, one for Word 7 and 95, then for Word 97 they switched to the 97-2003 format. Then they switched to docx.

        I'll ignore the DOS format. Word 5.1 for Mac came out in 1992, so 4 incompatible file formats in 5 years. They then managed 10 years of compatibility, although 2003 supported docx it was not default until Office 2007.

        Anyway... if Microsoft's true interest were compatibility (rather than sticking it to Google), they should simply take google's properties off their (in)compatibility list since this is breaking rendering.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Multiple doc formats

          "Anyway... if Microsoft's true interest were compatibility (rather than sticking it to Google), they should simply take google's properties off their (in)compatibility list since this is breaking rendering."

          Anyway... if Microsoft's true interest were compatibility (rather than sticking it to any competitor that encroaches on the monopoly turf),...)

          FTFY.

          1. JDX Gold badge

            Re: Multiple doc formats

            Exactly what monopoly does Internet Explorer command?

            And defending Google is laughable. The primary reason they want to drop support for older IE versions is so they can get those people to switch to Chrome.

            If anything, Google are using their near-monopoly position as an internet search site to try and strong-arm people into using their other products - their browser, their email and their social networking site.

  7. Levente Szileszky

    Truly PRICELESS...

    ..., seriously, it's just PERFECT as this crazy, unstoppable Ballmerian train wreck is running towards the station at full speed, just perfect - because it perfectly shows the level of utter incompetency under Ballmer, originally stemming from the top, now reaching so far into the roots that the company is practically delivering BROKEN PRODUCTS ALL THE TIME, ONE AFTER ANOTHER, not even being able to maintain compatibility with its own core products...

    ..priceless, indeed.

  8. Timfy67
    Facepalm

    "This post best viewed in Netscape Navigator..."

    I'm no Microsoft fanboy... I oversee an eclectic mix of machines and OS's.

    I do however feel a teensy bit sorry for the Internet Explorer devs lately. For years they got it in the neck for not following standards and now they are being crucified for following standards too closely!

    I am a satisfied user of a large swathe of Googles products, but even I have to admit that their response of "Download Chrome" to reports of bad rendering smacks a little of the "best viewed in Netscape Navigator" days and the archaic times of having to maintain two or three different browsers to use with various sites.

    No browser should pander to proprietary code, just because one or two of the big players say this is how it's going to be done...

    1. ratfox

      Re: "This post best viewed in Netscape Navigator..."

      Considering the Google products have kept working fine not only in Chrome, but also Safari, Firefox and Opera, I'd tend to think that this is a bug in IE rather than a bug in Google products.

      There was however definitely a hint of smugness in Google's way to tell Microsoft they were not allowed to create a native YouTube app for Windows devices, and that Google would not bother to write one themselves for such a small market share.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "This post best viewed in Netscape Navigator..."

        You never coded a real web page, right? Often depending on the user agent or browser detecttion the page is not the same for every browser. If Google pages have code to detect IE and act in some way, a new version which doesn't act exactly like the old one - maybe even because it is more standard compliant - may break it. The fact that it triggers "compatibility mode" may explain some of that.

        1. Timfy67
          Coat

          Re: "This post best viewed in Netscape Navigator..."

          Actually I have been running my own design company for a number of years... although I will tip my hat to my employees for knowing far more than me and keeping me in tea and biscuits! I just "encourage" them and buy *Ferrari's

          *which is in fact an 11 year old Honda with a bungee cord holding the exhaust together...

          Let me pass you your coat.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: "This post best viewed in Netscape Navigator..."

            Design company? That's explain everything. Usually the most broken pages comes from "design companies" that think a web page needs only design - not a proper UI and application coding....

    2. Tom 13

      Re: "This post best viewed in Netscape Navigator..."

      Your comment shows little respect for the past or the current situation. "This site best viewed in Netscape Navigator/Internet Explorer 3.0" are vestiges of the time before standards were agreed to. If the Google searches were breaking in Firefox and Safari you could accuse Google of breaking standards to break MS. But they are working perfectly fine there. MS Compatibility mode was a horrendous non-standards compliant way of dealing with Petabytes of badly coded websites from when MS was pushing non-standard coding for websites.

      I'm not fond of Chrome and preferentially use FF myself. But the pathway to recommending it as a download is pretty clear: Google don't have any say over FF or Safari and little input into the design and implementation decision for either piece of software. They do control Chrome so they are better positioned to enforce standards implementations on it. (Yes, the reverse is true as well, but there is no actual proof they are breaking standards.) So legal tells them to recommend Chrome which alleviates liability issues if they recommend something else.

