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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.""
However fast we fix old holes, there will be people to exploit new holes...
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
I thought they had to start with a new code base since the IE6 base had reached its end of fixabilities (like add an extra fix, and something else breaks again, and so on and on and on).
Apparently they went on on the IE6 base anyway???? Well, good luck with Vista, and your updated IE6 browser. I am off to buy a spyware firm & an anti spyware firm and get filthy rich from Vista.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
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. ;)
Why? Because they ARE the standard and they know it. In a perfect world, they would conform to the standards that everyone else is striving to hit. But MS knows they own the market. They know that there are a bazillion web pages written specifically for IE. They know there are lazy coders out there that don't bother checking for web standard conformity and only care that their pages work on IE. So why should they rethink their IE development? It's much easier this way (for them). It's a shame, and maybe some day it'll kick 'em in the ass, but for now, they know they're in the driver's seat.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
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.
Microsoft doesn't care who they're upsetting. It's the companies who have websites who are forced to comply with how IE renders pages, or they won't get any visitors.
Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn't care about Slashdotters and their ideological reasoning.
It's a sad (but true) reality that when you own 90% of any market...people have to play by your rules...
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
However, all of the other painful bugs for everyone else will remain in place.
Content Management System: A pretentious way of saying "text editor."
I noticed it until version 5, when I switched to Firefox
According to this Acid test, my image w/ Firefox 1.0.6 is quite a bit off from their rendering. Perhaps Safari, standard Mozilla, Opera, and others are compliant? Because this doesn't seem too pro-Firefox in my eyes (which seems good, since it may not be biased).
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
We all know that, given their track record, while Microsoft may espouse standards compliance, they are completely willing to sacrifice it to whatever they percieve to be a "cool feature"; particularly if it benifits only them via vendor lock-in. I'm sure we can expect many new and wonderful "features" that only IE7 can implement properly, and that hordes of web designers who only test on IE will fall prey to.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
They are trying to be standards compliant? Anyway, also keep in mind the rumors that even FF was not acid compliant out of the door...
On a different note, I agree with you, IE ought to toss in the towel on the W3C complience thing, they need to bite the bullet and just admit they plan to march to their own drummer.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Microsoft took care of that with their own additions, and the differences in still buggy HTML, which is not covered by css.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
You know...you're right.
for free wallpapers, visit Sargosis.com
Ballmer: Before your execution, you will join me at a ceremony that will make this code base operational. No web developer will dare oppose the Emperor now.
Linus: The more you tighten your integration with the operating system, Ballmer, the more exploits will slip through your firewall.
"fix as many of the worst bugs that web developers hit as we can"
And what bugs do we actually encounter? They make it seem like these are issues or limitations with say, XML, HTTP, or CSS. The only issues I've ever encountered were with compatibility between browsers. And I'm sorry, but this is not a simple bug fix. This is a structure and an ideal that triggered the browser wars. They chose to make IE translate code a certain way, and they chose to make client and server side components incompatible with other browsers. Ten years later, users are getting smarter and their original goals have come to bite them in the ass. Only now do the choose to fix these bugs when the possibility of being defeated is looming. Thanks Microsoft!
Sigs are for Terrorists.
Is this even a question of Microsoft not caring about standards and the W3C? Does M$ even have to comply or are they going to get themselves in more trouble with their monopoly case?
kensavage knows more than god
Let's go over a few logical fundamentals:
Your post should be marked as a troll. You haven't got a clue what you're talking about.
I'm really curious as to how they are going to handle the * html hack that is current with IE6...
If they have fixed the aforementioned bugs (from the IE7 Blog) will we still be able to target IE6 and whatnot the same way? Wonder wonder wonder..
I can see shit + fan if the same * html hack works in IE7, or if there isn't a way to target it specifically.. But who knows, it's gonna be a gong show regardless.
Yay for IE!
R4NT.com - A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
What stupid, stupid reasoning.
We'll support the features people want = we'll support the features that are most used = we'll bugfix the features used by the World's Most Popular Browser [TM] = we're actually going gto do jack shit for interoperability.
I'd love to believe that MS really are going to fix IE's utterly appalling CSS support that other browsers sorted out years ago, but judging by IE's track record I don't hold out alot of hope. Hack, am I the only one who failed to notice any significant extra features in the much vaunted IE6?
Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
..how much troube will the pages that use the current bugs to their advantage have.
Cheers,
RoadkillBunny
Firefox still doesn't pass that test...
Username taken, please choose another one.
What are you talking about? I did that as you stated and it backed right up to /. with no problem. IE6SP2. Actually, I can't remember ever having such a flaw in IE.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
Acid isn't a standard at all, it's a test. It tests compliance against CSS standards, it's not a standard itself.
With each fix and update they make, they'll create 10 new bugs and errors. Any one else noticed this pattern?
Yes, in Open Source.
OH... VULNERABILITIES you say. Nevermind.
