Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Email to Microsoft re Office 2000 and MSIE

Author:Dave Winer
Posted:6/10/1999; 5:34:54 AM
Topic:Email to Microsoft re Office 2000 and MSIE
Msg #:7168
Prev/Next:7167 / 7169

This is a lightly edited excerpt of an email I sent to several Microsoft people responding to Tuesday's DaveNet piece. They asked if I wanted them to answer the questions via email or if I wanted to start a discussion. Let's have the discussion, of course!

Email to Microsoft re Office 2000 and MSIE

I'm not sure it's possible to answer all the questions. Office is a huge piece of software, and along comes the Internet and screws with everything that Office does. Office 2000 is remarkable for the breadth of its embrace of the web. But in doing so, it alters the web, and that's pretty sacred turf, for me and for many other people. So you're scared, and in expressing that, you evoke my fear! This is not a good place to be.

My pitch to Microsoft, maybe not to the Office team, is to invest in the browser, independent of Office. As a developer who has made a substantial investment in MSIE, I don't like that all the good editing features came in Office. The browser is definitely a writing environment. I don't know if MS realizes this. Leaving the writing environment so barren in MSIE while building out so much in Office is a big problem for the Web. That and the disappearance of Netscape.

We're in an awkward mode now. If you want to get out of a place of fear you have to lead a little. This means improving MSIE without tying it to Word. It's pretty simple.

Dave

PS: If you doubt that the browser is a writing environment, try using Hotmail as your exclusive email interface for a week. It'll open your eyes. I think if you care about your users you'll generate a two-page feature and bug-fix list. Such improvements will allay much of the fear you hear in my piece, and would engage Microsoft in the web in a way that Microsoft knows how to engage -- feature requests and bugfixes. This is the culture, right??

PPS: The key is to embrace the *users* of the web, not just the technology of the web.

There are responses to this message:

This page was archived on 6/13/2001; 4:50:41 PM.

© Copyright 1998-2001 UserLand Software, Inc.