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Windows Guru Calls For IE7 Boycott
Anonymous Cowherd writes "Paul Thurrott, a journalist that usually writes about all things Windows related (and sometimes about Apple affairs too), made a call in a recent article to boycott Internet Explorer, due to Microsoft's approach (continued in IE7) of not supporting web standards: 'My advice here is simple: Boycott Internet Explorer. It is a cancer on the Web, and must be stopped. IE is insecure and is not standards-compliant, which makes it unworkable for both end users and Web content creators... You can turn the tide by demanding better from Microsoft and using a better alternative Web browser. I recommend and use Mozilla Firefox, but Apple Safari (Mac only) and Opera 8 are both worth considering as well.'"
In fact, I think I'll take it a step further and boycott Windows as well.
They claim they don't want to support all the standards because it will break poorly coded website. Well, there's an easy solution they already somewhat support... turn on the correct rendering engine with doctype switching! Regular users with badly coded sites are unlikely to have a correct doctype (or any doctype at all) that would trigger this mode. Standards supporters win, and users win.
I doubt a boycott of this sort would have much impact. Anyone who cares already uses something other than IE. Your average user will just say "Why bother? I've never had a problem." That's what I did.
Why do my serious comments get modded "funny"?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Have your webpages check to see what browser the client is using, and if it is IE7 (or hey, ANY version of IE) refuse to render the page and pop up a link to Mozilla or Firefox and tell the user that his current browser is broken, and a plague on the web, and that he should follow the given link and download a REAL broswer if he (or she) wants to see your content. (turn around is fair play I say!)
After my third time removing spyware from my wife's grandparents' computer I did the following:
1. Install Firefox.
2. Change IE shortcut to Firefox.
3. Rename Firefox icon as "Internet"
4. I told them that their computer was slow because of the IE and AOL browsers.
This worked wonders. These are the same people that were told to defrag once to make your computer faster and interpreted it as a "defrag every day."
... unforunately Microsoft won't give a damn about you and your ideas.
http://www.windowsitpro.com/Article/ArticleID/4720 8/47208.html?Ad=1
TODO create witty sig.
I just visited the Acid2 test page in the Internet Explorer 7 beta, and it looks exactly the same as it does in FireFox. Am I doing something wrong?
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Boycott a product that hasn't even shipped yet? We have no idea how secure/insecure it is, or how standards compliant IE7 is going to be. Just stop blustering already.
You're right, but firefox is working on it, Microsoft announced that they won't even try to pass the Acid Test. Neither one may be able to meet the standards yet, but at least the Mozilla group is working on it. Which would you rather use, the group that tries, or the group that knowingly blows it off.
Apple says that safari has already passed in their test builds, and Opera is said to be "very close". Rather than the market telling the users what they want, perhaps by boycotting IE the users can tell the market what they want.
There is a term...
Too Little Too Late.
Yes the next version SHOULD be better then the last one. But it is not what we want. Why Can't we follow the CSS Specs 100%, We can excuse free software for not because it is free and you get what you paid for but for a company like Microsoft who has a lot of resources and cash it should be head over heals better then anything out there. And it is not even close.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Oh that would play out well out work.
Boss: "What happened to our friday numbers? We owe Audi 200,000 more impressions and we'll never make it"
Me: "Oh, that! It's the Microsoft-Free Fridays Apache module."
(grumbling and hushed tones)
Me: Didn't know you'd be such a d1ck about it. Okay, I'll get my things....
Except that other browsers pretend to be IE (e.g., Opera) or can be configured to pretend as such (e.g., Konqueror, Safari).
The above is the exact reason why browser detects are no longer used in Javascript: The user agent doesn't tell you jack or shit.
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.
....But as few of them as we can.
Come on. Give me a break. It sounds to me like it will take a long time for the browser to be up to the standards. Is IE7 just a rewrite of IE6? If so, would it be faster to start from scratch if you wanted to make the browser compliant with all of the standards?
In the web platform team that I lead, our top priority is (and will likely always be) security - not just mechanical "fix buffer overruns" type stuff, but innovative stuff like the anti-phishing work and low-rights IE.
I'm also supprised that MS doesn't have a team that only works on security and leaves bugs and standards to a different team, considering how many updates we all get that are just for IE's security.
Then again, what the hell do I know? I don't write browsers. What does someone who does think of this?
Vol~
That works well for MS Office, Photoshop, Flash, Illustrator, etc...
Oh, wait, no - that doesn't work at all.
Video for Online Dating Profiles
Yeah, that's exactly what will keep people coming back to your site. "Hi, thanks for visiting! This has nothing to do with my content, but you're not using the browser I think you should, so YOU'RE A MORON. Now on with the show..."
It's not your job as a Web developer to nag your audience or stuff your own preferences down their throats. It's your job to connect with them, to give them whatever the site offers in the most useful way. Unless your site is about Web browsers, it's outside your authority to lecture them about it, and in the likeliest case you'll simply convince people that Firefox users are pushy assholes and make them more resistant to switching.
