On Wednesday, Brady Forrest announced that MSN had launched a new UI for MSN search.
He also mentioned that they’ve made a lot of improvements to their algorithm lately.
I’m not going to spend any time talking about the algo comments because there are already plenty of people handling that.
Instead, I thought I’d restrict my comments to just the UI.
This morning, I went to MSN Search to check on a few things. When I loaded the page, this is was the search box looked like in Firefox:
Then I loaded it up in IE and got this:
Notice the difference?
In Firefox the "new and improved" searchbox isn’t even visible. And their was no "Onfocus" JS to give me a blinking cursor in the area I’m supposed to type my query. As a user, I would put a clearly defined search box at the top of my list when it comes to a search UI. And I know that many people on the MSN team actually use Firefox, so how is it they would think it’s ok to release a UI like that?
Firefox might not be big percentage of the total browsers that visit MSN, but it is a huge percentage of the browsers being used by the people on the web that write about search. When you are a company that is constantly trying to overcome the "Evil Empire" stigma, I would think you would be smart enough to understand that the little things like true cross-browser compatibility are important.
Now, instead of spending my time objectively evaluating the new MSN SERPS, I’m having flashbacks of all the arrogant "You can’t view this page unless you use Internet Explorer" meesages I’ve received over the past few years.
Comments
7 Responses to “ msn-ff.jpg ”
Got something to say?
Ok, ill bitch about the results.
http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=user+interface&FORM=QBRE3
Check out the title of result number 2. Oh, the irony.
I really doubt that it’s a mistake. MS knows enough about usability. I think they actually meant to do it deliberately.
Very interesting.. A part of their tactic against FireFox?
Make it seem like it does not support latest changes, not updated
and old?
It looks as though the new UI appears properly in FireFox now. I don’t even know what the big deal about the new UI is. The changes are very minimal and not very newsworthy, in my opinion. I think the new “steely gray” color just looks washed out… not very exciting.
I have no problems using MSN Search with Firefox. For me it looks like in the IE screenshot.
The searchbox is not visible in your Firefox because you have disabled javascript
I’ve been using Firefox on my Mac, and I get the same version you get in IE. In fact, I follow MSN Search closely, and I’ve never seen the version you’re seing in Firefox. It makes me wonder if it’s just a Windows Firefox issue.
Regarding their SERPs, I too have seen significant improvements. Although it’s hard for me to admit it, I’m starting to really like MSN Search over Google since they’ve improved their SERPs and also their interface.
Hey greg-
I just loaded those pages in firefox v1.5.0.1 (my normal browser, the browser i made the original post in) and i don’t see what you are describing.
what version are you running?
brady