Making IE Standards Compliant

spin2cool writes "Dean Edwards has taken it upon himself to make Internet Explorer W3C compliant. How? Well, it isn't by patching the application, as you might suspect. He's created a stylesheet, dubbed 'IE7' that uses DHTML to load and parse style sheets into a form that IE can understand. Just include the style sheet in your HTML pages, and things should render correctly. The complexity of the CSS transformations is really amazing and shows off the power of this stuff."

Comments

Kudos, but...

[Channard]

.. it's a sad state of affairs when a developer outside of Microsoft actually ends up doing something that MS should have done themselves. So they can say 'screw it' to standards and someone else does the finger-work.

Re:Kudos, but...

[MartinG]

Not really. It's perfectly natural to many of us for someone to change things to work in the way they want them to. It's a basic freedom that many of us try to protect.

What's unusual in this case is that closed proprietry software has been "changed" without access to the source.

It's not sad that someone other than Microsoft had to do it. It's sad that people other than Microsoft can't do such things a whole lot more.

(in reality, they can of course by not using closed source software, but for some it seems percieved convenience is more important than freedom, but I digress)

Re:Kudos, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

I know. They are the largest software company in the world, they have billions in the bank, and it takes one individual without access to the source to fix up some of the most glaring errors that have lain there untouched for over two years. Microsoft ought to be ashamed.

Re:Kudos, but...

[blackbear]

If you could build really bad software that looks good on the surface, get other people fix it for you for free, and still get paid, would you do it?

I suppose that the reason I'm not rich yet is because I wouldn't. Building software is usually time consuming and costly. Building good software is more so. I wonder that the OSS movement didn't gain popularity so much because of a desire to contribute, as out of a sense of frustration that there was very little good software available at any price.

The market dosen't reward good software because most users are so ignorant of what is good software that they just buy whatever is most shinny and pretty and expensive. The only alternative seems to be to write good software and give it away for free so that you don't have to sit in the Microsoft (and others) stench all day long. It's not just Microsoft, but they're the best example.

All he has to do now

[maroberts]

Is ponder how to get over the Slashdotting of his site.

I'm sure the CSS is a work of technical art; seeing it would be even better.

Google cache

[Underholdning]

Site is already slashdottet. Here's Google's cache of the document.
So - how are the plans going with implementing a slashdot cache?

Re:Google cache

[nacturation]

I still don't know why Slashdot doesn't reference non-high bandwidth sites using the freecache service. All that needs to be done is prefix the URL with http://freecache.org/ and follow it with the full regular URL, eg:

http://freecache.org/http://www.slowsite.com/big _p ictures.html

It benefits the site owner by having reduced bandwidth costs and it also benefits Slashdot as we can read the articles.

Re:Shows the power of IE

[Nadir]

Fact is that IE 6 doesn't even support CSS2 properly which became a W3C recommendation in 1998.

Re:Shows the power of IE

[minus9]

but this hack really does show the power of IE

The power of IE is that it's broken but it may be possible to fix it?

I have a powerful car for sale if you're interested.

Re:firefox

[ideatrack]

But this is why FireFox still isn't onto release one. I also get problems on my XP box using some sites, especially forms; but there are also still sites that don't work correctly in any release.

IE has the usual MS philosophy in that if something doesn't comply with the way they've done it, who cares because everyone will change to their way of thinking. I agree with those who don't like that someone else has to clean up after MS but what else are you going to do? For better or worse it is, and will be for a while yet, what most non-techy people use.

Re:firefox

[foolip]

Perhaps it's slashdot that needs to be made standards compliant! It would seem that someone doesn't want us to know how compliant it is.

It seems WDG had better luck getting through, but look at all those errors!

Fixed in nightlies

[Jack Zombie]

Use a Mozilla Firefox nightly build, the bug (217369, I think) that caused this problem is fixed in them.

More major changes since 0.8 here.

Dean Edwards

[amigoro]

I thought this was something about the democratic nominations, but then saw Kerry was missing.

Flippancy apart, I think using CSS to make IE7 W3C compliant is a really brilliant idea. However, the browser itself is a small part of the equations. Very few websites are W3C compliant. Vast majority of them are geared to a certain browser, depending on the whim and fancy of the designer.

