Microsoft Live Shopping Launches - But No Firefox

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1. David Beach
   

   April 28th, 2006 at 11:08 am

   Doesn’t seem to support Safari either. In fact I get a “does not support firefox” error message when i load it in safari…

   lame

2. -gary
   

   April 28th, 2006 at 11:18 am

   Same for Opera. I guess everything that isn’t IE must be Firefox.

3. Calvin
   

   April 28th, 2006 at 11:35 am

   Calvin’s Online Spending
   BETA

   I’m sorry. I do not yet support Microsoft Live Shopping.

   I’m working to correct this as soon as possible, but don’t hold your breath

4. Jesse
   

   April 28th, 2006 at 11:54 am

   You have got to be kidding me. What kind of genius decided to alienate 12 percent of the potential user base? (probably higher)

5. John Snow
   

   April 28th, 2006 at 11:54 am

   Pathetic but this is probabably something that microsoft planned to do a long time ago.. I’m just Glad that Google has started to support Firefox openly via their Home Page.

6. Saul Weiner
   

   April 28th, 2006 at 11:54 am

   This is true for almost all MSFT live launches. Live Mail is still this way.

7. Lydon
   

   April 28th, 2006 at 11:55 am

   “Most bloggers and journalists use a Mac and/or Firefox and this audience was just completely alienated from Live Shopping.”

   I’m not so sure about that…

8. Kurt
   

   April 28th, 2006 at 11:57 am

   They just don’t care, do they?

9. Michael Arrington
   

   April 28th, 2006 at 11:57 am

   Lydon, I actually have no support for that statement other than personal observation. It would be a very interesting to know precisely what the breakdown is, though.

   About half of the readers of this blog are on Firefox, by the way.

10. Bill Minton
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 12:02 pm

    Yeah, they’re gonna miss all 30 of you. *rolleyes*

    Wanna know what most people do when a site they visit doesn’t support the bottom 8% of the browser market they’re a part of? They pull up IE and use it for that site.

    Think about it, you’re wanting them to code for the competition. It may happen, it may not. Either way, I wouldn’t be overly surprised.

    And either way, if I can save real $$$ there, I sure won’t negate to do so because they don’t support Firefox or Opera. Principles are nice, but try paying your house payment with them.

11. Kurt
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 12:03 pm

    Did they just fix it? It works for me now.

12. Michael Arrington
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 12:05 pm

    Bill, interesting position. You’re right, I’ll be firing up my PC and trying this out later, but I do not agree that most people will go to that kind of effort.

    I was so pleased with the IE7 2 beta launch earlier this week, and Microsoft’s recent efforts in general to embrace customers. This is a letdown.

13. [GEEKS ARE SEXY] Tech. News
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 12:05 pm

    Michael: Most of your readers probably come from Digg right? I experienced the “Digg Effect” 5 times on my blog, and the percentage of users using Firefox was around 70%. I don’t think this is a good indication of what the rest of the web population are using. Digg users are “power users” after all, and most of them know the value of using an alternative browser.

    Cheers!

    Kiltak
    [Geeks Are Sexy] Tech. News

14. Michael Arrington
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 12:09 pm

    Hi Kiltak, I think you are right about Digg users being Firefox friendly, although I’ve seen this from the start with TechCrunch. In fact, I was also at 70% Firefox in the first few months of the blog. I think blog readers are cutting edge, and cutting edge people tend to use firefox.

15. TheWeb20Dev
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 12:09 pm

    Microsoft’s boat is sinking.

16. Michael Arrington
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 12:09 pm

    Kurt, I am still seeing the same message. If you are getting a live shopping page via firefox, please email me a screen shot.

17. -gary
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 12:30 pm

    I could fire up IE to use their sites, but I won’t. If I can’t use a site in my everyday browsing environment, I won’t bother. Which is exactly the reason why I don’t use live.com for anything or 99% of the personal start pages out there since they refuse to work with Opera.

    The right-click “Open in Firefox” and “Open in IE” does come in handy from time to time though.

18. Kurt
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 12:34 pm

    Email sent. I just upgraded Firefox today, so I’m not sure if that has anything to do with it. Running on Linux.

19. Rodney
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 12:34 pm

    Compare this with what happens when you visit Wordpress with Flock: you get a big ol’ “Welcome Flock users”. Not quite the same, but it does show a difference in attitude. Oh, and I’d like to correct Kurt that it’s the *top* 10 percent who use Fx.

