Just what has Microsoft been doing for IE 7? 354
Jeff Reifman writes "Last week, Windows columnist Paul Thurrott ripped into Microsoft for ignoring CSS standards with its upcoming Internet Explorer 7.0. "Microsoft has set back Web development by an immeasurable amount of time. My advice is simple: Boycott IE. It's a cancer on the Web that must be stopped. IE isn't secure and isn't standards-compliant, which makes it unworkable both for end users and Web content creators." With the redesign of my own site last month, I discovered just how non-compliant IE is with basic CSS: IE 52% vs. Firefox 93%. Is Microsoft purely incompetent and tone-deaf to customers — or simply counting on IE's non-compliance remaining a de-facto standard?"
I vote de-facto standard (Score:5, Insightful)
-Ed
Re:I vote de-facto standard (Score:2, Insightful)
Boycott (Score:5, Insightful)
Boycott I.E.? How are people supposed to do that? Just code to the standards and screw the users?
Most users don't care about your ideology or standards. Some of them aren't even aware that there are other browsers, much less why they would want one. If your site doesn't work, they'll just move on to one that does, not complain to Microsoft that xyz.com doesn't render properly.
Re:I vote de-facto standard (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm glad the IE-bashing gets popular even amongst Win-supporters, we Mac- and Linux-users have been alone on that trip for too long.
De-facto standard not difficult for them (Score:4, Insightful)
Hopefully this will change soon.
Don't ask (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Boycott (Score:5, Insightful)
I would vote for people recommending FireFox or Opera on every website. Maybe adding functionality for standards compliant browser that IE lacks.
The main thing is NO IE ONLY WEBSITES.
Don't make them and don't use them.
Yes sites need to support IE but they better support browsers that support standards just as well if not better.
Re:De-facto standard not difficult for them (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Boycott (Score:5, Insightful)
You're referring to the golden era known as HTML 3.2?
Thats the problem, none of the browsers fully implement any of the standards. Some are just better than others.
Re:Boycott (Score:2, Insightful)
There are plenty of ways to crash IE with malformed HTML. I seem to recall that a number of them haven't been fixed yet, and even if they have been, not everyone is using the latest version.
No better way to convince someone that IE is broken than to break it right in front of them...
Re:Boycott (Score:3, Insightful)
"Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft's business model is heavily dependent, not on actually giving customers what they want, but on tricks like "embrace, extend, extinguish". Microsoft will make more money if everyone follows Microsoft's non-standard way of doing things, because then everyone will need Microsoft software to see web sites.
If it weren't for the fact that it is temporarily possible to trick users who have little technical knowledge, Microsoft might be only barely profitable.
--
Will the violence of the U.S. government will end the 3,000 years of violence in the Middle East, or increase it?
Paul Thurrott? (Score:4, Insightful)
In the linked article, he describes CSS as "an HTML-like technology that Web developers use to create Web sites." That's really a stretch, especially on a site like Windows IT Pro. (Couldn't he have said, for example, that it's used to style pages?) But I digress.
In any case, he can complain about IE being stuck in the 90's all he wants--I get as frustrated with it as the next Web developer--but has anyone looked at his site (or Windows IT Pro, for that matter, except I doubt he has much control over that one)? It's a mess of tables, inline Javascript and CSS, and it doesn't even have a DOCTYPE. And he's complaining about standards? IE's buggy rendering and the compatibility mode in Firefox and other browsers is probably the only thing holding that site together.
The article reads like just another attempt to bash Microsoft. It's even a bit hypocritical (see my last paragraph)...
Auto-boycot (Score:5, Insightful)
if IE --> Download Firefox Link [mozilla.com]
else --> Welcome visitor!
ACID2 - Whoopdeedoo! (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously!?
IE7 fixes the Holly Hack, the box model, PNGs, the pixel jog, the double margin float, child selectors, position:fixed, the XMLHttpRequest object, XML degradation, the phantom box, percentage vs. auto, the PEEKABOO bug (Oh My God - line-height bug, too!), EMACScript degradation
IE7 is waaaaaaaaaaaaay closer to Firefox and Opera than IE6. And because they have a new product, they're going to work harder on CSS2.1 for the next year while they claw their way back into their 90+% market share.
