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Just what has Microsoft been doing for IE 7?
Jeff Reifman writes "Last week, Windows columnist Paul Thurrott ripped into Microsoft for ignoring CSS standards with its upcoming Internet Explorer 7.0. "Microsoft has set back Web development by an immeasurable amount of time. My advice is simple: Boycott IE. It's a cancer on the Web that must be stopped. IE isn't secure and isn't standards-compliant, which makes it unworkable both for end users and Web content creators." With the redesign of my own site last month, I discovered just how non-compliant IE is with basic CSS: IE 52% vs. Firefox 93%. Is Microsoft purely incompetent and tone-deaf to customers — or simply counting on IE's non-compliance remaining a de-facto standard?"
I believe that they are just hoping that IE remains the standard as it will come pre-installed with Vista and will be going out on automatic update, so the vast majority of windows users are going to move over to IE7 with-in a year or two.
-Ed
So you see what had happened was....
Boycott I.E.? How are people supposed to do that? Just code to the standards and screw the users?
Most users don't care about your ideology or standards. Some of them aren't even aware that there are other browsers, much less why they would want one. If your site doesn't work, they'll just move on to one that does, not complain to Microsoft that xyz.com doesn't render properly.
Don't ask what Microsoft can do for IE7; ask what IE7 can do for Microsoft.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
Hopefully places will stop coding for IE since they dropped Mac support. While the Mac user is not the biggest user, it is a percentage, and coding to IE will certainly remove their ability to use the site. Just stick to open standards... is it really that hard?
Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted. - Aldous Huxley
"Is Microsoft purely incompetent and tone-deaf to customers - or simply counting on IE's non-compliance remaining a de-facto standard?"
Microsoft's business model is heavily dependent, not on actually giving customers what they want, but on tricks like "embrace, extend, extinguish". Microsoft will make more money if everyone follows Microsoft's non-standard way of doing things, because then everyone will need Microsoft software to see web sites.
If it weren't for the fact that it is temporarily possible to trick users who have little technical knowledge, Microsoft might be only barely profitable.
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Will the violence of the U.S. government will end the 3,000 years of violence in the Middle East, or increase it?
All of these are bugfixes, not additional support for CSS.
Yes, these are improvements to CSS support.
This is only part of draft specifications at this stage.
This is a workaround for proprietary behaviour that gives false positives in Internet Explorer 6. Doctype switching isn't part of any specification, it's intentional misrendering. Not to mention the fact that it wouldn't even be a problem if Internet Explorer supported XHTML in the first place.
More bugfixes, not additional support.
What are you referring to? They haven't made any changes to their JScript engine, which is their implementation of ECMAScript.
All in all, I see a lot of bugfixes, but hardly anything in the way of adding missing support for parts of CSS. Sure, they added selectors, but they missed out tables and generated content, which are huge parts of the specification. Sure, they added a workaround for people using faux XHTML, but they didn't actually add XHTML support. And I don't know what you mean by "ECMAScript degradation", but they still have a non-standard event model instead of the DOM event model.
Come off it. Bugfixes are not a great leap in functionality. Sure, it's great that we finally have them, but to characterise this as closing the gap between the browsers in any meaningful way is exaggeration beyond belief.
Er, some of the things that Acid2 tests for are things you are describing as fixed in Internet Explorer 7, so obviously some of the things in Acid2 are important to you.
And, wearing my impractical pedant hat, I have to point out that you are saying that people who care about Acid2 less than you are impractical pedants, which makes no sense.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
That's because it's a blitheringly stupid idea.
1. Don't block your target audience.
2. Don't force them to do something they don't want to.
3. Don't try to fragment the web, it won't work anyway.
If they want to use a broken browser, have a popup window say 'your browser is broken, use firefox', and that's it, end of story.
Your end users DO NOT CARE about your personal crusade to rid the Internet of poorly designed browsers. Really, they don't.