[News] Microsoft: IE7 Can't Match Oprea or Firefox (Standards-wise)
Roy Schestowitz
,----[ Quote ]
| In his article, Wilson defended IE, and more specifically, he decried
| the poor rating given to the browser in a web standards support summary.
| In a nutshell, the report said that IE 6 and IE 7 can't match the level
| of standards support found in Opera and Firefox.
`----
http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2006/8/16/4999
With Firefox extensions/themes, as well as Opera themes/widgets, it's
unlikely to catch up, function-wise.
Roy Schestowitz
> Roy Schestowitz :
> I have IE6 on my linux box just out of curiosity, to test a few of my
> sites. The rendering is junky. CSS is very poorly implemented in IE6
> (even min-height directiveas are ignored) and I'm not inclined to do
> extra work to support EI. The argument that IE has the most users and
> therefore IS the standard doesn't fly with me. The internet wasn't built
> for IE, IE was built for the WWW and I wont allow it to be a tool that
> manipulates my work.
I have been (and still am) thinking along the same lines as yourself. I have
had the miserable experience of seeing some perfectly-good pages failing to
work properly in IE. As long as everything is readable and does not stand
out, this will be bearable to the stubborn ones who stick with IE. Moreover,
if we show IE users their browser in its 'full glory' (or lack thereof),
e.g. by exposing obvious bugs and problems, users will decide to upgrade to
a third-party applications. What bothers me are Web site that downplay the
wealth of capabilities (X)HTML/CSS have to offer just because of IE. Are we
forced to stay back because of Microsoft? Can it control/restrict novelty
because it has become an effective monopoly? Just as in the case of 64-bit
applications?
Try the following with IE and see what happens (transparent PNG menus and a
special greeting to IE users).
http://www.schestowitz.com/Research/Notes/Bibliography/bib-manager/phpbibman/
Best wishes,
Roy
--
Roy S. Schestowitz | Every beginning must start somewhere
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nes...@wigner.berkeley.edu
Wow, this is absolutely devastating! As near as I can tell, the poor
guy at Microsoft has been trying to support open standards against
management. He doesn't say much about the history, i.e. the fact that
Microsoft didn't do anything with IE until they were recently forced to
by Firefox competition. The feedback is amazing. Example:
Quote:
-------------
So if you believe that the reason for IE's lack of standards support is
something other than malice of forethought to strangle other browsers,
you are wrong. If you have followed the anti-trust trial you would have
seen the actual evidence for these decisions. Microsoft is an
anti-competitive company run by unethical shitheads.
This won't change until the workforce is slashed and the entire company
culture changes. Steve Ballmer is the king of the shitheads, so when he
goes things might get better. But until then, expect MS to only do the
absolute minimum to defuse the worst criticism. Remember my words:
unethical shitheads.
-------------
End quote
Erik cited this same guy's blog a few days ago to support the notion
that Microsoft is dedicated to standards compliance and is doing the
reasonable thing (I think that's why he cited it). The way this story
has developed, it shows exactly the opposite, and is very revealing
about sentiments out there in the developer world.
Roy Schestowitz
Sorry to reply in brevity to such as an informative post, but for what it's
worth, Scott Berkun (I hope I remembered the spelling of his name
correctly), the guy who managed the IE projects from version 1 through to 5,
is using Mozilla Firefox. No own dogfood. Just dogs (or "unethical
shitheads").
Best wishes,
Roy
--
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Oliver Wong
<nes...@wigner.berkeley.edu> wrote in message
news:1155745520....@p79g2000cwp.googlegroups.com...
>
> Erik cited this same guy's blog a few days ago to support the notion
> that Microsoft is dedicated to standards compliance and is doing the
> reasonable thing (I think that's why he cited it). The way this story
> has developed, it shows exactly the opposite, and is very revealing
> about sentiments out there in the developer world.
I don't know about Microsoft, but the guy himself seems to be dedicated
to standards compliance:
http://blogs.msdn.com/cwilso/archive/2006/08/15/701894.aspx
<quote>
This post is about me. Please do not post comments about Microsoft's
behavior in response to this post.
[...]
There's a lot of anger aimed at Microsoft, in particular around IE. A lot
of it comes out in comments, here and in the IEBlog. A lot of the
frustration behind it is certainly justified, though being frustrated at me
personally is not. I try very hard never to take it personally, and usually
succeed. I occasionally let blatant inaccuracies piss me off, and then I
can get pretty pissy in tone in reply. (The inaccuracies are frequently the
result of anti-Microsoft sentiment to begin with, compounded with the last
five years of web browser non-feature-development.) Too many people read
that as "typical Microsoft arrogance", which frankly pisses me off all the
more, because I've personally railed against Microsoft arrogance for longer
than most of you have been involved in the web. (Yes, really. I started
working on IE in 1995. I know many of you were working on the web prior to
that, but I doubt the majority were.)
[...]
