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In this story in today's newspaper, I wrote about the growing angst in the Web development community over the lack of information about Internet Explorer 8, the next version of Microsoft's browser. One of the people I quoted in the story was Dave Massy, a former Internet Explorer senior program manager, who offered a level-headed take on the situation via e-mail. Here's an extended version of his message to me:

I'm sure the team is working hard on IE8 and will say something when they are ready. ... I'd agree with the IE team when they say they need to be careful about releasing details before things are at well baked on the project. Releasing details when they are still very much subject to change can set expectations very badly and backfire. ... I do however think the team is failing engage with web developers and to lay out a roadmap of where IE as a platform is headed in the future. I'm disappointed in their lack of engagement with the web developer community about IE as a web platform after the progress we made in IE7.

Here's the interview on SitePoint.com where Microsoft's Chris Wilson was asked about the situation. From the transcript:

"When we ship a new version of Internet Explorer, a whole lot of companies have to go test their software against IE, they have to go, you know, figure out what kind of content their tools should be generating, and that sort of thing. And because we do that, because there are so many people who rely on us, we have to be very, very careful to be 100% confident when we announce things like "that's exactly what we're doing," or "that's the date that we are aiming for." When we don't, we tend to get a lot of people upset with us, of course, but it's not just them being upset with us; it's actually, it can be damaging their business model if they bet on us releasing something in a given timeframe, or bet on us releasing a given feature, and we don't ship it."

There are a number of interesting reader comments on the story, including this one by reader dpk: "I'm all for browser development being glacial. Who'd want a rapidly moving target these days?"

Finally, here are some related posts by Al Billings, the other former IE team member I spoke with for the story. A former Internet Explorer test lead, Billings now works at Firefox maker Mozilla.