I mean, if you can't maintain and be compliant with the standards, then why even try
The reason is simple. With 90%+ market share in the browser world Microsoft just figures whatever they do *is* the standard. I don't agree with this but I can understand their thought process. If almost everyone is using my software product then what do I really care what the small other percentage is doing?
Quality Hosting e3 Servers
Unless I'm thinking of the wrong acid test, FF 1.0.6 still doesn't spit out the smiling face at WaSP's acid 2 test, so it can't say much, but then again, ever try to load the acid2 test in IE? horrible. I just want to be able to use the same CSS file for IE as I do for Firefox, and have it be standards compliant. Oh well, good thing I don't care about how my sites look in IE, but it is nice that they are trying to be compliant!
"Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed." -C.S. Lewis
Since the Webstandards site has been /.ed, here's a mirror of the Acid2 test:
t ml
http://whereswalden.com/files/webdev/acid2/test.h
The W3C? How many divisions do they have?
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Now, open IE up and look at the Acid2 test. IE completely fucks it up beyond recognition. I could render the picture better by shitting out paint.
I'm curious to know how other browsers like Opera and Safari handle the Acid2 test. Are there technically any browsers out there that can pass it?
... 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.
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.
-Lod
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.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
What does it say when google and yahoo are creating brain drain hiring good developers that push the limits of standard-incompetent browsers, while Microsoft does not seem to be able to get qualified people to just make the thing work right in the first place? I know there are some brainy people in the ranks of Microsoft. At this point can ultimately determine it isn't a question of "can't fix" but "won't fix" ... or "afraid to fix" ? It's been hypothesized that Microsoft is afraid to fix IE for fear of losing their application monopoly to web applications.
Funny how quickly the MS bashing begins, yet when I just tried the Acid2 test with Firefox (my browser of choice btw), the results were far from impressive. And correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know Acid2 isn't an officially accepted standard, it's a *proposed* standard.
Acid2 is a test of the CSS standard, not the standard itself. And no, Firefox doesn't pass. But the Firefox team has made it a goal TO pass, unlike the IE team which has apparently said, "screw it, we're not going to waste our time just to pass that." IE is shooting for "good enough."
Considering the amount of money Microsoft could theoretically pump into development on the next version of IE, wouldn't it make more sense for them to be the first to pass the test (and by doing so provide implied compliance with the standard)?
"I am off to buy a spyware firm & an anti spyware firm and get filthy rich from Vista."
I would put my money somewhere else. Direct competition with Microsoft only gets you filty rich if they buy your company.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
I saw it. My IE home page is set to about:blank. I opened IE. Copied and pasted the first URL from Firefox in to IE, and navigated to it. Then did the same for the second IE. Now when I hit back it cycles through the two pages without returning to the blank page. *shrug* So what? It's a rather inconsequential bug.
Personally, I would like them to change the behaviour of the DocumentComplete event. We navigate to to our redirect server which returns a 3xx code and sends us off to the correct page. When I get the document complete event I try to get a reference to the HTML document and iterate over the elements. Only in this situation HTML document appears to have no elements. Our workaround is to navigate to a web page that contains some JavaScript that does the navigation to the final page, but that requires that the user has JavaScript enabled.
Is it too much to ask to fix PNG!?!?!?!?
It didn't stuck me.
Not sure how your comparison of the "browser wars" is like the Cold War - how does the cold war mean "you get garbage output?"
"Microsoft is clearly saying they're working on standards"
Ohh, shit then. Let's believe it. Especially because you can't see it yet. I'm not saying that they AREN'T working on standards but Microsoft doesn't have a very good track record in this regard. You can't blame people for being just a little skeptical.
Now, Bill Gates might not be coding the browser but he's involved with the high level descision making and if he gets together with Ballmer and says "let's make IE *almost* standards compliant to keep people locked into IE" then guess what the programmers do?
A lot of great software has been produced by Microsoft - anyone that denies that has an agenda. Unfortunately, every single peice of MS Software - Every package - is marred with *something* that tries to lock you in. It's very unfortunate.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Opera Acid2 as of today and the forum post accompanying the attachment:
Good news for Opera users.
IE's hit-or-miss CSS/DOM support drives me nuts, since it tends to add a significant amount of work to almost every project for me. But until Firefox ships a browser that passes Acid2, it seems rather silly to complain about IE's problems with the test.
#DeleteChrome
Why does the CSS test page itself contain bad CSS code? Is this test really valid?
i le=css2&warning=2&uri=http%3A//www.webstandards.or g/act/acid2/test.html%23top
o p
.parser-container div
.parser
.parser
.parser
.parser
.parser
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator?prof
Errors
URI : http://www.webstandards.org/act/acid2/test.html#t
* Line: 44
Parse Error - second two]
* Line: 89 Context :
Invalid number : color orange is not a color value : orange
* Line: 95 Context :
Property error doesn't exist : }
* Line: 98 Context :
Property m rgin doesn't exist : 2em
* Line: 98
Parse error - Unrecognized : };
* Line: 100 Context :
Invalid number : width only 0 can be a length. You must put an unit after your number : 200
* Line: 101 Context :
Parse Error - ! error;
* Line: 101 Context :
Parse error - Unrecognized : }
-Joe
Honestly there's a few fixes thay could make that would solve a whole lot of stuff fairly quickly:
:hover: correctly
- Fix the box model
- Fix inheritance issues
- Implement
Hell, even if they just fixed the box model that would solve the bulk of the problems that people are having now. I'm still curious why they botheres with this "beta" except to show off their awesome new UI that breaks all known UI design conventions for no compelling reason.
