Comments on: Microsoft.com is updated

By: Brian

Brian — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 13:44:01 +0000

What? No “Beta” next to their logo. I thought that was a standard for Web 2.0 sites! They may have a clean, updated site, but the usability is horrible.

“OK…let’s place the main navigation on the right like bloggers and in a box that looks like an ad. This should draw all the cool kids attention.” Come on!! I’ll admit….it took me awhile before I found it since I automatically block out advert columns. Sometimes blazing a new trail gets you burned.

By: gram

gram — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 14:19:35 +0000

well, what i can say… it’s buggy :( try to open popup in FF and scroll down, you’ll see where shadow div ends. I can’t believe they have such dumb dhtml programmers

By: Andi K

Andi K — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 07:59:46 +0000

@ Adnan: Better working than in IE 6!

By: DigitaLink

DigitaLink — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 15:12:40 +0000

Oh come on now … if the page validated, it wouldn’t work in their own browser! ;)

Personally, I don’t give a rats butt about Microsoft’s homepage. They could go offline entirely and I’d never notice.

By: wroxbox

wroxbox — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 12:34:21 +0000

Not bad.

But 112 warnings by w3c validator, no errors.

Mainly about & -> & no widths with images and lots of empty spans

By: Adnan Siddiqi

Adnan Siddiqi — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 12:28:04 +0000

Intresting thing is that it works on FireFox :-)

By: JosÃ© Jeria

JosÃ© Jeria — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 23:14:16 +0000

About you guys pointing out it doesn’t validate. So what? Who gives a F**K? Since when are websites judged based on if they validate or not?

Google, Yahoo, Ajaxian, Wikipedia, YouTube etc all don’t validate. And nobody cares. They are still good websites.

Ah yeah, Duncan Beaver, you pointing out that microsoft.com still doesn’t valite, your own homepage doesn’t validate….

By: Brenda

Brenda — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 03:46:50 +0000

appears to work in opera – - I’m very suprised – - though for all i know half the content is missing.

By: Trevor

Trevor — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 23:53:34 +0000

well it looks better than the apple homepageâ€¦

Well, it looks better than the tabs at the top of the Apple site. That shit is years old and hideous. But the rest of Apple’s site is generally very clean and attractive, design-wise, in my opinion.

By: Andi K

Andi K — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 18:10:39 +0000

The first thing that I see when I visit the page with IE6 is a JS error and the design is not correct – the same problem on msn.com. This is ridiculous, they don’t support their own browsers. They should add a “get firefox” button. Probably IE7 supports the site correctly, but it’s an IE and not Firefox. Anyway, Opera is supported partially.
The left hand menu could be made better. It’s better to click and not hover an item to see further information.

Fazit: They still don’t support their own products and still don’t know how to mark up and design in a standard compliant way.

By: Animal

Animal — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 15:09:51 +0000

They have the size of their “modality mask” wrong when the “About Microsoft” divwindow is up. It’s created to the depth of the viewport, not the depth of the document. Scroll up and things become clickable. It looks weird.

By: mihd

mihd — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 14:45:14 +0000

well it looks better than the apple homepage…

By: smrimell

smrimell — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 14:16:14 +0000

First impressions from a design and usability perspective, this isn’t bad at all. I particularly like the way the main body content changes on rolling over the left hand links. My first impressions are often wide of the mark but its a fair 7 out of 10 on first view. Validation isn’t the be all and end all, its an ideal not an imperative. I’m pretty fussy about validating my own pages, but only because I’m anal! I don’t expect it from Microsoft.

By: Vincent

Vincent — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 13:55:07 +0000

It’s amazing how Microsoft can get thier works to a new level of incompetence. I just can’t understand why they don’t create a nice and valid web site. Beauty and validaty are not incompatible, beauty mean valid and valid mean beauty. They still don’t understand that.

By: Corporal Max Sterling

Corporal Max Sterling — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 10:17:34 +0000

not bad, visually… but it lags like hell on my computer for some reason, while moo.fx, scriptaculous, etc do not lag at all. also, like someone else noted, only the front page sports their “new, customer-requested navigation” whereas all the rest of the kazillion pages on their site have the old left-nav.

dont wanna fall in that MS bashing category, but honestly i think they should focus more on making their products better and not so much on how cool their homepage looks, imo

By: Alex

Alex — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 06:44:02 +0000

It looks okay – they just copied the greybox technique and made three “views” for it.

Creativity: 2
Implementation: 8

By: Shawn

Shawn — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 05:49:00 +0000

sry, I must bring this up…notice how that’s the only page that actually complies to standards (everything else doesn’t display right in firefox)

By: Shawn

Shawn — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 05:46:16 +0000

no way….a dHTML page from MS that actually works in firefox!
****UNBELIEVABLE*****

By: Will Sahatdjian

Will Sahatdjian — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 05:13:51 +0000

Hmm something new from Microsoft…who would have thought everyone would immediately begin bashing?

By: Dougal

Dougal — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 01:37:43 +0000

I like it, very slick. and works well in firefox unlike some of there newer web apps … ie hotmail live.