      1. joed

        Re: "This post best viewed in Netscape Navigator..."

        I'd add that whatever Google recommends (and they try to push Chrome any way they can), they have no business in breaking their real product (search, web apps) just to piss off MS. Somehow I think that only MS would benefit from this (if only through making Google to lose some ad sales).

        1. Hans 1

          Re: "This post best viewed in Netscape Navigator..."

          IE has 13% browser market share, I am 100% sure MS is doing this to try and fend off google users to bing and MS solutions ... problem is, this time they are 5 years late ...

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why??

    Why on earth do MS keep doing this stuff again and again and again? Most of the serial fuckups of the last few years aren't even down to the type of mistakes everyone makes, but to really, really bad design decisions, which makes you wonder if they even deign to commune with the world outside Redmond before designing or unleashing the latest debacle from the comfort of their Ballmerian reality distortion envelope.

    Even asking the office cleaners for an hours overtime and a cosy chat over coffee might have saved them the embarrassment of Windows 8. The only genuine score of recent times was the Kinect, and that only because everyone else figured out what it was for.

    Gates might be unkindly remembered for predicting the interwebs as a 'fad', but Ballmer won't get that lucky by a long shot.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. Not That Andrew

      Re: Why??

      As far as I can tell, for a change this was a problem caused by Google, not MS.

      1. oldcoder

        Re: Why??

        Except for the fact that it was Microsoft that changed.

        Evidenced by the fact that if you disable the "compatibility" it works.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Why??

          Read the article again, Google's site caused IE to use compatibility mode.

          1. joed

            Re: Why??

            Or is it that IE interpreted some random factors as "use compatibility mode" signal. Compatibility mode is not a standard (does anyone outside of MS fully understand what it means and what it does?) and should not be implemented, ever.

      2. Hi Wreck

        Re: Why??

        Except that even some Microsoft sites are borked too: "and is also making life difficult for users of Microsoft's own Outlook Web Access webmail product."

    3. Kunari

      Re: Why??

      Kinect was a neat toy add-on for the XBox 360, but many aren't happy it's being forced upon them in the XBox One.

      Nor did the best game really take advantage of Kinect on the 360. However, that could be a chicken & egg thing. I still think the Kinect needs some kind of Wii-like single hand controller to really bring it to it's fullest.

    4. Philip Lewis

      Re: Why??

      "Why on earth do MS keep doing this stuff again and again and again?"

      A good working definition of insanity, is repeating the same action and expecting a different outcome.

      So the answer to your question, is that the organisation is so dysfunctional, that the components of the organisation can behave insanely without the processes in the organisation flagging the insanity of it. Make no mistake, Ballmer has created a dysfunctional organisation and it will take a new CEO of considerable charisma AND savvy to turn it around - I certainly would not want the job, as one would be on a "pound to a hiding" - a rather precarious starting point no matter what compensation was offered!

  10. xenny

    appears fixed now

    Rendering was broken until some point yesterday. I've not had the problem since then.

    Was the problem there in the ie11preview for Win7 ?

  11. Sil

    Would not be the first time google uses its monopoly power to make life miserable to consumers of competing platforms.

    Witness the YouTube app on windows phones which they sabotaged many times.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I guess MS should change it TOS so that web search engines which are not Bing can only be displayed on Windows only if they are native metro apps running in a tile. And that they can't display ads, or collect user informations. Just to play the same game Google is playing with Youtube...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Up voted for the perversity alone!

    2. Montreal Sean

      Funny, the Youtube app works fine on my Blackberry phone and tablet...

      So is it only MS that Google is shunning?

  12. AMB-York Silver badge

    Works for me

    Been fine since I patched Exchange 2013 last month.

    Still can't download SQL Express though!

  13. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Unhappy

    Google operating like Microsoft.

    Surely not.

    They said they'd "Do no evil"

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Google operating like Microsoft.

      There is definitely no love lost between Google and Microsoft… Heck, the "don't be evil" motto was itself already a jab at Microsoft. so…

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Google operating like Microsoft.

      You missed the part that says [Do no evil] "to our bank accounts"

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Google operating like Microsoft.

        Do you reaaaaly believe Google works for mankind and not to buy their own 767 selling your data? LOL!

        Listen to me, I've ten billions in a bank account in Nigeria, I need you to send me $10,000 to move them to your country... it looks to me you're the kind of people who can find this business interesting...

