An apology

I’d like to apologise to those who have taken the time to contact me (either by email or Twitter) regarding IE8 bugs

A few months ago, I embarked on a work project that has ultimately left me with no time to keep on top of incoming mails, let alone bug reports from contributors. If you haven’t received a reply from me regarding your correspondence, then I could easily see how you may think I can’t be bothered to reply – rest assured, this isn’t the case at all.

I’ve had a truly great response from authors ever since I requested they write in about potential bugs they’ve found. For me to not respond to the more recent emails in an adequate time frame is completely unprofessional and I apologise profusely for this. I still have a complete archive of all emails sent to me, and I endeavour to respond appropriately to all of these in the coming month.

Some people may argue that since IE9 is now starting to be exposed publicly, that maintaining an IE8 bug list such as mine is worthless. I disagree strongly with this view. I like to think the list in it’s current form is providing developers with a much needed knowledge base that Microsoft Connect is lacking (filtering, clear UI, etc). My aim is to carry on maintaining the list into the near future, and for it to become a permanent resource to developers.

IE9, and associated bug reporting

Apart from reading the majority of IEBlog articles on IE9’s rendering capabilities, I’ve been completely out of the loop as to what IE9 has in store for developers when it’s finally released. You may be wondering, since I’m an IE MVP, why I wasn’t informed on a product group level; I don’t have an answer for you. There’s been absolutely no PGIs for Internet Explorer and the IE MVP newsgroup has been extremely quiet- so quiet in fact I’ve now removed Unison from opening at startup, and I now don’t pay attention to the newsgroups at all.

I for one was astounded after finding out that IE9 won’t be released for WIndows XP – limiting a browser version to certain platform versions is absurd on so many different levels. I do all my browser testing on my Macbook Pro and I have two VM’s installed (one for IE6/7, and one for IE8). I’ve decided to bit the bullet and purchase Windows 7 tomorrow so that I can test drive IE9 for the first time, albeit on ‘Platform Preview’.

In terms of IE9 bug testing, like with IE8, my aim is to create an initial list and would open up participation to authors that are inclined to do so. I see a far greater need to establish a prominent list of IE9 issues than with IE8, since IE9 attempts to include complete implementations of several CSS3 modules, that they haven’t embarked on before with IE8. For this reason, I can evisage there being far more bugs with IE9 than with IE8.

Coming back to outstanding IE8 bug reports from authors writing in to me, I envisage to respond appropriately to those in the next month or so, and to continue to invite authors to contribute to this ever-growing list.