I could render the picture better by shitting out paint
...I did not want...
mental image...
This question has been answered several times. As it seems, Opera renders it mostly correctly (significantly better than FireFox), and their reps say they're working on passing it completely. Safari passes it now, but the version that does isn't available yet. The same goes for Konqueror (I think).
Want a high quality FOSS RTS game? Try Warzone 2100!
I honestly think MS is just jazzed about everyone focusing on Firefox, because the reality is no one buys MS products for Internet Explorer. The more OSS people focus on Firefox, the less Microsoft has to worry about any competition for its real moneymakers.
Plus, most users simply won't upgrade because they don't experience any problems on IE and for that reason will not be compelled to download Firefox. And since MS is looking at competition that could probably in the end only take away the techiest people, there is no real reason why MS should throw THAT much money at the IE project.
Apples excellent Safari web browser passed the Acid 2 test in April 2005.
There is now a released version of the open source WebKit that drives Safari for everyone to use.
Apple rocks. But you already knew that, didn't you?
(/snip)
So I think that sums most of 'em.
And look, if IE6 fails miserably the ACID2 test, i'm really hoping we'll see a yellow blurb at least in IE7 (right now it's like a red wall with some pieces of slaughtered yellow-face in there).
In firefox we don't see the face, but at least we can see a nice yellow thing with wierd not-intended-to-be sunglasses on... kinda.
So I'm quite curious how the ACID2 will render in IE7...
... the quicker people will migrate to Firefox.
Yes, it DOES contain invalid code. CSS standards not only say what valid code is, but how browsers should fallback when they encounter INVALID code.
Actually, they mention this in the FAQ too.
Acid2 is a test of the CSS standard, not the standard itself. And no, Firefox doesn't pass. But the Firefox team has made it a goal TO pass, unlike the IE team which has apparently said, "screw it, we're not going to waste our time just to pass that." IE is shooting for "good enough."
From TFB (the fucking blog):
As a wish list, it is really important and useful to my team, but it isn't even intended, in my understanding, as our priority list for IE7.
We fully recognize that IE is behind the game today in CSS support. We've dug through the Acid 2 Test and analyzed IE's problems with the test in some great detail, and we've made sure the bugs and features are on our list - however, there are some fairly large and difficult features to implement, and they will not all sort to the top of the stack in IE7. I believe we are doing a much better service to web developers out there in IE7 by fixing our known bang-your-head-on-the-desk bugs and usability problems first, and prioritizing the most commonly-requested features based on all the feedback we've had.
So, they view it as a useful wishlist, they are implementing lots of stuff from it, but they don't expect full compliance for the scheduled release (which is scheduled to be long before the Vista release, possibly this year). From my perspective, this is quite a bit from "screw it, we're not going to waste our time just to pass that."
safari and konqueror pass, but opera and ff do not.
t hor=&sort=1&op=stories
at least not according to slashdot: http://slashdot.org/search.pl?tid=&query=acid2&au
Only works for me if I open a new tab. ;)
Who ordered that?
Acid2 does not test every possible web standard or even all of the CSS standard. Passing it implies nothing as far as sticking to a standard goes. Passing it does show that you have a good implemention that works well, but thats about it.
Regards,
Steve
First, look at the Acid2 test as rendered by Firefox. It's got a few problems, but if you compare it to the prerendered picture for comparison you can see a few similarities. At least the overall shape is generally correct.
Now, open IE up and look at the Acid2 test. IE completely fucks it up beyond recognition. I could render the picture better by shitting out paint.
Just because it looks "further" from the correct rendering in IE than it does in FF, does not necessarily mean that IE is doing a worse job at it.
What?
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".
vk.
IE7 passes the Acid test, as in you need to be on LSD to use it.
/. ++
I've decided to stop giving a crap if my pages don't look right in IE. Okay, I might spend 15 minutes to work around a problem, but other than my resume, my pages are things I build for fun.
Figuring out why IE doesn't work with a page that looks good in every other browser is just not my idea of fun. It's not even an interesting challenge, since the solutions are never elegant or satisfying.
And this is not a matter of spite, or retaliation, it's just a simple matter of spending my time on things I find enjoyable, versus working around someone else's brokeness.
Thankfully, I don't do web development to put food on the table.
What we need more of is science!