  14. DrXym

    Doesn't necessarily mean it's Microsoft's fault

    Google have popularized the concept of "Javascript+HTML is a problem to work around" and consequently their code is largely a mess of opaque, obfuscated, machine generated code that targets browsers by user agent. When it gets the targetting right it leads to an optimal experience. But when it gets it wrong... well it could screw things up completely and leave the browser taking the blame.

    So perhaps it's Microsoft screwing up their rendering, or perhaps it's Google making assumptions about IE that don't hold in the latest incarnation.

    1. Roo

      Re: Doesn't necessarily mean it's Microsoft's fault

      "So perhaps it's Microsoft screwing up their rendering, or perhaps it's Google making assumptions about IE that don't hold in the latest incarnation."

      ... Or perhaps Microsoft isn't testing their browsers against some of the most popular websites before releasing them. It's not a stretch to imagine some dyed in the wool project manager at MS canning tests against competitors websites.

      1. DrXym

        Re: Doesn't necessarily mean it's Microsoft's fault

        "... Or perhaps Microsoft isn't testing their browsers against some of the most popular websites before releasing them. It's not a stretch to imagine some dyed in the wool project manager at MS canning tests against competitors websites."

        Perhaps it is. But as likely it's Google's existing code making bad assumptions that don't apply to the latest version of IE and Microsoft striving for standards compliance over backwards compatibility and inadvertently breaking sites that rely on the bad behaviour.

        It's something which most likely can be resolved quite simply wherever the problem lies.

        1. Roo

          Re: Doesn't necessarily mean it's Microsoft's fault

          Not entirely sure why you got so heavily downvoted for that post Xym, seemed a perfectly reasonable guess to me.

          That said, if MS had tested what they released against some common websites they may have caught those problems in any case. Maybe they did test and just released anyway... :)

          1. DrXym

            Re: Doesn't necessarily mean it's Microsoft's fault

            I'm not sure why I was downvoted either. I guess some people just see relatively minor and resolvable technical issues on a website as evidence of some vast conspiracy by either one tech titan or another.

      2. Hi Wreck

        Re: Doesn't necessarily mean it's Microsoft's fault

        Apparently, Microsoft does indeed test their browser, at least on their own web sites. None the less, they still ship it despite "also making life difficult for users of Microsoft's own Outlook Web Access webmail product."

        Left hand, meet right hand.

    2. Mike Dimmick

      Re: Doesn't necessarily mean it's Microsoft's fault

      I believe it was a combination of the two:

      - Google's code in March didn't detect the new IE User-Agent string properly...

      - ...so Microsoft added google.com (etc) to the IE compatibility view list, telling IE11 to pretend to be IE10...

      - ...then Google changed their code last week to work properly with IE11's correct User-Agent string, but break with the IE10 string (only when the IE11-specific 'Trident/7.0' appears, and therefore doesn't break in actual IE10)...

      - ...now Microsoft have removed the CV-list entry so IE11 reports as itself

      The current 'ttl' element in the CV-list is set to 1, presumably cache for one day before trying again.

      Information on IE's User-Agent string and Compatibility View list can be found at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ieinternals/archive/2013/09/21/internet-explorer-11-user-agent-string-ua-string-sniffing-compatibility-with-gecko-webkit.aspx

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Google have way too much unaccountable power these days. The way they manipulate everything from search results to software scares the crap out of me. I use their paid services on a daily basis and their arrogance astounds me, IBM used to similar and MS was going the same way - they are in need of a counterbalance much as IBM had with Ahmdal and the other late coming clones.

    1. Tom 13

      Re: Google have way too much unaccountable power these days.

      This is true but does not mean Google broke the code base. The intention of standards is write once/run everywhere. That turning off the bit that tells IE to use the non-standards implementation makes the browser work put the fault squarely in the MS court. Even if somebody at Google went out of their way to code a page to break IE11 in compatibility mode only, which seems doubtful.

      1. Philip Lewis

        Re: Google have way too much unaccountable power these days.

        "Even if somebody at Google went out of their way to code a page to break IE11 in compatibility mode only, which seems doubtful."

        You are saying this about a company that "went out of its way" to exploit a bug in Safari without telling anyone, in order to increase their advertising revenue.

        You ascribe a "morality" to the organisation that palpably does not exist!

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Can't Microsoft do something right?

