Was out with Dana and Wim the other night and we talked a bit about getting bugs fixed. I was saying that I never got the “feel” I could get a bug (in my opinion) fixed in IE. It was suggested that I talk to the IE Team about it. My point was that MS doesn’t give users (or rather, me) the feel that the user has the power to get bugs fixed.
However, if the IE Team is reading this, what would it take to make it so that “http://” or “https://” isn’t needed when putting in a non-standard port in the web browser. IE: I can’t type in “localhost:8080” in the location bar in IE. “localhost” works, but “localhost:8080” turns into “local:8080”. This works fine in mozilla and other browsers. Of course, even if it is fixed I’m sure it’ll be out in the next version of IE, which is due out sometime in 2006-2009 depending on who you talk to š
End result I have gotten a couple of bugs fixed in Mozilla and some other open source projects. However, the sucky part of this is that sometimes you have to wait years before things are even responded to. Well, maybe not years, but this bug was only answered 7 months after it was posted asking for more info (I missed the email I guess and never responded) and then another 2 months later it was closed unresolved (my fault for not responding).
Still, it’s a different mindset, you don’t feel like you have to have thousands of dollars or millions invested to get bugs fixed.