IE8 Will Be Standards-Compliant By Default

A number of readers wrote in to make sure we know about Microsoft's change of heart regarding IE8. The new version of the dominant browser will render in full standards mode by default. Developers wishing to use quirks mode for IE6- and IE7-compatible rendering will have to opt in explicitly. We've previously discussed IE8's render mode a few times. Perhaps Opera's complaint to the EU or the EU's record antitrust fine had something to do with Redmond's about-face.

Comments

Huge assumption in the title

[Tumbleweed]

Let's make one thing clear - IE8 may be in standards-compliant MODE by default, but whether it's *standards-compliant* has yet to be proven. What Microsoft HAS proven (repeatedly) is that it considers compliance with standards to be a relative term. Only time will tell. I sure hope that they actually accomplish it this time; I'm tired.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[Your.Master]

Compliance to standards is a relative term. No browser exists today that is completely compliant. What we can say is that this one appears to be more compliant than before -- it renders ACID2 at the very least (and probably does right everything IE7 did right).

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[SEE]

They've said it already passes Acid2.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[CastrTroy]

So does Safari. Yet from my experience it has way more rendering bugs than most other browsers I've used and tested against. Passing Acid2 does not mean that it is standards compliant. For instance. IE doesn't support the :last-child pseudo-class, but that doesn't appear in Acid2. So even if it does pass Acid2, it may still not support this feature.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[Phroggy]

What Microsoft HAS proven (repeatedly) is that it considers compliance with standards to be a relative term. So do all other browser makers. The various standards involved are non-trivial to implement, and as another poster commented, nobody has implemented all of them.

Just because a browser passes Acid2 doesn't mean it's "standards-compliant". It means it complies with the specific parts of the standards that Acid2 tests for, which is only a few things that most browsers (at the time Acid2 was created) got wrong.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[megaditto]

E8 may be in standards-compliant MODE by default, but whether it's *standards-compliant* has yet to be proven You are a pessimist, or a cynic.

Let me inject a little optimism into this thread by saying that IE8 can indeed be standards-complaint because it will be the standard.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[pembo13]

More standard than IE7 isn't really a high bar to aim for though.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[Anonymous Coward]

> Compliance to standards is a relative term.

No, this statement is incorrect.

> No browser exists today that is completely compliant.

That is true. But it has no connection with the last statement.

I understand your point, and it's well taken, but you are introducing a tautology. Standards compliance is absolute, by _definition_.
Some attempts to comply with written standards may fail, and as such are not compliant. It may well be true that no browsers exist that are standards compliant, as the standards are written. However, please don't go waving around poisonous ideas like "standards compliance is a relative term".
Americans seem to have adopted a very lax relativism of late, a kind of fuzzy belief that everything is subjective. Some things are not. Some things are just facts that must be heeded. The definition is not up for negotiation, that's what _makes_ it a standard.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[Secret Rabbit]

And if you read that blog, they admitted that the only things they fixed were the things required to pass ACID2. Please note that this certainly does NOT mean that it is actually compliant.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[ILuvRamen]

hey come on now, Microsoft is all about following standards...as long as they make the standards. Anyway I don't really get this. Why would they want to run any mode that renders an element differently than it was intended to? Do they think they can do better than the web designer that made the page? I get pissed if a browser moves an element by a pixel on pages I make! It's complete common sense to want to render it...you know...correctly.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[Craig Davison]

This is good news. The important thing is that MS is now saying they're willing to sacrifice backwards compatibility in IE. They have no reason not to follow the standards now (barring bugs or technical limitations).

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[Your.Master]

I'm not an American (but I will claim that many, many things ARE subjective). But I am a native speaker of English and as such dispute the definition of standards compliance. I tried dictionary.com but it doesn't seem to address whether compliance is an absolute term or not. Let me draw an analogy:

We have Aristotelian conceptions of Gravity.
We have Newtonian conceptions of Gravity.
We have Relativistic conceptions of Gravity.

Would you agree that a physical theory being "correct" is equivalent to a physical theory being "standards compliant" where the standard is reality?

If so, then I think if we followed your your view, none of these models are correct, and that's that. In my view, all of them are unequally correct, or in other words, unequally incorrect. Every one of them is more correct than "things fly away from massive objects due to gravity". I would tend to go so far to say as Newtonian and Relativistic interpretations are both, in fact, correct; but decline to say either is 100% correct.

http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm

Of course, you have an easy out if you claim that correct is not like compliance with the reality standard. But in that case I'd like to know why you disagree with that.

But if you accept that correct & compliance with reality are the same, and still disagree with me, then we've devolved into an argument of semantics. "I believe this word means this". "No, this word means THAT". Ultimately not entirely useful.

And definitions are always, ALWAYS up for negotiation, because that's how natural language works :). English doesn't even have a standards body. French has one, but every speaker is to some degree non-compliant.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

The difference is that other browser makers generally aren't perfect for innocent reasons. Whereas with MS, it's hard to tell when they're innocent or trying to be sneaky bastards.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[Your.Master]

No, what they said was that they didn't necessarily have all standards met; but at no point did they say that they only fixed just enough to do Acid2.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[denis-The-menace]

You must be new here and under 25.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[calebt3]

Just because it is called standards-compliant mode, that does not mean it actually is standards compliant.
Car analogy: It could be something like sawing the roof off of your car and calling it a convertible.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[cheater512]

The difference is that Firefox is predictable.
If it doesnt support something then it will do nothing.

IE on the other hand does whatever some guy at Microsoft thought would be cool at the time.
Its not predictable and often it contradicts the standards.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[calebt3]

Microsoft is all about following standards...as long as they make the standards. Tell that to OOXML.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[cheater512]

I'm more of a realist. It all boils down to the same thing though.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[Merusdraconis]

That was true five years ago, but no longer. With the amount of competitive alternate browsers out there, and the new rise of the iMac, the standard is the W3C. While most web developers will put in extra effort to work around IE's bugs, they're starting from W3C-standard webpages and kludging in IE support, not (as it worked years ago) building pages that worked in IE first then trying to make them work on Netscape later if at all.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[jo42]

No, he is over 35 and speaks from experience.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[alshithead]

"The important thing is that MS is now saying they're willing to sacrifice backwards compatibility in IE."

Fantastic point.

I wonder how many little sites built by IE-centric coders are going to need a lot of work in order to function well with IE8.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[mysticgoat]

Would you agree that a physical theory being "correct" is equivalent to a physical theory being "standards compliant" where the standard is reality?

No, I don't agree with that stipulation.

Reality is in its essence unknowable. Theories are models of reality that are simpler, and are based on a multitude of assumptions. And many of those assumptions go unstated. For instance, I am aware of no theory of gravity that takes into account the color of the objects being described, yet there is no scientific basis on which we can exclude color (or smell, or taste) from gravitational considerations. We do so because at this moment in history it seems silly to include it, but that is a literary arts judgment, not a scientific judgment. If you want to get your pet theory on Electric Pulse Gravity published, you'd do well to heed the literary aspects, but don't mistake them for the science.

A standard, however, is the formal statement of a group's conceptualization about a process, such as how a distance shall be measured, or how a web page shall be rendered. A standard has nothing to do with reality. It is all in your head (and the heads of everyone else who familiarizes themself with the standard). Because a standard is a human production that has no physical reality, it is possible to fully comply with its every detail (assuming that it is a well-written standard). Perhaps more to the point, it is possible for someone to completely learn a standard, including any of its weaknesses like internal contradictions or ambiguities. However it is impossible for anyone to completely learn reality, or learn all there is to know about any theory of reality.

In this sense, Euclidean geometry is a standard. You can do a lot of neat things with it, and you can spend lots of time exploring places where it is still ambiguous (things not yet proven). But you can't violate its established rules and still claim it is Euclidean geometry. You can replace those rules with other rules, but then you have a non-Euclidean geometry, like spherical geometry as one instance.

It is possible for a web browser to be standards compliant in the absolute sense. It is also reasonable to describe the relative compliance of non-compliant browsers. And since in nearly every case the context will make it clear as to whether the meaning is absolute or relative, there is no rarely any need to specify that. Unless, of course, one is pushing a hidden agenda, where the intent of talking about the subject is to create as much heat and smoke as possible while putting out no light.

There's probably a really succinct way of saying all the above, but I left my Zen Pocket Companion at work.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[LingNoi]

I guess you missed this story..

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[LingNoi]

So he's one of those old fogies that hates xhtml+css and needs his html 3 tables... great, experience..

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[statusbar]

With respect to the http 1.1 standard, it _is_ relative...

From the standard:

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [34].

When the people writing the standards write standards with the words "SHOULD" or "SHOULD NOT" or "RECOMMENDED" or "MAY" or "OPTIONAL" you now have a standard which can have many different faces, or compliance levels. IMHO, this is poor standards writing. They MUST make the specs using the terms "MUST" and "MUST NOT" and bump the version number. Then you can easily have automated unit tests which show absolute compliance. But we don't, and must rely on what developers "THINK" or "MAY NOT THINK" is correct about the spec.

--jeffk++

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[cp.tar]

More standard than IE7 isn't really a high bar to aim for though.

It is much higher than "more standard than IE6".

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[cp.tar]

I wonder how many little sites built by IE-centric coders are going to need a lot of work in order to function well with IE8. <brokenwindow>Well, at least Microsoft is keeping the said coders in business.</brokenwindow>

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[ryszard99]

+5 smackdown

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[edwdig]

Have you ever tried implementing something described in an RFC ?

When you get to the should / should not stuff, it comes down to in most cases you really want to listen to it, but there tend to be specific cases (say, embedded devices) where it really doesn't make sense to follow the normal behavior. Generally, if you run into one of those cases, it tends to be obvious that deviating from the spec is the right thing to do.

The optional and recommended stuff tends to be things that really depend on the specific product and shouldn't be forced.

Making things more strict would be a bad thing and make people break the standards more. The current setup acknowledges that different implementations have different needs and does a good job of accommodating.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[FrangoAssado]

Would you agree that a physical theory being "correct" is equivalent to a physical theory being "standards compliant" where the standard is reality?

Oh, come on.

The web "standards" specify what exactly is required for an "agent" to comply (for example, in the CSS 2.1, the section 3 defines the conformance requirements).

So, I might agree that right and wrong may not be absolute for theories explaining reality (and I do!). But being compliant to a standard that specifically tells you that is needed to comply *is* absolute.

BTW, thanks for the link. I'm an Asimov fan, and I hadn't seen that yet.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[Your.Master]

[quote]yet there is no scientific basis on which we can exclude color (or smell, or taste) from gravitational considerations.[/quote]

Sure there are. For instance, parsimony. Repeated experimentation holds that these properties are pretty much unrelated to gravity*. Besides, other models that appear consistent seem to adequately explain colour and smell and taste in ways that are incompatible by virtue scale with consistent gravitational theory.

Anyway, I recognize and respect your distinction here, although I do think it's hypothetically possible to come up with a model for reality accurate in every respect, we can just never truly comprehensively know that we have found the answer. That's neither provable nor disprovable, and thus, neither here nor there.

But I agree that context makes things clear pretty much always. If you look at the original context of my statement, he first used compliance as an absolute term, then declared that Microsoft viewed it as relative. I argue that the relative interpretation is quite valid. As for the hidden agenda, I don't think any of us (you, me, the guy I originally responded to, the Anonymous Coward in between) was pushing any hidden agenda, so I don't know where that came from.

I apologize if I looked like I was pedantically claiming that the absolute interpretation was invalid and retract any implication thereof. From my perspective, the person I responded to was saying that the relative interpretation was invalid, and the guy who responded to me agreed with absolutism-only.

* pigments for colours are slightly different composition, smells are different aromatic molecules, taste from that and other factors; all of which can reflect subtle molecular differences that lead to different mass per molecule which can in turn lead to different gravitational forces. Let's not analyse that one too deeply :).

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[Your.Master]

I had to draw an analogy to something else with gradations of correctness. Physical theory was the only one to pop to mind. I don't really see a distinction just because we don't know the total rules to comply to reality (that's kind of the point). But you do, so okay.

You're welcome for the link.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[SanityInAnarchy]

Ignoring some of the vague language of standards -- like "MUST, SHOULD, MAY, OPTIONAL", etc, as another poster clarified -- there is another reason why standards-compliance is subjective.

If you define a standard as a particular chunk of language, it is possible to create something which is technically compatible with the language, but not with any existing implementation of it. It is possible that this is because the existing implementations followed the spirit of that language, and you followed the letter of it. See any DJB program for examples of this.

If you define a standard as a particular reference implementation or validator (hopefully accompanied with a chunk of language), it is also possible for there to be bugs in that implementation, which must therefore be reflected in all competing implementations, but were absolutely not the intent. See the Windows APIs -- particularly their backwards-compatibility hacks -- for an example of this.

In other words, it is possible that either the language or the implementation will not adequately describe what was intended. In such cases, it is possible to have degrees of compliance -- all of which are technically compliant.

I would argue that to minimize this, it would be helpful to have all three -- a spec (or at least a design document), a reference implementation, and a validator (which could also be used as functional tests while developing the actual implementation). Even so, it's not going to be perfect.

That said, it is usually very clear when something is not compliant to standards, and there should not be degrees of that. Many people seem to think there are, but that only leads to the mess of hacks that is the Quirks Mode of most browsers today.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[SL Baur]

What Microsoft HAS proven (repeatedly) is that it considers compliance with standards to be a relative term. What Microsoft has proven repeatedly is that what they promise and what is finally delivered often bear little relationship to each other.

I have little faith in them to deliver a working product. Does anyone else remember the "free" streaming media player they released for Linux about 10 years ago when they were trying to kill RealAudio? I downloaded that expecting something, but I never got a sound nor any video out of it. I'm not sure if it was intended to work at all.

Truth be told, if Microsoft sold a (working) media player for Linux, I'd buy it. But they don't.

I'm surprised by this announcement, because I assumed the reason they made the decisions they did had to do with supporting old versions of their system. Maybe they came up with some convoluted work-around to not break them. Not that I particularly care. IE8 most certainly will not work on any system I use and I've become an Opera fan (why couldn't they sell Linux versions way back when? Stupid, stupid. Netscape was so broken and Opera is so good, it would have been worth paying a license fee for it) anyway.

Now if only I could link XEmacs as an external editing widget to Opera (or any browser), browsers wouldn't be broken any more.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[ncryptd]

So does Safari. Yet from my experience it has way more rendering bugs than most other browsers I've used and tested against. Safari does? Hmm... that's odd. Typically, I've found WebKit to be the best renderer out there as far as standards go. I use it as my "reference" renderer when designing sites, as something that renders fine w/ WebKit will almost certainly render the same in every other standards-compliant browser.

Sometimes its standards support becomes an issue -- especially when I forget that Gecko doesn't support things like inline-block.

Do you have any examples of its buggy behavior? (Not contesting that it has bugs, I'm just curious to see what sort of bugs.)

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[Pinchiukas]

> and probably does right everything IE7 did right Did IE7 do anything right? No, really.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[ksalter]

Weak.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[Phroggy]

I understand your point, and it's well taken, but you are introducing a tautology. Standards compliance is absolute, by _definition_. I take your point as well, but I want to interject that this entirely depends on what the standards are. Can you build a word processor that is 100% compliant with Microsoft's OOXML standard? Not really, in any meaningful sense, because the standard is incomplete and refers to behavior that isn't described as part of the standard (that's a large part of what all the OOXML vs ODF fuss was about). Can you build an IRC client that is completely standards-compliant? No, because the RFCs that describe how IRC works are incomplete, inconsistent, contain errors, and aren't strictly adhered to by any popular implementation.

In the case of HTML/XHTML and CSS, there's been quite a bit more effort invested into making sure the standards are properly documented and are internally consistent, but these standards are constantly evolving. Is it enough to support HTML 4.01 and CSS 2, or must you support HTML 5 and CSS 3? Do de-facto standards count? Remember that XMLHttpRequest (the basis of AJAX) is mostly a de-facto standard; the W3C has published a working draft of a specification for it.

Standards compliance isn't always as cut-and-dry as you make it sound.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[McFadden]

Compliance to standards is a relative term.

No, this statement is incorrect [...] please don't go waving around poisonous ideas like "standards compliance is a relative term."