    Seems that they are tarnishing themselves with a reputation of failure all across the place. My office is being hit by the bad Windows patches breaking Exchange. They break their own compatibility with IE. They release W8.1 and have to withdraw some versions, and make a pain to download it. They are struggling to get anyone to use WP (and no, carving a 10% niche in the low cost segment is not anything close to significant, see what happened with RIM when they went cheap and everyone in the school got a BB because of BBM)

    Now, seriously, these guys need something that can be called a success, otherwise morale at MS is going to go down the drain.

    1. Philip Lewis

      Re: Can't Microsoft do something right?

      "Now, seriously, these guys need something that can be called a success, otherwise morale at MS is going to go down the drain."

      The implicit assumption being that is not already in "the drain".

      An equally plausible explanation is that this and many other really egregious fuck-ups* are the RESULT of morality being in the drain. A scenario I find considerably more plausible.

      * Check Trevor Potts tirade against the new licensing somewhere else here on the Reg. A situation that beggars belief, but might be explained by employees of MS basically not giving a fuck - at least in the big picture.

    2. Montreal Sean

      Re: Can't Microsoft do something right?

      Morale can't go down the drain, there are no drains at Microsoft.

      You don't need drains if you never produce any crap...

      </sarcasm>

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    In the meantime, the view from the Linux hill has not changed

    Maybe there should be a section on high visibility failures from major Linux distributions to compensate. Otherwise some uninformed observer may conclude that Linux users have an easier time living with their pieces of computing gear. Not so, until the latest versions, OWA was "basic view" for Linux clients since day one. Nothing lost for us.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: In the meantime, the view from the Linux hill has not changed

      Oh well, when I installed the latest Debian 7 in a VMWare VM I couldn't get proper video acceleration because the VMWare video driver package which comes with that distribution has a dependency bug - which is know since last year, and was never fixed before release, because the release was "frozen" - and to get it working I had to download the source, fix it, and compile it. It's really a pity we don't have IE11 sources so we could fix it ourselves... like we have to do in Linux....

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: In the meantime, the view from the Linux hill has not changed

        For the downvoters:

        http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=675977

        It took 15 months to close such a silly bug.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: In the meantime, the view from the Linux hill has not changed

          Guess the thumbs down are for the Debian project that doesn't fix such bugs in a timely manner.... LOL|

          BTW: I got two Dell servers with PCIe SSD disks - guess what? Debian 7 doesn't support them. Ubuntu does, Debian doesn't. I understand they may not want to support the latest applications release, but not supporting newer, powerful hardware? Looks very stupid to me.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: In the meantime, the view from the Linux hill has not changed

      >OWA was "basic view" for Linux

      My company's OWA sucks big steaminng turds on Win 7, OS X and Linux. All 3, far as I am aware.

      Take the previous/next and all the buttons. Ridiculously small so you have to zoom in just to have a chance at clicking them, if you're on a mobile.

      How difficult would it be to have an OWA which, out of the box, wonder of wonders, uses CSS to style its buttons differently when it is is on a smaller screen?

      Oh, but wait, that is Outlook 2007. Of course, my bad, CSS theming and anything dynamic probably needs a full upgrade of everything in the stack to Office 2013. Couldn't possibly adjust HTML/JS generation on an existing release. This is exactly where Open Source beats proprietary crap.

      And the contrast between me finding 3 yr old personal emails, on my free gmail, with basic query strings. 5 minutes, if it's there at all.

      Vs laboriously searching in Outlook client, or OWA, for emails more than a month old on our corporate Outlook? Slow. Huge, or empty, result sets.

      Priceless.

      Look, Linux isn't necessarily the end-all and be-all of computing, but blaming it for OWA's stupidity is about as retarded as you get.

    3. This post has been deleted by its author

  18. Jerky Jerk face

    I dont think i can remember a time when a windows explorer release did not feel like it was still in beta.

    heck, do they ever fix all issues before rolling another broken version out?!

    Im shocked to hear 11 is in 8.1

  19. Reading Your E-mail

    WOW, IE won't render a competitors search engine correctly !!!!

    On a completely unrelated note, not in the slightest way linked to the above, guess we will have to use Bing instead.

    Wasn't this from the same company that wanted standards for browsers then blew it off when it actually happened?

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ah, IE Compatibility lists

    The code that sends a list of all sites you visit to marketing and the NSA to check if you're compatible with their rules.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "leaving IE11 to make Google look bad"

    I think Google can do that to themselves often enough that they don't need MS help....

