Slashdot Mirror
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....
Well, the IE developers use Firefox themselves anyway, so didnt bother putting in full support for CSS. After all it wont make any changes to their 'default' browsing experience....
Dont waste you time reading stupid sigs like this.
CSS 2.1 standard support:
... just like the /. article earlier today about how wide the universe is.
IE 6: 52%
IE 7: 54%
Firefox 1.5: 93%
Opera 8.5: 93%
Opera 9: 96%
Ok, so I agree that the numbers seem to be good estimates, about right. But how on earth do they actually come up with these percentages? Is is a simple cumulative count of all css tags and attributes that work vs. don't work? Or do some have more weight than others? Seriously, they seem like fabricated numbers
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.
It will not be MS that will make it the de-facto standard, but the people that code websites. Most commercial websites "code for IE" only and therefore force it's customer base to have IE wether they want it or not. The only workaround is to not use that company's service. But then again the people that actually use these services may not have a say as to which services they use because these services are mandated by the companies they work for.
Hopefully this will change soon.
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.
Unless they are mistaken, this is a 2K5 article. And it talks about the beta 1 release, I got beta 3.
Now on the topic of better CSS, I think IE7b3 is better than what is advertised in that article. It's still far from perfect though.
When Google announced that they were going to start offering an alternative search for blind people that rates sites based on how well they comply to the W3C usability standards, I really thought they might follow up with a search engine that rates the results according to general standards compliance. I'd love to see "works in any browser" sites on the first page and "IE-only" sites on page 10.... Suddenly all of those commercial sites would have an incentive to make their sites work instead of just making them flash-y.
"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.
--
Will the violence of the U.S. government will end the 3,000 years of violence in the Middle East, or increase it?
Really, they made a good step in the direction with W2K and later with XP it was nice for end users and W2K3 is bearable but wtf are they doing with Vista. There is nothing exasperatingly new (like usage of the NT kernel in W2K) or a breakthrough in GUI (as with the speed of the GUI in XP) or a sysadmin-friendly environment (as in W2K3). In fact, nothing has really changed, a little GUI painted on but that's it.
IE7 still not W3C compliant or anywhere near there, still giant loopholes in the OS. Still using NTFS instead of the promised WinFS.
I was really (as an MS hater) looking forward to maybe a change within Microsoft since WGates left (and we all know a lot of work goes before the actual announcement) and Vista coming out and having promising features announced, but I can't see anything of that in their new OS.
As for a change, Stevie is announcing stuff at some convention and I am astounded. I mean, I didn't know they could do a lot more improvements in 10.4, but look at the Leopard Sneak Preview and a versioning file system and all kinds of other neat stuff... and that's right after a devving freeze in Vista which was supposed to copy some neat features out of OS X 10.3, maybe even 10.4, heck they could even copy stuff out of KDE for all I care, it still look better.
Microsoft (Gates or Ballmer, whoever has the power): I am very disappointed in you guys. I work in a mixed environment (Linux, Windows, Mac) and I have heard things in that my company (which has a bigass license with you) moving to Mac's for some non-critical users (that only need Office and to surf the intranet). If Apple pulls it off and actually builds in Win32 support in their OS, you are going to become just another SCO within a few years.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Simple way to boycot:
if IE --> Download Firefox Link
else --> Welcome visitor!
Seriously, they're complaining about the Acid2? The most irrelevant web standards test ever devised?
...
Seriously!?
IE7 fixes the Holly Hack, the box model, PNGs, the pixel jog, the double margin float, child selectors, position:fixed, the XMLHttpRequest object, XML degradation, the phantom box, percentage vs. auto, the PEEKABOO bug (Oh My God - line-height bug, too!), EMACScript degradation
IE7 is waaaaaaaaaaaaay closer to Firefox and Opera than IE6. And because they have a new product, they're going to work harder on CSS2.1 for the next year while they claw their way back into their 90+% market share.
I could honestly care less about ACID2 compliance, and the people who do are impractical pedants. ESPECIALLY when IE6 fails so many more basic standards tests than ACID2, all of which IE7 is fixing.
It is like complaining that you passed calculus without knowing how to use a slide rule. Ridiculous.
Am I taking crazy pills, or is this article not over 1 year old? [ August 02, 2005 ]
...go to http://www.ie7.com
(Seriously. The best browser is there.)
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
I would love to see an automatically self-updating Gecko ActiveX control. Any IE user who visits my sites (or dozens of other sites that mandate it), would simply have to click "Yes" once (ever), and then the user would be using the newest version of Gecko to render the pages automatically.
IE could be effectively marginalized that way.
http://outcampaign.org/
I interviewed for a IE7 CSS job at Microsoft about four months ago. Coming from a web development background, I was curious as to how they would present their goals/problems with meeting CSS standards. I was well aware of the "code it to standard, view in IE, and cry" web development cycle.
One of the team leads (sorry don't know how high up of a team lead he was) actually said that often when people say IE is rendering something incorrectly it is actually IE that is doing it correctly while all of the other browsers are rendering it incorrectly. I could tell he was looking at how I would respond to that statement. I just sat there and didn't move. While in some cases that may be true, I knew that was an arrogant lie, and was just enough for me to stop caring about the interview. Needless to say, I didn't get the job. Fortunately, I had already interviewed for another job, which I've since been hired at, which is much better.
Two points here:
1- With team leads holding that kind of attitude (and touting it during interviews), no wonder IE is the quagmire it is. They're more used to making standards, not adhering to them.
2- Yes, recent college CS grads can find a job! I actually had 2 1/2 offers after only 4 interviews. Just develop your skill set (more than what they teach you in class) and learn how to communicate in *English* not just C, C++, Perl, etc.
Faith is a willingness to accept something w/o complete proof and to act on it. Reason allows you to correct that faith.
Does anyone know if IE7 will fix the absolute worst behavior in IE -- closing TCP connections with RST rather than FIN?
This bad behavior:
--exists in IE6 and earlier
--violates RFC 793 sections 3.4 and 3.5
--ties up LOTS of memory in zillions of stateful devices (firewalls, VPN gateways, L4 and L7 load balancers, and on and on)
--does not belong to the MS TCP/IP stack, since other applications (eg, telnet) close connections properly
I haven't played with IE7 yet. Someone please tell me MS has finally addressed this abomination.
This article is over a year old, the poster got it totally wrong. Does anybody have any info on whether the comments are still relevant in the latest IE7? I have no reason to expect that they aren't, but just checking.
What's your GCNSEQNO?