[rralian]

Trust isn't necessarily about grudges or emotions. Microsoft has had a long history of being very web-developer un-friendly; providing terrible tools for debugging, making it very difficult to test different browser versions, not implementing features that developers asked for because users (who wouldn't know about them) weren't asking for them, turning old browser versions into mandatorily legacy software (abandoned on old operating systems... like windows 2000, XP, etc.), not doing more to encourage people to upgrade, and just building a bad browser.

Mozilla, google, apple, and opera, have shown that it doesn't need to be this way. They have put in the effort to earn the trust of developers. Microsoft has not. Microsoft has shown a pattern of not listening to or caring about the web developer community. They seem to have not viewed their browser as a product in itself, but rather a tool to help sell their operating systems. All other concerns are secondary. That means web developers (or let's be honest, even users) have not been top of mind in the strategy that has traditionally been applied to Internet Explorer... corporate strategy has. That's fine, it's their prerogative to do so. They've had the market position to use IE as that kind of tool. Other companies playing the underdog have instead had to build their browsers and manage their strategy to provide the best possible product in order to win market share. I TRUST that they understand it is in their interest to do so.

Is Microsoft starting to play catch-up? Yes, and that's great... I hope they continue to do so. But they have not EARNED my trust that they have my interests as a web developer (or even a user) as their top priority. IE9 is a good effort, but it just hasn't been out for very long. I need to see a longer history of improvement and earnestly creating the best product and listening to developers. I believe their best interests are now served by building the best possible product... I just need to see more track record before I TRUST that they understand this.