  22. Shasta McNasty

    I can't even fake the suprise

    Many, many years ago, sysadmins learned not to upgrade software with the latest version as it never worked as described and would most likely break things.

    Microsoft and Oracle to name just two, have a long history of releasing, poorly-written, untested, half-arsed code that royally buggers everything up without a fix being readily available.

    1. Philip Lewis

      Re: I can't even fake the suprise

      "DOS is not finished until Lotus 123 won't run"

      It's déjà vu all over again --Yogi Bera

  23. IGnatius T Foobar
    FAIL

    IE 11 User-Agent string

    Isn't IE 11 supposed to be the one where they claim it's so insanely standards compliant that it doesn't identify itself as IE anymore?

    Looks like more MICROSOFT FAIL to me.

    1. Mike Dimmick

      Re: IE 11 User-Agent string

      Yes, it is:

      Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko

      And Google didn't work with that, so Microsoft set up the compatibility view list so that IE sent a very-nearly IE10 string to it:

      Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 10.0; Windows NT 6.3; Trident/7.0)

      The real IE10 sends:

      Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 10.0; Windows NT 6.2; Trident/6.0)

      At some point - presumably in the last week - Google changed their code. Now the real IE11 User-Agent string works, and the real IE10 User-Agent string works. The faux-IE10 string set by the Compatibility View list, however, doesn't. (I've just tested this out with IE10 on Windows 7, using Fiddler to change the requests before sending - sendng 'Trident/7.0' causes it to break in exactly the way described.)

      So now, Microsoft have changed the Compatibility View list so that IE11 sends its native User-Agent string.

      Microsoft are warning that they intend to remove the feature in future versions:

      "Starting with IE11, document modes are deprecated and should no longer be used, except on a temporary basis. Make sure to update sites that rely on legacy features and document modes to reflect modern standards.

      "If you must target a specific document mode so that your site functions while you rework it to support modern standards and features, be aware that you're using a transitional feature, one that may not be available in future versions."

      - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ie/bg182625(v=vs.85).aspx#docmode

      1. majorursa

        Re: IE 11 User-Agent string

        As usual thick layers of management have complicated the plot. In the end there were just 2 developers, one on each side, that could have exchanged phonenumbers and synced the modifications.

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Not enough engineers, too many corporates

    What we are seeing is what happens when a company is run by sales, marketing and PR idiots, rather than engineers, programmers and experts. I am starting to become convinced that like many MPs they are so used to power and money, that they are becoming completely out of touch with the needs of 'the people'.

    How can they go from getting it right so well with Windows 7 (and Windows 2000 for that matter), to making a colossal screw up of pretty much everything since? Especially as you would think they would have learnt from the problems of DOS 4.0, Windows ME and Vista.

    The next time someone tells me "oh that Linux breaks things when it updates, complete waste of time" will be pointed to the whole Windows 8 / 8.1 / Surface / IE farce.

    No doubt however they won't take any real notice of whats going on, and instead will have more lockdown, more adverts, more Metro and more PR muppets parachuted into senior positions.

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Aha!

    That explains why on the new Win 8.1 laptop I was building a couple of weeks ago, my OWA login looks more like Exchange 2003 than the 2010 it's actually running.

  26. Gav

    You're not on the list, I'm not compatible

    Microsoft have a history of not following any standard, so they have a back catalogue of non-standard renders on previous versions of IE. So what do they have to do to fix this? They have to keep a separate "compatibility list" that allows their new browsers to work with websites designed for the peculiarities of their old browsers.

    Just consider that for a moment; In order for you to be 100% certain of IE rendering a website correctly, someone needs to decide whether or not it should be on a list that you, or Microsoft, maintain on your computer. It needs the list where every single site on the entire web should be considered.

    ...Or you take your chances and sometimes IE screws up rendering (at which point you modify the list ).

    This madness is totally of Microsoft's own doing. If their old IE versions hadn't been such prissy go-it-alone ignorers of standards, websites wouldn't have had to be designed to handle IE as a special case, and the new versions of IE wouldn't need the list.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: You're not on the list, I'm not compatible @Gav 13:36

      "This madness is totally of Microsoft's own doing. If their old IE versions hadn't been such prissy go-it-alone ignorers of standards, websites wouldn't have had to be designed to handle IE as a special case, and the new versions of IE wouldn't need the list."