Why the hell shouldn't he, when he's absolutely right. If standards compliance wasn't a relative term, we wouldn't be able to make constructs such as "different levels of standards compliance", or "the level of standards compliance fell somewhat short". You're simply confusing compliance (relative) with compliant (absolute). Really, you owe the guy an apology for your lecture on lax relativism.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[Jugalator]

> Compliance to standards is a relative term.

No, this statement is incorrect. It can be very hard to comply to all standards though because there are ambiguities in the documentation published by the W3C. That's one of the reasons they release new revisions to their standards, btw.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[Chief Camel Breeder]

"Standards compliance is absolute, by _definition_."

Under this definition, Firefox would be as broken as IE5 because neither comply. That's crazy; current firefox does a much better rendering job on compliant pages than IE5 (as do IE 6, 7 and 8). The concept of partial compliance is real. We need it to assess real browsers.

Partial or relative compliance isn't subjective. For any browser, we can determine exactly which the parts of the standards with which it fails to comply. Your observation about American culture doesn't support your main argument.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[Haeleth]

Standards compliance is absolute, by _definition_.

Why? Please explain your reasoning here. "Because I said so" is not a valid argument.

Some attempts to comply with written standards may fail, and as such are not compliant. It may well be true that no browsers exist that are standards compliant, as the standards are written. However, please don't go waving around poisonous ideas like "standards compliance is a relative term".

Sorry, but to the vast majority of people - even the vast majority of techies - it is a relative term, whether that fits with your ideology or not. Ask anyone (who cares about web standards) to name a standards-compliant browser, and they will. They'll name Opera, or Safari, or Firefox. Because, while none of those browsers complies absolutely 100% with every pertinent web standard, they are standards-compliant: they take absolute compliance as a goal, they treat instances of non-compliance as bugs, every new release is more compliant, and the vast majority of real-world pages that have been written to web standards work perfectly in all of them.

To declare arbitrarily that "either you comply or you don't" is nonsensical: it lumps these browsers together in the same "non-compliant" bucket as IE6. It is obvious to anyone who tries using a range of browsers that some comply more with web standards than others, i.e. some are more standards-compliant. It follows from the fact that I can make that statement that standards-compliance is relative.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[the cheong]

I think there's a misunderstanding here.

When he says "standards compliance is [not] a relative term", he's not saying that a browser must _either_ be compliant or not. (He's _not_ saying that compliance is a binary state, which is what you're arguing against.) Rather, he's arguing that there exists a standard to which everyone should comply: an _absolute_ standard. Of course, all of the browsers have some imperfection, but some browsers take these imperfections as "bugs", recognizing that they are not fully conforming to the standard, while other browsers take these imperfections as a choice (i.e. taking it as their own _relative_ standard).

There are people here who argue that standards are "relative"--that everyone is allowed to have their own standards because no one can speak for the masses about what is right and what is wrong. However, the _point_ of making standards is so that we have an absolute goal that everyone may work toward, in uniform. You can't let everyone have their own standards, and say that some standard exists.

I don't mean to troll. I just don't think we're all on the same page about what "relative" means.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[uhlume]

Because a standard is a human production that has no physical reality, it is possible to fully comply with its every detail (assuming that it is a well-written standard).

And therein lies one hell of an operating assumption, WRT practically any standard generated by the W3C in the last decade. (CSS, DOM, XHTML, SVG... HTML 4.01 may well be the last thing they wrote that wasn't a complete fucking joke.)

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[Twinbee]

A couple of years back, I would have said something just like you did. I too, believe in many absolutes (including the quality of music/art, which is more controversial).

However, there are a few ways what he said could be interpreted, and it seems to me that by saying "it's relative", he's merely stating the obvious - that the implementation is relative to the "set-in-stone" standard.

If you still doubt this, then explain why he said "What we can say is that this one appears to be more compliant than before". That itself shows that he is saying there are 'degrees of quality' towards the standard, and that some implementations are closer (better) than others.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[Keeper Of Keys]

I wonder how many little sites built by IE-centric coders are going to need a lot of work in order to function well with IE8. Depends if they already fixed them to work in IE7. If they did, all they have to do is add a meta tag to the head and IE8 will render in IE7-mode.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[kundziad]

When the people writing the standards write standards with the words "SHOULD" or "SHOULD NOT" or "RECOMMENDED" or "MAY" or "OPTIONAL" you now have a standard which can have many different faces, or compliance levels.

Not quite. If you look at RFC 2119, you will notice that each of the words has its precise definition. So for instance, not implementing a "SHOULD" still doesn't break standards compliance. Full stop.

Remember that we are here discussing the most simple fact of stating standards compliance and not practical aspects of specifications' requirements. You may have a point (however the authors have explained in RFC 2119 the need for different key words for stating requirements), but it is off-topic and not valid in this discussion.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[Crayon Kid]

Did IE7 do anything right? No, really.

Come on, let's not be like that. I test my website layout in Opera and Firefox and then move on to IE to see what needs to be fixed so it looks as intended. With IE7 I rarely need to fix something, and it's usually minor. IE6 however is a completely different story and I never get away without a conditional comment introducing an extra stylesheet that picks up the pieces. So let's give credit where it's due: IE7 is a hell of a lot better than IE6 and I hope IE8 is even better than that.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[Crayon Kid]

IE on the other hand does whatever some guy at Microsoft thought would be cool at the time. Its not predictable and often it contradicts the standards.

"Never ascribe to malice what can be explained by incompetence", that's how the saying goes. Of course, Microsoft is always trying the lock-in tactics, but that's more about things like VBScript, ActiveX and Silverlight and less about HTML and CSS.

I suspect that the blunders present in IE6 and earlier in respect to HTML/CSS rendering (and security!) have more to do with things like preserving legacy behaviour, corporate decisional lag, not breaking compatibility and crap like that. Not good, naturally, but ascribable to a kind of stupidity rather than ill intent.

And may I point out that the whole standard compliance thing bloomed only a few years back, when Firefox started rising and web designers started wanting to move away from table layouts to liquid layouts with CSS 2.1 and so on and discovered that IE6 is crap in that respect. Before that nobody gave a damn, you could do table layouts in IE just as well as the next browser.

So what I see is that the standards revolution in web design caught IE6 in a dormant period and Microsoft was arrogant enough to let the problem grow worse for a while. It wasn't malice, just stupidity.

I dare speculate that if they had given the world IE7 a few years early, Firefox may have never had the success it enjoys today. Or that if Opera had started giving its browser for free it would've enjoyed higher usage figures right now. But that is a different discussion.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[DanielJosphXhan]

So what you're saying is that by IE15 we should see a fully standard-compliant browser?

Microsoft has the be the only organisation on earth *slower* that the W3C. I mean, it's not exactly a moving target.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[strikethree]

There is a world of difference between not fully implementing a standard and doing something against the standard.

strike

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[Bogtha]

When the people writing the standards write standards with the words "SHOULD" or "SHOULD NOT" or "RECOMMENDED" or "MAY" or "OPTIONAL" you now have a standard which can have many different faces, or compliance levels.

No, if it does the absolute minimum specified, then an implementation is compliant with the specification. Just because the specification describes further behaviour that is a good idea, it doesn't make the implementation non-compliant or "partially" non-compliant. "Compliant" is still an absolute term.

IMHO, this is poor standards writing.

Not really. The problem is that some behaviour is suitable for the vast majority of implementations, but there are special cases where it's justified to ignore that part of the specification. The spec writers don't want to label reasonable behaviour that doesn't cause problems as "non-compliant", so they put SHOULD instead of MUST. If an implementation ignores those parts where it doesn't make sense, it's still compliant, it's just a bad implementation. Compliance is not a synonym for "good", it's a requirement for "good".

Then you can easily have automated unit tests which show absolute compliance.

You can have that anyway. You aren't talking about making compliance deterministic, you are talking about making something beyond compliance deterministic.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[cp.tar]

So what you're saying is that by IE15 we should see a fully standard-compliant browser?

If by "standards compliant" you mean "compliant to the standards up to year 2004", then yes, that sounds about right.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[Anonymous Coward]

Experiments have proven that red objects and blue objects exert the same gravitational force?

I don't think so. I'm pretty sure that if anyone had done the study, it would have been reported here.

I wonder if GP post was about the discrepancies in velocity of the Voyagers and some other satellites? It seems like gravity might have dependencies we don't know anything about.

Probably not color, though. Maybe shapes: maybe cuboidal gravity is different from spherical gravity is different from cylindrical gravity.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[Laurence0]

I tend to think of that more as a converted.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[Excelsior]

Safari does? Hmm... that's odd. Typically, I've found WebKit to be the best renderer out there as far as standards go. I use it as my "reference" renderer when designing sites, as something that renders fine w/ WebKit will almost certainly render the same in every other standards-compliant browser.

Your statements conflict. You are basically saying, "if I can get it to work on Safari, it will work anywhere." That doesn't mean it is the most compliant, rather the opposite.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[mysticgoat]

Because a standard is a human production that has no physical reality, it is possible to fully comply with its every detail (assuming that it is a well-written standard). And therein lies one hell of an operating assumption, WRT practically any standard generated by the W3C in the last decade. (CSS, DOM, XHTML, SVG... HTML 4.01 may well be the last thing they wrote that wasn't a complete [bleep]ing joke.)

And your point is....?

And why do exclude HTML 4.01 or the earlier work? Seems to me the split between HTML 4.x and XHTML 1.x has proven to be a pretty funny joke. And we were all laughing so hard at HTML v3.0 that no one actually got around to figuring out how to implement it. And the continuing giggles from that joke were so side-splitting that HTML v3.1 was dropped before we even got it to the punch line.

Nobody ever said a standard had to be serious. Look at the clowns of Redmond: they make money hand over fist, and they've yet to treat any standard seriously.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[statusbar]

While I agree with your basic points the real problem here is the ability to test all possible combinations of should/optional features of a specification implemented in a specific client in combination with all the should/optional features of the specification implemented in a specific server. In the HTTP case, there are no formal test suites for clients and servers because the specification has too many combinations of options, and as a result, many servers are broken and require workarounds are required by clients and many clients are broken and require workarounds by servers - and we still had cases where IIS would infer that a client is IE and would automatically modify its protocol in an unexpected way in order to do these workarounds.'

--jeffk++

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[thegnu]

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [34].

That still doesn't make it relative. It's absolute, because you can look at something, and tell if it complies. If something doesn't do something that is marked RECOMMENDED, it's still standards-compliant. Just because there are gradations doesn't mean they're not absolutely evaluable gradations.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[foniksonik]

Uh that's because :last-child is an Acid3 test

http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/webkit-unassigned/2008-January/061575.html

See that the bug is listed as acid3 bug... couldn't find a better reference quickly on webstandards.org

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[statusbar]

Okay, relative is the wrong term then. The issue I have is that sometimes specifications are not written with testability of compliance in mind. All combinations must be tested, and if this is not easy or automate-able then you will be guaranteed to have systems out there not compliant but 'usually seem to work'.

Programmers (including me) complain a lot about microsoft HTML rendering or HTTP quirks or non-compliance issues in corner cases but these things are very much non-trivial to implement and test.

IMHO for a non-trivial sytem, a proper specification MUST include the tools that can be used to verify an implementation, and it MUST be possible to make a verified implementation!

The C++ standard is a good example - there does not exist a single fully verified standards compliant c++ compiler. Some are close. But this is not really the implementor's fault if the specification is not even internally consistent and no tools are given to perform validation.

I guess my point is just that some specifications are better than others, and some invite half-assed implementations.

--jeffk++

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[Tumbleweed]

What's it mean "by default"? Is there a big shiny button that says "push me" on it that switches it from standards compliance to microsoft-lockin?

I think it's a big shiny meta tag you can use, in case your code is really crappy and designed to depend on IE rendering flaws.

IE's not done till Google Maps won't run! :)

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[portnoy]

Note that that story is talking about the fact that IE8 wasn't going to pass Acid2 out of the box, because IE8 was talking about requiring an extra document tag for standards compliance (which the Acid2 page wouldn't be adding). Since *this* story is talking about IE8 removing that requirement, the previous story is now moot.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[BasharTeg]

What Microsoft HAS proven (repeatedly) is that it considers compliance with standards to be a relative term.

Yes, and so do Opera, Firefox, Safari, and every other browser on the planet. Hopefully, they'll start being standards compliant too, and stop interpreting standards compliance to mean "better than Microsoft's standards compliance" which if you're following the point, is also a relative standard of compliance.

It's funny that you can damn a vendor for having a "relative" opinion towards standards compliance, when every other browser on earth is only "relatively" standards compliant. You could argue which is relatively more compliant than the other, but that's still relative compliance.

You show me a new release of Firefox or Opera that is FULLY and COMPLETELY standards compliant and I'll join the crowd of people willing to make broad statements about IE's lack of standards compliance. Until then, the hypocricy stains the conversation.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[Tumbleweed]

IE8 has better standard compliance than Firefox 2 actually.

Many unreleased browsers do.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[jeremyp]

Safari 3 doesn't pass ACID 2. It's actually a regression in this respect in comparison to Safari 2.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[Random BedHead Ed]

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119

For those too busy to consult RFC 2119 in detail, it basically states the following:

• Should should mean "should."
• Must must mean "must."
• Must not must not mean anything other than "must not."
• Required is required if you want to express the idea of a requirement.
• Shall shall mean "shall."
• Shall not shall not be construed as indicating that something "shall." (In fact it shall be the opposite.)
• Should should usually mean "should," but not always.
• Should not should not mean anything other than the opposite of "should," but also not always.
• Recommend is recommended for use in RFCs as well, but may be optional.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[statusbar]

So according to you, there should^H^H^H^H^H^Hmust not be any kind of deprecation in standards? Nothing to warn developers "This is bad usage, we tolerate it for the moment but it will probably be outlawed in the next version"? SHOULD and SHOULD NOT rules are a good thing. They allow for quick adoption of a standard while still showing the optimal way to implement a standard for those who want to do everything right and have unlimited resources. Omitting the SHOULD parts would make standards much less useful.

Right; If communication is done with protocol X, version Y, then it is specified what things must be allowed. If they want to change it and deprecate something, then bump the version number and make it so that the new version has a "MUST NOT" for this. Allow for version negotiations so a client or server can fall back to lower numbered version if they need to. But the features of each version are clear-cut and non-optional.

This simplifies implementations and makes it more likely that implementations will be compliant.

--jeffk++

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[DanielJosphXhan]

Well, to fair, we don't know what a "standard compliant" application means for Microsoft... seeing how they've never done that before.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[HTH NE1]

HTTP is clear that the client must honor the Content-Type provided by a server when provided. If that type is text/plain, the client must treat it as text/plain, not text/html, image/gif, or application/octet-stream. If and only if the server does not provide the Content-Type may the client inspect. "Content-Type: text/plain" != "". Quoting:

Any HTTP/1.1 message containing an entity-body SHOULD include a Content-Type header field defining the media type of that body. If and only if the media type is not given by a Content-Type field, the recipient MAY attempt to guess the media type via inspection of its content and/or the name extension(s) of the URI used to identify the resource. If the media type remains unknown, the recipient SHOULD treat it as type "application/octet-stream". Strongness added by me. I have yet to hear of an IE version that passes HTTP compliance in this one regard by default. (I've heard that even the option to force compliance in this regard in some versions doesn't work either.)

The consequence of IE's non-compliance is misconfigured servers that serve binary data as text/plain because people building the sites only test with IE and never learn how to teach the server to send the proper Content-Type header. Put a .ISO file on your website without telling the server that .ISO should be served as application/octet-stream and you get users with compliant browsers loading the disk image as plain text in their browser windows.

The only thing wrong with RFC 2616 in this section is that it strays from the terminology defined in RFC 2119 in using "if and only if" in conjunction with a SHOULD to hide what should have been labeled a MUST NOT as a MAY. The intent was that clients MUST implement support for what the server SHOULD provide and not nullify the benefit of a server implementing a SHOULD but rather give accommodation to servers which do not do what they SHOULD do. A rewrite would say it more clearly:

Any HTTP/1.1 message containing an entity-body SHOULD include a Content-Type header field defining the media type of that body. If included, the recipient MUST honor the media type provided by the Content-Type field and MUST NOT attempt to guess the media type via inspection of its content and/or the name extension(s) of the URI used to identify the resource. Only if the media type is not given by a Content-Type field MAY the recipient so guess the media type and, if the media type remains unknown, the recipient SHOULD treat it as type "application/octet-stream". Or just separate the client responsibilities from the server responsibilities, or update RFC 2119 to include a definition for and require the capitalization of IF AND ONLY IF.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[punissuer]

I wonder how many little sites built by IE-centric coders are going to need a lot of work in order to function well with IE8. None. Either they'll just stay broken, or all their pages will get prefixed with a magic tag that says RenderLikeIE7 or RenderLikeIE6 or RenderLikeIE5....

