I’ll take Jeffrey Zeldman over Jakob Nielsen any day. (Case in point.) And Zeldman’s criticism today of Microsoft’s inexplicable use of the Word HTML rendering engine in Outlook 2010 despite IE8’s genuine efforts to become standards compliant is true to form. A quote worth repeating in its entirety, re-tweeting (if it weren’t over 140 characters), and having tattooed on your favorite body part:
Big companies love these fictions where one part of the company “pays” another, and accountants love this stuff as well, for reasons that make Jesus cry out anew.
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3 responses to “Zeldman on Outlook 2010”
The reason a company would pay another part of the same company is for budgets plain and simple. If your department isn’t taken in the money then you get cut plain and simple. Welcome to corporate America!
After a decade in the corporate world, I understand departmental budgets. But I think the point Zeldman is trying to make, and one I agree with, is that that kind of corporate structure is an artificial construct, and if you step back from it you realize that there’s a certain absurdity to it. Frankly, it’s something I’m glad not to be a part of anymore. That kind of arbitrary internal division is what leads directly to the situation at Microsoft where one department uses something grossly outdated, even though another department has developed something far better, because the first department couldn’t afford to license the technology from the other!
In theory I agree with you. Meaning it is a little absurd it you step back. In fact I make fun of it daily. It is an absolute necessity though.