After M$ propaganda campaign, they will move to the new standard, I mean IE7 standard, not W3C standard. And all of the Win2k and WinXP users will be left behind again. Then people have to pay the Bill for upgrade again.
I have a strong feeling that M$ will release a tool help web developers move their IE6 compatible web pages/applications to IE7 standard. Maybe the tool even work with jsp/php.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
Sigh. Wake me up when firefox lets me link to my (international-alphabet) filenames, for index-files on my hard disk:
a >
<a href="sea-squirt%20(ホヤ).jpg">hoya</
(Those two unicode characters are the japanese word for sea-squirt.) For me, this kind of basic alphabet support is FAR more important than the far reaches of CSS3.
Debugging JavaScript in IE just plain sucks. It's so bad that I just do not even debug in IE anymore, if the bug is reproducable in Mozilla, I debug there.
It would be nice to see MS fix with IE by adding a parsable stack dump like Mozilla (error.stack) including function name, file name and an accurate line number.
JsD
...it's simply a test, nothing more, nothing less. What it tests ranges from the esoteric (embedded data in objects) to the plain (css positioning) to the bad (css that's bogus and should be parsed as such). It's a cool test suite but, just like acid 1, cannot test every little nuance/interaction or part of the css spec.
In fact, acid 1 was only concerned with the box model that, whilst important and the bane of many a css devs life, is small potatoes when it comes to some really cool stuff that's possible once you delve deeper.
As far as firefox failing the test, yes, it does indeed fail, but not that badly at all (the face is discernable with there only being a few problem rows). In explorer you cannot even tell that the thing is meant to draw a face, all you get is a red block at the bottom of the screen, the words hello world and a few random looking blocks elsewhere - that tells me (perhaps incorrectly) that the core CSS foundations of explorer when it comes to stuff tested by ACID 2 is severely broken (or just not implemented yet).
One thing is for sure, I hope they have some uber guys working on the new explorer team, with all the regressions that hacking a truly crufty codebase will create they are going to have their work cut out for them.
The reason the new generation of browsers, by which I mean written from scratch post css, i.e. khtml (and safari's webkit) and to a certain extent mozilla (not a total rewrite I believe, but still considerable), are doing so well standards wise is they learnt from past mistakes and tried to build an extensible platform from the ground up. Opera and Explorer have to keep hacking on features to a codebase that is now getting long in the tooth (10 years+ ?) and is for a field which has seen an almost unprecedented rate of change and standards adoption; No wonder it's so hard to get it right.
If microsoft really wanted to make a great product they would scrap what they have now and start again, from scratch and do it right. This will never happen of course because the only reason we are seeing any new development is because they are fearful mozilla and co will come and take away their prized future revenue making plans (leased software running on thin clients, no chance of piracy then ;o)
I am NaN
Yeah, MS is shooting for "good enough" for IE7. But then IE7 is on a VERY short development schedule. It's scheduled to go gold this fall.
We can probably expect IE 7.5 or 8 about the time of Longhorn next year. It may even have a 7.5 sometime in the spring and 8 in the fall, though I think that's unlikely.
I fully expect that by the time Longhorn ships, IE will be as standards compbliant as Firefox is, though i've been known to be wrong before.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
Ok, tried that. Went to OSDN, then to the first, then to the second bad page. Pressed Back, then again. Was on the OSDN homepage, as I expected. What was supposed to happen in your opinion?
Name one piece of software that doesn't crash.
yesUnless you run yes as: `yes > bla`. Bad things happen then.
Are there technically any browsers out there that can pass it?
Who cares? This is a CSS file with a wishlist of a single developer! Besides that, it has incorrect CSS in it. Somehow people have latched on to this thing.
Box-model in IE was fixed around 2001. Fix YOUR code.
I'd like IE to support basics like width , height , display:inline and float . Currently under these names Microsoft has implemented min-width, min-height, display:inline-block and god-knows-what, respectively.
Firefox is still being worked on to pass the Acid2 test (see bug 289480, no direct link since this is /.), and it's still a high priority (P2) bug that should see the light of day by 1.5.
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
Look towards the bottom of
http://www.webstandards.org/act/acid2/
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.
Before you mod me funny, think, perhaps I was insightfully funny?
For the ten millionth time. There is bogus CSS because the acid2 also tests the case of fallback on invalid css! There is a very good reason the bad code is there! To make sure browsers can handle it!
This is VERY true. Bad CSS will become a standard and common usage if it behaves the same on all agents. MOD PARENT UP!
So, they view it as a useful wishlist, they are implementing lots of stuff from it, but they don't expect full compliance for the scheduled release (which is scheduled to be long before the Vista release, possibly this year). From my perspective, this is quite a bit from "screw it, we're not going to waste our time just to pass that."
Very true. Actually, it's more a case of not having time to waste, rather than not wasting time. Personally, I wish they had either started sooner or would take longer, and do it right...but they didn't really have the incentive to start sooner (no competition), and taking longer isn't really an option when you're playing catch-up.