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[RobertM1968]

Please keep in mind that IE6 and IE7 were also both standards compliant... In case you hadn't guessed, my statement was sarcasm based off MS's claims (that they would be) before the release of each of those browsers... we see how they turned out - better (which isnt tough) but not standards compliant as promised.

Also please keep in mind, making a browser pass the Acid 2 test doesnt mean anything. I am sure MS is well aware that many places and people will test IE with that and jump to the conclusion that the browser is standards compliant - when in reality, MS may just have made sure that the browser can do what it needs to in order to pass that one set of tests (and not yet dealt with dozens of the other standards related issues).

Do I think MS will live up to their promise this time? Heck, on a personal level I really don't care. I dont use it for personal surfing.

On a professional level? Yeah I hope so (it would be nice not to have to create sites for (a) The Internet and (b) The IE-Net), but am not holding my breath - I've learned from past experience...

I am fervently hoping though....

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[statusbar]

For more information on what I was referring to, I ran into a specific example of internet explorer 5 handling HTTP POST differently if it knew that the server was an IIS server. If IE was communicating via a proxy it acted differently. I only noticed this because I was monitoring the protocol via a iptables re-routing the packets through a simple transparent proxy. The result was that IE 5 was not able to upload attachments to hotmail because hotmail was using IIS and was messing with the POST data length. It was interesting because when I explicitly set IE to use the proxy, the broken protocol would not happen and the system would work fine.

I also wasn't referring to Content-type - It's more about the WebDAV extensions (rfc2518) and the 'unnecessary complexity' that they add (rfc3253) and their non-orthogonality with other HTTP methods.

At least now the implementations have settled down as users are no longer required to have the webdav dll from a specific version of microsoft office installed in order for webdav to work properly in IE!

But to get here from there was a long involved process of many people running broken software and complaining. When it SHOULD have been something that was verifiable before they even shipped the software to any customers, and it wasn't...

--jeffk++

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[Crayon Kid]

...But the picture wouldn't be complete without this: I've gone and tested IE7 with ACID3. It scored a spectacular 4 (four) out of 100! That's while, I remind you, all other major browser engines out there score today in the 40-90 range. Even those versions, and this is important, that were out before the ACID3 test was around. See what it means to plan ahead and work with standards?

What does this tell me? That, while IE7 does a lot better than IE6, it becomes apparent that this is done with skin-deep tricks. They didn't do anything new. They needed something to pacify the angry mob until v8 came out, so they hacked on the IE6 engine to produce "nice" rendering. Together with the revamped interface it's something meant to stop Microsoft bleeding browser marketshare. Smart.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[frsmith]

pigments for colours are slightly different composition, smells are different aromatic molecules

Actually he's right, the above still comes down to an atomic structure held in place by gravity.
The reality is we have no idea what is behind the colour/smell. If I dismantle a car in my garage and leave a door,
you see a door, I see a dismantled car
At what point did the car become a door?

Bob

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[GWBasic]

I understand your point, and it's well taken, but you are introducing a tautology. Standards compliance is absolute, by _definition_. Some attempts to comply with written standards may fail, and as such are not compliant. It may well be true that no browsers exist that are standards compliant, as the standards are written. However, please don't go waving around poisonous ideas like "standards compliance is a relative term". Americans seem to have adopted a very lax relativism of late, a kind of fuzzy belief that everything is subjective. Some things are not. Some things are just facts that must be heeded. The definition is not up for negotiation, that's what _makes_ it a standard.

That's assuming that "standards compliance" is possible! A standard can be logically inconsistant; meaning that parts of the standard are impossible to implement. Also, a standard can have poorly-defined areas, meaning that two "compliant" implementations are incompatible.

For example, a "standard" could say something like, "the ENABLED attribute tells if feature X is enabled or not." Without saying what the valid values of ENABLED are, one implementation could say "true" and "false", another could say "yes" or "no", and another could say "enabled" or "disabled". In such a scenario, all three implementations are compliant; yet incompatible.

HTML, and all of the other "standards" that come with it, are so complex that I wonder if true standards compliance is even possible. We might need to revise the standards to eliminate ambiguities, which will make "standards compliance" an absolute term, as you claim that it is.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[Anonymous Coward]

No.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[Anonymous Coward]

Parsimony (and Occam's Razor, and all that) is more like a literary concept than a scientific one. It's a "Don't add to the confusion with unnecessary detail" kind of directive. Not something that comes out of the laboratory.

I don't care about IE at all

[BadAnalogyGuy]

It's not my choice of browser, and it hasn't been since FireFox 2.

What I want to know is why can't Firefox be standards compliant too? I don't want to hear any excuses about IE, I want to know why my browser can't do what the other browser can. Do I need to switch again?

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[owlnation]

I'd like to agree with you. Unfortunately, I am occasionally forced to use IE through some lousy developers use of ActiveX or mediaplayer drm.

The day that web developers all reach a "standard" where they refuse to implement these things will be a joyful day for humanity. They all have the power to do that now, but it seems that some developers are not at the same standard as the rest.

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[bunratty]

Firefox 2 is one of the most standards compliant browsers around. What other browser does significantly better overall at standards compliance than Firefox? Check out the link I provided to webdevout's information on browser standards support before you reply...

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[mike_sucks]

You're not forced to use IE by those people - you choose to. In doing so, you are rewarding them for being crap.

What you should be doing is refusing to use them. Switch bank, don't use the service, or whatever - but make sure you write them an email or letter explaining why.

/mike

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[CastrTroy]

Yes, other than not passing Acid2, I can't find any major problems with Firefox's rendering. Other browsers do much better on the Acid2, but do much worse in actual real world web pages.

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[Arthur B.]

But I use elinks and no online banking site support it... and and and... don't I deserve that the banks support my favorite browser ? Don't I deserve that people work for me so that I have what I need ?

Funny? 99% of people think that way.

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

What other browser does significantly better overall at standards compliance than Firefox?

Well, since the link you provide is largely question marks for the Webkit based browsers, that's hard to say. Also, the comparison you link to is missing a lot of standards where Firefox is a bit behind. These include:

• Javascript - Safari, Opera, and Konquerer all have at least some support for Javascript DOM 3, which Firefox lacks in the released versions so far.
• image formats - Konquerer supports MNG, Tiff, and PDF. Safari supports JPEG 2000, Tiff, and PDF. I know of no standard image formats Firefox supports not supported by both of those (yet).
• XHTML 1.1 lists Firefox at 63% and question marks for Safari and Konquerer, but wikipedia currently lists both of those as having "full support" and Firefox as "partial."
• Web Forms 2.0 - Opera supports, Firefox doesn't
• Voice XML - Opera supports, Firefox doesn't
• WML - Opera supports, Firefox doesn't

That is not to say Firefox is necessarily behind other browser for standards compliance in general. No one with a clue would cite the Acid tests as proof of anything in that regard, but it does indicate that the link you provide is not particularly strong evidence one way or another. The whole question is probably too vague to be answered. There are a lot of Web standards and what really matters is which ones are most universally supported and what functionality cannot be used because of lacking support in one browser or another.

In summary, I reject your assertion, not because I'm convinced you're wrong, but because you haven't provided enough evidence to support it and there is significant contradictory evidence (cited above).

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[Firehed]

Which, in actual terms, means that people code to Firefox just as they code to IE. It just so happens that coding your page to look right in Firefox is a helluva lot closer to the standard (if not it exactly) than when you do the same in IE.

I think some people may be doing tremendously over-complicated things with CSS and page elements though. There are only two things that I generally need to implement a (rather trivial) workaround for when implementing designs - transparent .png files, and IE's utter failure at centering elements with #blockid { margin: 0 auto; }. Maybe my implementations aren't complicated enough. Maybe other people are trying to do unusual things. Maybe I'm willing to give a virtual middle finger to IE users and give them square corners and simplify my life with the -moz-border-radius and -webkit-border-radius half-implemented properties (I think the final border-radius property set is part of CSS3, and we'll be lucky to have most of CSS2 implemented by the time IE8 comes out - in any case, this is a style issue and not specific to IE). But in all seriousness, IE seems to be giving me a lot fewer headaches than it once used to. Maybe it's just dumb luck.

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[CastrTroy]

If you're looking for a way to do rounded borders, you might want to check out my method of creating rounded borders. It seems to be a lot easier than all the other implementations I've found, and doesn't require you to mess with your HTML too much.

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[satoshi1]

You say this, but would you do this? It is often easier to just put up with the browser bullshit instead of switching banks or finding a new service provider. I can't very well switch schools because my university doesn't support Opera for it's student portal, can I?

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[jweller]

I have to use IE to access my companies payroll site, so if I want to get paid, I must use IE. It's one thing to vote with your wallet but I am not a martyr.

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[glwtta]

Firefox 2 is one of the most standards compliant browsers around.

Given that there's like 3 browsers, isn't "one of" not all that impressive?

Bring on your "I use Browser Foo as do almost 17 other people, you Insensitive Clod"! :)

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[mlingojones]

...except for the fact that it doesn't pass Acid2. What other browser does significantly better at standards compliance? Safari 2 (or really any browser using an up-to-date WebKit), Opera 9... and oh yeah, IE8. IE8 will do better at standards compliance than Firefox. P.S. Your link is outdated. Both Opera 9 and Safari 2 beat Firefox 2. Check here.

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Which, in actual terms, means that people code to Firefox just as they code to IE. It just so happens that coding your page to look right in Firefox is a helluva lot closer to the standard (if not it exactly) than when you do the same in IE.

I disagree. At my last employer I used OmniWeb for a while (a very niche browser). Most of the Web UI developers used Firefox, but a couple used Konquerer. A few used Safari. A few used Camino. A few used Opera. Regardless of what you used, when you found a bug, you tested it with a couple of other browsers and if the remote Windows box was available (or you had an emulator running), you tested it on multiple browsers and multiple platforms.

The upshot of all of this was, when a bug was listed, it was pretty easy to see which bugs were specific to a given browser. Bugs that appeared in some version of IE, but in no other browser at all, were by far the most common occurrence. Realistically our approach boiled down to, "write to standards; then hack for IE. " Make no mistake, we did not code for some other browser then try to make it work on every one, because that was not needed for the most part. We were programmatically generating Web pages and interfaces from XML data and a couple of databases. For the vast majority of the time, all browsers but IE were close enough to the standards we used (HTML3, CSS2, XHTML) so that there were no discrepancies when tested.

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[Anonymous Coward]

There are very few banks that don't support non-IE browsers in 2008.

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[colfer]

Firefox 3 is in beta, and FF 2 has been feature-frozen for a long time, so it's an unfair comparison. Generally FF is overrated methinks, but pretty good for being so popular. Like the cute chick that will even date you.

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[IntlHarvester]

"Your" method (which is fairly widely used) is considered lacking because it requires a number of non-semantic DIV elements to be in your code, where ideally it could be done entirely from CSS.

(And also FYI if you use a circle-shaped PNG, you can use the same image for all 4 corners.)

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Firefox 3 is in beta, and FF 2 has been feature-frozen for a long time, so it's an unfair comparison.

Why? The browsers were all referring to the release versions, not the beta versions. Opera 9.2 has been feature complete for a while to, and the 9.3 beta is in use. I don't see why this makes a difference. The only real difference I see is availability of alphas and betas is sometimes restricted more than Firefox.

The question is, "of real standards, does Firefox tend to have better support" and I don't see the availability of a Firefox beta, Opera beta, or WebKit beta as being any different.

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[Khuffie]

Not sure about your part of the world, but where I live, quitting a job due to having to use IE for a payroll site is...stupid. Choice of employment is not up to the individual. If it were, I'd be "that-guy-that-sits-on-his-ass-playing-videogames-and-getting-paid-millions".

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[bunratty]

No, it's not "impressive" nor did I mean it to be. It's about as standards compliant as the other popular browsers (excepting IE), that is, Safari and Opera. That's why I'm wondering why the OP is complaining about Firefox's standards compliance. It seems as good as the other decent browsers, so what's the problem with Firefox?

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[Jarjarthejedi]

People still use ActiveX outside of Microsoft's sites? I haven't seen a single ActiveX control since I swapped to Firefox, 3 or 4 years ago...

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

I don't know what banks you are talking about I use three of the largest in the united states, they all support firefox 100%. If you are using Joe Shmoeville bank's website, you aren't thinking very clearly. Is Joe Shomeville going to understand how to build a secure website? I wouldn't trust a bank that can't create a website in 2008 that works with firefox or safari.

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[mike_sucks]

Would I do it? Yes. Have I? Yes - I've switched banks once because of it, but I guess I've been lucky enough not to have encountered anything else that absolutely requires IE that I absolutely cannot change.

Still, it's what you get from running Windows - people can always tell you to "just fire up IE". I can't run IE - it is not available for the operating systems I have available to me, hence I have a much bigger stick to hit them with when they tell me I must use that browser.

/Mike

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[StonyUK]

Firefox doesn't support COL or COLGROUP either.

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[BZ]

Sorry, but this is false. There's support for those, and has been for a good long time.

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[mike_sucks]

/me puts his zealot hat on

I make it a condition of my employment that I can use Free Software for all of my work during the day. This kinda makes the problem of deciding to quit go away.

/Mike

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[BZ]

> Javascript - Safari, Opera, and Konquerer all have at least some support > for Javascript DOM 3, which Firefox lacks in the released versions so
> far.

Care to cite? Last I checked, various parts of DOM3 Core and DOM3 Events (as it existed at the time; it's been mutating since) were supported in Firefox 1.5 and Firefox 2. See:

    http://lxr.mozilla.org/mozilla1.8/find?string=nsIDOM3

(1.8 is the Gecko version for Firefox 1.5 and Firefox 2.)

> image formats

While it's nice to support more of these, there is no standard that requires their support in a web browser... MNG and Tiff in particular were judged to not be worth the code it would take to support them. That's a judgement call, of course.

> Web Forms 2.0

Which isn't a standard yet. Not even close.

I do agree with your general point that trying to judge which browser is "more standards compliant" by comparing _which_ standards they implement is silly. The only sane questions to ask are: "Which browsers support this standard I want to make use of?" and "How good is their support for that standard?" And even the latter of these two is pretty fuzzy.

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[calebt3]

Zealots don't wear hats.

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[VGPowerlord]

While that's true, they don't support all attributes on them, such as align.

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[mike_sucks]

No no, it's a hat made /out of/ zealots.

Comfortable and quite a nice looking number, too.

/Mike

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[beoba]

So use IE for the payroll site, and whatever you like for doing your job more efficiently.

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[satoshi1]

Seems like an awful big hassle just to make a point about a web browser.

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[BZ]

True enough. Mostly to do with using a CSS renderer and there being no way to represent this part of HTML in CSS...

The best part about standards is when they contradict each other. ;)

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[mike_sucks]

You obviously missed the bit where I said "I can't run IE - it is not available for the operating systems I have available to me".

That aside, I think supporting an open web is worth it.

/Mike

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[bunratty]

If it's Acid tests you're concerned about, you'll be glad to know that Firefox 3 passes Acid2. Firefox 3 beta 3 performs about as well on Acid3 as Opera 9.5 beta 1, although both are beat by Safari development builds. Safari doesn't seem to do quite as well as Firefox on real-world pages, however.

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[satoshi1]

There are ways to run IE under wine that work surprisingly well. I'm sure setting up IEs4Linux would be easier than switching banks. I, too, am for an open web but has the bank you switched from fixed the IE dependency?

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[mike_sucks]

I can't legally run IE - I do not have copy of Windows and I do not agree with the shrink-wrap licence IE ships with.

Hence the fact that Wine runs it is moot.

/mike

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[arabagast]

funny thing, linksys actually demands activex on some of their mid-level managed switches. This combined with a crippled ssh/telnet setup, where you can't mange vlans and only watch port status, was quite the shock - and they even had a cisco sticker on the box!

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[ceeam]

Closer to 6 => Opera, FF2/3 (similar enough), IE6 + IE7 (quite different sometimes), WebKit + Konqueror (lots of differences too).

