Re: Moderately improved map of Microsoft tying evidence

[Dave Sieber <dsieber@terminal-impact.com>]

  David E. Y. Sarna wrote:
  > 
  > 1. What exactly is wrong with Microsoft relying on portions of IE in
  > building Developer Studio?
  
  That's why I posted the message as it was originally written: although
  the installation messages claim that only portions are needed (they call
  them "components"), it performs a complete installation of IE without
  obtaining permission. I already have Netscape Navigator installed on my
  machine -- I don't want another browser, especially IE, and most
  especially when I was misled into thinking that only "portions" were
  needed for Developer Studio. Personally, I find this objectionable
  because it was a covert way of installing IE on my computer. IAC, there
  appears to be no *legitimate* reason that Developer Studio requires a
  complete installation of IE. Do you know of one?
  
  > 2. Yes, the new Microsoft help tools are based on html. RoboHelp (Blue
  > Sky Software) has tools for creating this kind of help very easily, or
  > converting existing help files.
  
  First, for the benefit of the other readers who may not be familiar with
  them, they are not standard HTML, they require ActiveX and IE (3 or 4),
  and work only under Win 95/NT. A standard HTML browser can not read
  them. Aside from all that, yes they are "based on HTML" <g>. I don't
  have a problem with Microsoft creating a Windows-only help system for
  their Windows-only programming environment, but lying about the IE
  "components" is a different matter. Adding insult to injury is the fact
  that the new help system performs more poorly than its predecessor,
  making the rush-job to move it all to "HTML" even more dubious, but I
  suppose there's no law against that.
  
  > 3. IE4 reads the new help files perfectly. The price is right (free).
  > What us the  problem, exactly?
  
  I didn't say it read them imperfectly, just very slowly, and that they
  were very badly formatted. As you recall, there were many complaints
  about the new help system when DevStudio shipped, based on its
  performance and the sloppy formatting.
  
  Regarding the "price" of IE4, we all know why MS is giving it away free
  and the effect they wish to create against Netscape. This is old hat.
  
  --
  Dave Sieber
  dsieber@terminal-impact.com
  http://www.terminal-impact.com