Maybe I shouldn't be so hard on them, either. They are finally taking large steps in the right direction, and it's probably best to at least save the bashing for AFTER the product is released.
Sometimes I have this knee-jerk reaction to unload with both barrels on them, though...mostly because I do truly hate IE as it is now. Granted, that doesn't exactly put me in the minority around here, but sometimes it does make me fill a little silly afterward.
Congratulations: not only didn't you RTFA, you clearly haven't R'ed any F'ing A's on this topic for at least the last year. Good job. Wouldn't do to inform yourself before deploying your indignant !'s and ?'s.
SIERRA TANGO FOXTROT UNIFORM
Just wanted to make meta-comment on this kind of thing. It's interesting the cycles these discussions go in. For a while, it's popular to bash microsoft for everything they do (because, well, that needs no explanation), then it becomes popular to defend them (b/c you're being fair and open-minded) and then it swings back....
It's like there are these two attractors in the dynamics of this discussion..
Does anybody know wether it will support position:fixed? Thanks
Virtually no one cares. That's why Microsoft is not wasting time trying to pass it. It's an arbitrary academic exercise that doesn't reflect real world experiences.
If they really cared about standards compliance, they would have fixed at least some of the head-banging CSS bugs for Beta 1. It's pretty clear from the blog link posted by the OP that these fixes are an afterthought. The fact that the developers needed to go to various websites to see what the worst IE CSS bugs are indicates 2 things: 1) the IE development team doesn't actually develop any web pages to test the software that they write (if they did, they would know EXACTLY how infurating some of these IE-only bugs are), and 2) they've never read the CSS standard spec. Everyone remembers Ballmer running around, waving his arms, and yelling "Developers! Developers! Developers!" Well, I guess we web-developers don't count, even those of us who develop exclusively for IE.
Before anyone chimes in that I'm some anti-Microsoft zealot, I'd like to point out that I'm a web-developer in a shop that is exclusively MS. I code in ASP.NET and write HTML/CSS/JavaScript targeted at intranet users on IE ONLY. My complaint is not that MS doesn't follow standards, but that their CSS implementation is infuriatingly buggy. When you can't even keep your IE only developers happy, you've got a serious problem. And it's not the sort of problem that you can fix as an afterthought.
While thinking philosophically, we see problems in places where there are none. -Wittgenstein
FF 1.5 will not pass Acid2. This is not the right time in our release schedule to fix those kinds of bugs. We'll pass Acid2 in the next major version of FF after that.
Man, all you flamers: look at the change list! You lowered my expectations a lot, but when you actually look at it (gasp! RTFA), it's pretty nice. I'm impressed!
"May the days be aimless. Let the seasons drift. Do not advance the action according to a plan."
iCab passes because they use Webcore from Safari as their rendering engine.
we will fix as many of the worst bugs that web developers hit as we can
Why is the goal not: fix all the bugs. Now if they don't fix a bug, they can either say it is a feature , not a very bad bug or a new standard.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
> We can probably expect IE 7.5 or 8 about the
> time of Longhorn next year. It may even have a
> 7.5 sometime in the spring and 8 in the fall,
> though I think that's unlikely.
What are you talking about? They've said that IE7 will ship on Longhorn. So you're suggesting they'll be at IE7.5 or 8 on WinXP and 7 on Longhorn? No way.
> I fully expect that by the time Longhorn ships,
> IE will be as standards compbliant as Firefox
> is, though i've been known to be wrong before.
Nice troll.
What, people already forgot the fracas set off when Dave Hyatt landed complete Acid2 rendering in the WebCore CVS (which you CAN download and use - quite easily I might add)?
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
Thank goodness we might finally see proper PNG alpha channel support after, what, a decade? But there are some other annoyances which I hope also get on their list...
I pray, I pray so very much for the min/max widths working in IE 7. ...Hey...give me a plane ticket down there and an ice cold corona. Give me some code to work with, I'll add it for 'em. ;)
" Yesterday upon the stair I met a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today. I wish that man would go away."
Dave Shea published the list of what's fixed and what's not a few days ago...
- live from Costa Rica !
Considering the amount of money Microsoft could theoretically pump into development on the next version of IE, wouldn't it make more sense for them to be the first to pass the test (and by doing so provide implied compliance with the standard)?
Ah, so you believe then that the more programmers on a project, the faster and better it gets done?
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
It's good that they are focusing on fixing the problems that web developers actually face. I am one, and all I ask from them is to fix rendering issues so I don't have to use hacks to make my site render the same way across browsers. Oh and fuck the Acid Test, as the IE developers said, it's a "wish list" for the future.
Mozilla stole tabs from NetCaptor. So what? Right?
I think you meant 80%+ market share.
And given current trends, 70%+ market share might be more accurate at the time Longhorn ships.
Will the tag still work?
Absurdity: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion. -- Ambrose Bierce
No, because web developers don't buy MDSN subscriptions, it would make sense for them to make the life for web developers as miserable as possible.