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[pimpimpim]

I moved to Germany 4 years ago and had to change banks. I searched for the online banking possibilities for several banks, and found that the bank that someone from work used to advice to all new foreign employees had an online banking system that required to install two plugins (!) for internet explorer. The other bank I checked had a full website-based banking system with even a test account to try out its functionality. That was an easy choice, maybe I should have made it clear to the bank with the stupid system. It's better now, though, the big banks have perfect browser-independent online banking systems and even the bank I didn't chose switched recently, I guess their current clients also got fed-up with their severely broken online banking.

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[Travy.b]

Honest question:

At work I use Firefox on my workstation almost exclusively except for two (Government run) sites. Both of these require ActiveX. One provides data on sewer invert levels, locations, and also AHD level data for the whole of my state. The other provides legal Boundary information for every block of land.

How can I phrase something that will send a 'message' to them, that although I am forced to use their sites due to my place of employment (and chosen profession) it is not a good thing to do in the long run. I'm not trolling, merely that I am at a loss to explain to them in a succinct way that the method they are using is flat out wrong.

I can unequivocally state that should I find the right way to go about it (in a manner with which even registers to them) I will let them know.

Cheers..

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera 9.2 has been feature complete for a while to, and the 9.3 beta is in use. Opera 9.2 has been feature complete for a while to, and the 9.3 beta is in use. I don't see why this makes a difference. You don't see any difference between the 3rd major release of a browser, and a minor update to the 9th release of a different browser?

To put this in perspective, Fx 3 series is 33% of Firefox's version history, by the numbers. 9.3 is approximately 2% of Opera's. Ya think there might be a few more new things in Fx 3?

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[CastrTroy]

I could use a circle, but then I couldn't have borders going from width 3, to width 1 in the transition of the corner. I've never seen a solution that uses only CSS. Could you please show me one. Most of the other implementations I've seen used 4 nested divs, so my solution was a lot nicer.

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[Pojut]

What is there to not agree with? It's a web browser.

Look. I can understand wanting to stand up for your beliefs and doing what you think is right, but this is plain stupid. Yes, I said it: it's fucking stupid.

Do you make your own shoes? Or perhaps "grow" your own gas? Did you manufacture all of your own clothing? Did you grow all the fruit and vegetables that you eat, AND pick them yourself? If not, you are saying that you think that child labor, oil companies, and illegal immigrants working are all ok, but no Internet Explorer for you! You couldn't POSSIBLY agree to the terms set forth for using a WEB BROWSER.

Seriously. Stop being absurd.

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[Firehed]

write to standards; then hack for IE.

Yes, exactly. I should have been a little clearer. What I meant was that after writing to standards, there's a tiny amount of hacking to iron out Firefox quriks compared to IE (and generally none in the Webkit-based browsers, such as Safari).

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[Firehed]

There are a dozen ways to do it. I just threw out the half-implemented properties as the easiest way to do things - and how it should be done. It was generally irrelevant to my point, other than there not being an -ie-border-radius property.

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[mike_sucks]

Stop being absurd? What, not wanting to break the law is absurd? Or having some principals (and actually standing up for them) is absurd? Or not rolling over and getting reamed by faceless corporations is absurd?

If you think this is just about a web browser, then you clearly have no clue.

/Mike

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[mike_sucks]

Good question, I don't have the right answers - I suspect it would vary depending on who you are dealing with and what country you're in. I don't think there's one deus ex machina that you can throw into an email, however. You could try joining Mozilla's community evangelism group and get them to provide ideas and assistance.

Perhaps one way to start is to establish a friendly dialog with the people involved. You could try first sending an email to the people who maintain the sites. Just ask when they plan to support browsers other than IE and platforms other than Windows.

If you have a non-Windows machine that you often use, point out that it would be handy to be access the sites from that machine for such-and-such a reason. If they point to roadblocks (e.g. they don't care, management does not care, technical issues, etc) then try to find out who could do something about it and start talking to them as well. Write letters if email does not seem to be working.

You need to be patient however, don't expect them to change overnight - especially for large and government organisations making such changes can take a long time. The most important things are to keep it friendly (don't use threats or extortion) and keep in touch over time so they feel a constant but gentle pressure to fix their sites.

It's not fast or easy, but worth it.

/Mike

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[Pojut]

Stop being absurd? What, not wanting to break the law is absurd?

Yes, because if you really wanted to use IE and the law was the only thing in your way, you would have bought windows by now.

Or having some principals (and actually standing up for them) is absurd? Or not rolling over and getting reamed by faceless corporations is absurd?

Own anything with a big name brand on it? Or do you own a car that you didn't build? Or perhaps the computer you are typing on...you designed and built all the parts? You DO roll over and get reamed by faceless corporations...

If you think this is just about a web browser, then you clearly have no clue.

And if you really believe what you are attempting to convince me of...

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[Sevenspade]

Mozilla spidermonkey is the ECMA reference implementation. Do Opera and WebKit support javascript 1.7, 1.8, 1.9?

To be fair, ECMA 262 edition 3 reference implementation is SpiderMonkey's JS 1.5. The changes in 1.7, 1.8, and 1.9 have not been standardized. Regardless of whether these changes are slated to be part of edition 4, the previous sentence holds true, and the other vendors shouldn't be faulted for not supporting these.

Furthermore, SpiderMonkey does have some deviations from the standard, albeit incredibly minor.

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[mike_sucks]

Actually, I don't own a car. Why? Because aside from the cost and the envrionmental impact, both car companies and petrol companies are ruthlessly evil. By not having one, I don't support those companies. I don't buy my furniture from Ikea, I don't buy my coffee from Starbucks. I buy locally where ever I can, if I can't then I buy from whoever is the least evil. I only use Free Software for the same reason.

I can appreciate that not having any ethical or moral principals makes your life easier, but criticising others for doing so makes you look like a stupid asshole.

/Mike

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[Pojut]

Then I suppose I'm a stupid asshole.

Look, I have no problem with FOSS software...I think the sense of community that it builds is indicative of where we as a species should be heading towards.

That being said, it's not about morals...it's more of a case of convenience. I hate supporting big companies. But between where I live (Montgomery County, Maryland...in which there is nearly no such thing as a local business when it comes to the big stuff) and my tastes, I don't really have much of an option. I'm happy that you have morals and that you are willing to uphold them, but I'm too lazy for that. I hate the system, and yet I am a picture-perfect example of those born, raised, and living by it. I don't like it, I wish it were different, but they aren't...I'm just sort of floating along with everyone else.

Why do I live that way if I hate it? Because it's easy and it fits into my lifestyle. Horrible? Yes. Am I a bastard for being this way even though I am aware that I am this way? Yes. Am I going to do anything about it? Not at present...although there are plans that involve Colorado and my nearest neighbor being a half mile away. Until then, however, I'll just continue floating along in a nice inflatable raft...I'll jump out when I see a river bank that I can climb up on, but I'm in no rush.

If I go far enough in either direction, I will eventually find land. I'm honestly just too lazy to do that yet.

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[mike_sucks]

/me shrugs

You and the rest of western civilisation. Seriously, I think we're all screwed anyway because most people are the same as you describe. I guess I only bother out of not wanting to shit too much where I sleep.

/Mike

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[Pojut]

To further your last sentence, I see myself as still being an infant...content to shit where I sleep because I don't know any better.

I've been to other countries and have visited more than half of the states in the USA, but I have lived within 20 miles of where I was born for all of my 23 years. I likely won't really change my ways until I get out of the area... until then I'll just keep sucking the teet.

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[StonyUK]

Sorry, myself and a lot of other people don't agree with you.

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[BZ]

Let's see. The and elements are parsed. Cells are grouped into columns and columns into colgroups. You can collapse and uncollapse a column or colgroup at a time. You can set backgrounds and borders on columns and colgroups. You can set the widths of columns and colgroups. All the properties that CSS2.1 allows on them are supported. Colgroups can span multiple columns. Logical columns can span multiple columns of cells.

The only thing that's not supported is align/valign on columns and colgroups, and that only because it's not really so compatible with a proper CSS implementation. Now maybe that means in your book that "Firefox doesn't support COL or COLGROUP". But at that rate, you might as well say it doesn't support CSS, since there are parts of CSS that don't work (say positioning ::before content).

What that link tells me is that there is no align/valign support (which I already knew) and that a lot of people have a hard time correctly phrasing a question (which I also already knew, to be honest).

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[wertigon]

Well, IMO one of the most useful parts about colgroups is that you can left/right/center-align numbers/images/whatever on them. Yet, Firefox won't let me do that even with CSS. Neither will Opera. That's a cryin' shame in my opinion, since it wouldn't be *that* much extra work. Instead I must rely on JavaScript to produce a similar effect.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, consider this example: http://paste.cplusplus.se/paste.php?id=7860

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[BZ]

> Yet, Firefox won't let me do that even with CSS.
> Neither will Opera. That's a cryin' shame in my opinion,
> since it wouldn't be *that* much extra work.

Actually, it's a lot more work with CSS. More to the point, it's fundamentally incompatible with the current processing model required by the CSS specification. See http://ln.hixie.ch/?count=1&start=1070385285 for a pretty good description of the problem.

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[wertigon]

Aha, I see. That explains quite a bit. Thanks for the answer. :)

The only catch

[Anonymous Coward]

is that new definition of 'full standards mode' means 'requires Silverlight'.

Correct link

[RockMFR]

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/03/03/microsoft-s-interoperability-principles-and-ie8.aspx

Re:Correct link

[Spudds]

And here's an interesting little tid-bit from the blog to chew on:

While we do not believe any current legal requirements would dictate which rendering mode a browser must use, this step clearly removes this question as a potential legal and regulatory issue. I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

Or perhaps...

[dedazo]

They just thought it was the best thing to do. After all, they're going to be breaking a lot of intranet crap, which won't make them lots of fans.

But that doesn't get the juices flowing as effectively as the "they did it because I think they're scared of the EU" editorial byline. Must have those ad impressions.

Re:Or perhaps...

[ScentCone]

No, I think that the people from Opera just went to Seattle and burned the houses of the project managers .

Re:Or perhaps...

[ILuvRamen]

at my old work, because of their intranet pages, they haven't gone to IE7 yet lol. It looked like a basic html page to me so I dunno what the problem was. I think the IT staff is a bunch of morons and before you're like "nah ah!" they're all getting fired in March. That's right, all of them. They're ACS people and they're gone. They're bringing in IBM people to replace them. Lol anyway, yeah I didn't really buy that scared of the EU crap. What does the EU care about IE following standards? Anything to make IE worse should delight them cuz it'll help break up the semi-monopoly.

Re:Or perhaps...

[fimbulvetr]

If you think the IBM people are going to better in any capacity, you are sorely mistaken.

Re:Or perhaps...

[jmdc]

You might find it interesting that the IEBlog entry hints that they were actually thinking about such things:

While we do not believe any current legal requirements would dictate which rendering mode a browser must use, this step clearly removes this question as a potential legal and regulatory issue. Of course, I concede the point in the general case that the slashdot editors do try to generate traffic in the way you describe. This is the exception that proves the rule.

Re:Or perhaps...

[ILuvRamen]

hey, I didn't pick them lol. I work for Tek Systems, a contractor they used. Actually I just did a short inventory project for IBM before they take over. And you know what, to work 4 days at a place where I had been working for 12 weeks before, they made me do a background and drug test and read a bunch of ridiculous corporate crap. I think I don't want to work with or anywhere near IBM again.

Re:Or perhaps...

[ScentCone]

Yes. Arson is a real laugh riot.

Oh, please. I'm making fun of the people who do crap like that. Burning down expensive model homes is the ultimate temper tantrum. The twits of ELF (who appear to have done this) are so unable to get people to see their point of view that they have to resort to torching other people's property in order to get enough cred with their fellow twits. That was all about bragging rights among a group of people so disconnected from reality, and so unable to communicate a lucid point of view or rational perspective that they behave like two year olds smashing someone else's toys in a fit of pique over being unable to articulate anything sensible or persuasive. It's the height of asshattery. I hope they go to jail, for a long time. And not jail for the "I like to watch things burn" damaged goods type characters, but jail for the "I like to destroy other people's property in an attempt to make political points through shock and destruction, which means I'm actually a classical terrorist" types.

Windows Versions?

[Sponge Bath]

Will this be installable on XP and later or will it only be available for the Vista follow on: Vista ME?

Re:Windows Versions?

[niteice]

Informative? mods on crack, as usual

That link is from 2004.

fsvo

[Nimey]

For small values of "compliant". I'll lay odds that it will still be less compliant than Gecko, KHTML, or Opera.

And we'll still have retarded webmonkeys designing for IE instead of standards, especially if MS gets it really wrong again.

Re:fsvo

[rtb61]

More accurately, after 3 to 6 months of free beta testing by clients and end users, and when M$ sorts out the 'discoveries', from the 'disclosures' and then the patching, it will really actually start to approach standards compliance, and hence to fit with M$ speak, it will be 'more' standards compliant than the previous version.

Not that I use it but...

[Iphtashu Fitz]

I'll still be interested in how well it handles the Acid2 and Acid3 tests.

Re:Not that I use it but...

[Anonymous Coward]

IE 8 Passes Acid2 Test

Re:Not that I use it but...

[The Ancients]

According to various articles linked to from google, IE8 beta builds have passed Acid2. As for Acid3, let's start with small miracles, shall we?

Hmmmm

[Brian Gordon]

This could actually be some competition for the unstoppable Firefox.. if IE stops sucking then nobody will switch.. I'm expecting firefox 3 to pack some serious performance and standards-compliance improvements, but if it didn't then I'd have been happy to switch back to IE8. Firefox is an absolute memory whore. I do like the interface though; IE7's was horrid.

Re:Hmmmm

[garett_spencley]

Competition is good. If Microsoft actually goes and creates a superior product then IE users get a better browser which forces Firefox to either "up it's game" (giving FF users an even better browser) or remain the same while everyone switches back to IE because it's superior.

Either way everyone gets a better browser. Win-win.

Re:Hmmmm

[bunratty]

Hmmmmm... Firefox looks like it uses less memory than other browsers to me. How would we see this "memory whore" thing you're talking about? Can you give me a site to go to that causes Firefox to use much more memory than another browser?

Re:Hmmmm

[bondsbw]

Then Firefox and open source is serving its purpose.

Really... does everyone hate IE because Microsoft has a browser monopoly, or because IE has sucked for so long and there was no competition to force them to do anything about it?

Re:Hmmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox at 94 MB???
hahahaha! Maybe if I *just* started it.
My firefox jumps to about 400 MB after about 2 weeks of being open.
Posting AC because I moderated this story already... :(

Re:Hmmmm

[eebra82]

I think a lot of people use Firefox because it is so easy to modify to your needs. IE can be configured, but not even remotely close to what FF can do with the help of plug-ins and extensions.

Also, I would say that most people who use Firefox are experienced users. Firefox cannot grow beyond this market simply because my inexperienced father is happy with what comes bundled with the computer. I hope you understand that analogy. Most people simply don't see the difference, nor do they care.

Re:Hmmmm

[Mongoose Disciple]

Okay, I'll bite.

First, that page is several years and versions of each browser old.

Second, it's an uptime kind of thing in my experience. If I'm working on an older machine, I typically need to close Firefox every few hours because it's hogging a few hundred meg of memory. IE doesn't, in my experience, bloat over time as bad.

If you're not prone to leaving a browser open for days of browsing at a time, you might not ever notice it. This doesn't invalidate the many good points of Firefox, it's just a little annoying.

Re:Hmmmm

[bunratty]

I ran Firefox 3 beta 3 on Windows for a week without closing it just recently. It was using 150 MB of memory, with a peak mem usage of 250 MB. Having to close Firefox every few hours isn't the typical Firefox user's experience. Firefox using 100-150 MB of RAM is typical, even when running for many days. It sounds like you're having an unusual problem if you're having to restart it every few hours. Perhaps you may want to follow some of the suggestions on the page I linked to.

Re:Hmmmm

[MeNeXT]

When IE starts supporting more then windows "current version" then it may start becoming a superior browser.

IE 8 is to move people onto VISTA it most likely won't run on XP... but that's only my experience and my opinion.

Re:Hmmmm

[WK2]

Firefox is an absolute memory whore.

OMG WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO YOUR BROWSER!?!? And how? Whatever it is, I don't think Firefox actually wants your memory that badly.