20. peter abilla
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 12:35 pm

    Microsoft Live Shopping doesn’t support Flock either.

21. [GEEKS ARE SEXY] Tech. News
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 12:37 pm

    Gary: Live.com sucks anyway, I just hate their new beta search engines, it’s slow and the interface is bloated with crap.

22. zeroize
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 12:40 pm

    On another similar note, everytime I loginto hotmail via firefox I get a “Help us stop spammers by matching the characters in the picture!” page that annoyingly makes me input the random jibberish… Never with I.E.

23. Frank Cefalu
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 12:44 pm

    ok anti micrsoft peeps cool it.There are certain reasons why IE is being used that Mozilla does not support. If you think Mozilla is very advanced fine. But I doubt this is a reason to cut out market share and to isolate services to IE. Same reason as DTD Restrictions via Mozilla & IE. Yes they are both browsers but are vastly different in their purpose.

24. Decipho
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 12:45 pm

    Why spend so much developing this and make it not work on all browsers?

25. Yuval
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 12:50 pm

    Also, like all “live” things, it’s so slow I get bored and hit the X button..

    2-3 seconds for a lousy description to popup? WTF?

26. jamesw
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 12:52 pm

    frank cefalu, i’m sure you’ll tell us what features of a 5 year old browser mozilla doesn’t support that are critical to the functioning of the site.

27. Koji
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 12:54 pm

    Funny, I tried it with IE7 Beta 2 and received the same generic:

    We’re sorry. Windows Live Shopping Beta does not yet support Firefox.

    We’re working to correct this as soon as possible.

    —

    Now that’s funny..

28. Todd
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 12:59 pm

    Huh, it doesn’t work with IE Mac either? I fired up IE Mac and got the same “Firefox not supported” message.

29. Dan
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 1:00 pm

    Who exactly are the alienating? The only people that care about this aren’t likely going to be using anything from Microsoft anyways. Face it, all the people that are complaining would have been complaining about MS over something else if not this.

    OMG!!! A M$ website only works with an M$ browser. M$$$$ Sux0rs!!1!

30. Eric
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 1:03 pm

    Works fine for me

31. InViN
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 1:11 pm

    Actually I find that MS Live concepts and technologies are not very promising after testing out most of their beta products, including live messenger(too buggy and eats up too much memory), live mail(too buggy, too big the ads, too slow the response, emails too secure to be readable, no competitive edge over gmail whose beta was not even buggy and whose features were much more attractive when it first came out), etc etc. MS still relies too much on its .NET technologies while Ajax is leading the trend.

32. rev_matt
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 1:14 pm

    I am an avid online shopper. My experience is that if you use IE to shop online, you are asking to be a victim of identity theft. So I don’t use it. I have to fire up IE for work fairly often, for internal web apps, but that’s how I pay the bills. I’m not putting my personal info at risk in order to go shopping.

33. Lars Fischer
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 1:14 pm

    Maybe we should just ignore Microsoft.

34. James
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 1:15 pm

    Well…. I use a PowerBook running Camino as my browser (as all Mac users should) and can access that “amazing” site just fine. No messages at all.

35. m
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 1:28 pm

    This whole live-stuff from microsoft is completely irrelevant, too little, too late and too restricted to their hotmail-crowd. And we all know how much these guys love ads; popups and other annoyances. IE is so old, if you don’t support firfox you don’t excist on the net for me.

36. Keith Dsouza
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 1:36 pm

    Well whats new Google does not support IE7 and microsft does not support firefox, its not only with shopping.

    Check out Mail beta its not for firefox too.

    Similalrly Google calendar like i had blogged is not for IE7 and nor is Beta toolbar 4.

    So its all reciprocal you see, atleast one should back down its been over a month now since i had bugged google guys with the iE7 toolbar bug and even after they replying affirmatively i haven’t seen no release for IE7 yet.

37. b
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 1:37 pm

    Why bother firing up Windows to check it out? Just ignore Windows Live entirely. It will go away eventually.

38. Nil
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 1:41 pm

    it reminds me of launch of .net platform. Microsoft said its going to be platform independent, and we working for it. ….it was just marketing buzz they used, .net neevr came up for non-windows. if it was for some small company in very stealth phase, i cud have believed . I suspect some trick in this…..

39. Scott
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 1:44 pm

    “The entire Mac audience has been shut out of Live Shopping.”

    Just like IE cannot be used on the iTunes music store.