And a bunch of those "Windows library functions" are only available on Windows, and therefore it's impractical to use anything else.
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?
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Considering the amount of money Microsoft could theoretically pump into development on the next version of IE, wouldn't it make more sense for them to be the first to pass the test (and by doing so provide implied compliance with the standard)?
Microsoft won't be the first to pass Acid2, not unless all that money's going to buy A MAGICAL TIME MACHINE...
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I don't really think I've ever bashed Microsoft. I also don't defend them because I'm open minded, or fair -- I defend them because I think people presumptuously. "Oh noes, Microsoft registered a defensive patent, everyone let's scream at them despite the fact that so many other companies do the exact same thing and Microsoft isn't suing people over patents!" "I call bullshit, Microsoft claims they're working on standards, so I'm going to assume they're lying just for the hell of it!", "Oh shit, let's boycott Microsoft because they're adding DRM to their OS, even though it's inevitable that it's going to happen to the rest of the Mac/Linux soon enough anyway!".
At least it will be in shades of brown...
Life is not for the lazy.
It'd be nice if Firefox, Safari, and Opera got together and would actually agree on a standard (and implement it!) for attaching fonts to web pages that isn't complex or weird. I suggest just making it work with the html link tag.
Then you could use nicer fonts without having to use images. That mixed with CSS could fix a lot of the existing problems with website design.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Since 99% of the incompetent "webmasters" out there use absolute font sizes to make the pages unreadable to everybody but kids with perfect vision.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Sure. That's kind of what I was getting at - there are some standard or predictable reactions to this kind of story, and then there are some logical responses to those reactions - thus every time there is a story like this it spawns both of these poles. Over time they seem to be getting more entrenched - as if the valleys of the attractors are getting deeper...They also repel each other but are also symbiotic... getting kind of offtopic now though.
a piece of spyware that attacks windows . . . but is only being reported by OSX people. Hmm, someone was a bit scatterbrained while coding...
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
To be honest guys, the acid test takes browsers way past the point of being practical.
Certainly the tests are interesting, but how many 3-column websites with links and graphics actually benefit from being able to draw a CSS smiley face?
...and you can send unicode directly, without using HTML entities. For example all the pages on my site are sent as "Content-Type: application/xhtml+xml; charset=UTF-8". I can then show Spanish and other unicdoe characters without needing to resort to HTML entity hacks. If you can't configure your server directly (i.e., no .htaccess support or the like), then a simple PHP script (or similar script in another language such as Perl or Python) should do the trick: ...PHP... ...your page here...
(You should probably change that to text/html if not using XHTML 1.1.)
This is, of course, presuming that your server can handle Unicode HTTP requests...
"In IE7, we will fix as many of the worst bugs that web developers hit as we can" if we have time, as we will be integrating IE7 into every aspect of the OS to make it completely inseparable.
IEFBR14
Definately. If not for the existence of IE we'd still be stuck with Netscape 4.x which believe it or not was even worse in regards to Standards.
Competition is good.
That is, as long as it's actually from creative people introducing exciting new products. When you try to instill competition by kneecapping the dominant player back down to the lowest common denominator... you really aren't going to see much improve.
No, it's a test designed by the members of the Web Standards Project, who are some of the world's foremost experts on the W3C specs. One of its stated purposes is to test CSS error-handling in browsers (since the CSS specification mandates certain behavior when invalid CSS is encountered, this is important). It does not test for 100% compliance with any particular specification (test suites exist for that purpose already), but does test the implementation of a specific set of useful features, in hopes of spurring browser vendors into improving support for those features.
And what bugs do we actually encounter? They make it seem like these are issues or limitations with say, XML, HTTP, or CSS
I'd say the article goes out of its way to say that they are bugs in IE... I mean, that's what it's about, and all. Nowhere did it say that there were issues with the standard. As a matter of fact, the author even asked people to post iother areas where IE breaks compliance with what they are planning to fix in IE7.
The bug list that they plan to fix:
And improvements:
The only issues I've ever encountered were with compatibility between browsers.
That, as they say, would be the point. And this ::WHOOSH:: would be the article flying waaaay over your head:
Only now do the choose to fix these bugs when the possibility of being defeated is looming. Thanks Microsoft!
Eh. Better late than never... or something like that.
Oh... and to keep this post from being modded flamebait: I hate Micro$oft, those money-grubbing obnoxious f***tards. Ok. that should do the trick.
--
One mod's informative is another mod's flambait.
Acid2 is kind of out there, and as others are pointing out, our beloved FF won't pass it, either. The real questions are: Will it even fully support just pure CSS1? And for the person who said this: "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."--Um, why are we giving them a pass here? Everyone else has gotten their shit together in the meantime, why can't MS? Weren't they one of the original members of the w3c in the first place?
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I mean, if you can't maintain and be compliant with the standards, then why even try
Are you honestly saying that you can't understand the economics of this situation?