On the other hand, perhaps you meant, "memory hog."

Re:Hmmmm

[zippthorne]

It seems to maintains a list of all of the words that it has helpfully suggested corrections for, for you. So, you must be one terrible misspeller.

But, why would you leave your web browser open for weeks at a time? You should be turning the machine off when you go home for the night / leave for work in the morning (depending on home/work status) to save electricity. Only servers need to be on all the time.

Re:Hmmmm

[Heir Of The Mess]

Here's an interesting one off of Microsoft's own live.com A blog entry with pictures

IE gets up to 250MB and then doesn't render the page. Yet Firefox works fine. Interestingly though if you save the Firefox content and then load it in IE is also works fine, so maybe not a fair comparison as it seems to be serving up different material to each browser.

Re:Hmmmm

[Mongoose Disciple]

I'll have to check, but I'd bet I'm still running Firefox 2 on the couple of older machines that I've used it on with problems.

If the 3 beta is fairly stable I'll have to give it a try.

Re:Hmmmm

[Just Some Guy]

Either way everyone gets a better browser. Win-win.

No kidding! It sounds like IE8 will support both OSes: XP and Vista.

Wonder if my IE7 for Ubuntu will upgrade itself?

Re:Hmmmm

[bunratty]

One thing you should do if you've had problems with Firefox 2 is create a new profile, whether you decide to stick with Firefox 2 or update to Firefox 3. In my experience in the MozillaZine forums, that one simple suggestion seems to fix most problems. There's lots of other advice for fixing problems in the MozillaZine Knowledge Base.

Re:Hmmmm

[Apocalypse111]

There's still one big reason not to switch back to IE - security. I don't want to go look at the open web using an integral part of my OS, thanks.

Re:Hmmmm

[dwater]

> Either way everyone gets a better browser. Win-win.

Then the number of FF users will drop, making them less significant to content producers so they target IE more and more. Then Microsoft will think they are the standard and stop further IE development, letting it sit stagnant for years on end while the general populous gradually realise how much they're being screwed, meanwhile FF has shrunk to insignificance/etc/etc.

Sounds like a viscous cycle; one that can only be broken by people not either not bothering to use IE at all even if it does get better, or Microsoft changing it's colours and keeping up development/etc/etc. I know which one I'd have money on, if I were a betting man.

Of course, there's a "secret option number 'c'", which is Microsoft don't bundle their browser on their OS so that there's a level playing field on which to complete. You can stop laughing now.

Re:Hmmmm

[Your.Master]

You just totally missed his point. If, hypothetically, IE8 is in some way better than Firefox on Windows, Firefox will have adapt to compete. This will help Firefox on Ubuntu, because Firefox is competing with IE in the marketplace, even if it is not competing on your OS of choice.

Re:Hmmmm

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Competition is good.

Competition is good, when it is fair competition in a healthy market.

If Microsoft actually goes and creates a superior product then IE users get a better browser which forces Firefox to either "up it's game" (giving FF users an even better browser) or remain the same while everyone switches back to IE because it's superior.

The problem is, what if IE isn't better or what if IE 8 is better but IE 9 is worse? In the first case most people still use IE even though it is inferior, because they assume a normal free market is operating and if there was a better browser Dell or Gateway or Sony would put it on their computer for them. Worse yet, every time a person buys a new computer (every few years) the whole thing is reset and MS gets another shot at being "good enough" that people don't go out of their way to get something better. So if any version of IE is better, more people end up using it than its merits would win in a normal, free market. This allows Microsoft (the monopolist) to use their market share to introduce artificial problems in the offerings of competitors (even if that problem is just Firefox is harder to obtain and install). Worse yet, Microsoft can use their dominance to prevent progress. Right now IE does not even completely support 8-year old Web standards that everyone else does... so those standards go unused by all because no developer can afford to lose 70% of potential customers. In this way the Web has been crippled; prevented from becoming a viable alternative for most applications (which would remove the need to pay MS for having a monopoly on desktop OS's).

Either way everyone gets a better browser. Win-win.

Sadly that is not the way it works when one player is leveraging a monopoly in another market. A lot of people end up with a worse browser (regardless of which one they use) as well as a less functional internet.

Re:Hmmmm

[ipfwadm]

Not to be a prick, but you have heard of laptops and the suspend-to-RAM feature, right? Doesn't use a whole lot more power than turning the thing off, plus you don't have to waste all that power waiting for it to boot up and start all your applications again. I've had Firefox running for at least a week now, and it's pushing half a gig of RAM. Of course I also have close to 40 tabs open.

Re:Hmmmm

[nmb3000]

I don't want to go look at the open web using an integral part of my OS, thanks.

Er, what? That doesn't even make any sense. How does the IE rendering engine being used for other parts of Windows (help, media player, etc) make it any more of a security risk? The Gecko engine is used by many other OSS programs, does that make it inherently less secure?

It doesn't matter what browser you use: they all have security holes. What matters is the context of the user running the browser. If you run Firefox as Administrator/root then your system is just as (potentially) vulnerable as running IE as Administrator.

I know, this is Slashdot. "IE is NOT an integral part of Windows! They're lying!" = Insightful. "IE is an integral part of Windows and that makes it more vulnerable!" = Insightful. Finally there's a place where you can have your cake and eat it too.

Re:Hmmmm

[bunratty]

My firefox jumps to about 400 MB after about 2 weeks of being open.

That's fantastic. I've never run any browser for more than about a week. I've never even been able to keep Windows running for more than about two weeks. Firefox 3 should use even less memory after long periods of time, and I can only hope it will be stable enough to run for weeks at a time.

Re:Hmmmm

[lukas84]

IE7's Protected Mode on Windows Vista is a big improvement over what Firefox offers - it limits the seriousness of exploits immensively. Firefox could do the same, but they don't (yet).

Re:Hmmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe people switches back to proprietary stacks because of performance considerations only. I consider that quite dumb. Even Apple shows they tend to abuse dominant positions they achieve and I would cut some slack to Microsoft? LOL no way. Microsoft does good products when it is not dominant. Let's keep it that way.

Re:Hmmmm

[BenoitRen]

In this way the Web has been crippled; prevented from becoming a viable alternative for most applications

For crying out loud, not everything has to get on the web. We have these nice things called desktop applications. Sure, web applications have their placed, and can be very useful for several things, but let's not exaggarate.

Re:Hmmmm

[e03179]

Firefox is popular because of the extensions right? Sure it beat IE to the punch and offered tabbed browsing first. But to the average user, what's really the difference? I say it's open source and customizable extensions; something IE lacks. I'm not switching to IE8 because it will render pages more accurately until they offer me extensions like Foxforecast, GMailNotify, YSlow, del.icio.us, Firebug, Web Developer, etc.

Re:Hmmmm

[pizzach]

If, hypothetically, IE8 is in some way better than Firefox on Windows, Firefox will have adapt to compete. This will help Firefox on Ubuntu, because Firefox is competing with IE in the marketplace, even if it is not competing on your OS of choice. In general I agree with you. But whenever someone says something about adapt and compete against Microsoft, I tend to cringe. In most other cases, the market shift would be something reasonable like 30%-70%. This leaves you with a good chance to make a comeback even if you make a stupid mistake (like Communicator) once or twice. In the Microsoft case, it becomes something so slanted that resources become a limiting factor when people switch away. Much like open source Flash development basically stops when the Adobe version finally releases.

If web developers on Windows switch to IE exclusively again....*shutter*

Re:Hmmmm

[pbhj]

I think he meant it fscks with your computers memory.

Seems quite apposite to me.

Re:Hmmmm

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

For crying out loud, not everything has to get on the web.

No, but there are advantages to Web applications that have not been realized due to artificial limitations.

We have these nice things called desktop applications. Sure, web applications have their placed, and can be very useful for several things, but let's not exaggarate[sic].

Web applications can theoretically work from any computer, while traditional applications cannot. More importantly, however, is Web applications can work regardless of the operating system, which opens the way for easy cross-platform development allowing large organizations to avoid paying the MS tax. Even with the incredibly limited functionality supported by IE, Web mail, Web IM, Web games and even Web based office suites have significant use. Imagine if they were 10 times as easy to use and 3 times as functional as they are today.

I doubt Web applications will ever take over all the functions of OS specific apps, but hybrid applications and Web apps could easily allow normal users to have all their data backed up and accessible to their old computer and their new computer without having to re-install or buy migration software. This scared the hell out of Microsoft, which is why they have held back Web technologies as much as possible.

Re:Hmmmm

[TyrainDreams]

Then why can't i uninstall it...and when i do 'uninstall' it then why does it still render through the explorer...its kinda impossible to remove...making the whole saying its not integral thing...kinda wrong...but the fact of the matter is that no matter how many other OSS apps use GECKO, my windows machine isnt running them...it does however come stock with a filebrowser/media player/help document viewer/control panel/desktop/etc all part of which is IE...

THANK YOU!

[theaceoffire]

Microsoft, I can honestly say that this is the first version of IE that I have ever looked forward to.

Here's hoping that we can forget the others ever happened!

Re:THANK YOU!

[calebt3]

Don't thank them until it is fully extractable from the OS.

EPIC WIN

[yakumo.unr]

Firefox 3 will surely be my browser of choice still, but this is still an epic win for developers, and the progression of the WWW.

huge success!

Re:EPIC WIN

[mike_sucks]

Absolutely! Will this be the end of "write using standards, hack to get IE working"?

Of course, the devil will be in the details - let's see how how well they implement the new support.

/mike

Re:EPIC WIN

[Chandon Seldon]

Will this be the end of "write using standards, hack to get IE working"?

Not until users stop using IE7. On a web site I recently did dev work for, IE6 was still considered the primary target.

Re:EPIC WIN

[yakumo.unr]

Some places will always be far behind, but this news means there should be a brighter future, instead of endlessly delving further and further into a barrel of hideous hackery.

MS is caving in? again?

[rainhill]

...ummh, I've got a bad feeling, something is not right.

Re:MS is caving in? again?

[BenoitRen]

I sense a disturbance in the Force...

Re: IE8 Will Be Standards-Compliant By Default

[rodgerdb]

"Perhaps Opera's complaint to the EU or the EU's record antitrust fine had something to do with Redmond's about-face."

I would like to think Microsoft reads Slashdot. =)

Put it all on Silverlight!?!

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I wonder if they're serious. Will they really be standards compliant enough so that I don't have to hack around IE8's deficiencies? Will this still be true for IE9? It's possible. Will this include SVG and XHTML and CSS3? What about XUL and HTML 5?

If all of the above work in the next couple of version of IE, do you know what that would indicate to me? That would indicate that Microsoft is betting on Silverlight to lock in users in the next 5 years... because they've pretty much convinced me they will never compete based upon features and the merits of their software, rather than trying to make it as hard as possible for users to switch to anything else.

Re:Put it all on Silverlight!?!

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

By standards compliant they pretty much just mean HTML CSS javascript and the DOM. There are many web technologies, but there isn't a single browser that fully supports all of the standards you listed. I wish there was. Feel free to correct me If I'm wrong.

Re:Put it all on Silverlight!?!

[CastrTroy]

Microsoft is playing some serious catch-up after laying dormant with IE6 for so long. It will be nice if they can get XHTML 1, CSS2, and HTML4 all working respectably well in IE8. It's yet to be seen if they will maintain that momentum and continue to adopt new standards such as HTML5 and CSS3. I personally hope they do, especially with CSS3, as it has lots of really nice features.

Re:Put it all on Silverlight!?!

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

There are many web technologies, but there isn't a single browser that fully supports all of the standards you listed. I wish there was. Feel free to correct me If I'm wrong.

No, here is no browser that supports all of those completely. Some of the specifications are still in draft form for some of those technologies. So far, however, Firefox, Safari, Konquerer, and Opera all have at least some support for every one of the specifications I mentioned. Explorer has some support for some of them, but is behind on all of them compared to every other browser.

The difference is which browser teams are committed to implementing standards going forward and advancing the Web technologies as a real goal and which are interested in doing as little to make the Web a more powerful platform as possible while not incurring serious legal problems. I submit that if Microsoft is really serious about implementing the standards they will have at least some support for all of these Web technologies in IE 8, enough so that it shows they are committed to keeping current with Web technologies instead of freezing the Web at a technological level it was at 8 years ago and making sure it is never useful enough so that people can use Windows or some other platform.

Re:Put it all on Silverlight!?!

[c0ol]

Silverlight works on Firefox

Re:Put it all on Silverlight!?!

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Silverlight works on Firefox

Of course it does. Likely it will work on OS X too. Every new format or protocol or technology MS pushes that is in a market they have not dominated works on other platforms. The problem is what happens as soon as MS has enough share of that market. That is when incompatibilities or platform support is intentionally broken to lock-in users, force users to move to MS products, and help reinforce their primary monopoly. The solution is to support only open standard formats with trademarked names, so that MS cannot later break compatibility until the courts order them to stop (many years later after the new market has been destroyed).

Re:Put it all on Silverlight!?!

[BenoitRen]

XUL? That's not even a standard, as far as I know.

In other news..

[wellingtonsteve]

Hell has just frozen over..

I guess the student was wrong.. http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=83;t=000609;p=1

Re:In other news..

[owlnation]

Hell has just frozen over...

in the silverlight of a blue moon...

Question

[jason777]

So does this mean that existing sites will be automatically broken, unless you add a tag?

Re:Question

[bunratty]

Sites that depend on the behavior of IE7 will break unless they add a tag saying they are designed specifically for IE7. Sites that were developed according to standards, and do not rely on the behavior of specific versions of specific browsers, will not break. This is the advantage of designing web sites according to the standards. As a further advantage, they also tend to work in other browsers and on other operating systems.

Re:Question

[chiskop]

Depends how the existing site was made. If it was designed against IE6/7, then yes, it will be at least a little broken, but then it already was.

If it was designed to standards (which the article calls 'IE8 content', roffle) then it seems like ie8 will "interpret web content in the most standards compliant way it can."

It's that last little bit that prevents me from getting all excited just yet.

+1 Informative

[BadAnalogyGuy]

You may be new around here, so you don't fully get the moderation rules yet.

If you moderate in a thread and then post in it afterwards, all moderation will be erased. This happens even if you are posting anonymously.

Re:+1 Informative

[VirusEqualsVeryYes]

That's not quite true. Your moderations get erased if you post AC by checking the "Anonymous Coward" checkbox, but if you manually logout before posting, your mod points remain intact.

Wouldn't it be funny...

[Anonymous Coward]

if IE8's default standards mode was directly comparable to firefox, safari, etc. And then, get this, IE8 introduces a new mode that is 100% standards-compliant, better than any other browser on the market. And then... oh get this, get this: then you have to add a meta tag to access the better-than-other-standards-browsers mode!

Oh, I can just see it now. Irony at its best.

Perhaps...

[Phroggy]

Perhaps Opera's complaint to the EU or the EU's record antitrust fine had something to do with Redmond's about-face. Or perhaps Microsoft simply realized that their previous plan was flawed, and they've decided to do the right thing just because it's the right thing to do. Or maybe it occurred to them that encouraging everyone to move to standard code will make development of future versions of IE much easier, so it's in their own interests to do so.

Booga booga

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Want to get people to switch to Firefox?

Tell them that IE leaks passwords and will run scripts that can read your hard drive and send credit card numbers to malicious servers.

Tell them that FireFox has the "Do Everything" feature too, but it is disabled by default. It can be turned on later, though "in your experience, you've never had any trouble with it off."

Tell them that FireFox is free and is based on Netscape (they will probably remember that name) which turned the browser business over to "Mozilla" when it went out of business. "Mozilla" makes money fixing security holes in FireFox, which is why it is so secure.

Then install it for them.

Re:Booga booga

[FishWithAHammer]

That won't really help for the vast majority of users.

OOXML

[Maestro485]

In other news, OOXML will be in compliance with ODF.

Good news

[Random BedHead Ed]

I'll believe it when I see it, but this is good news if it's true, and if "standards" means what you'd hope. The best thing for the web is for all of the major browsers to abandon support for decrepit, non-standards-compliant sites and send the message that they're committed to CSS and other modern elements of design. Microsoft has been hesitant to do this for many reasons aside from anticompetitiveness, but the chicken and egg problem of needing to support legacy sites is getting old. If they pull this off I'll stop using my nasty voice when I talk about IE.

Not the EU or Opera...