Few of you believe it - occasionally, someone who knows me really well
does - but I actually believe in open standards. Real open standards. The
ones built by a group of people with an interest in making the world better,
not just in their own private vested interests. I've championed that in one
way or another since I joined Microsoft, and I continue to do so today. It's
been a hard road, but not one I can imagine myself not choosing to walk
down. It's been gratifying to me over the past couple of years to see my
championing pay off in the change of direction in Microsoft. It's been
frustrating, though, to be continually identified as the personal screw-up
responsible for IE not supporting more standards today, when it's actually
because of my personal influence that CSS is IMPLEMENTED in IE.
</quote>
- Oliver
Roy Schestowitz
Judging by that later post of his, his bosses antagonise any desire to
embrace standards. And with phrases like "unethical shitheads", he is most
likely to ditch Microsoft soon. A shame, really. There are many buses filled
with developers who leave Redmond, but few buses actually come in.
Ultimately, Microsoft is forced to employ people in less developing
countries. And the quality of the software (e.g. Windows Vista) shows... a
lot of Microsoft project (including Vista) are being offshorn as Bill Gates
whines about CS education in the States. It's nothing but crocodile's tears.
None of the good American developers is willing to work for an evil
monopolist, so in his defences, Gates says that no good developers are out
there. They are definitely out there. They just don't want to work for him.
They make it their life's mission to have Gates' house of fraud eliminated.
Erik Funkenbusch
Actually, judging by the responses and support from people in the web
community that actually know what's going on, Microsoft is making serious
headway and doing the right things. They've got a lot of support from the
Web Standards Project, and various other big names.
From the blog comments, the author of the "compliance chart" you posted,
david hammond, says this:
" am the author of the cited standards support resource, I personally
prefer using Firefox on Linux, I'm a huge supporter of strict standards
compliance, I think Internet Explorer's present state (IE7 included) is
perhaps the biggest obstacle in the advancement of the Web, and yet I
completely agree with Chris Wilson's post here.
Internet Explorer is grossly behind the times because Microsoft dropped the
ball several years back. But when IE7 development began, they picked the
ball back up and are now running as fast as the developers of any of the
other browsers. Yes, they'll continue to be grossly behind for quite some
time as they struggle to catch up (which, if they stay at their current
pace, could take a decade or longer), but there is no point in pretending
like they aren't trying right now. No matter how much money you have, you
can't catch up on several years of development on a project like this
overnight, and other browsers aren't going to slow down to let Internet
Explorer catch up. So don't confuse not catching up with present laziness."
Some people refuse to accept the fact that IE development was stopped for
several years, and that this can't be made up for overnight. The comments
like "Why can't you just support standards" are naive and stupid. They say
this like standards support should be a simple thing, and clearly
Microsoft's lack of support means they're deliberately not doing so. That,
of course, ignores the fact that no browser is fully standards compliant,
which just proves how difficult it is.
nes...@wigner.berkeley.edu
I don't see anything in any of the posts here either above or below
yours, to change my impression that this guy is in favor of standards
compliance, but Microsoft management has been against it. Perhaps the
best thing you can say about Microsoft management is that perhaps they
have partially changed their mind and that things will be better in the
future.
Of course the lack of standards compliance makes developers angry, but
not necessary users. In fact, it can work the opposite way, when web
designers create noncompliant sites that work with IE but not with
Firefox. This of course has been the point of Microsoft management's
policies, and I think there can be no doubt that it goes right back to
Gates, considering the prominence of this issue in Microsoft history
and Gates' personal involvement in the DOJ case (giving testimony,
etc).
I have an old friend who worked as a tech writer for Apple for many
years. His son-in-law was part of the Netscape team, and later AOL,
working on their browser. His story was how Microsoft made IE accept
sites that were out of spec, so Netscape, which respected specs, would
look broken when used with them. This is an old story, but it's the
kind of story that has been going around silicon valley and other
places for a long time, and contributes greatly to the animus against
Microsoft.
Oliver Wong
<nes...@wigner.berkeley.edu> wrote in message
news:1155816319.5...@i3g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
>
[snip me quoting the blog]
>
> I don't see anything in any of the posts here either above or below
> yours, to change my impression that this guy is in favor of standards
> compliance, but Microsoft management has been against it.
You're right; I misread your position, sorry. Basically we were in
agreement all along.
[...]
>
> I have an old friend who worked as a tech writer for Apple for many
> years. His son-in-law was part of the Netscape team, and later AOL,
> working on their browser. His story was how Microsoft made IE accept
> sites that were out of spec, so Netscape, which respected specs, would
> look broken when used with them. This is an old story, but it's the
> kind of story that has been going around silicon valley and other
> places for a long time, and contributes greatly to the animus against
> Microsoft.
>
I don't blame Microsoft for accepting broken sites. The golden rule of
the Internet is "be lenient in what you accept, but strict in what you
emit". What I *do* blame them for is improperly rendering sites which do
adhere to specs. This forces people to intentionally write non-compliant
code to get their sites to "look right" in IE.
- Oliver