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."
Before anyone starts bitching about how much IE sucks and how it's lack of standards is nothing but a burden on anyone, understand that this is a decent move by Microsoft in the right direction.
I know, I know, it's almost too little, too late, but it's better than nothing and as long as this trend continues, at least we might have a decent amount of cross-browser standards in a few years time, as opposed to none if Microsoft simply hadn't bothered.
So basically, Microsoft, listened to their customers, went with the better default mode (and it is better that they do this), and the Slashdot article ends with "But it makes more work for administrators - boo!"
*sigh
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
"that, unfortunately, will mean work for site administrators."
Well, if you don't code to standards, that's what you get. I don't feel sorry for them.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
That pretty well sums up the entire Microsoft experience.
More than 60,000 Windows programs won't run on Linux.
This is anything BUT unfortunate.. Once agreed upon standards are the norm everyone will benefit, and it'll save a ton of work in the long run.
yay for MS on this call
If you write your site for Firefox, chances are you can just tell it to use that code for IE8. Assuming, of course, that IE8 comes through with their promises of compliance.
A little pain now for a lot less cumulative pain later. I'll take that!
"That, unfortunately, will mean work for site administrators."
The only "unfortunate" thing about the need to retool web sites is that it could have been avoided by coding to the standards in the first place.
"I'd horsewhip you if I had a horse." -- Groucho Marx
"I used non-standard code on my site and it stopped working. It must be someone else's fault!"
Morons.
if you have the page render in firefox as appearance a
and you have the page render in ie as appearance b
then its a rather simple top level switch to say "all ie8 requests get rendered as appearance a"
you're not talking about a lot of work here folks
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
One of their big stated reasons for buying into their infrastructure is that they offer a stable platform for developers so they don't have to keep doing more work every time Microsoft upgrades.
This reason is rapidly falling by the boards. First it was Visual Basic, which has changed so many times that there is no hope of old code running. Then it was the Windows API, where many things that developers did, originally with Microsoft's blessing, now cause security warning dialog boxes in Vista. Now it's their interpretation of HTML, which they convinced many web developers to follow instead of the standard.
Every time a developer codes to a Microsoft "standard", they had better be prepared to make extensive modifications at the drop of a hat.
Hopefully Microsoft's customers are catching on to this trend.
Nobody really cares what work you have to do in order to make a site work for them. Your whining doesn't serve the purpose you want it to.
Sad, but true.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
And what would portable C look like if we didn't even have a standard that compilers tried to follow? At least having standards makes it possible to write portable code. Standards are not a fool's errand as Joel tries to make them out to be. They are not a panacea, but following standards is much easier than simply testing in all browsers and hoping for the best.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
There are those who feel that maintaining the old rendering mode would be preferable - allow developers to add the meta tag forcing standards mode. "Don't break the web."
The problem is that unless 100% of new pages include that tag, the amount of broken stuff out there keeps increasing.
Assuming the goal is write-once, standards-based content (please tell me that's the goal), you can break it now, or break it years from now when the amount of content has grown.
Do it now, rip the bandaid off. Force future user agents to use the One True Markup so we don't end up in this situation again.
Please, no more mod points. I only abuse them.
just had to make a site compatible with ie6, ie7 and firefox. please, NOT another browser version that soon. as a developer this is not appeasing me at all, its irritating me.
Read radical news here
Oh, I forgot to mention, these bosses sign our paychecks.
damaged by dogma