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You mis-spelled 'whine'.
Lump lingered last in line for brains, and the ones she got were sorta rotten and insane.
You write "can't even" like acid2 is critical or trivial. It exercises part of the CSS standard that Firefox has trouble with, but that does not mean Firefox's CSS support is no better than IE's.
Slashdot isn't a multi-hundred-billion-dollar corporation with a stranglehold monopoly on the desktop operating system market.
Xfce: Lighter than some, heavier than others. Just right.
standards comply to you!
Seriously, when you have as much marketshare as microsoft, forget the w3c -- you ARE the standard.
All this IE won't pass the Acid test on purpose hype is a little out of control. Where that comes from is this article from yesterday where the IE developer says:
our top priority is (and will likely always be) security
First, let's be happy about that. Obviously the more serious problem with IE is the security issues.
He then says:
I want to be clear that our intent is to build a platform that fully complies with the appropriate web standards, in particular CSS 2 ( 2.1, once it's been Recommended).
and further more:
It's pointedly not a compliance test (from the Test Guide: "Acid2 does not guarantee conformance with any specification"
So neither the author nor half of slashdot read anymore then the hyped up Slashdot headline. He specifically says they will be fully compliant and are making that a large issue. Cripes, if you want to have credibility, at least get the real facts straight.
> Have your webpages check to see what browser the client is using, and
> if it is IE7 (or hey, ANY version of IE) refuse to render the page and
> pop up a link to Mozilla....
No, that would just piss people off. But how about this:
Use a standards compliant feature that looks better on a proper browser but is readable on IE. The readable part is critical. Then put a little disclaimer or a "Problems with this page?" button that leads to text on the order of "This page uses standard CSS/DOM/BlahBlah. The current version of IE has some issues with it. If you are using IE we recommend either waiting for the next service release or installing one of the following browsers, all free downloads and known to be standards compliant. But rest assured that while some of our pages may render slightly wrong, we are testing our pages to ensure that the actual content remains readable while Microsoft addresses this issue."
Perhaps even have screen captures of the page rendered on several browsers, a fragment of code that breaks on IE alongside a link to or a snippet of text from the standard. But stick that level of detail on a link to avoid confusing the normals.
The correct tone is to make the IE users feel like that this is a Microsoft problem (which it is) that the site is aware of it and trying to mitigate the disruption to their browsing experience, that a solution is offered and that the site feels their pain. But to also subtly make them feel like second class web citizens for using a legacy browser. Perhaps even find a way to work that word in somewhere. All the big companies abuse that word to disparage anything that is a) more than a year old and b) not on THEIR technology roadmap. Lets turn it back on em.
The trick here is that Microsoft has no plans to actually fix their bugs, but if a couple of medium to high profile sites pulled this stunt they WOULD fix them. Because the last thing they want IE users to realize is that they are using the crappiest browser on the Internet. When they do fix the bug, wash rinse and repeat with another feature developers would really like to be able to use.
Democrat delenda est
It's the CORPORATE desktop. Microsoft does NOT want to break that.
And they have users locked DEEP into Exchange, Outlook, and Outlook Web Access (OWA). They have also had corporate users develop custom ActiveX controls, yadda yadda.
OWA looks GREAT on IE on Windows. It looks EXACTLY like Outlook 2003, and behaves almost exactly like IE. Which is amazing for a browser! What really sucks, is that it's totally proprietary, which means it works in nothing else, but IT departments STANDARDIZE on it, which means their users are all using it. They are hopelessly dependent on it. And they cannot use Macs (because Safari, Firefox, Opera, and IE 5 for Mac all render it like crap), and they cannot use alternative browsers on a PC. If Microsoft "fixed" IE, they would offend their corporate customers, who are exactly the people they're trying to get billions out of when Vista/IE 7 ship, and that WILL NOT HAPPEN.
Believe me, I get the "fix your browser because NONE of our corporate IT apps work on it!" like every week. And saying "hey, not our fault" doesn't matter to these people. It means they cannot use their apps, or run key business components, on our platform, and there's not much we can do about it to fix things. And it sucks. Microsoft knows this, of course.
Each horizontal band line is a separate test or group of tests. Clearly, gecko renders more lines correctly than IE. "better" can be quantified.
The article however is screaming about the IE team saying that they won't aim to pass the ACID2 test for this release. I don't see a problem with this, the point of my previous post was that it is not worth it to worry about getting the browser in line with standards perfectly on every front when no other browser passes the test anyway. Getting the CSS2 into a good known functioning state for baseline web development is the right priority. People going paragraph-surfing on w3c.com and making up tests that no browser passes is not something to take much notice of until then.
To reiterate; Fix what is most needed (and they are apparently bringing up a lot of broken functionality to the standard) first, and maybe worry about what the W3C is whining about some other decade.
Email them and comlain. You use the site, hey even your job involves you using the site. You have a perfectly vaild reason to complain. If nobody tells them ( Micro$oft sure wont ) they are too dumb to work it out them self and they will never change it.
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