FYI: Creating circular references is a perfectly OK thing to do.

[David Mark]

I am not interested.

Odd for someone trying to horn in on the iPad market. Whatever.

I am only interested in driving home the point that
you have yet to refute.

You have no *relevant* point. Please drive home now.

 

[Alan Gutierrez]

Odd for someone trying to horn in on the iPad market. Whatever.

You are referencing yourself. Why should I seek out more of you when
I've got you right here, ignoring a salient point? Task at hand.

You have no *relevant* point. Please drive home now.

I also say the point is relevant, and you have yet to refute that. You
can't refute the argument so you keep misdirecting the argument. You
actually have an interesting habit of removing the part that you're
supposed to refute, and then picking up on a word, "seems" or "iPad" and
setting up your straw men around that.

So, I invite you to refute my point that platform is a choice, therefore
is is just as logical to choose the platform of the future instead of
the platform of the past, and then I invite you to refute the relevance
of that point to the discussion, otherwise, if you refuse to accept
reason, then please find some other tactful way to concede.

 

[David Mark]

You are referencing yourself.

Talking about writing Web sites/apps that work as well on the iPhone/
iPad as they do on the desktop. If you choose to ignore that, then go
ahead and "target" the iPad, but don't say I didn't warn you.

Why should I seek out more of you when
I've got you right here, ignoring a salient point? Task at hand.

There's no task at hand. The relevant part of this discussion is long
over.

I also say the point is relevant, and you have yet to refute that.

Refute that your point is relevant?

You
can't refute the argument so you keep misdirecting the argument.

I'm not arguing with you at all. I've long-since informed you that
I'm uninterested in this irrelevant offshoot.

You
actually have an interesting habit of removing the part that you're
supposed to refute, and then picking up on a word, "seems" or "iPad" and
setting up your straw men around that.

No, I rarely snip anything, much to the chagrin of some regulars
here. I did in this case as I had no interest in the your continuing
(and seemingly unending) attempts to drive home a point that is
irrelvant to the discussion.

So, I invite you to refute my point that platform is a choice, therefore
is is just as logical to choose the platform of the future instead of
the platform of the past,

That's easy enough. You don't need to choose at all. You could have
saved some time by reading the post I cited.

and then I invite you to refute the relevance
of that point to the discussion,

Richard has already explained that to you two or three times.

otherwise, if you refuse to accept
reason, then please find some other tactful way to concede.

And I concede nothing and don't have to give you a reason.

 

[Alan Gutierrez]

Refute that your point is relevant?


I'm not arguing with you at all. I've long-since informed you that
I'm uninterested in this irrelevant offshoot.

I have no evidence that the point is irrelevant. You're waving you
hands, but you are not being reasonable. It is now, in my experience, a
place you retreat to when you cannot offer reason, to simply declare the
point irrelevant, or say that someone else made the point for you.

I can only assume that you can't make a point on your own.

No, I rarely snip anything, much to the chagrin of some regulars
here. I did in this case as I had no interest in the your continuing
(and seemingly unending) attempts to drive home a point that is
irrelvant to the discussion.


That's easy enough. You don't need to choose at all. You could have
saved some time by reading the post I cited.

Compromise is inherent in software. More platforms means more money.
Conversations with you are a luxury I afford myself. I see no profit in
them, time or money, other that perhaps to get you open your mind to new
ideas.

 

[David Mark]

I have no evidence that the point is irrelevant. You're waving you
hands, but you are not being reasonable. It is now, in my experience, a
place you retreat to when you cannot offer reason, to simply declare the
point irrelevant, or say that someone else made the point for you.

I can only assume that you can't make a point on your own.

Making assumptions about me is a slippery slope.

Compromise is inherent in software. More platforms means more money.

So narrowing your choices means less money.

Conversations with you are a luxury I afford myself.

Well, if you are ever feeling the pinch, you might want to try out our
utilitarian Jorge line.

I see no profit in
them, time or money, other that perhaps to get you open your mind to new
ideas.

What are you my therapist now?

 

[Alan Gutierrez]

Making assumptions about me is a slippery slope.


So narrowing your choices means less money.

Yes. Exactly. Except by money, I mean costs. Should have made that
clear. I believe your starting to see my point. Is there hope that you
might see the reasoning, yet?

Well, if you are ever feeling the pinch, you might want to try out our
utilitarian Jorge line.

What are you my therapist now?

I'm having a go at reasoning with you. Again you've done nothing to
address any sort of point. I'm sure that if you could be right, you
would be right, but you can't be right, so you just do this thing you
do. In any case, compromise is inherent in software. More platforms
means more costs. Valid choice is to narrow platform support to favor
the platforms of the future. Another valid choice might be to support
the platforms of the past, but I choose not to. You can choose to
support all platforms, as well. Choices, choices, choices. All valid.

