Opera Tells EU That Microsoft's IE Hurts the Web 338
kastababy writes "In yet another instance of up-and-coming browser developers fighting back against the Microsoft behemoth, the makers of Opera have filed a complaint with the European Union against Microsoft. In their complaint, they allege that IE's 77% market share abuses its dominant position by tying IE to Windows and its refusal to accept Web standards, causing significant interoperability issues. The complaint also requests that the EU's Antitrust Division force Microsoft to separate IE from Windows and accept several different standards, thereby resolving major interoperability issues and providing consumers more choice in the browser market." Update: 12/14 19:47 GMT by Z : We also discussed this yesterday.
Problem in Accepting Standards (Score:4, Insightful)
But in IE's case, it seems almost to be a complete disregard for the standards.
Re:Problem in Accepting Standards (Score:3, Insightful)
And should definitely be required to fix bugs (bugs defined where behaviour differs from the published standard) for free and within a reasonable time frame.
Perhaps make them implement any standard feature which is implemented by at least 2 other browsers.
Decoupling IE and Windows... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Opera (Score:3, Insightful)
s/Opera/Internet Explorer/ and I'll agree with you.
Re:Opera (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Decoupling IE and Windows... (Score:5, Insightful)
I, personally, have no qualms with Microsoft shipping IE with Windows. It is their product, after all. BUT they should give OEMs the option to strip it out and replace it with Firefox/Opera/Safari/K-Meleon if they so desire. Which, really, is what this is all about.
Re:about time (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's limit us to address books for example.
Outlook express 4 and 5 not compatible:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/244459 [microsoft.com]
MS outlook to MS spam software, not compatible:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/179962 [microsoft.com]
Outlook E supports folders in address book, but not exporting folders:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/241875 [microsoft.com]
That was only from the first result page using keywords address book import error... If they can't standardize on a way to store contact information, can you even claim that microsoft makes *standards*? There is nothing standardized in that company. Show me a single nontrivial webpage with CSS that looks the same in IE 5,6 and 7 WITHOUT any nonstandard hacks. Even when following Microsofts own guidelines, or software that is not possible.
Re:about time (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Problem in Accepting Standards (Score:2, Insightful)
The WWW has come to be regarded as a utility for all practical economic purposes, so requiring different browsers to be standards-compliant is not at all illogical.
Re:Simple (Score:0, Insightful)
you're a fucktard
Re:Decoupling IE and Windows... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Waaambulance (Score:1, Insightful)
Someone posted what I thought was a rather insightful comment the other day pointing out that Microsoft will never adhere to "standards," since the majority of computer users will be using their software by default and will assume that it's every other browser that is "broken," or it's Openoffice.org's fault that the MS Word document they're try to open isn't displaying the tables correctly.
So I'm not surprised Microsoft went off in their own direction with regard to the W3C, just as nobody will be surprised when documents saved in the OOXML format by Microsoft software don't act as expected when opened in Openoffice.org, for example. People will say Openoffice.org is shit, and decide to stick with MS Office because it "just works."
Re:Been a while since I've heard of "Opera"... (Score:2, Insightful)
This will probably result in a number of death threats, but, I've tried Firefox, Safari, Opera, and Netscape and I still choose to use IE7. Yeah, the others might be a little faster rendering pages, but I make extensive use of tabbed browsing and rarely wait for a pages to render. Firefox is a memory sieve. The others don't support Windows Authentication (yes, I know, evil M$ proprietery, etc.) but that's a requirement at work, so switching to another browser (or running 2 browsers in parallel) on principle when I'm perfectly happy with IE just doesn't appeal to me.
Re:Why separate? (Score:1, Insightful)
What, the first 5,000 posts saying "the rules are different for monopolies" didn't answer the question for you?
Standardized IE's impact on other browsers (Score:4, Insightful)
Not necessarily. End users don't pick their browsers for standards compliance. They do pick them by questions like, "Does this browser work with my bank's website?"
If the most-used browser (IE or otherwise) is fully standards-compliant, that lowers the bar for developers to build sites that work with multiple browsers: target standards and you get something that works in IE8, Firefox, Safari, Opera, etc., instead of targeting IE6, tweaking for IE7, tweaking for Firefox, and deciding anyone running another browser is just SOL.
End result: More websites are compatible across the board, so when people try Opera, fewer of them will run it for 2 days and say, "Well, I sorta like it, but the POS browser can't handle my favorite website. I'm going back to IE."
Re:Decoupling IE and Windows... (Score:4, Insightful)
What about Opera's dominance on the Nintendo Wii?
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Opera (Score:3, Insightful)
Well once you're in the real world and your job depends on the site you're building working in IE you'll change your tune.. or find other employment. If it doesn't look right in IE, you can't ignore it, like it or not.
Re:about time (Score:5, Insightful)
CSS2.1? How about they start with something simpler to fully implement, like
If there's anything I forgot, it belongs on that list. IE has never fully supported anything.
Re:Of dupes and dopes (Score:3, Insightful)
If IE supported all current standards properly, users who switched away from it to other browsers would not see so much of a difference in web content, because they would be looking at a page which should render correctly in _all_ browsers, not just one. Does anyone but me remember what Microsoft's website looked like in Firefox 1.0 before they re-did it to make it compatible?
I rest my case.
Re:Waaambulance (Score:3, Insightful)
On and off over the years I've had occasion to work with Microsoft developers on various things. At one point I worked with the COM team and the IE team for several months. I didn't work for MS, I worked for a company that had discovered a weird and complicated bug. "They" are just a bunch of guys, regular programmers, just like you find at every other big company in the world. Nobody has a secret evil plan. It just doesn't exist. They bust their ass meeting deadlines and building things and dealing with bug reports and testing and builds and everything else, and frankly there are so many different people involved, any such Evil Agenda would be exposed so quickly from the inside it would make your head spin.
It's exactly the same as people who talk about "the government" engaging in these elaborate machinations: both organizations are too large, and spread across too many people, and moving in too many different directions simultaneously to permit the kind of organization and single-mindedness of purpose that is required to execute these clever, evil plots. There are too many points of exposure. Too many potentially disgruntled employees in the loop.
Sure, occasionally somebody really does take it upon themselves to do something underhanded, but as an organization-wide "strategy" it just doesn't happen that way.
But this is slashdot, and reason takes a back seat to self-righteous anti-capitalism.