    I cannot see the issue here…

40. Sean
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 1:51 pm

    Going to a Microsoft site and demanding that they support other browsers would be like Ilegally sneaking into a country and demanding citizenship. It just isn’t going to… what?… they did what?… on May 1st?… really?…

    Uhh, nevermind.

41. Segre
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 1:52 pm

    Perhaps they are not trying to attract bloggers and press who would begin by posting their “this is test” messages. What if instead they are targeting ordinary consumers (”where is my credit card”).

42. Keith Dsouza
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 2:04 pm

    Yea your right who cares about microsost all they have been doing in past two years .

    1. Copy c++ and java (90%) and create .net.
    2. Copy mac fully (made xp earlier) make vista.
    3. Copy netvibes make live.com
    4. Copy firefox (mozilla) make IE7.
    5. Trying to copy Google Gdrive and making live drive.

    So what not can we expect from them more.

43. thad judkins
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 2:14 pm

    First the new hotmail, now this. You can’t tell me that microsoft can’t hire web developers to make browser compatible sites, everyone else seems to be able to. The only explanation is the most blatant, underhanded attempt to force people into using their browser by providing content that only works with their own stuff. That, is the definition of how a monopoly acts, using market dominance to further domination of said market. Cut and dry.

    /thad

44. jamesw
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 2:16 pm

    Nil, there was/is a CRL for freebsd from microsoft.

45. Jim
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 2:21 pm

    This is hillarious and just goes to show Microsoft’s lack of commitment to web standards. Like an above poster said, I’ll be ignoring this one.

46. dugee81
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 2:28 pm

    isnt there an extension in FireFox called IEtab? i havent tried it, but its supposed to view pages like they would be in Internet Explorer. just a thought.

47. busybee
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 2:29 pm

    Seriously lame! Especially if they consider this POS site as “web 2.0″. More than half the people who have even heard of “web 2.0″ will not DREAM of using IE! So who is this “public” beta really for? Ballmer? HAHA

48. Rich
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 2:31 pm

    Should I be surprised. Microsoft has not given up trying to control the world. One of my pet peeves is web sites that only support IE and worse, the ones that requires windows and IE. Idiots.

49. Kingsley
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 2:46 pm

    Their CRM doesn’t support Firefox either.

50. David
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 4:38 pm

    I use Firefox when the mood suits me, I use IE when the mood suits me. Bottom line is this: all these services are in BETA… anyone who expects them to work in all browsers on all platforms is missing the point here… a beta release is a test release.

    To those that complain about MS copying other technologies: who doesn’t? Was Google the first search engine? Did Mac build their own OS? Hint: Mac OS X is based on Unix. All I’m saying is that if technology was never infuenced by competitors, there would never be any innovation.

    My 2 cents…

51. Chuck
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 4:43 pm

    dugee81,

    Yes, there is an IETab extension for Firefox and it works great. It would be perfect for this type of scenario, and many others.

52. Collin
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 5:06 pm

    Does it use ActiveX or something? Spoofing my HTTP user-agent didn’t fool the main page.

53. Search Engines WEB
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 5:18 pm

    It is a beauty - and a very ambitious effort.

    It really hits your PCs resources hard - but several features are quite noteworthy.

    Instantly filtering results by Popularity Price or Rating

    and getting instant thumbnails with more info about a product - by hovering over it with a cursor -

    The Resource-demanding AJAX tech does this without reloading the page

54. aspertain
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 5:24 pm

    OMG - get a life people. You hate Microsoft. Fine. We get it. Move on. What would you be satisfied with? It is only the first day - why not give them a little time? This is not like Word or something that we are going to have to wait 3 years to get a better version. I’m sure that they have plans to support Firefox, Opera and everything else. Chill out.

55. Vlad
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 5:58 pm

    I don’t think MS can afford to keep ignoring alternate browsers the way they have in the past.

56. Jason B.
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 6:17 pm

    In case no one has noticed, IE is still the majority browsing platform and as such the majority of fancy online sites first launch with IE support only, or IE and firefox only, and then actively work to include support for Apples’ browser too. It’s really not that big of a deal.

57. Robert
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 6:32 pm

    Hey Bill… You couldn’t be more incorrect. I’m not going to go out of my way to go to a shopping site, when I can just type in http://www.ebay.com or http://www.craigslist.com and get the same thing.

    Sorry.

58. Anonymous
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 7:16 pm

    There’s no question IE still holds the largest marjority of browser use. That’s not the point.

