Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Pushes Devs With Wider IE8 Beta
An anonymous reader recommends a story about the upcoming beta 2 release of Internet Explorer 8. InternetNews expects that the standards-compliant default mode will push many developers to update their sites. We've previously discussed IE8's standards compliance and other features. Quoting:
"Over the years of IE's dominance as the leading browser, designers regularly tweaked their sites to get the best possible accuracy in rendering pages in IE -- most recently, the current commercial release, IE7. Now those pages will need to be changed. Microsoft originally planned for IE8 to default to rendering similarly to IE7, while super standards mode would have been an option. The outcry from critics helped convince Microsoft officials to instead default to super standards. That, unfortunately, will mean work for site administrators."
Unforunately, it's not that simple. Previous versions of IE were broken enough that standards-compliant HTML and CSS would not render properly. So if you wanted the majority of people to be able to actually use your site, you /had/ to be aware of - and often code around - IE stupidity, for all but the simplest of applications.
So true.
Call me a loser, but after setting up my website nicely with CSS defined columns, floats, etc - it didn't work in IE. It just displayed an empty page! While it worked fine in Mozilla, FF and Safari.
I recoded the site using tables for lay-out.
When I did that, it worked nicely in IE as well. And I really had the intention to move with the times.
It's a simple company site, partly static, partly dynamic - but using tables was the easiest way out for me, without having to learn even more new things. I've got better things to do with my time.
If you mean developers, then adhering to standards and "looking good" are the same thing -- since more and more end-viewers use browsers other than IE. Developers should care about adhering to standards because not doing so may alienate some of their (or their employers') potential customers.
If you meant end-viewer, they aren't really germane to the discussion, since what we're discussing is in the blackbox to them. All they will understand is that some sites seem "broken"... not understanding that it's because they are using a non-compliant browser. Again this goes back to the developers, since it is their duty to make sure their website looks good (or even is viewable) by the most number of people.
Please note I'm generalizing here, I'm sure there are exceptions.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
This is the truth. M$ intentionally chose to not follow the standards, in order to strengthen it's lock-in strange hold.
It was a shrewd business decision that has netted them shitloads of money. And today half of the internet works properly only on M$ windoze + IE 6.
One funny thing is this has never been brought to the monopoly abuse discussion at large AFAIK.
- Half of the web doesn't even specify a doctype. Those pages would be rendered in qwerks mode anyway, meaning they would display fine.
- The zealots that are using strict html4 are most likely already aware of any display problems already.
- The xhtml using folks basically already said "Screw Microsoft! I don't care if you can view this page anyway!" to begin with.
Damn drama queen.Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
That is a quote from the article, not a Slashdot addition.
And I certainly did not read it as "bash Microsoft". I read it as "bash those people who forced Microsoft to default to standards because they made all you web developers have to do more work".
Microsoft is clearly, finally, doing the right thing. And I think that sentence is from somebody mad that their beloved Microsoft is being forced to do the right thing and is making up reasons why this is bad.
lol.
P.S. The article is ancient news. MS backed down from their original plan to make IE8 default rendering of 'IE7 aka broken' after a shit storm from the web dev community. It got nasty. Zeldman, in particular, came out of it badly bruised as he bizarrely supported MS's original idiotic plan. It's now going to default to 'the best we can do' - which should mean ACID2 is passed. Like I said, this all happened months ago.
The user-agent string is not a reliable indicator of which user-agent is being used (as counter-intuitive as this seems), a much better methodology (that several other people have already mentioned) is to use IE conditional comments to serve additional stylesheets to specific versions of Internet Explorer after the main stylesheet to override only the specific rules required to get that version of internet explorer to display the content as expected.
This has several advantages:
This is the methodology I prefer to follow with the sites that I develop, and after the experiences I had testing compatibility and fixing various layout problems that remained in IE7 I can say that it definitely pays off. Personally I'm hoping that IE8 will be close enough that I can finally dump IE conditional comments entirely once the older versions have disappeared and relegate it to the pile of no-longer relevant skills alongside the ability to generate pixel perfect layouts using tables & invisible spacer gifs and the ability to consistently beat almost anyone at Perfect Dark multiplayer.
There's mischief and malarkies but no queers or yids or darkies within this bastard's carnival, this vicious cabaret.
Quick, which was more standards-compliant? IE 6 or its rival NS 6?
If you picked the former, you're right. The problem with Microsoft is not that it isn't standards-compliant, but that it failed to sufficiently innovate following the end of the first browser wars. IE 7 was a step in the right direction, albeit one that left it in an awkward position. IE 8, though, should be standards-compliant, at least as much so as FF 2. IIRC, hasLayout is being ripped out in IE 8 which should fix many of the more aggravating problems.
Also, at least in the last two or three years, MS has not been actively undermining standards in the CSS realm. Some IE developers are regular posters on the public CSS mailing list, and it's not to complain about some standard or another. Granted, they haven't communicated in large numbers on the WHATWG lists, but I'm sure they're more interested in getting current impls up to scratch instead of designing the future of the HTML specification.
I have also heard anecdotes that standards-compatibility was put on the back-burner for some time to fix more glaring issues (like security holes).