For my part, I run my sites thru Anybrowser to make sure they will render on, well, as the name suggests, any browser.

Shows the power of Open Source

[fidros]

> mozilla was last released yesterday - ie6 was
> released 2+ years ago

So, you're saying that the problem is not IE but the broken proprietry way of building softwarwe that can't can release new versions in time to answer real customer needs?

I think I agree :-)

Gilad

Microsoft should hire him

[SlashMaster]

Anyone who cares this much about the company's product should be given serious consideration for employment.

Microsoft should hire him...

Re:firefox

[Imperator]

That's pretty sad, for /. to mess with their server settings to disable the w3 validator. Their HTML has been terribly broken for years. I don't understand what they do with all that money they have, because they sure haven't been improving the site very much. Makes me glad I don't subscribe and I block their ads.

Re:Shows the power of IE

[next1]

current project i'm working on i did all css layout (ie; no tables) and had opposite experience: same code was fine in moz / opera, needed completely different version for ie5 and ie6 due to various bugs in each.

now actually reverting to tables for a lot of the layout because of it.

Re:Useful stylesheets

[farlukar]

try this one

Re:Shows the power of IE

[gusnz]

And what's more, it doesn't even fully support CSS1, which was released in 1996! Try the ComplexSpiral demo, which is a neat demo of the effects possible in Mozilla, Opera and Safari with the 'background-attachment:' CSS1 property, which IE supports only on the BODY tag. Also, let's add 'position: static' support onto our wishlist (for watermarks/menus on pages) and PNG alpha support, and a whole bevy of regular CSS rendering bugs that have remained unsolved for years. MS claims "full CSS1 compliance", but in reality they only support the reduced CSS1 core spec.

And to think it'll be a wait of several years before IE is updated with Longhorn... until then, writing pure CSS sites is going to remain a bug-whacking chore. Let's all be collectively glad that MS fought so hard for their "Freedom to Innovate" back in the anti-trust days ;).

P.S. redesign slashdot using modern web standards, editors!

Re:Making IE Standards compliant?

[nhorman]

So I'll ask the burning question here: How is creating a stylesheet to be included in individual web pages considered making IE standards compliant? Wouldn'the the article be more acurate if it read "modifying web site allows it to be rendered correctly in IE6?"

Re:Shows the power of IE

[JimDabell]

AFAIK there is no browser available that correctly renders CSS 2.0 -- the entire spec.

You are right, which is why some of the more esoteric features have been removed from CSS 2 and CSS 2.1 is about to be released.

However this is a lot different to Internet Explorer 6's situation. There are massive amounts of CSS 2 that simply aren't implemented, such as a whole bunch of selectors and tables.

The next time you see somebody complaining that CSS layout is hard, remember that there's probably a way to do what they want in a few lines of CSS, but that part of CSS simply doesn't work in Internet Explorer (but does in Mozilla, Konqueror, Opera, etc).

Re:All that's missing

[scragz]

I wonder if it's possible to implement a DHTML hack for proper PNG support :)

Check here and here.

Source Code for IE7 htc

[EqualSlash]

via Google Cache : IE7.htc

Re:Useful stylesheets

[Openstandards.net]

What sites do you go to? I've been using Mozilla on all my computers (Windows and Linux) for over a year now without problems except for a few sites I had to use for clients (time reporting and Outlook web mail). I complained to the time reporting company, which explicitly says it only supports IE, that one cannot report time from a Linux box.

Other than that, every other site I use works great in Mozilla, including banking sites and other sites that you'd think would be tempted to make the IE-only mistake.

What I don't miss is the pop-up I used to have to endure in IE when I disabled ActiveX, not to mention it's countless lack of features (tabbed browsing, popup blocking, etc,...).

Re:Shows the power of IE

[weave]

And before people start attacking ie for saying that mozilla supports xyz css and ie6 doesn't - mozilla was last released yesterday - ie6 was released 2+ years ago.