If you're Microsoft, you want to work *just enough* on standards compliance to get some of the standards-whiners to shut the hell up, and so Web pages will display nicely enough, and so you can splash out another press release saying "standards compliance" so all the press will report on your being a "good netizen".
I mean, shitty though that may be, I have a hard time believing that you can't understand it...Microsoft has ~90% browser share, so whatever shitty browser they make, you and me and all the other guys have to make our Web sites work with it, regardless, or else we are alienating a staggeringly large percentage of available customers/viewers. Sure, I know there is a line they can't cross (i.e., if the broke viewability of 90% of the Web sites by crappy rendering, then they'd lose market share), but I think their strategy is to do "just enough" to continue to be successful. Anything else is wasted engineering resources.
gameDB
No. IE7 will ship this fall. There will most likely be a new version that ships with Longhorn (and be backported to XP as well) a year later. Whether that's IE7 SP1, IE7.5 or IE8 is yet to be seen.
The fact taht IE7 has been set to ship for XP almost a year before Longhorn ships should tell you something.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
Microsoft won't give me the source for IE, but the patch is so obvious I've still managed to beat their developers to it:
t op" )h tml" );
if ( document.url == "http://www.webstandards.org/act/acid2/test.html#
document.redirectTo( "http://www.webstandards.org/act/acid2/reference.
That's a fine plan. Something like: />
<link rel="font" href="/foo/bar.ttf"
Formats aren't a problem, either: OS X, X11, and Windows can all handle Windows-format TrueType fonts.
The only real problem is likely to be licensing costs for those using fonts in their webpages - it would tend to be very expensive, since using the technology would essentially involve giving away a copy of the font. (I have disregarded DRM snake oil solutions that would in any case exclude open source software.) Then again, there are plenty of free headline fonts, which is where variation is wanted most.
It also wouldn't be practical for complex scripts: Japanese and Chinese fonts are often tens of megabytes in size.
If your comment title says 'Re: Foo', I'm not likely to read it.
>iCab passes because they use Webcore from Safari as their rendering engine.
s html
this simply isn't true.
the people modding this up should have checked the facts first.
1.) if iCab 3.0 would use WebCore it wouldn't be available for macos 8.5
2.) the (german) interview with the iCab creator available here:
http://www.macgadget.de/interviews/clauss/clauss.
clearly states that he doesn't use WebKit because he thinks it isn't standards compliant enough and only works on (new) mac os x versions.
As a lead software developer on a medium-sized suite of products (~100 engineers), I'd say that fixing all bugs on a product is infeasible. Don't get me wrong-- bugs are bad, but "good enough" makes economic sense, "perfect" does not.
Small, personal (~5 engineers), cottage software projects can and probably should aim for as-perfect-as-possible. I run projects like this at home in my spare time and it's rewarding and appeals to my inner perfectionist.
For a large effort, like a next-generation web browser, triage, risk-management and post-release planning are extremely important strategic concerns.
The consequences of Microsoft's bug triage are probably a lot more mundane than you're speculating. The defects will simply be release-noted or cataloged in their support database if they're discovered after the fact.
Less dramatic, I know. Conspiracies are a lot more fun, so I'll throw you a bone: somewhere there's a product manager who giving an engineering mandate which goes like this, "Make something flashy, don't worry about standards so much." Our frustrations arise as a consequence of this directive.
The alternative is a more compliant browser with fewer features and less flash (so to speak) and we are once again in the land of trade-offs and cost/benefit. Life is grim and boring, ain't it?
Microsoft/Claria Deal Dead (July 12)
Whilst the support in IE7 is better than IE6, its still awful, and they've even lied in places to make themselves look better. To quote the IEBLOG, they've fixed ":hover on all elements" - which isn't true, as the :hover pseudo-class STILL doesn't work on anything other than anchors.
The acid2 test looks exactly the same in IE6 and IE7 too, which implies that not much has changed.
"If you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all"
Why I have to spent almost 30% of my design time on fixing rendering issues in IE? I think that 30% extra cost is too much considering that the IE is the product of *VERY* rich company. So why I'm forced to spend my own time/money on solving IE rendering issues? Why me? Why not Microsoft? How long will it last? I'm loosing money with IE!
Well, I've got to get back to work. When I stop rowing, the slave ship just goes in circles.
For most things, it does. However, for the script tag, like <script src="..." />, IE will barf and display a blank page if you don't break that up into <script><!--blah--></script>.
"It's better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
I don't code to W3C standards, I code to IE, because that's what's on the desktops of my users.
"Your users", or "almost ninety percent of your users"? Does your boss know that you are turning away over 10 percent of potential customers by not coding to browsers that conform to W3C standards? Or do you code only for intranet sites, where the IT department controls what's on the desktop?
I'm so going to use that line on my customers, when they come to me screaming because the software I coded crashed miserably.
"Name me one piece of software that doesn't crash!"