    The point is what browsers are the early adopters using? The larger population that uses IE probably do not help spread the word as much as those who don’t.

    I have no proof, just a hunch.

    And while this may not be true for MySpace but what about Google Maps? Flickr? Digg? Del.icio.us? Gmail?

    Microsoft’s lucky it can push anything and everything to Windows users…

    If this were a startup, they’d be DOA

59. Hal
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 7:27 pm

    Hello Michael:
    I am curious, what web stat program are you using? The interface looks great, it reminds me of Mint.

    Much Thanks

60. Michael Arrington
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 7:48 pm

    Hi Hal - I’ve been using measuremap. It’s slow, but very useful.

61. Tom
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 8:11 pm

    It takes people to build software, even at Microsoft. And people are a valuable and finite resource. That said, it’s too bad that Firefox and other browsers are not supported out of the gate. I wonder if the the Windows Live Shopping team would have had more people or more time, if they would have been able to support Firefox out of the gate?

    Managers of software projects set goals (features, quality, dates) for shipping stuff. Most teams do not have as many developers or testers as they could use to deliver completely on goals in all three areas. So they make compromises.

    You can hit your dates, but to get there, you either have to compromise your feature or quality goals, or (more likely) both to some degree.

    Or you can ignore dates, taking all of the time in the world to build all of the features you want to at the highest level of quality possible, but you will never ship, and you will never have a viable line of business.

    For a service like Windows Live Shopping, I’m guessing that a deep browser testing matrix is essential. You don’t want browser compatibility bugs to screw up monetary transactions. Big test matrix = big team of testers, or lots of time in test, or both.

    I imagine (but have absolutely no direct knowledge) that for this Windows Live Shopping release, at some point along the path, support for Firefox and some other browsers was cut, or at least postponed, from the “beta” milestone. Thus the result you see today.

62. Diego Barros
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 11:18 pm

    Michael: “Most bloggers and journalists use a Mac and/or Firefox and this audience was just completely alienated from Live Shopping.”

    Interesting comment. In a recent Gillmor Gang, one which I think you were a part of, someone said something along the lines of “… most of the influential thinkers at conferences, and those in the audience, use Macs” I think the comment was that about 80% of them are Mac users. Have you found this to be the case? It’d be intertesting to hear some comments from these users (including yourself) why that is?

63. Michael Arrington
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 11:26 pm

    Diego, yeah, I have seen it. Yesterday at a blogger/entrepreneur meeting with Senator Edwards, every single computer on the table was a Mac (mine included) - something like 8 of them.It’s amazing. It’s also a status symbol in silicon valley - a bit of a snotty one.

64. Stewart
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 11:38 pm

    wow the eloy have spoken, get a life geeks

65. Diego Barros
    

    April 29th, 2006 at 12:59 am

    Thanks for the reply Michael.

    Maybe instead of thinking of it as a status symbol, it just shows people who have taste and style.

66. Sugar
    

    April 29th, 2006 at 1:34 am

    Just perfect.

    There are conversations upon conversations being made every day on the subject of “the greatest target group possible” for web pages, and Microsoft shuts off almost a 11%-12%.

    For the n-th time in my life, I’m gonna wonder, what the heck were they thinking?

67. Daniel
    

    April 29th, 2006 at 4:16 am

    Wow, that’s pretty stupid not to support Firefox off the boot. If TechCrunch’s breakdowns show anything, it’s that the people most likely to rush over and give this new feature a short are likely to be using FireFox.

68. Keith
    

    April 29th, 2006 at 4:17 am

    Marvellous! For some reason, I am still not switching to Linux, is because in time to comes, Microsoft is going to start using restrict every applications to its own brand.

    However, shopping.live.com is a new subject, and therefore there are very limited products available. Hopefully one of these days, its market will expand to that of eBay.

69. ThirdStorm
    

    April 29th, 2006 at 7:06 am

    Using Firefox I got the same error:

    We’re sorry. Windows Live Shopping Beta does not yet support Firefox.

    We’re working to correct this as soon as possible.

    Then I switched my Firefox user agent to IE6, then clicked the link that said “Go to Windows Live” and Lo and Behold I am using Firefox on live.com

70. Robin Miller
    

    April 29th, 2006 at 2:29 pm

    (shrug) There are plenty of shopping sites on the Internet, and if one doesn’t want to support my Linux/FireFox combination, it’s fine with me; I just hop to another one and spend my money there.

