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

[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

[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]

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

Correct link

[RockMFR]

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

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 .

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.

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

[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

[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

[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: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...

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!?!

[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: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?

+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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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:2008 - the end of Slashdot???

[Vexorian]

Microsoft is attempting to become more open source friendly

No, it isn't.

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.

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

[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: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.

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!

[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: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.

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.

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.

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

[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

[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

[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.

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.

[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.

[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: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".

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

[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: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:/.: 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: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

[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

[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

[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

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.

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.