Remember when Microsoft was releasing and improving IE on a rapid basis? Let's see, when did Microsoft allegedly win the browser war? Oh, about two years ago. When did Microsoft stop innovating IE? Oh, about two years ago. Since then, Microsoft doesn't care cause they have the browser market locked up. Therefore we need to download stuff like this and google toolbars to add pop up blocking and all kind of other third party stuff to get IE up to some modern day level.

Re:MSIE is the standard

[FireFury03]

Unfortunately if MS continues like it has done, the web will stagnate with no cool new features appearing. MS has made it clear they're not interested in making IE standards complient or adding any new enhancements. Since 95% of people use IE (and probably have no clue that there is anything other than IE available), if IE is never enhanced then web developers will forever be stuck in the trap of never being able to use any cool new features that IE doesn't currently support. Very few web developers will be happy adding features to their website that make it unusable for 95% of their visitors (although it seems that professional web developers have no problem with making their sites only work with IE).

What I'd love to see someone do at some point is re-skin FireFox to look like IE and then abuse one of IE's many security holes to replace IE with the reskinned FireFox on any machine that visits the website. :)

Re:firefox

[Wullis]

Perhaps it's slashdot that needs to be made standards compliant!

The magazine A List Apart has already redone Slashdot's design with web standards. Look here:

• http://www.alistapart.com/articles/slashdot/
• http://www.alistapart.com/articles/slashdot2/

Re:Making IE Standards compliant?

[I confirm I'm not a]

Just to clarify slightly - IE7 doesn't rely on serving up a different stylesheet, but an additional 'sheet. In other words, if you reference IE7 as your first 'sheet, existing stylesheets for compliant browsers will then render OK in IE.

If I've read it right you don't even need to sniff (well, at least not in the old-fasioned, java-script or server-side script sense): it's all done through CSS.

Corporate Business Strategy

[SeaDour]

Did you hear? McDonald's heard about this move by Microsoft, and was inspired to imitate their strategy. McDonald's is now pushing through the Department of Agriculture to add "Big Mac" and "Chicken Nuggets" to the Food Pyramid, placing them just below the highly-coveted "Dairy Products" block. McDonald's argues that since such a huge percentage of the population is eating their food, everyone should consider their products a nutritional standard.

Re:What's up with that comma, dude?

[platipusrc]

Man, you need to leave Mr. Shatner alone when he's trying to make a point!

The correct way

[at2000]

It is meaningless to comment by saying "hey I use firefox", because the rest of the world is not using it. Now still 25% of my visitors are using IE 5.5, given that IE 6.0 is there 4 years ago.

Yes, it is much easier to make Mozilla/Opera more IE-complaint. [See IE Emu]

It is also quite easy to design a new set of API such that they are deligated to the correct version supported by the browser in runtime. [See DHTMLLib] [See CBE]

But these are just the wrong way.

1. It gives excuses for IE people to think that they are right. It works well for all sites. (but of course we can't afford IE not supported (tm)
2. It makes our code bad. We are not coding for the standard, but for the bad browsers. It created the economics that bad browsers will never be gone.

A patch to IE means:

1. We are coding for the standard. Sooner or later when there is no more IE, just remove the line and our code works pretty well.
2. IE works by emulation. This means it will definately be made slower. When there are enough such sites, it gives people one more sites to move away from IE. That is, IE works, but not as good.
3. IE is considered second class. We focus on standard, and IE just work, by mistake. This is important when IE-to-Mozilla has become 50%-50%. It gives people more comfort to use Mozilla because it has the "brand" to work better.
4. Be prepared that IE can stop working at any time. When IE-to-Mozilla has become 30%-70%, we can start withdrawing this script, forcing extinction of IE.

It is exactly something like Cygwin, which implies UNIX-style programs are correct programs. When you move to Linux is just your choice.

Re:Making IE Standards compliant?

[GreyPoopon]

The trouble is...what if you don't have a windows computer to see how 'it looks' under IE?

This is an age-old problem for web developers. Good developers test their work in multiple browsers, and should also do a test in browsers a few versions back. This might mean keeping an extra box lying around that runs Windows, or using VMWARE or WINE to run Internet Explorer. People might flame me and say that any good developer KNOWS what the content will look like in different browsers and tries to produce a browser-agnostic design, but experience tells me that there's nothing like a quick test to find your mistakes.