[rice_burners_suck]

I doubt the decision has anything to do with Opera's complaint or the EU. I think the monkey dancer threw a chair, it him in the head, and the decision came as a result of that.

missing the point

[BPPG]

I much prefer firefox to ie. Hell, I've been into using kazehakase. And lynx comes in handy when I'm unable to run Xorg. But I would be glad to see microsoft finally bringing ie up to standards. It's not about which browser is better. People will use whatever browser they want. The important thing is that if such a widely used browser is up to standards, and if more people starts using, we can actually put those standard to use. If this encourages Mozilla and Opera to meet the standards as well, all the better. The thing is the content! Web developers will less and less have to plan for browsers quirks and contingencies, and focus more on content that everyone will be able to use and view online. So instead of five or six implementations, we can mostly just worry about one.

people switch because of standards?!?

[acidrain]

if IE stops sucking then nobody will switch.. I'm expecting firefox 3 to pack some serious performance and standards-compliance improvements

Standards compliance in this case will result in broken pages, at least in the short term. Not sure why people would switch for that. Also surprised that you think people when to Firefox for the standards compliance. I thought they went over for the usability the add-ons that didn't suck. Standards are, and always will be a nerd issue. Everyone else just wants you to shut up and make it work.

I just don't see how rolling out automatic updates one day that break working sites is the right thing. Right or wrong, users will blame Microsoft. I guess they deserve it for implementing standards incorrectly, but there really should be a better way.

Re:people switch because of standards?!?

[Brian Gordon]

I switched to firefox immediately when I learned how IE disobeyed web standards- and only for that reason

Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers

[rice_burners_suck]

I doubt this is being done to help the browser platforms of competitors. I think it's being done for much the same reason that the OS has changed in such a vastly incompatible way... to mess with Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers.

Re:2008 - the end of Slashdot???

[Vexorian]

Microsoft is attempting to become more open source friendly

No, it isn't.

This Will Cost MS Dearly

[rsmith-mac]

While this is good news for those of us in the geek crowd, I'm extremely surprised MS went this route. When IE8 is pushed out and it breaks a bunch of non-conforming non-tagged pages built for IE7 and IE6, there will be much hell raising to be had. MS will of course be blamed since they're the ones that changed things and I wouldn't be surprised if the backlash was well in excess of IE7's, if not close to the kind of backlash Vista initially got.

Ultimately everything will be worked out as developers fix their pages, but in the short-term period following IE8's release it's going to cost MS dearly. I can't for the life of me figure out why MS would want to put their neck on the line like this, it's not doing them any favors and "benevolent" usually isn't a term we use to describe Microsoft.

Re:This Will Cost MS Dearly

[John Jamieson]

It can't cost more than loosing the user base, which is what is happening now.

I figure they are trying to stem some of the defections to Opera and Firefox. They can always embrace and extend in IE9, if they get some of the user base back.

Re:This Will Cost MS Dearly

[tobiasly]

I can't for the life of me figure out why MS would want to put their neck on the line like this

You must not have read the press release!

"While we do not believe there are currently any legal requirements that would dictate which rendering mode must be chosen as the default for a given browser, this step clearly removes this question as a potential legal and regulatory issue"

They aren't putting their neck on the line... it's already there. :)

Re:This Will Cost MS Dearly

[dbIII]

When IE8 is pushed out and it breaks a bunch of non-conforming non-tagged pages built for IE7 and IE6, there will be much hell raising to be had

It happens. They still keep the user base and developer base. Consider Visual Basic - I think it started off as basic, got revised as pascal and is now something like java. I doubt that there are any lines of early VB code that will run with the current implementation. With a long enough time span you have a moving target and it's a pain at transition times.

Re:This Will Cost MS Dearly

[QuoteMstr]

No. The OP's point was that this move will cost them users. Either nobody will adopt IE8, at which point Microsoft can say, "look, EU, I tried, but nobody wants this thing!" or intranet users will upgrade, see their internal applications break, and while fixing them, consider other browsers. Some of these users will switch.

By the way - it's "lose", not "loose".

Re:This Will Cost MS Dearly

[n3tcat]

They probably are doing it for the same reason that you described. See, what you are describing is probably exactly why IE6 was designed the way it was. They probably failed to predict that in the long run those lack of standards would make life harder on them. Now they are trying to make life easier on themselves by doing what everyone has been telling them to do all along. Comply.

I think their biggest mistake was not becoming standards compliant sooner. They locked everyone in with IE6, but they failed to follow up with the bridge fast enough and now people are looking at alternatives. I think if they really perfect their IE6 mode, they can make it so that companies can upgrade to IE8 without fear of breaking their pages, and ultimately that is the target. It doesn't matter if the people upgrade. It matters if the companies upgrade, because without fail the people at home will want to use at home what they use at work. It's what they are used to.

Re:This Will Cost MS Dearly

[Bogtha]

While this is good news for those of us in the geek crowd, I'm extremely surprised MS went this route.

Me too. I'm a web developer and I hate Internet Explorer's quirks, but if I were in charge of the Internet Explorer team, I wouldn't be able to justify this decision to my superiors, not for Internet Explorer 8 (9, yes, after publicising this strategy).

Reading between the lines, I get the impression things happened from the bottom up. The Internet Explorer team consider their bad reputation and endless concessions to backwards compatibility with quirks mode to be millstones around their necks. But professionalism and the usual Microsoft backwards compatibility attitude forced them into defaulting to the Internet Explorer 7 rendering engine.

However, as part of Microsoft's legal wrangles with the EU, Microsoft have been pushing the boat out on interoperability, and the Internet Explorer team saw an opportunity and used that as a justification for dumping the backwards compatibility.

Remember, jokes aside, it's not like Microsoft is one big hive mind. There are a bunch of internal groups all making and justifying their own decisions to each other. I doubt the board of directors handed down an edict saying that Internet Explorer must work this way because of the legal issues, but I do think the legal issues enabled the Internet Explorer team to do what they already wanted to do.

Re:This Will Cost MS Dearly

[wralias]

It's a good time to be a web developer. All those mom-and-pop businesses who got a one-shot deal on their websites are gonna need some help when it "no longer works in IE." This is going to be the Y2K of web development, and I'm gonna be there to ca$h in!

Re:This Will Cost MS Dearly

[Stan Vassilev]

When IE8 is pushed out and it breaks a bunch of non-conforming non-tagged pages built for IE7 and IE6, there will be much hell raising to be had.

No one will raise hell because they only have to add a single meta tag to fix their broken sites.

The difficulty with IE7 was that the updated engine had unpredictable and unintended effects on certain sites, which had to be debugged, special cases added, code changed, tested, and so on.

If someone would rather bitch for days, instead of spending the 10 mins or so to add a harmless meta tag to his broken site, then well, web visitors should complain to that site's developers, not to Microsoft.

Re:This Will Cost MS Dearly

[John Jamieson]

How does MS loose if Microsoft can say, "look, EU, I tried, but nobody wants this thing!"? Thats right, they win! They can continue to embrace and extend with an excuse.

People might switch just because standards complient is the default?
First, IE can STILL can use the MS "standards"... second, who else produces a browser that is less standards complient, and is magically going to run all the old MS activex stuff(etc.). Ya, that is right, nobody!
Again, MS wins.

Thirdly, people are already switching... so more people switching is part of the current trend. The continueation of a current trend can not be blamed on standards complience.

So you see, I understood exactly what the OP meant.
I also didn't agree, MS is/was already loosing so much user base, that I don't think this is a risky strategy.

Ah, so your one of those people who have nothing better to do than correct typo's(and spelling mistakes). Do you really think someone who has a disability regarding spelling or has english as a second language respects you more because you can spot a spelling error? It would be like you pointing out that a blind person missed you walking down the street? Ya, he's impressed!

Re:This Will Cost MS Dearly

[QuoteMstr]

Ah, so your one of those people who have nothing better to do than correct typo's(and spelling mistakes). Do you really think someone who has a disability regarding spelling or has english as a second language respects you more because you can spot a spelling error? It would be like you pointing out that a blind person missed you walking down the street? Ya, he's impressed!

If a poster is simply ignorant of English grammar, the pointer will be appreciated. On the other hand, if a poster just don't care, the pointer serves as a warning to others. Willful ignorance of basic grammar is the mark of a demented anti-intellectual, one whose thoughts shouldn't be taken seriously.

Re:This Will Cost MS Dearly

[John Jamieson]

Firstly, incorrect spelling is often a case of a typo, or an inablility by one to not have the capacity to remember the correct spelling. It is not usually Willful ignorance.

Second, Slashdot does not have a spell checker, which means a poster would spend so much time checking posts that they would never get anything else done. (remember, someone with a spelling disability does not recognise an incorrectly spelled word, so most every word must be checked)

Thirdly, "take the log out of your eye, before you point out the sliver in someone else's". Correcting spelling (since you don't know the persons background) is usually petty. A while back, you posted and wrote about the "Garden of Eiden" (if I remember correctly). I remember wondering if you had something else in mind or were refering to the "Garden of Eden"... I quickly figured that one out, and you will notice that I did not mod you down OR correct you. It really did not matter, and since corrections are usually used as a method to show superiority... it is something I will continue to avoid doing.

Re:This Will Cost MS Dearly

[QuoteMstr]

Using "eiden" for "eden" is clearly a typo. On the other hand, there are errors that reflect sloppy thinking and a more profound ignorance of the English language. They include making a singular noun plural by adding "'s", inadvertent double negation* , and substituting "most every" for "almost every". These more serious errors reflect poorly on the poster's education and reasoning ability: any rational person would want to correct them. But when a poster, instead of learning from his errors, embraces or dismisses them, he is attacking learning and reason, and is an anti-intellectual. Everyone should discount his opinions; these opinions are not based on fact or reason.

Anyone interested in being taken seriously should be interested in learning about his errors. Pointing these errors out educates those who want to learn, and warns others about those who don't value learning.

* as in the first sentence of your own post

Re:This Will Cost MS Dearly

[John Jamieson]

No wonder you get modded down as a troll once in a while. You are a work of art.

Eiden clearly a typo??? YA whatever. (the letter e is SO close to i on the keyboard)

Pointing these errors makes you larger, at the expense of the other person. Too bad you need that kind of ego boost.

And you get to decide what is "anti-intellectual"? OK, I think we should end this thread, because I don't argue with God.

Re:This Will Cost MS Dearly

[QuoteMstr]

It's funny how those troll mods only appeared after I started arguing with somebody who mentioned using modpoints upthread. Those sockpuppets of yours won't do any good. Also, the original typo was "eaden", not "eiden". It speaks volumes that you can't even reliably reproduce an error -- not to mention that in reading your posts out loud, I'm reminded of "Romy and Michele's High School Reunion".

And besides - it's not that I'm defining anti-intellectual -- it's that you don't think things like evidence and reason have anything to do with the quality of a comment. Your philosophy would be postmodern drivel, if only you could articulate it better than a third grader.

Re:This Will Cost MS Dearly

[John Jamieson]

LOL, you don't think highly of yourself do you?
I enjoy a little banter and trashtalk once in a while, but from your attacks in this last post it appears you are taking this a little more seriously than I am, so we should "wind this puppy" down.

Sorry, I missed the whole argument you had with somebody about modpoints.

As for sockpuppets... if you are implying I have friends on /. who mod down those who correct me, sorry.
1. I don't care enough to take the time to set something like that up.
2. I don't know anyone on slash dot. (or I probubly do, but don't know the username)

Cmon, now you are desperate - dissing me for not knowing how you misspelled Eden. I didn't/don't care to remember your mistake exactly*. I just thought it was funny reading the error, then being corrected by the same person for a typo a while later. (I don't remember for sure, but I think I even modded that comment up, why I remember it I bet).

Now start writing some nice stuff again, I won't forget your name now and will at least chuckle when I have the chance to give you mod points for an insightful comment. (and yes, I bet I have speling mistakes EVERYWERE ;) )

*yep, I may be too flexible. In twenty percent of the contracts I've had, I'm just happy if I can understand my co-workers attempt at English. It tends to "relax" ones expectations somewhat. lol

Things change in 10 years

[michaelmalak]

It's been nine years since IE5 came out with broken CSS and Web developers have been screaming for it ever since. What's that that Bill Gates says about predicting the future -- that 10 years is just enough time to see paradigm shifts but not so far out that the future cannot be predicted? Does coding to a standard count as a paradigm shift? I guess it is when you're Microsoft and you're coding to someone else's standard.

It's a trap!

[tobiasly]

It's a trap! First Microsoft lures us all into using interoperable web standards, and then... then.... shit, I can't figure out how they can use this for evil. Gimme a sec...

Re:It's a trap!

[Aegis Runestone]

IT'S A TRAP! [/Ackbar] This one deserves a funny.

Re:It's a trap!

[calebt3]

This is the 'Embrace' stage. 'Extend' comes in IE9.

Re:It's a trap!

[codemachine]

The trap is Silverlight. The standards compliant web is being extended with Silverlight, and a number of companies are already buying into it.

IE becomes the browser that can best view all the old broken IE-only HTML, all the compliant HTML, and all of the Silverlight pages that "enhance" the web. All of the other browsers will only render standard HTML well.

Sure Mozilla renders XUL, but Silverlight probably has more adoption than XUL already. Too bad someone didn't come up with a really friendly IDE to XUL early on in Mozilla's lifetime, since that is one thing MS tends to do well that drives adoption of their languages and tools. Developers, developers, developers!

Re:It's a trap!

[arkhan_jg]

It kills one of the main reasons to use firefox. IE is a gateway to a lot more things than just html/css. You have activex, windows media DRM and now silverlight (though that is for firefox too). By keeping sufficient windows users using IE, with no incentive to move off the default, some developers will still target sites at windows IE only users. That then keeps the windows lock-in going.

Microsoft always viewed the web as something that threatened their core OS market; apps that run on any platform over the network, via some neutral platform like a browser (which has finally started to happen despite years of feet-dragging by microsoft) means people can function outside windows. First comes firefox, then openoffice, then OSX or linux.

Miicrosoft still wants to keep IE's version of the web separate from everybody else. they've just accepted they've lost the xm/html/css part of that, and need to stay relevent there to keep the rest of their lock-in going.

Developers & the half-life of accumulated cont

[weston]

Developers, developers, developers, right?

I think Microsoft has finally genuinely started to realize a very simple fact:

Client-side web developers hate them.

And it's probably the one thing MS has thoroughly earned with all the IE bullsh*t over the last 10 years.

This is a really great gesture, it's a good start if they want to allay any of that and gain back trust. But honestly, nobody gets over 10 years of being treated like crap overnight, and the half-life of contempt isn't short.

Personally, I'd like to offer my congratulations to the IE Product management team, and let them know that in time, I'll probably only wish debilitating terminal illness on them, rather than painful and extended death by torture.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Opt in

[MSDos-486]

So it is in standards mode by default? You mean how Windows Firewall and UAC are enabled by default and 99% of software guides tell you to disable("opt in") them because they were poorly designed.

Re:Opt in

[chiefbutz]

Exactly! This is why the only use for Internet Explorer is using it to download Firefox.

Acid2 is now obsolete!

[Spy der Mann]

IE doesn't support the :last-child pseudo-class, but that doesn't appear in Acid2.

I suppose this is why they already designed Acid3. Hint: Firefox 2 scores 50/100.

Re:Acid2 is now obsolete!

[bertok]

I just tried this with Mozilla 3.0 beta (Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.2; en-US; rv:1.9b4pre) Gecko/2008021607 Minefield/3.0b4pre) and the score was 60/100. Not bad.

However, it doesn't look like the reference rendering. There's no colors, there are red blocks in a few places, and there's a purple "X" as well.

Re:Acid2 is now obsolete!

[Crayon Kid]

That's why I'm glad they are doing the scoring thing. It's much better to be able to put an exact figure on the compatibility level. With ACID2 you just had the graphics to compare to and you'd say "that doesn't looks right" and "it fails". A score out of 100 is much better than a yes/no verdict. And it's much more realistic as well, since most browsers will not be able to implement all standards perfectly all the time.

Improved standards isn't the story here

[trepan]

The real story here is that "Developers wishing to use quirks mode for IE6- and IE7-compatible rendering will have to opt in explicitly."