I could honestly care less about ACID2 compliance, and the people who do are impractical pedants. ESPECIALLY when IE6 fails so many more basic standards tests than ACID2, all of which IE7 is fixing.
It is like complaining that you passed calculus without knowing how to use a slide rule. Ridiculous.
Re:I vote de-facto standard (Score:5, Insightful)
Plus, I'd rather be able to download and install Firefox on a newly-built computer using IE, than have to download it from another computer and copy it across the network or burn it onto a CD. And what if I don't have access to another computer when build time arrives?
Not having a browser installed = pain in the ass to get one installed = bad idea.
Re:I vote de-facto standard (Score:5, Insightful)
"Hoping" is the wrong word. They know that they're guaranteed 85% of the user base, and don't see any reason they should care about any standards except their own.
And before somebody says, "OK, IE is the de-facto standard, we can all just code our pages to use it." Ask yourself this: when you write code in C++ or Java or Perl, do you blindly guess what might work? No, you look up the language features and APIs that are documented to do what you need done, and you use them. But when it comes to coding web pages there is no documentation. Yeah, there's the Microsoft documentation, but it's badly written, and it reflects an implementation that nobody outside of Microsoft really understands, and that could change at any time.
Standard compliance is important. Not to make your web pages work on everybody's browser. But to make them work at all.
Re:ACID2 - Whoopdeedoo! (Score:5, Insightful)
All of these are bugfixes, not additional support for CSS.
Yes, these are improvements to CSS support.
This is only part of draft specifications at this stage.
This is a workaround for proprietary behaviour that gives false positives in Internet Explorer 6. Doctype switching isn't part of any specification, it's intentional misrendering. Not to mention the fact that it wouldn't even be a problem if Internet Explorer supported XHTML in the first place.
More bugfixes, not additional support.
What are you referring to? They haven't made any changes to their JScript engine, which is their implementation of ECMAScript.
All in all, I see a lot of bugfixes, but hardly anything in the way of adding missing support for parts of CSS. Sure, they added selectors, but they missed out tables and generated content, which are huge parts of the specification. Sure, they added a workaround for people using faux XHTML, but they didn't actually add XHTML support. And I don't know what you mean by "ECMAScript degradation", but they still have a non-standard event model instead of the DOM event model.
Come off it. Bugfixes are not a great leap in functionality. Sure, it's great that we finally have them, but to characterise this as closing the gap between the browsers in any meaningful way is exaggeration beyond belief.
Er, some of the things that Acid2 tests for are things you are describing as fixed in Internet Explorer 7, so obviously some of the things in Acid2 are important to you.
And, wearing my impractical pedant hat, I have to point out that you are saying that people who care about Acid2 less than you are impractical pedants, which makes no sense.
Re:ACID2 - Whoopdeedoo! (Score:3, Insightful)
First of all, a correction to the article itself. IE hasn't set back web development, it has held back web development, since IE6 was released
The ACID2 test may seem irrelevant based on its content (the smiley face), but it is actually a very intense yet concise test of CSS2 box model and selectors support. IE7 fails ACID2, so your claim that IE7 fixes box model support is false.
MS has only taken the occasion of IE7 to fix the specific issues that developers have been shouting the loudest about for more than half a decade, most of which you list. Unfortunately, from what I've seen, they have added more hacks to the clunky rendering engine from IE5 (or earlier), instead of developing a new rendering core from scratch. IE7 will still not have the level of support for web standards that other browsers have had for years.
MS has specifically stated that IE7 will not support the application/xml+xhtml mime type. This is a simple thing that most people overlook the importance of. The so-called "Web 2.0" cannot be fully realized without it.
Excluding Netscape 4.x, IE has the worst support for W3C standards of any mainstream GUI browser. IE7 will only make marginal improvements. The lastest verbal vomit from Redmond regarding compliance improvements basically says, "wait for IE8 and 9". I've seen nothing about IE7 and CSS3, of which all other modern GUI browsers now implement some subset.
So, what has MS been doing with IE7? Much ado about almost nothing. IE7 seems to have the same incremental standards support that Firefox 2 will have; the main goal of both of these seems to be user interface, privacy, and security improvements. In 2 years, we'll see how Firefox 3, Opera 10, Safari, and IE7.1 compare.
Re:Boycott (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I vote de-facto standard (Score:4, Insightful)
Bundling IE doesn't prevent OEMs from doing their customers a favor by installing Firefox and making it the default browser. There's no good reason not to bundle it.