 

[David Mark]

Yes. Exactly. Except by money, I mean costs. Should have made that
clear. I believe your starting to see my point.

Not at all. I thought you were referring to the money you hope to
make.

Is there hope that you
might see the reasoning, yet?

Again, you should really read that post I cited. It describes how I
can retrofit any existing site to work in narrow and animated native-
like fashion in any of those devices, without the desktop user even
realizing it. Of course, the exceptions are very bad sites that use
tables for layout, huge bloated and/or browser sniffing scripts,
Flash, etc. Those would require actual work.

It doesn't cost any additional time if you do it right. Though if you
don't know how to do it right (and can't be bothered to learn), I
guess you are screwed (like those Flash-y, Ajax-y, magazine-layout-
like sites that have been the rage for years).

I'm having a go at reasoning with you.

You said you wanted to open my mind. Thanks, but I think you have the
wrong number. Please hang it up.

 

[Scott Sauyet]

[ ... ] Jorge was arguing much further that taking
advantage of this and writing scripts that would obviously fail in IE
would be an effective technique to either move people away from IE or
convince MS to fix its browser.  That argument is much less clear.
Most of the people who've tried that, I imagine, have found themselves
fairly disappointed in the results; unemployment is rarely pleasant.

Moving away from an end of life platform and toward contemporary
platforms is a valid strategy. Moving off of vulnerable and unsupported
platforms toward contemporary platforms is a valid strategy. Dwindling
support for a platform expedites the drain. Certainly, Microsoft must be
feeling pressure to catch up to Safari and Chrome, which are backed by
serious competitors.

I doubt Microsoft is overly worried about better browsers stealing its
market share. They've never found a way to make the browser earn
money for them. They're probably better off worrying about Google
Docs and Linux and the dominance of the iPhone, issues which cut into
their bottom line. The point has been made repeatedly in this thread
that there are many corporate environments in which some version of IE
is the only allowed browser. There are still a number, I believe on
IE6! That simply means that an app that doesn't work in IE is simply
not going to be used in these environments.

That is changing, albeit slowly. Firefox has definitely made inroads
in corporate environments, and I imagine Chrome will as well. I
recently completed an assignment for ESPN modifying an in-house
Firefox-only app! But the reason it was FF-only was that the initial
developers weren't competent enough to make it work cross-browser.
Fixing the issues that caused that were never part of my task,
although they were not severe. So this does happen, even in large
corporations (ESPN is owned by Disney.) But it's not a major factor
as far as I can tell. And I doubt that Ballmer is worried by people
like Jorge.

collector as an issue they do not want accommodate, I can see how it
will reduce the cost and complexity of their offering, and their
platform will only grow as time goes on.

Yes, but they have to be willing to forgo a large portion of potential
users right off the bat. Even if they are targeting, say, the iPad,
should they make the decision up front to make it more difficult to
later port the application to a wider environment? Usually, I
contend, the answer should be no.

Otherwise, they are going to have a legacy user base, and it is hard to
lose customers that you've begun to support. There will be plenty of
employment for people who skate to where the puck will be.

You seem to be misunderstanding. The issue is not writing in a way
that will only work in IE; it's writing in a way that will *also*
support IE. Others in this thread have rightly argued that circular
references with host objects is a bad idea regardless of IE's
particular issues. But the main point is that there are techniques
almost as easy to use that don't cause problems in what is still the
most widely-used browser. Why not use them?

 

[Richard Cornford]

On every project I make the business decisions.

So you have no external clients? Because if you have external clients
then the business decisions that relate to browser software design are
their responsibility (as it is their business).

I make the business decision to take on a project. If the project
is burdened by arbitrary requirements, I'll pass on the project.

That is a completely different sort of business decision from the
decision to create something that 'targets the iPad'. Yours is in
internal decision, and it is entirely your own business if you chose
to walk away from proposed projects. But where, for example, a project
is to create something that sells widgets to punters the impact on the
success of the outcome at achieving its purpose is very much the
business of owner (funder) of that project, not the developers working
on it. If the design is going preclude some percentage of customers
'up front' that will impact on the owner's business, and the decision
to do that is then the owner's to make (hopefully with some (informed)
input/advice from the developers).

You seem to bring it back to your choice of platform

Haven't I made the point that in the context in which I work the
choice of platform is effectively made by client's IT department (or
rather was made by that department at some point in the past).

and your business

It isn't my business. I am an employee.

and your personal preferences.