      If site builders had had the balls to stick to the standards and not pander ro a special case MS might have dropped the go-it-alone approach ages ago.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: You're not on the list, I'm not compatible @Gav 13:36

        One awakens beside the tree one felled .. bad translation, but you get the idea

      2. Roo

        Re: You're not on the list, I'm not compatible @Gav 13:36

        "If site builders had had the balls to stick to the standards and not pander ro a special case MS might have dropped the go-it-alone approach ages ago."

        They tried that, unfortunately it didn't work because the people who paid them to build websites insisted that the sites they produced were compatible with IE<whatever> - because that was the most 'popular' browser in the world at the time.

        Firefox changed the ballgame beyond recognition for the better, but there are plenty of PHBs out there who insist on websites being built for IE regardless.

  27. Sheep!

    If you are using IE

    The you have already identified the problem.

  28. codeusirae

    Internet Explorer 11 BREAKS Google

    That's totally co-incidental, Microsoft would never hack their own browser to make looking at the other fellas stuff a jagged experience ..

  29. Azzy

    It sounds like a human race condition...

    Reading over that, particularly the interim fix of disabling Microsoft's compatibility list, it sounds like something like this happened:

    Microsoft released IE 11 with Win 8.1 RTM, and people started working with it for compatibility testing.

    Both google and microsoft recognized that there was an issue with IE 11 and Google properties.

    Microsoft adds google to a compatibility list that makes their pages work.

    Google fixes the problem (possibly very close to the Win8.1 rollout) so the compatibility list is no longer needed, but this makes it incompatible with IE 11 if the settings in the compat list are used.

    Microsoft releases Win 8.1 and IE 11, and is horrified to discover that Google properties don't work anymore. As is Google.

    If this is what happened, I find it hard to be angry at either of them - both of them were trying to do prevent any problems, but wound up breaking eachothers' work.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: It sounds like a human race condition...

      PICK UP THE FUCKING PHONE!

  30. JLV

    ...

    - Jim, what are you doing?

    - I'm testing Google Search in IE before our Windows 8.1 go-live, boss.

    - What? You know that it is expressly forbidden, article 422.31 sub-paragraph c to use anything but Bing here? Or anything but approved Microsoft (TM) services and technology.

    - But, boss, lots of users use Google...

    - I don't want to hear this. You know what happened to Elsa when she took an iPod to work? Wanna look for a job elsewhere? Get your act together and test MSN, Bing, Azure, Zune and Silverlight, as I asked you to last week.

    None of this dallying around on useless stuff. No one in Management is gonna care if Google breaks.

  31. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    To avoid the problem altogether...

    We need a new browser. Developed outside the United States by independents with source code available for anyone to review.

    MS and Google are US companies that give your info to the US Gov. I use DuckDuckGo.com as my search engine and am desperately looking for a browser that does not upload to the mothership.

    Only once their user base starts declining THEN they will dial back the idiocy.

    1. Dave Lawton

      Re: To avoid the problem altogether...

      Search for NetSurf

  32. Canecutter
    Meh

    The proper use of Internet Explorer

    Here is the proper way to use Internet Explorer.

    1. Use Internet Explorer to download the installer for some other browser (Firefox, Chrome, Opera, etc.)

    2. Install downloaded browser

    3. Run newly installed browser

    4. Forget you ever had IE installed on your computer (except for the patch Tuesday patches, of course)

  33. johnwerneken

    So What

    Google is a PITA especially any sort of "search" that crowd sources / page ranks screw that. Likewise image oriented versions of web mail. No loss in either case.

    But I use IE 11 and some of the goggle stuff esp maps and sometimes docs sometimes search, no such issues here.

    Rarely go to web outllok fka Hotmail but haven't seen any change there either.

    Suspect the people with these issues have i d 10 t or KITC errors

  34. Daniel Voyce

    Why the hell does it have a "Compatibility List"?

    Why cant it just follow standards?

  35. Prndll

    hhhhmmmm......haven't used IE since version 5.5

    I consider it to be the best solution to all this nonsense.

  36. Gartal

    Only Google?

    Hell I'm having trouble with El Reg rendering properly and that really pisses me off.

    Everything renders on the left. No problem with Opera just IE.

  37. Truth4u

    Microsoft shot themselves in the foot when they botched HTML as much as possible and tried to force IE6 on everyone as some kind of standard even though it deliberately showed contempt for the standards.

    It's that kind of hubris that led to the IE userbase falling off a cliff right about the time everyone switched to broadband and realised the need for a standards compliant browser.

    Now Microsoft have to rely on compatibility lists.Compounding a technical problem with a complex administrative problem ultimately means more problems not less.

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