I'm not going to bash Microsoft because their software sometimes crashes (and anyway, it doesn't crash that much). On this point, both the OSS and MS solution does remarkably well.
But stating that it's not a problem if a software crashes because other software also does is simply idiot. If people thought like you, we'd be still living in the caves (hey, bears also does!). But luckily, you don't work at MS.
nbody2002:If you can read this you may be addicted to the internet
"You know, we've wrestled with standards and security and perhaps we should exit the browser market given the great alternatives out there."
They have a 90 percent share of the browser market. They are winning. Why on earth would they exit the market?
"I realise this is not a very popular opinion but it's the truth, and there for needs to be said" -Bill Hicks
But still, it will be able to flutter its eyelids, and its hands will move a bit.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
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.
W3C standards were not hyped, but the standards at the time were well known top anyone interested enoguh to read about it. Just like best coding practices. Now, if one is trying to make a profit, one may have to cut coners. That is understandable. So one borks the standards, and does not prioritize buffer overflows as a problem. I have no issues with that as a bussiness decision.
What I do have a problem with is 20 years later coming out and saying that we did not know, or no one made up do it. I was coding quite a bit in the late 80's and 90's. I read much of the HTML 1.0 standards, and what came after. Those books were very clear on what HTML was, what it wasn't, and where to be careful. MS ignored those warning not because they were not, as you say, 'hyped', but because following the standards made little sense on the bottom line. MS was very late to the game, and all that mattered was getting in, not being complient. Complience mattered not as most would use whatever garbage MS prodced because that was all that most knew.
Today, they have to correct for that decision. It is just like corrected for the 640K issue, which forced so many of us to put hacked hardware and drivers into an otherwise excellent machine. Or having to put all this virus protection crap to protect a badly decisioned network OS, but wonderful standalong OS. They knew. It just did not make sense to do it.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
My god. Its horrible. Its hard to use, tabs are terrible, and the layout is more confusing and messy rather than the simple design that they were going for.
"Figuring out why IE doesn't work with a page that looks good in every other browser is just not my idea of fun."
I wonder what would happen if all websites such as yours (and there are quite a few) started including the tag, "Best viewed with Firefox 1.0.6, Opera 7, or Safari" and inclusing links to download pages, with no mention of IE at all. More IE alternative downloads, you think? Or more pissed visitors who say, "Screw it."
I am not flaming or trolling. I truly wonder if websites (especially popular/high traffic sites) calling attention to better browsers in this manner would make a noticeable difference.
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
Max and min widths and heights are soooooooooo important for proper resizable page design.
This would be one of the best features they could add, and i see no mention of it in their blog.
Forgive me if this has already been pointed out, but there is a very large IE6 userbase that is going to remain large long after the release of IE7. Win2k and Windows98 are still widely used, and unfortunately Microsoft in their great wisdom have decided not to provide IE7 for these platforms.
The greatest service that MS can provide to the web developer community, would be to find a way to patch the IE6 engine with the bugfixes that are going in to IE7 - perhaps roll them out through windows update. IE6 is going to be around a long time, and while it is commendable that they have finally decided to address the standards compliance issues with IE, it won't really have any impact for several years. In the meantime, the css hacks will continue to be a necessity.
This sig is false.
Well, yeah. Actually. Even though it's a crappy standard, and it's not what a lot of people wanted, 90% of the market (isn't it less by now?) uses it. Look up the definition of "standard".
HI, MY NAME IS ISAAC.
It's easier to develop good CSS if when there is a problem it renders the same in all browsers to a known spec, rather than just letting the designer know "uh-oh...something's wrong".
re: XP / Vista only... i have no bones with this, (an IE6 renderer upgrade would be nice though) after all when ford brings out a new model everyone doesn't bitch and yell that they arent releasing an "upgrade" for the rest of the ford owners to get the nice shiney sat nav unit, do they? If MS is to construct a less buggy more secure OS/Browser then it needs to wipe the slate clean with Vista and have zero quirks for the sake of backwards compatibility. It's a no win situation. they make it backwards compatible then everyone complains about the bugs, miriads of config options and slow execution of software. make it brand new and everyone complains about the lack of support for the old bugs and options!
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
So...
IF they fix IE7 so all the hacks we use for IE6 are no longer neccessary, and we stop using those hacks...
THEN we'll be helping them squeeze everybody off of Win2K and earlier since they won't put IE7 on Win2K.
That's an ugly thought.
Although my reply would probably be that Microsoft software crashes way more often, I've had a couple of incidents with Mozilla lately. But OpenOffice, on the other hand.. D'oh!
What DOES pass this acid test
Newer builds of Safari do. They haven't been pushed out to the general public but I *think* they might be in the open source repository.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
FireFox is slow and, as you noticed, has inferior CSS support. Konqueror works near perfect.
Luke-Jr
Your problem is that you are only testing browsers on Windows. Try Safari or Konqueror :)
FireFox may be the best Windows browser, but it's not that great on other platforms.
Luke-Jr