My personal preferences have very little impact on what I do beyond
deciding the architectural questions and some of the coding style in
the client-side code of the web applications that I work on.

The fact remains that Jeorge is correct in his argument that,
if you choose not to support browsers that do not provide a
proper garbage collector, then these issues of circular
references do not matter.

Correct, but only trivially so. It would also be true that if you
abandoned browser scripting entirely then these issues of circular
references no longer matter. Obvious, but not worth saying.

The relevant question is what consequences will follow if you set
about exclusively creating browser software that will be problematic
in IE. And the answer is that in today's market if you are 'targeting'
iPads then it won't make any difference to anyone, but if you are
selling (software to business or products to customers) or advertising/
promoting (yourself, or raising revenue through) then there will be at
lest some negative consequence, ranging to the extreme where some
projects/businesses will be rendered non-viable.

Obviously. This also makes my point. If they are supporting
a platform that I do not support, then we both go back into
the market to find a better pairing.

But having to go back to the market represents a failure to sell, and
the handing over of potential business to others.

You conceede the point here. You admit that I am right,
that Jeorge is right. So the discussion can end here. You
can specialize in maintaining the environments of the past,
I can specialize in the creating the environments of the
future.

Either would be crazy because the money is in the market of the
present.

Propaganda aside, the "environments of the future" is a risky game. I
have been at this long enough to see a precession of future
predictions. So far reality has not tended to deliver on any of them.
Eight years ago there were plenty of people buying the idea that the
future of the Internet would be IE only, and so we did not need to
bother with any of this 'cross-browser' stuff. And there were even
people proposing that if nobody bothered with this 'cross-browser'
stuff then the future of web would be IE only (and everything would be
easier).

Jeorge's grand scheme is to build applications that are not
burdened by the weight of a 10 year legacy.

That rather assumes that there is 'weight' to do the burdening. It has
been pointed out that it is not actually that difficult to cope with
IE's circular references issues, including coping by adopting a
practice of never creating circular references (and so never provoking
any consequences of doing so).

It rules out a lot of shops, but not all of them, and if there
is a market large enough to pay his bills now,

My employers would have to be pretty certain that there was such a
market if they were going to gamble a multi-million dollar global
business on it. To date, one client has enquired about using Chrome,
one about Safari, none about Firefox (a little surprisingly) and all
the rest (actual and potential) are IE only.

it will only get larger as time goes on.

While the market for browser scripts that also accommodate IE will not
get any smaller. So, you can go along with Jorge's grand scheme, and
in 4 or 5 years, if things do go to plan, you will be back to
competing on a level playing field.

Richard.

 

[Ry Nohryb]

(...) And I doubt that Ballmer is worried by people
like Jorge.

It's hard to tell what worries him the most when he's not on cocaine.
Is it the shrinking Office market ? Their catastrophic failure in the
mobile OS market ? Apple? The ~ null penetration in web servers ?
Linux? The plummeting market share of IE ? The Chromes, Safaris,
Firefoxes and Operas out there? The Zune's failure? The iTunes music
and app store? That nobody uses Bing ? Google? Is it Microsoft's total
incompetence what worries him the most? Or his own stupidity? Who
knows...

But yes, certainly he shouldn't be worried by the people who thinks
like you, but I'm not so sure about the people who thinks like Jorge.

(...) Others in this thread have rightly argued that circular
references with host objects is a bad idea regardless of IE's
particular issues. (...)

Is that a saying ? Why is it a bad idea? Because they (well, it's been
only Asen) have said so but have given no proof nor reason for it to
be so, except that IE leaks. Because it isn't bad per se. CRs aren't
neither good nor bad. It's just that the word has spread that CRs leak
memory, which is false. IEs are what are a bad idea, not the CRs.

But the main point is that there are techniques
almost as easy to use that don't cause problems in what is still the
most widely-used browser.  Why not use them?

Because there's no need. Because there are much more interesting
things to code and think about than workarounds for Microsoft IEs'
bugs.

And because we should not circumscribe the web to the least common
denominator (for cross browserness) when the least common denominator
is a fraction of what it would be if it were not for IE.

 

[Ry Nohryb]

(...) and since the scheme relies
on everyone going along with it, it must then fail.

The soldiers knew well -first hand- what was going on. Civilians knew
it too because they were being told by their parents/brothers/sons/
husbands soldiers, but mostly, (66 millions of people!) thought/
pretended/believed there was not much that they could do about it.
1939-1945.

History lesson: no matter what, only the right thing to do is the
right thing to do.