The following are incentives not to bundle Firefox:
Plus, I'd rather be able to download and install Firefox on a newly-built computer using IE, than have to download it from another computer and copy it across the network or burn it onto a CD.
To be in technical compliance with the law, MS would have allow OEMs to place Firefox or another browser on the install disk. Even if they don't OEMs can include an install disk for the browser. You can use the old version of the browser to download a newer copy of whatever you want.
Re:Auto-boycot (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:ACID2 - Whoopdeedoo! (Score:4, Insightful)
It is like complaining that you passed calculus without knowing how to use a slide rule. Ridiculous.
Not to be pedantic, but isn't it more like complaining that someone passed calculous when they have shown an inability to pass a calculus test?
ACID2 is not the end-all and be-all of web standards compliance, but it does give an indication of how well a browser is rendering certain kinds of CSS with reference to the W3C standards. It was devised on feedback from web developers to be a collection of common rendering inconsistencies between the major browsers. It's not completely meaningless.
Re:Boycott (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're lucky, they'll complain to someone at your company that the site doesn't work...
As a web developer, I can't afford to ignore IE. It is what 95% of my clients use to review their sites. "But it works in every other browser!" won't encourage them to keep their business with us.
As a website visitor, though, I use Firefox and Safari. And I complain to the webmaster@blah of any site I that tries to force me to use IE.
Re:I vote de-facto standard (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:ACID2 - Whoopdeedoo! (Score:5, Insightful)
Backwards compatibility with all the crappy proprietary behaviours of older versions of Internet Explorer is pretty important to Microsoft, which is why they are still using their older rendering engine instead of replacing it with something better. They can't make big changes because they are afraid they'll break things.
Internet Explorer 8 is where you're likely to see a change like this. From what they've been saying, I think it's likely that they'll not add a further doctype switch, but implement a new rendering engine for XHTML only. Everybody using text/html will be stuck with Internet Explorer 7-level support for CSS, and everybody using application/xhtml+xml will get the new rendering engine. This has the added advantage of zero regressions - so Microsoft won't have to worry about backwards bug-for-bug compatibility.
Unfortunately, to do this, they actually need to implement XHTML...
No, it's not. I know it looks quite similar when you are writing it, but supporting XHTML isn't just a case of adding "application/xhtml+xml" to the list of media types that get chucked through the HTML rendering engine. Apart from the obvious fatal-error-on-malformed-documents behaviour, there are changes to the DOM, changes to CSS, changes to page structure, and so on. For instance, the following code means different things in HTML and XHTML:
In HTML, this code creates four elements. In XHTML, it creates three elements.
There's all kinds of subtle ways in which XHTML differs from HTML, and if Microsoft don't get it right, it's going to cause a whole load of problems further down the line. XHTML is a golden opportunity to leave cruft like doctype switching and stupid CSS bugs behind once and for all, and if Internet Explorer 7 includes premature broken support for XHTML, it will be a squandered opportunity, and it will cause all kinds of problems further down the line.
How to defeat IE (Score:4, Insightful)
The crucial argument against IE is its terrible CSS support but it's very difficult to get this across to ordinary users. Here's my suggestion. Create your site with as many features as possible which fail in IE but render perfectly in Firefox, Safari etc. Next insert Javascript or CSS IE browser detection into your home page which inserts into the IE rendered page something along these lines:
This site will display better in a browser which supports web standards [webstandards.org]. Here's an example [homepagescreenshot.com] to show you the difference.
The example is a link to a screenshot of the home page rendered in Firefox and a link to the Firefox download page should also be added. This way we don't lock out IE users but make IE's shortcomings as obvious as possible thus dispelling the pernicious M$-cultivated illusion that sites with IE workarounds are the standard. For this to work it needs to be a standard response developed by the web standards project so that it becomes familiar when users see it on different sites. The only way to defeat M$ is to play them at their own game.
Re:I vote de-facto standard (Score:5, Insightful)
There may or may not be good reasons to OEM firefox onto the machines, but this isn't one of them.
Re:I vote de-facto standard (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Google is your friend (maybe) (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:I vote de-facto standard (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Auto-boycot (Score:2, Insightful)
> if IE -->Downad Firefox Link
> else --> Welcome visitor!