If you've been following any of the design / developer blogs and community response about this, you'll know that in a previous plan, all web pages would render in IE7 standards mode unless the developer inserted a specific meta tag

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" />

into each web page of a site. (For the truly avant garde, one could set the content to "edge", which would tell IE to render in the most current standards compliant version available). The outcry was that while it was clear that IE was making progress in standards, in order to take advantage of those improvements, developers were being asked to touch each page of their sites and tell IE to use its more standards compliant mode. That discussion is what was at play here.

Re:Improved standards isn't the story here

[jo42]

Yes, but the new way is just as idiotic: Every single existing web page that is who knows how old and currently IE6- and/or IE7-compatible will have to be updated with a meta tag telling IE8 that it should not render them in IE8 mode. I really don't see people bothering and going and updating hundreds of thousands of existing web pages/sites. IE8 will break more web sites than it will 'fix'. No matter what Microsoft does, they just make things worse.

Re:Improved standards isn't the story here

[WallyDrinkBeer]

No.

Old web pages will not have a DOCTYPE. If they don't have a DOCTYPE, IE 8 will render them using quirks mode. They will work exactly the same.

As a Web Developer, by including a strict doctype at the top of your current IE6/7 page, you are promising to be standards compliant. You shouldn't be ignoring standards and at the same time promising to browsers that you comply with standards.

If your strict IE6/7 junk doesn't render in IE8, then how is it currently working with firefox/opera etc.

If a developer cares so little about other browsers or doing things correctly, they deserve to have to update hundreds or web pages.

Re:Improved standards isn't the story here

[QuoteMstr]

Nobody "deserves" regressions. That's a stupid mentality. Users who don't know a thing about web standards should be lauded for actually clicking the "update" button; why should they be punished by having their favorite web pages break? So what if the developers are lazy? That's not the user's fault.

As some of the few people who know what we're doing, we have a duty to make life as easy as possible for those who can't help themselves. Not point, laugh, and say "hahaha. That dry cleaner should have known the new version would ignores CSS2.5.4.6 paragraph 2. He deserves to not be able to do his online banking for a few weeks."

In the real world, we can't create web pages that are functional, attractive, portable web pages that don't contain browser-specific workarounds. Programming to standards and having a page work everywhere, so far, has been a pipe dream, and IE8 won't change that overnight.

Microsoft's original proposal was the least bad option: codify and standardize the existing practice of using browser-version switches and various quirks modes.

Re:Improved standards isn't the story here

[jsoderba]

Look closer. The meta tag with http-equiv argument means that the browser should treat it as if it was an HTTP header field. You can accomplish the same effect by configuring the web server to include a "X-UA-Compatible: IE=7" header. On Apache it only takes a single line in the configuration file to add a static header to every page. I imagine the same is possible on IIS.

Re:Improved standards isn't the story here

[iangoldby]

developers were being asked to touch each page of their sites and tell IE to use its more standards compliant mode. That discussion is what was at play here.

Actually I don't think that was really the issue. It might be a pain to add the X-UA-Compatible line to every page, but a script could do it, or you could send an equivalent HTTP header.

No, the real issue was that Microsoft was requiring developers to write browser-specific code targeted specifically at IE8 in order to create pages that are not targeted at a specific browser. It doesn't take a degree to see the inherent contradiction here.

(The fact that the meta tag validates is beside the point. It is the fact that it is targeted at a specific browser that raises the hackles of standards-oriented developers so much.)

Re:Improved standards isn't the story here

[Phroggy]

Yes, but the new way is just as idiotic: Every single existing web page that is who knows how old and currently IE6- and/or IE7-compatible will have to be updated with a meta tag telling IE8 that it should not render them in IE8 mode. This is only true if 1) those old pages are currently rendering in standards mode (really old stuff designed for Netscape 4 will still render in Quirks mode and will therefore not be affected by this) and 2) the improved standards compliance of IE8's rendering engine actually breaks your site. Chances are, if your web site looks OK in Firefox, Opera and Safari, it will also look OK in IE8. On the other hand, if you actually meant for your page to look like this, IE8 will cause a problem for you.

Note that this situation is slightly different from the problems people experienced when upgrading from IE6 to IE7. If your site looks correct in IE7 but is broken in IE8, all you have to do is add a simple META tag. Yes, it's more obnoxious in the short term than if IE7 compatibility were the default, but I really don't expect most sites to have a problem with it.

I really don't see people bothering and going and updating hundreds of thousands of existing web pages/sites. IE8 will break more web sites than it will 'fix'. No matter what Microsoft does, they just make things worse. People have already had to update hundreds of thousands of existing web pages to get them to work in IE7. If they had any sense, they didn't just hack them to work exclusively in IE7; they updated the code to be standards-compliant so it renders correctly in IE7 and Firefox and Opera and Safari. IE8 getting even better standards support shouldn't break much.

Re:Improved standards isn't the story here

[Blakey Rat]

No matter what Microsoft does, they just make things worse.

Ok; you're Microsoft. You're working on a new version of IE that's capable of both standards mode, and capable of rendering all existing pages designed for IE 5/6 in a compatible way... how do you solve the problem?

It's really easy to say something like "no matter what they do, they make things worse" without actually coming up with a solution yourself. I don't mind the anti-Microsoft rants on this site, as long as they're at least vaguely rational and have a little bit of thinking behind them... I'd like to hear how this plan is "making things worse" more-so than the other. I'd also like to hear what you think Microsoft could do to "make things better."

Re:Improved standards isn't the story here

[DougWebb]

No, the real issue was that Microsoft was requiring developers to write browser-specific code targeted specifically at IE8 in order to create pages that are not targeted at a specific browser. It doesn't take a degree to see the inherent contradiction here.

I think that depends on how you look at it. Take a look at these example headers:

• X-UA-Compatible: IE=8
• X-UA-Compatible: IE=8;FF=3;OtherUA=4

As a web-based application developer, what these headers say to me is that the page has been QA tested and certified using these particular browser vendors and versions, and that these are the browser vendors and versions that are explicitly supported. Presumably, since there are reasonably standards-compliant browsers in the list, any standards-compliant browser should be ok, but these are the ones that are certified to be ok on our web application.

If browsers like IE8 are smart enough to see this header, notice that an earlier version of itself is listed, and change its behavior to match that earlier version, that's great. It means that my company doesn't have to tie our release schedule to the unpredictable browser upgrades of our users. We can specify IE7 as the latest certified and supported version, and once IE8 starts to become popular we can add it to our testing roundup for the next release, where we will switch the header to IE8.

Re:Improved standards isn't the story here

[SuiteSisterMary]

Ok; you're Microsoft. You're working on a new version of IE that's capable of both standards mode, and capable of rendering all existing pages designed for IE 5/6 in a compatible way... how do you solve the problem?

Well, off the top of my head, look at the 'last modified' date of the html file, and if it's older than, say, six months (from the ship date of IE8) use the standards method. Put a big button on the toolbar that says 'This doesn't look right' and if the user clicks it, pop up a new window with the page rendered in the other method and a box saying 'Is this better? y/n' and keep track.

Re:Improved standards isn't the story here

[iangoldby]

You are right, but it has very little to do with what I wrote.

I agree that if you are doing QA testing against a specific browser then you would ideally want some way to ensure that everyone uses the browser you have QA tested against. The Microsoft X-UA-Compatible header does exactly that by forcing new versions of IE to behave as the old version you did your QA testing on.

But some of us do not want to target any specific browser at all. This is the point I was making. Having to insert browser-specific code in order to not target a specific browser is an anathema.

The new proposal still gives you what you want - you can put in your browser-targeting header. It also gives the rest of us what we want by allowing us not to target a specific browser. Everyone should be happy.

(Except for those who used a valid DOCTYPE and then still wrote browser-specific code. But they deserve to be punished ;-) )

They also said Windows NT was POSIX compliant.

[weston]

It's true, and if they can live up to the claim, I think that's great.

However, this is Microsoft. Their behavior in the past has shown they're not above:

(1) hard-coding stuff to make test cases work
(2) bending definitions to claim compliance.
(3) announcing out-and-out vapor to intimidate competition

It's also good to remember they've never before delivered anything like what they're claiming to have.

If I were laying money on an outcome, it would be that IE 8 will continue to lag annoyingly behind the alternatives.

Re:They also said Windows NT was POSIX compliant.

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

However, this is Microsoft. Their behavior in the past has shown they're not above:

(1) hard-coding stuff to make test cases work

Do you have an example of this?

It's not that I don't believe you, it's just that I'm curious.

Re:They also said Windows NT was POSIX compliant.

[RAMMS EIN]

``If I were laying money on an outcome, it would be that IE 8 will continue to lag annoyingly behind the alternatives.''

Maybe not. Maybe the standards-compliance will go exactly so far that code developed against the standard (as far as it is supported by the competition) will also work in MSIE8, thus obviating the need to install an alternative browser if you have MSIE8 already. This would be a Good Thing for web developers, because they would no longer have to work around MSIE's non-compliance, and a Good Thing for Microsoft, because it could stop the decline in market share of MSIE. And, of course, adding some compelling extensions to MSIE8, they could actually make MSIE8 the _preferred_ browser for users and developers. Perhaps XAML and Silverlight already have that covered...

Re:They also said Windows NT was POSIX compliant.

[jimicus]

AIUI Windows NT was POSIX compliant. But the POSIX specifications of the time left huge swathes of API defined where it was perfectly OK to return ERROR_NOT_IMPLEMENTED.

None of the mainstream Unix vendors actually did this, so most Unix code was written on the assumption that very little was not implemented. Windows, OTOH, returned ERROR_NOT_IMPLEMENTED everywhere it could. With fairly predictable results.

Re:They also said Windows NT was POSIX compliant.

[portnoy]

People treat Overrated and Underrated as a form of meta-moderation; it's a reflection more on the moderation thus far than your comment. Here, it's probably someone saying that whoever modded your post "Insightful" when it provided no insight was being silly.

Re:They also said Windows NT was POSIX compliant.

[Paladin128]

I'm sorry, but other than geeks, who switched from IE because it wasn't standards compliant? I convinced many people to switch to Firefox for three reasons:

1) better security
2) better UI
3) plugins

That's it. Anyone who tells you people don't use IE because it's not standards compliant are idiots. Every web developer makes sure their pages work with IE, no matter how much extra work it takes.

Re:They also said Windows NT was POSIX compliant.

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Nice try, but the insightful mod came after the overrated mod. In fact, it came after I posted that question, so in a way, I think the insightful mod was the meta-moderation.

Re:They also said Windows NT was POSIX compliant.

[larry bagina]

overrated/underrated aren't subject to peer review in m2. A lot of people use overrated to push down comments they disagree with.

Re:They also said Windows NT was POSIX compliant.

[Sir Homer]

There is some evidence of this in the leaked Windows 2000 source code: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/2/15/71552/7795 Microsoft seems to put hacks in their kernel to allow certain programs to function instead of the other way around.

Will it work on...

[Aegis Runestone]

Windows 2000 perchance? I have a friend who has major problems with the net on various sites due to the fact that they did not allow IE7 on anything older than XP. This put him in a corner (and no, he won't swap browsers, just don't talk about it, don't ask. Period) that he can't get out of. So, will the new IE8 be available for older OSes? He doesn't have the money to upgrade. :/

Re:Will it work on...

[pavera]

Umm.... why won't he switch browsers? IE6 is the end all be all of browsers to this guy? That seems pretty stupid. windows 2000 is EOL'd they are not going to make any new software work on it. I'd be surprised if IE 8 runs on XP.

If he is going to run windows 2000 for the rest of his life, I'm pretty sure he is doomed. Why not install ubuntu at least?

Re:Will it work on...

[Aegis Runestone]

I guess I take that as a no. :/

Re:Will it work on...

[calebt3]

It's a safe bet. I also feel that there is no chance that IE8 will be on 2000. Probably won't even be on XP. Need to push users to buy Vista somehow.

Re:Will it work on...

[Anonymous Coward]

no, he won't swap browsers, just don't talk about it, don't ask. Period

Huh? Why on earth not? There are multiple excellent browser options for him to use, all free. There is no chance IE8 will work on Win2K. Sounds like your friend has "issues" that go beyond what you're telling us here - his attitude is irrational and any problems he's having sounds like they're his fault alone.

Re:Will it work on...

[Aegis Runestone]

Read this: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=474378&cid=22631318

It'll work fine on XP.

Re:Will it work on...

[Aegis Runestone]

You think that type of degrading talk would convince him? No, it'd just alienate him. For one thing, your words suggest he's stupid. My experience as friend to him says "no, he's not." He's actually very intelligent. Flamebaiting me into trying to change my friend's mind is extremely low. Stop it, and leave him alone. When I asked, I asked for my friend's sake, not my own. Not to prove him wrong, not to prove others wrong. I was doing it because I care about him.

Re:Will it work on...

[calebt3]

Read the reply to that post. Nowhere in that blog did it specify IE8, and it was "Published Tuesday, August 10, 2004 9:28 AM by ieblog". It was obviously talking about IE7.

Re:Will it work on...

[Aegis Runestone]

What makes you so certain it'll be Vista-only?

Re:Will it work on...

[Anonymous Coward]

Your attitude is as strange as your friend's. He has a problem - "major problems", in fact. There are multiple high quality, free ways for him to solve those problems. I suggest them, and your reply is oddly hostile and defensive. In my experience irrationality and intelligence tend to be opposites, not equals. The solution to his problem is staring him in the face - not just one but several solutions. To dismiss them out of hand is stupid - sorry, but it is - and make me think he doesn't actually want to solve them, but keep them so he can complain.

There's other oddities. He's using Windows 2000 and "can't afford an upgrade"? Dude, XP is over 6 years old. A secondhand license must go for $5 or something - geeze, if you ask nicely I'm sure one of the IT people here will just give one to you. Hell, I've got a bunch of unused licenses in a box 3 metres from me - I've never bothered to sell them because it's not even worth the time setting up an auction on eBay. Your friend can't afford $5? How does he even have internet access, or electricity for that matter? Is his computer also 8 years old?

Obviously there's some weird shit going on here that I don't know about, and don't want to know about. Oh well - I guess your friend can continue to use Windows 2000 and IE6, and keep complaining about it, and you can continue with your strange passive-aggressive public requests for help when you obviously don't actually want it.

Some people!

Re:Will it work on...

[calebt3]

First of all, I am not certain. I just wouldn't bet on it.
What incentive do they have to make it work in XP?

Re:Will it work on...

[Aegis Runestone]

I'm not sure. We'll just have to wait and see.

Not M$ Standards-Compliant

[fatp]

Standards-Compliant?? Definitely not Microsoft Standards-Compliant!

the plot thicken's

[zakeria]

standards mode by default: looks like to me they will show the world how "bad" the standards are cause they never wrote them, they do this by telling everybody this is the standard!!! but it won't be it'll be a broken half assed attempt at the standard making it all look bad!!

Moderators....

[madbawa]

....can I mod the article as 5:Funny ?

Acid3

[drewness]

Just for fun I tried Acid3 with a couple browsers (all MacOS 10.4.11):
Firefox3 nightly from March 3rd: 66/100. (Second closest to the reference rendering.)
Safari 3.0.4: 39/100.
Opera 9.26: 46/100. (Looked the least like the reference rendering though.)
Webkit nightly from March 4th: 87/100. (It also looked the closest to the reference rendering.)

Re:Acid3

[VGPowerlord]

For reference, Opera 9.50 beta scored 60/100.

Re:Acid3

[XMode]

Also for reference, IE6 renders the page so badly it doesn't show the score correctly (at least I cant see it under all the other mess).. I'm going to assume this makes it a zero (but we all knew it would do that badly didn't we)

Re:Acid3

[transwarp]

Interesting. Build 1834 scores 65/100 for me. It also crashed once.

Re:Acid3

[robably]

So what browser do the Acid Test people use to check their tests? Why don't they just release it and then everyone could use that. Problem solved.

Re:Acid3

[Jane_Dozey]

IE6 managed to get 11/100 for me (running on xp +sp2)

Re:Acid3

[VGPowerlord]

That is strange. I didn't note what build number it was, but it was a new copy (for Windows) that I downloaded yesterday. I uninstalled it once I was finished.

/.: Giving proprietors a pass and vapor = real.

[jbn-o]

Merely building on the parent, not objecting: Time will tell but it's times like these that tell us where people's loyalties are. Why are people are so interested in what Microsoft has to say about their vaporware? Lots of people did the same thing when Microsoft announced IE8's allegedly passing Acid2. It's particularly telling to read open source proponents go on about what a meritocracy open source represents in other contexts and yet see so many discussing this vaporware as if it's real. No code, no proof, no credit, no exceptions? Apparently Microsoft gets another pass.