 

[Scott Sauyet]

Is that a saying ? Why is it a bad idea? Because they (well, it's been
only Asen) have said so but have given no proof nor reason for it to
be so, except that IE leaks. Because it isn't bad per se. CRs aren't
neither good nor bad. It's just that the word has spread that CRs leak
memory, which is false. IEs are what are a bad idea, not the CRs.

Perhaps it wasn't well argued earlier, and I don't have time to check,
but it's a simple corollary of the fact that there are few standards
that apply to host objects. They are allowed to be implemented
however they want. There is no standard I know of that MS is ignoring
by its separate GC for host objects, so even if you manage to single-
handedly chase IE out of the market, the next great browser might have
similar problems.

 

[Ry Nohryb]

Perhaps it wasn't well argued earlier, and I don't have time to check,
but it's a simple corollary of the fact that there are few standards
that apply to host objects.

ISTM that a GC should release asap the memory used by any object that
is no longer reachable, and all browsers except IE manage to do it
right, and I don't see any connection between this and the number of
standards that apply to host objects. The only connection I see is
with the quality of engineering of the software: defective and non
working: Microsoft's IEs, ok/working: everybody else's.

They are allowed to be implemented
however they want.  There is no standard I know of that MS is ignoring
by its separate GC for host objects, so even if you manage to single-
handedly chase IE out of the market, the next great browser might have
similar problems.

You point being that somebody else might as well deliver another
browser as broken and badly engineered as Microsoft's Internet
Explorer? I'd find it hard to believe...

I think that M$ could do much better if they wanted, but they've just
not wanted for more than 10 years, and we've been suffering it for
long enough. Or not?

 

[Ry Nohryb]

It's hard to tell what worries [Steve Ballmer] the most when he's not
on cocaine. [...]
The ~ null penetration in web servers ?

That's not even close to reality:http://news.netcraft.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/wpid-overallc.png

~ 20% is a ridiculous server marketshare for Microsoft. They try hard
to increase it, but they fail again and again. Nobody sane prefers an
IIS over a Linux server.

Are you sure?http://gs.statcounter.com/#os-na-monthly-201001-201007

I was thinking about Linux's share in the server market.

Are you sure?http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-na-monthly-201001-201007

Yes I am. IEs had more ~ 90% market share only 5 years ago... what is
it now?

It's true that MS are losing their monopoly in many of the areas you
stated, but they're not doing nearly as badly as you think. Wishful
thinking, perhaps?

No. M$ is the biggest zeppelin in the sky, but it's slowly leaking
hidrogen, they've got to manage to fix that or sooner or later...
Recently Apple's market value surpassed Microsoft's. Can you tell me a
single Microsoft bussiness that's not going downwards ? Office ?
Window mobile? IIS ? Zune? Bing? Tablets? what? Yes, they've said that
sales of W7 are going well. We'll have to trust it. But still,
overall... don't you see that everything else isn't ?

Circular references aren't bad per se. In certain data structures,
they're even required. It's true that they present a problem for
reference counting garbage collectors, but there are strategies for
working around that (sweeping/tracing). IE, with its dependance on
external COM objects, has a lot more trouble breaking these reference
cycles. There have been some improvements in IE7 (and patched versions
of IE6, IIRC), but the leaks are still a lot more pronounced in IE than
in other browsers. I wonder if they've finally managed to tackle this
problem in IE9.

It's going to be very embarrassing if they don't.

In the meantime, we can either avoid creating circular references where
 possible, or break them ourselves - e.g. by nulling variables or
properties, or by calling faux destructor methods when a problematic
object is no longer required.

Yes, all of you've been doing it for years. Aren't you tired of it?

If you can afford to ignore IE's memory issues, you're leading a charmed
life. Many of us have to deal with this and other IE-related problems in
our jobs every day. I can't just tell my clients to switch the whole
company over to a different browser, just so that some little script of
mine doesn't cause memory leaks. They'd probably find it more economical
to switch to a different JS developer instead.

Yes, I understand that any customer is good, even those browsing with
IE :-(

I sympathize with your position, I really do, but the fact of the matter
is that most people in this business can't afford to ignore IE. All we
can do is create awareness of the problems, and create enough bad
publicity for MS to force them to do something about it. It looks like
they're finally starting to get their act together with IE9, but it's
still too soon to tell. And we'll still have to live with the older IE
versions for quite some time.

I hope not for too long.

That said, there are situations where it's possible to wean people and
even smaller companies away from IE6. One strategy that I've employed
for this purpose is to calculate the price for an intranet project as
usual, and then offer a significant discount if they agree to ditch IE6
in favor of a more standards compliant browser. The discount doesn't
cost me anything, because I'm saving a lot of time in development, and
now the company has a financial incentive to finally upgrade their browsers.

Very good. +1