Brilliant. Send X% of your users away just because YOU don't like their choice of browser. When I'm over in Windows and I run into one of these sites, I just go elsewhere to find what I want. I don't have Firefox in Win and don't care to install it. If that means someone doesn't want me to visit their site, screw'em.
Al Hunt
Re:Auto-boycot (Score:3, Insightful)
IE is just the latest crappiest browser that isn't up to today's standards and developers hate spending the time to 'tweak' or downgrade.
Re:I vote de-facto standard (Score:4, Insightful)
Rules are necessary for any game. The fact that you can't get 100% compliance is beside the point.
Re:I vote de-facto standard (Score:3, Insightful)
On the contrary; on my bookshelf sits a copy of the ISO C++ standard, amongst other things, and I last referred to it on Friday.
An unfortunate example, given the chaos created by Microsoft's decision to use a different scoping rule for variables declared in for loops in Visual C++ 6 to just about everyone else on the planet. To be fair, VC++ 6 predates the C++ standard, though only just. This one still causes headaches even today, though.
More seriously, and speaking as a guy who's currently reviewing the office coding standards in light of our need to build portably on something like a dozen different platforms that are each being upgraded as an ongoing process, there are countless places where even today, nearly a decade after the standard was published, compilers get stupid little things wrong. You don't notice them most of the time, because most platforms get most things right, but they are there, and many of them are really quite trivial and silly limitations.
As a consequence, the only way we can be confident that our code builds and runs properly on all the different platforms is to do it: each night we make those builds with each compiler, and we regularly run our automated test suite on all of them, and examine any differences between the results on different platforms. Given that we're writing math-heavy code, unfortunately there tend to be quite a lot of those differences, even though our code is theoretically standard-compliant.
I would love for everyone to implement the C++ standard perfectly, so that such checking would be a formality. However, until they do (and I doubt they ever will for a standard as bloated as C++'s), I'll trust the results I see from actually compiling and testing with each platform over the theoretical results every time.
Re:Auto-boycot (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Don't block your target audience.
2. Don't force them to do something they don't want to.
3. Don't try to fragment the web, it won't work anyway.
If they want to use a broken browser, have a popup window say 'your browser is broken, use firefox', and that's it, end of story.
Your end users DO NOT CARE about your personal crusade to rid the Internet of poorly designed browsers. Really, they don't.
Re:I vote de-facto standard (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's stop quibbling about exactly how good C++ implementations are, and get back to the point I was trying to make. When you design an application, whether it's in C++ or HTML, you need a coherent framework on which to build. You can get that from the big percentage of C++ (or Java, despite your sneering at that platform) that works according to spec. You can also get it if you only have to support browsers that do a reasonably decent job of implementing the HTML and CSS specs. You cannot get it if you have to navigate the murky world of whimsically implemented standards, undocumented proprietary features, and weird spyware-loving plugins that is IE 6.
Re:Auto-boycot (Score:2, Insightful)
I guess it depends on why you run a website. For a commercial site to turn traffic away is self defeating and silly. If hobby webmasters want to be pigheaded about their choice of browser, I suppose the world is no worse off.
At the very most, if you feel you "have to say something", put a note at the top of your index page "Optimized for Firefox, The Standards Compliant Browser - users of other browsers may experience difficulties", provide a link to firefox and let it go at that. I guarantee, if I'm looking for a piece of information, I don't want to stop, download a whole new piece of software, install, configure and figure it out before I can get what I need and get back to what was important to ME, the user.
Al Hunt
Re:Auto-boycot (Score:2, Insightful)
When every other site they visit comes up just fine in IE, telling people that yours can't comes off as bitchy and/or incompetent. Keep in mind that most people have no idea how nice sites could look if they didn't have to dumb themselves down for broken browsers. Users don't care how *you* want your site to look. They consider it your job to do whatever you have to so *they* can view it.
Firefox advocacy is all well and good, but I suspect it would be more useful to give 'em a banner with a "tell Microsoft to fix IE" button that lets them sign a petition. Every thousand signatures or so, fire off a copy to Redmond. The only way IE will get fixed is if MS hears users (not developers) say they care.
Re:Auto-boycot (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm not optimistic that Microsoft would care if the users said they cared. They would be more upset if they met those words by switching off of IE though, otherwise they're still using IE which is all they want.