Steve Jenson's blog

Lessons from the Browser Wars

Lessons from the Browser Wars

I'm going to try and check this out tomorrow. This guy was the PM for IE's 1 through 5. I work with another guy involved in IE, too.

Update: This talk was good, he talked about scaling processes to different sizes and kinds of groups and the radical change the IE team saw throughout his time involved with it. He also explained why DHTML came from Microsoft and took Netscape by surprise: (paraphrasing) "Microsoft knows almost better than anyone how to build forms-based applications and DHTML was a natural extension of that knowledge". I never thought of it that way before.

I also like his discussion about Second Wave effects and how being the most innovative is not usually the way to make the best product, which reminds me of Richard Gabriel's essay "Money through Innovation Reconsidered" (from Patterns of Software).

Anyway, I think I'll be reading Scott's book.

# — 11 May, 2005