Meanwhile, free software web browsers like Firefox are out there doing the work in a provable way by distributing regular publicly-visible updates (nightly builds in Firefox's case) all the while allowing users to run, share, and modify the work. There's no question what these browsers are capable of and where there's room for improvement, no need to speculate about what might be. And no hindrance finding out what free software browsers are really doing with our data when we run them.

Re:/.: Giving proprietors a pass and vapor = real.

[Runefox]

Only one problem: IE is still the largest single share of the browser market, and likely will be by the time IE8 hits the market, which means people like me (web developers) and Joe Average (end users) are very interested in how it's going to turn out, even if I don't actually use IE for anything other than testing purposes. When IE has a viable competitor in the market share category, then the heat will be on and the focus will shift. For now, not enough people use Firefox or other browsers, though the shift is in progress.

Re:/.: Giving proprietors a pass and vapor = real.

[Haeleth]

Time will tell but it's times like these that tell us where people's loyalties are.

What? Are you trying to insinuate that everyone who welcomes this announcement is loyal to Microsoft? Because that's patently false. I dislike Microsoft's software, which is generally poorly designed and limiting, and avoid it at every opportunity. But I still welcome an announcement like this, because it indicates that there are humans within the organisation who are interested in making things better.

Why are people are so interested in what Microsoft has to say about their vaporware?

Because IE affects us all, even if we don't use it. And, um, because it isn't vapourware by any standard definition of that term. This is an announcement about a concrete bit of software that we have no reason to believe will be delayed. It's a plausible announcement that reveals an embarrassing U-turn in Microsoft's plans; why would they lie about that? And it's a positive announcement that shows us that even Microsoft is occasionally willing to admit that they've made a mistake; why should we not be happy about that?

No code, no proof, no credit, no exceptions? Apparently Microsoft gets another pass.

I, for one, am certainly not being inconsistent here. I haven't downloaded any Firefox nightlies either. I follow the principle of believing people unless there's some reason not to, and I see no reason not to believe this announcement, since it isn't claiming anything particularly implausible. If Microsoft had said "we will start bundling Firefox with Windows", I would have laughed in their face. If they'd said "we will stop trying to buy ISO certification for OOXML", I would have collapsed in hysterics. But when Microsoft says "we will change the default setting in IE8 to use a better renderer, and require people who want IE7 compatibility to ask for it explicitly", well, why should I demand proof? It's not an extraordinary claim by any stretch of the imagination.

Re:/.: Giving proprietors a pass and vapor = real.

[jbn-o]

If you're interested in how MSIE8 was going to turn out, my point was perfectly valid. When I made my post a couple of days ago you had nothing to test with, so discussion about what MSIE8 would do was pointless. You can't test webpages on a discussion of a browser, you need running code to work with.

When it comes to challenging software proprietors you need a better argument than what proprietors offer. Therefore if you want to really pour on the heat the best way to do that is by teaching software freedom. Proprietors can't compete with freedom no matter how reliable and powerful their programs become. If people are consistently taught to evaluate programs by features they'll sometimes fall into the trap of proprietary software (because proprietors aren't all poor programmers). Just as most people who drive aren't mechanics but still care to keep their cars running in a trustworthy way, people need to learn comparable principals about the software they use: when you have software freedom you can get people you trust to hack the code for you on your behalf and end up with a trustworthy, powerful, and reliable program to use.

Still vaporware

[JoeCommodore]

Regardless of its reported capabilities - it's still vapor-ware and what version is currently available mainly follows MS standards.

Though I will say with that news; I guess you can develop sites without having to consider any of the IE quirks anymore, right?

Re:Still vaporware

[bunratty]

No, first of all IE7 will be popular for many years to come, so you will still need to deal with its quirks. Also, IE8 will also probably not be nearly as standards compliant as Firefox 3, Safari 3, and Opera 9.5. It will simply now do the best it can at rendering web pages by default, instead of rendering web pages with all the IE7 quirks by default. That means you'll still be coding to IE8's quirks just like we're still coding for IE7's quirks now. The only difference this announcement makes is that we don't have to put a silly "render this page according to standards, you dope" tag in all our web pages for IE8.

Re:Still vaporware

[RightSaidFred99]

You don't really know what "vapor-ware" is, do you? Hint - it's not "any software which is currently under development and not available". Crikey.

Re:Still vaporware

[JoeCommodore]

IE 89 is being touted one way or another like a current released product, which it isn't. Seems like vaporware to me.

Re:Still vaporware

[Phroggy]

IE 89 is being touted one way or another like a current released product, which it isn't. Seems like vaporware to me. Not any more than Firefox 3, which isn't a currently released product either (although FF3 is much closer to release than IE8). Come to think of it, when we were talking about IE7 before it was released, it wasn't vaporware either.

Seriously, nobody's saying IE8 will be out the door tomorrow or next month. It's a work in progress, and it's being treated like a work in progress. If the company says it will ship "any day now" and we know it won't really, that's vaporware. This isn't vaporware. I have every confidence that IE8 will ship within a reasonable timeframe.

Re:Still vaporware

[bunratty]

Mozilla has offered nightly builds of Firefox 3 for almost three years, in addition to numerous alpha releases and three betas so far. To my knowledge, no builds of Internet Explorer 8 have been made available to the public yet. Frankly, we have yet to see IE8 for ourselves, and we certainly have no idea how close it is to release.

Mercy for good ideas

[null etc.]

Håkon Wium Lie of W3C answered questions posted by slashdot members. One of my questions that he answered:

http://interviews.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=189321&cid=15602319

Q: Why doesn't CSS allow web designers to specify styles per user agent?

A: It has been proposed and rejected many times. The basic problem with it is the same as for the User-Agent header in HTTP: every browser will be forced to lie about who they are.

I don't necessarily see that being the case. I would love to be able to specify a style that would only be targeted towards certain browsers, and know for a fact that it will fix that browser's incompatibilities without requiring my CSS to have all sorts of layers of devious hacks upon hacks to target certain browsers and ignore others.

Seems like W3C never considered this possibility, and now browser manufacturers have to deal with it in their own ways. Thanks W3C! Only 10 years behind the curve.

Fucken IE...I mean microsoft...

[thecheatah]

I remember one time I was trying to abstract an event handler. The code when something like this:

obj.onload = function

I dont feel like explaining what was the problem so Ill just say what I wrote to fix it

obj.onload = function
if (obj == window) window.onload = function

^^ basically window.onload was a "hack" if you did x = window; x.onload = function; this wouldnt work.

Wow.

[dcollins]

So it took a $1.3 billion fine to get Microsoft to change a single "if" statement?

What's taking soo long?

[kjzk]

IE has made web development a living hell for me and I despise Microsoft for it. If everyone used Firefox my life would be 100 times easier!

It depends on how you define "standards"

[leighklotz]

Interesting; stir up a tempest, then calm it, and then claim you're now "standards compliant!"

Where's SVG, XForms, XBL?

XMLHttpRequests in a post Eolas v. MS world

[Bushido Hacks]

Because 75% of browser users are still using Internet Explorer (which now can't have ActiveX support without some patch to work around the legal BS), AJAX and JSON applications will not work on Internet Explorer. (Don't kid yourself! If you have Gmail and are using MSIE. If you really want to see GMail or any of the other Google apps work like they should, don't use MSIE. Firefox or Opera are the way to go.)

The other 23% (2% being other browsers) get to play with all this web 2.0 stuff.

Re:XMLHttpRequests in a post Eolas v. MS world

[00_NOP]

Where do you get this garbage from? See here for just one site I wrote that uses AJAX just fine. The main difference I can see with IE is the way it treats (or what it regards as) idempotent requests. But there is no fundamental difference in user experience.

I love free software, but less of the tripe, please.

Always been true.

[goodmanj]

Internet Explorer has always been standards-compliant by default, because Internet Explorer has always been the default standard. Whether you, me, or the W3C like it or not.

I'll believe it when I see it.

[Chas]

Not before.

And when I see it...

[SanityInAnarchy]

I will actually thank Microsoft for it.

It's assuming a lot of things, but I was among those who complained the loudest on the threads in which it was announced that IE8 would require an explicit HTTP header (something like "Browser-Compatibility: IE8") to enable standards-compliant mode. Today, I feel like I made a difference.

Yes, it is suspect, as is anything coming out of Microsoft. But if they do finally manage to pull it off, it is a good thing.

Well said

[Chrisq]

Try telling a judge that "compliance to the law is a relative term" because everyone infringes a speed limit.

Re:Well said

[Anonymous Coward]

And it could work. Ever hear of someone being ticketed because they were going the speed limit? They were impeding traffic. Plus, the amount of money you have often influences on whether or not you are charged.

Re:Well said

[JuanCarlosII]

You'll get your license confiscated for doing 90 in a 30 zone, less likely if you were doing 35. You were saying?

Re:Well said

[Phisbut]

You'll get your license confiscated for doing 90 in a 30 zone, less likely if you were doing 35. You were saying?

You're talking about different penalties for different levels of non-compliance. 35 in a 30 zone is still non-compliant, just less so than 90.

Re:Well said

[coolGuyZak]

Compliance to the law is relative, in that the boundary of legality is defined by precedence, particularly in civil matters. In fact, trials serve dual purpose. One is subjectively analyzing the facts of the case, to determine the events which led to the crime or grievance. The second is judging the compliance of an individual's actions in regards to the law. Most particulars of a case are defined beforehand, within a grand jury, evidential criteria, &c.

So they decided to use Mozilla code

[GNUPublicLicense]

Since this company seems unable to deal with standards for various reasons, I cannot see IE8 standard compliant, execpt if it's not their code, namely they copied Mozilla code (It's not GPL... :( )

What about their HTML creation tools?

[phlegmboy]

Will the crappy, bloated code they vomit out be standards compliant or will it be a Macro$lut "$tandard" that will only work properly on IE8 unless other browser makers hand over cash to be allowed to use the "$tandard"?

Depends on the standard

[Namarrgon]

While I certainly agree with your viewpoint in principle, more than a few "standards" are written in an insufficiently precise manner, and two fully "compliant" products may well turn out to be more than a little incompatible with each other, depending on how closely they guessed the intentions of the authors. A rigorous testing suite can help of course, but the more complex the standard, the greater the likelyhood of corner cases being missed, same as with code.

So are they compliant or not, when the real bugs are in the standard itself? The standard can be rewritten to be more precise of course, but occasionally the interpretation of the definition *should* be up for negotiation (lawmakers realise this, that's why we have courts).

I applaud your position of absolutes, but in the Greyscale World, the involvement of humans etc makes the attainment of absolutely 100% anything significant more of an iterative process than than a fact.

Well, not perhaps anything, that's a bit too absolute...

Ahhhh

[Patchw0rk F0g]

I knew there was a reason I moved to print jobs exclusively...

So all those IE only websites will now crash

[gelfling]

This should be interesting.

Getting all this in perspective

[00_NOP]

The free software moevement has done this - not Microsoft. three years ago they were still flogging browser code with four year old bugs in it - because nobody was challenging them (or rather nobody who relied on cash from software sales was allowed to challenge them). Then along came Firefox and the rules of the games were totally subverted.

The lesson ought to be clear. If you want better Windows software, start switching to Linux and other free software offerings now - because it is only when MS are under threat from competition that they bother with customer needs.

Re:Developers & the half-life of accumulated c

[Bogtha]

And it's probably the one thing MS has thoroughly earned with all the IE bullsh*t over the last 10 years.

Personally, I'm wondering if they can possibly release Internet Explorer 8 in nine weeks. Because the 12th of May is the ten year anniversary of the CSS 2 specification and Internet Explorer 8 might actually include full CSS 2 support (not including the aural stuff).

IE7

[oliverthered]

IE7 scores 12.

Where's the praise?

[WebmasterNeal]

At least on the IEBlog, which is notorious for anger and rage, there were positive comments. It appears that regardless of what gets posted on Slashdot, all people can do is complain. How about we all just admit it and say "thanks IE team" for once.

Standards compliant by default

[Gonzodoggy]

Um, shouldn't the headline be, "IE8 will be standards compliant by accident"?

Re:Developers & the half-life of accumulated c

[Schnapple]

Client-side web developers hate them.

No, client-side web developers hate having to test in multiple browsers. The answer is to make all of the web browsers render things identically but this will probably never happen - Opera and Mozilla don't even agree most of the time, to say nothing of Safari. True, if the browsers all agree on how to present things this problem would go away but in the meantime it's easier to curse the mere existence of the other 20% of browser usage (or ignore them) than it is to realize it's Microsoft's browser which is deficient. So, client-side web developers hate everything which is not IE.

CSS

[Tarlus]

And then maybe my cascading style sheets will finally be standards-compliant with W3C's test. Not that it was ever a big deal to me, but the thing fails only because of really strange CSS trickery I've have to use to make IE properly display a page that already looks perfect in Firefox, Opera, Safari, Konq... etc.

Re:dude!

[Anonymous Coward]

Until then, they are [...] assholes who won't play nice with anyone else.

Takes one to know one, Twitter.

Mod parent interesting!

[Spy der Mann]

So what browser do the Acid Test people use to check their tests?

That's a very good question. Any instrumentation needs to be calibrated with an even more precise instrumentation. So, what browser did they use? Or did they test things in various browsers, asumming that they would work correctly combined?

Re:Mod parent interesting!

[asparagus]

A good question, they write/use their own browser, Amaya, which is slow but compliant.

They'll be happy to comply--in their own way...

[swordgeek]

Here's the scenario:

New computer install, IE8 is in 100% full-compliance mode. Everyone is happy.
User hits a website with non-compliant (IE6- or IE7-specific) code. A window pops up saying, "The website you are viewing contains extensions to make it more functional. Would you like to enable these extensions? (Y/N)"
Of course the user does, and bingo--no more standards compliance. The onus has been shifted to the user, and their (uninformed) decision. Microsoft is in the clear.

Note to Microsoft: My fee for the above scheme is $1 000 000 Cdn. Please don't make the mistake of believing I won't collect.

Re:Developers & the half-life of accumulated c

[punissuer]

client-side web developers hate everything which is not IE I'm a web developer, and I hate IE. For me, these discussions remind me of the time I whipped up a simple, elegant, little webapp from scratch, sent it to review, and watched it break completely. Its little buttons did nothing in IE, and the reviewer didn't have Firefox installed, so he couldn't even see how the app was supposed to work. My mistakes were 1) relying on the spec for HTML4, and 2) forgetting to test in IE. While I admit I should have done more testing, I still have to protest that (to my knowledge) IE just doesn't have proper docs that describe how it works. With a standards-compliant browser, you can write to the specs and test. With IE, it's just blind testing until you find what works.

Orwell's Internet

[tabby]

While all browsers are standards compliant... some browsers are more compliant than others

Re:Developers & the half-life of accumulated c

[nikanj]

The bugs in other browsers tend to be in "hm, that margin is too wide" category and IE is mostly in "where the F::K is my content?" category. Use italics in a floating div in IE7 and the text disappears. Sometimes. Bold and normal fonts work fine. Just another nice cup of BS from redmond. As a web developer, I can say that I hate IE. Fortunately Facebook is now telling IE6 users to upgrade :)

I'm going to get poo'd on for this..

[cavebison]

but I thought IE did a better job with one thing - the box model. Firefox can simulate it using -mox-box-sizing: border-box. I've read that IE's box model makes sense to lots of people, who say the W3C's version is unintuitive, and I agree with that.

Let's not forget IE came up with lots of groovy things that initially made it a web app developer's wet dream. Standards are just that - if IE's stuff had been adopted by and built on by W3C, we wouldn't be complaining so much. Perhaps MS was ignoring the W3C (or vice versa) while the standards were first being written up, I don't know.

But IMO W3C deserves a slice of the blame for causing such a huge divergence in HTML. They could have brought more of IE's DOM ideas into the picture. e.g. IE had implemented "outerHTML" as well as innerHTML. What's so bad about that? A different box model with "padding" taken into account in content size. Again, what's so bad about that?

Standards are essential, but surely we didn't have to go through such hell just to get an agreed set of HTML rules. W3C could have done more to avoid a lot of pain. Just my opinion.

Re:dude!

[Anonymous Coward]

It must be hard for high school dropouts out there. Good luck to you!