71. Tina
    

    April 30th, 2006 at 6:12 am

    I hate that Microsoft is acting like this. It only makes me want to use IE less. They should just wake up and realise that not everybody has the same taste, and by excluding users, they’re hurting their business.

    I’m also a beta tester of Live mail, and I have yet to see an impressing thing about it because I use Firefox. The features are just like the old hotmail, only the layout has improved a little.

72. Anas Hashmi
    

    April 30th, 2006 at 6:47 am

    Now go to ExplorerDestroyer.com and link your site among their 50% ranks. you have achieved majority firefox users.

73. Tom
    

    May 1st, 2006 at 12:56 am

    http://random-m.com/images/166.....plorer.png

    doesn’t work in IE for mac too

74. darkwing duck
    

    May 1st, 2006 at 6:00 am

    If Microsoft Live Shopping does not work on other browsers. It only work on ie/msn that web page is dead to me.

75. Ian McAllister
    

    May 1st, 2006 at 10:46 am

    Firefox support was already our top-priority post-launch and you’ll see it very shortly. Your chagrin at its absence at launch is understandable and your feedback has definitely been taken to heart. Keep an eye on the official blog for details if you care to check back: http://spaces.msn.com/liveshopping

    One clarification, I’m not “the” pm for Windows Live Shopping but one member of the Shopping team actually more focused on services/technologies other than the site itself. I don’t want to hog more than my share of credit (or blame depending on your PoV)

    Thanks to those of you who have submitted feedback on other features of the site.

76. Mark
    

    May 1st, 2006 at 11:14 pm

    one can expect an MS site to have a huge majority of IE users but we are a pretty mainstream site and our visitor’s IE usage is down to 66% +- 3%. More important than the browser bashing though is the implications for standards support and accessibility. Will users of assistive technologies be able to use liveshopping? Would they want to?

77. Lukas
    

    May 3rd, 2006 at 12:32 pm

    Microsoft sucks

78. Lukass
    

    May 3rd, 2006 at 12:32 pm

    Microsoft sucks

79. Steve Tucker
    

    May 4th, 2006 at 10:14 am

    Curse Microsoft! Curse it to hell!

80. Mondo
    

    May 7th, 2006 at 7:06 am

    Doesn’t really matter. No one with a brain uses firefox, and no one with a brain will touch a shopping system run by Microshaft. No problem!

81. Mondo
    

    May 7th, 2006 at 7:07 am

    Shit, I got that the wrong way round!! I meant no one with a brain uses IE!!

    DOH!!

    I was trying to say that in only letting IE uses in MS was only allowing in retards… and then I go and mess up the comment, boy do I feel stupid now!

82. al
    

    May 13th, 2006 at 11:34 pm

    I dont understand the point in releasing the damn thing if it only supports IE, its like saying you cannot watch this program unless you have a HDTV. Come on, live/shopping team get a grip

83. 1
    

    May 21st, 2006 at 2:35 pm

    Best shopping website!
    data ebay etailsolution market

84. Adultvideo
    

    August 7th, 2006 at 10:38 pm

    I hate that Microsoft is acting like this. It only makes me want to use IE less. They should just wake up and realise that not everybody has the same taste, and by excluding users, they’re hurting their business.

    I’m also a beta tester of Live mail, and I have yet to see an impressing thing about it because I use Firefox. The features are just like the old hotmail, only the layout has improved a little.

85. vinchenzo
    

    August 19th, 2006 at 8:15 am

    Is there still a way to get a place in the online shopping market?

86. myeppliance
    

    December 8th, 2006 at 2:37 pm

    Microsoft Live is horrible
    When how and what does Microsoft think its doing changing my default search engine to Microsoft LIVE

    (try it type something in the address bar and see)

    Not only does there search show nothing close to what I see in many other search engines but it locked up the computer to the point I had to shut it down… what else were they trying to change in my system to cause such a disaster.
    Its so troubling when you see a company desperate enough to pull a stunt like this,
    Silly little antics lead nowhere but in bad review, almost as bad as yahoo,
    Cheap tricks receive cheap responses , Microsoft is losing the search engine race.

87. Karaoke Kev
    

    January 9th, 2007 at 8:41 am

    Jeez - their marketing must be seriously bad. I’ve never heard of Windows Live Shopping (Beta) until now. Maybe it didn’t get any further than the beta stage?

    Karaoke Kev
    http://youtubekaraoke.blogspot.com