Wow! For all the derision and loathing we pour on Microsoft and its village-idiot web browser, every now and then you see some engineering project from a back room on the Redmond campus that makes you think that somewhere in the steamrolling bureaucracy, somehow, there are fun, creative minds just trying to claw their way out.
Witness the IE Test Drive Site. It’s a place to test out demos relating to HTML5 and other web technologies, which Microsoft is trying to keep on track for preview editions of Internet Explorer. But there’s lots of fun, fun stuff here, including a pinball game, a Sudoku generator, an asteroid field simulator, and tons more stuff. Just be advised that it’s meant to be cutting-edge, so if you’re not updated to full-modern standards, you won’t be able to run this stuff.
We have just one question: Why aren’t the people behind this demo site running the whole dang company? It’s this thrilling attitude towards playing with technology and making it do gee-whiz stuff that Microsoft had in spades in its early days and so grimly lacks now.
