Slashdot Mirror
CSS Support Could Be IE7's Weakest Link
Ritalin16 writes "Many web developers may be disappointed to hear that Microsoft decided to hold off on full CSS2 support with IE 7.0. As said by Microsoft-Watch: 'One partner said that Microsoft considers CSS2 to be a flawed standard and that the company is waiting for a later point release, such as CSS2.1 or CSS3, before throwing its complete support behind it.'" More commentary available from ZDNet. Generally related to the IE 7 Acid Test thrown down by Opera.
Support CSS 2.1. We're really not picky. Anything is better than nothing.
See, that's the problem. It's just like Microsoft to say "We'll wait til later ( point release, such as CSS2.1 or CSS3) before throwing our complete support behind it" I don't understand! You have to plan for the future, no plan after the fact!
"I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection." -- Sigmund Freud
Yesterday I had to make a page.
I made it in firefox with no problems. Then, I looked at it in IE and it was terrible. If I code to standards why can't microsoft make their products support standards?
We consider the standard to be flawed. So instead we will continue with our flawed support of the previous standard.
People will use IE7 because windows update will automatically put it in place of IE6 one day. It will fix some bugs and create others. It will not change how web developers create sites, it will not derail Firefox, it will not make people salivate for Longhorn.
What. Just because their products have their own flaws means they should adopt all technologies that are flawed?
"Ideas without action are worthless."
Designing pages for one particular Web browser is a bad idea
Using CSS2 and designing for the set of all browsers known to support most of CSS2 isn't "designing pages for one particular Web browser".
I've decided that from here on out I will invoice my CSS time for IE seperately. Being that I create most browser interfaces in XHTML and all layout is 100% CSS, I will now isolate the huge chunk of time I must spend on each project for IE compatability. I will also make it clear UPFRONT by making an accountance in my proposol for just how my design time will be devided up and how much time I estimate to spend on IE compatability vs supporting the rest of the world.
Why single IE out on my invoices and proposols? To let companies know where that extra $2,000.00 went for 20-30 hours of my time. That's why. And in hopes that they will opt not to engage in that expenditure.
I'd urge all other UI designers and developers to do the same.
And if the client decides that they wish not to support IE, a small victory shall have been won.
It was fine 5-6 years ago to say "Ooops -- you're using that Netscape piece of shit, please come back using a real browser"
I say it's time we start doing this again, but for IE and for the exact same reasons.
That's a common misconception. CSS has made that easy for seven years (display: table-cell), it's part of the CSS 2 specification.
The reason why nobody knows about it is because even though Safari, Mozilla, Opera, Konqueror, Firefox, Omniweb, etc. implement it, Internet Explorer doesn't, which means it might as well not exist.
This is why everybody is so keen for Microsoft to implement CSS 2. Or CSS 2.1, which is CSS 2.0 with the more difficult parts taken out and a couple of proprietary Internet Explorer properties thrown in.
It's not "CSS making it hard", it's "CSS making it easy and Microsoft making it hard".
For most purposes, grouping selectors is more than enough. The example you gave is a bit odd, because CSS lets you do that easily:
if by "adheres quite reasonably" you mean "enough errors on the main page that the w3c validator gave up and stopped counting after the first 50", then yes, slashdot adheres quite reasonably to HTML 3.2.
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
An effective signature identifies a particular user amongst a base of thousands.
I'm not entirely sure this is what you are after, but did you realise you can combine classes?
.style1 {color: red;} .style2 {background-color: blue;} .style3 {border: 2px solid black;}
i.e.
<p class="style1">I Have style 1</p>
<p class="style1 style2>I have style1 and style2 combined</p>
<p class="style1 style3">I have style1 and style3</p>
<p class="style1 style2 style3">I have the lot!</p>
The real reason why Microsoft does not fully embrace W3C standards is because they want to move away from browser-based application. This is also the reason why they let IE development go into the tank.
In the browser-based application model, MS does not control the desktop. They have competitions from Firefox and Opera. More importantly, MS also does not control the server. They have competition not only from Apache, but also Google, Amazon, eBay, AOL, and anyone who publishes a web application.
Microsoft's aim is to control both ends of a network application. And the way they are going to do this is to replace HTTP web servers with IIS and Exchange Server and to replace web browsers with Outlook. The .NET platform is just a step towards that goal. If you accept IIS/Exchange and Outlook as a server/client network application platform, there is no need for W3C standards. It also eliminates any competition, or at least make the competition dependent on Microsoft technologies.
Therefore, any effort that Microsoft expends into making "the web" more usable, such as CSS compliance and updates to IE, only enhances the browser-based application model and hurts Microsoft in the long run.