Update on Standards and CSS in IE7

brajesh writes "Chris Wilson has posted on IEBlog about the Standards and CSS in IE7. According to the post, "In IE7, we will fix as many of the worst bugs that web developers hit as we can, and we will add the critical most-requested features from the standards as well. Though you won't see (most of) these until Beta 2". Further,"we will not pass this (Acid2 browse) test when IE7 ships.""

Comments

This is good for all the browsers

[edyu]

Although there will be Microsoft bashing in this thread, I believe this is good for all browsers because almost all the other browsers are standards compliant. Therefore, as IE becomes more standard compliant, the common denominator between the browsers will be bigger thus more web pages will be displayed correctly in all the other browers. I appauld Microsoft for this effort although it might be a result of necessity rather than goodwill. ;)

Re:This is good for all the browsers

[Nasarius]

I have a nasty suspicion that after IE 7.0, they won't stop or slow down, but will speed up. It's what MS does: crush the opponent.

I don't know. I'm truly surprised at how little has been done with Longhorn/Vista. There's a shiny new interface, a slightly improved version of IE, and some neat developer technologies. Oh, and desktop search. This has taken them 4-5 years? If they plan to crush the competition, they're going to have to pick up the pace quite a bit.

Re:just give up

[jav1231]

Simple. M$ isn't going to concede that they can't keep up; not even to technologies they don't even have yet. They will buy technology, mimick it, or simply continue to bastardize. The thought, "You know, this software from Acme is filling the niche well. There's no reason for us to go into that segment" never occurs to them. Let alone, "You know, we've wrestled with standards and security and perhaps we should exit the browser market given the great alternatives out there." They want it all and they want it now.

If the fix their bugs they'll break web sites

[LemonFire]

If the fix their CSS bugs they'll break web sites that is heavilly dependant on IE CSS.
Too many developers have gotten dependant of the IE CSS quirks already.

A really sad situation, however it's the right thing to do though.

-- This SIG was created without the help of CSS

A Feature Request

[fm6]

"... we will add the critical most-requested features from the standards as well."

Dude, the "feature" most developers are requesting is standards compliance!

Re:Face it.

[someonewhois]

Well, there's a typical anti-Microsoft remark. The only thing it's missing is the dollar sign on the S.

Let's go over a few logical fundamentals:

• Firefox doesn't pass the Acid2 test either. Neither does Opera. That's virtually an irrelevant point at the curernt time.
• Bill Gates isn't the one coding the browser.
• The browser wars were like the cold war. It kept both sides trying to get the upper edge on each other in any possible way. As a result, you get garbage output.
• Microsoft is clearly saying they're working on standards, and they ARE.
• At the time that the codebase of IE was starting, the w3 standards weren't as hyped as they were today. As a result, it's no surprise that Microsoft didn't listen to them.
• Name one piece of software that doesn't crash. I know I've had all sorts of non-Microsoft software crash.

Your post should be marked as a troll. You haven't got a clue what you're talking about.

Re:just give up

[anotherone]

Firefox still doesn't pass that test...

Mod parent up.

[merreborn]

... I was waiting for someone to point out the fact that no real browsers pass acid2. And lord knows firefox not only crashes on me once every week or two, and chews up ungodly ammounts of ram, and doesn't garbage collect in a timely manner.

give web developers a break

[LodCrappo]

As a part time hobbyist web developer, I have to applaud any move by any browser towards correctly implementing standards. Sure yeah it's Microsoft and I think I share a pretty negative view of alot of things they do with many of you. BUT... have you ever tried to create a page that uses even moderately complex CSS and have it look the same in IE and Firefox? It's practically impossible. I usually find it easier to just serve up different pages based on the user agent.. that sucks! So any move regardless of motivation that makes it possible to create a single version of a page and have it look normal is a good move in my book. For once, and just this once, good job MS.

Thank You Firefox!

[blueZhift]

Thank you Firefox! Without competitive pressure from Firefox, I doubt that we would be seeing such effort to fix longstanding issues with Internet Explorer. IE 7 won't be perfect, but it will likely be a lot better than it would have been if the Mozilla project and Firefox had never existed. I suppose in some small way this is a bit of revenge from the grave for Netscape.

Re:Someone Please Explain This

[keot]

From the about page of the Acid2 browser test site:-
Note: some 827 people (rough estimate, contents may have settled during shipping) have written to point out that the CSS used in the test is invalid. This is deliberate, as a means of exposing the ability of user agents to handle invalid CSS properly.

This is why I don't use box model "hacks"...

[venomkid]

This is why I never used things like the box model "hack" or any other browser bug-dependent CSS for cross browser compatibility. It's begging to have the site start blowing up in users' faces as soon as a new browser is released.

Even the terrible implementation of CSS in IE6 is usable enough to make sites to standard. Sure it requires a bit of cheesiness, but I'd rather do that than *depend* on their browser continuing to not only have bugs, but to react to those bugs the same in every new release.

There is a middle "standard".

freedom to innovate

[pjrc]

Ok, they're making progress. But did anyone notice what's "innovative"?

but innovative stuff like the anti-phishing work and low-rights IE.

Using any other browser would be running all that browser code without admin privs. Yeah, they're making a "broker" that handles all the system interface. Pretty much the architecture most unix-based server programs have been using for years. Except at the client/browser level it's unnecessary... unless you're building on previous poor design decisions.

The anti-phishing... yet another thing others have already been doing quite well for quite a while.

It's plainly obvious they're playing catch-up on many fronts. That alone isn't a reason to bash them, as least as far as I'm concerned. But calling "innovative" the features that have been implemented for over a year or more in other browsers or as third party add-ons is pretty cheap.

Or did I miss some new features, anything really, that's truely innovative in IE7, rather than just implementing features already available from competitors and third parties?