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."

Comments

Cue the "M$" bashing shrills

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Cue the "M$" bashing shrills

[maxume]

As a user, I often care whether a site is easy to navigate and has a decent structure.

Re:Cue the "M$" bashing shrills

[Snover]

Uh. min-width is in IE7. I'm surprised you don't know that if you're testing "primary in Internet Explorer".

Not to be high and mighty, but you really really really should develop against a standards-compliant browser *first*, which means any one of Konqueror, Safari, Opera, or Firefox, and then hack IE once you're all done using conditional comments. Since all the browser vendors other than Microsoft do a good job of adhering to standards at this point, by testing against one of those browsers you can pretty well guarantee you will be functioning in the rest of them. It makes much more sense than to test on the outlier (IE) and then try to fiddle with it until it works in everything else.

I'm quite confident that none of my sites will need to be updated for IE8 as long as Microsoft are doing their jobs, because the sites are written to conform to standards and only use conditional comments with special CSS for browsers <= IE7. That means that when IE8 rolls around, it will get served the same standards-compliant code as everything else and (for once) will not break on it.

Re:Cue the "M$" bashing shrills

[jmusits]

Browser specific stylesheets.

If people were using these instead of horrible CSS hacks to make their pages work within IE then we wouldn't be having this conversation. Unfortunately too many people are still using CSS hacks to make their pages render properly.

By using browser specific stylesheets, assuming that IE8 is actually standards compliant like FF, then IE6 and IE7 can continue to load their stylesheets to fix their problems and IE8 will only load the non-specific stylesheet as FF does and then all will be good.

Since you place the browser specific stylesheet after the generic one the styles in defined in the browser specific stylesheets override the ones in the generic stylesheet, while the ones only defined in the generic one cascade down. This is the beauty of Cascading Style Sheets.

Re:Cue the "M$" bashing shrills

[Snover]

I strongly disagree. Unless you want to end up having to do like this article suggests and make a bunch of changes every time a new browser comes out (and maybe you do -- I bet it's good for business), it makes much more sense to test against something that you know adheres to defined standards and then doing minor fixups for IE at the end.

If you're writing and testing against IE, and you write a line of CSS that doesn't do what you expect and change it to make it work, but the reason it wasn't working isn't because you wrote it wrong but because IE calculates some dimensions incorrectly (read: hasLayout), then when you get around to testing it in everything else (and by "everything else" I mean "Firefox", since this is what the IE-first crowd seems to think means "everything else") it's broken. Now compound this issue 20 times, because there are 20 distinct things in the CSS that cause IE to fuck up. Maybe there are also some combinations of things that trigger a bug. So now, instead of writing hacks to work around IE's brokenness, you are writing hacks and sending different code conditionally to "work around" the browsers that are rendering it properly. Suddenly, when IE8 comes around and fixes the bugs you're relying on in IE, you've got a broken Web site again. It's just a bad idea, and getting things working across all the other browsers, frankly, takes a mere fraction of the time it does to get things touched up properly for IE.

Re:Cue the "M$" bashing shrills

[walshy007]

Funnyily enough I agree with all of your post except the ***

For starters "DEP" known to the rest of the world as the NX bit, has been supported in linux kernels since 2004, now this should not require any code changes at all to utilize. The kernel handles memory protection, and when the binary is loaded I'd imagine everything in .data and .bss should be protected, aswell as every malloc.

now, on to ASLR, since linux 2.6.12 it's on by default, and also, requires no special code, it just works, as it should (and hopefully does) do on vista.

now onto vista 'protected mode', essentially this reduces the privilege level, awesome, now windows isn't running it's browser as root essentially, but every decent windows person should have a restricted personal account themselves in which they do things regardless, making it moot, and nobody sane in linux does everything as root.

as said, I agree with the rest of your post, but the *** part makes you sound like you listen to too much microsoft advertising, the people who code firefox are smart, don't bash them without looking into things.

Let's Bash Microsoft!

[h4rm0ny]

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

Re:Let's Bash Microsoft!

[Macthorpe]

I would have summarised like this:

- IE7 not standards compliant
- Slashdot posts article complaining
- IE8 standards compliant but not by default
- Slashdot posts article complaining
- IE8 standards compliant by default
- Slashdot... posts article complaining

I can only echo your sighing...

Re:Let's Bash Microsoft!

[EvilMonkeySlayer]

I think the complaint isn't so much that they're implementing a proper standards mode, more the fact that it has taken so long for them to do this.

People kept getting peeved off expecting Microsoft to start implementing some proper standard support (something which was expected of them in IE7) and then getting annoyed when they do a half hearted attempt at it.

Re:Let's Bash Microsoft!

[FooAtWFU]

That's only because Slashdot has both Complainers and Non-Complainers on any given topic, and the Complainers are the ones who enjoy posting most. So they do.

Re:Let's Bash Microsoft!

[pete-classic]

I'm not defending the summary, but it is worth remembering that Microsoft actively undermined web standards for the last decade or so. It is laudable that they are finally getting on board with the program, but the reason these sites need to be re-worked is that Microsoft intentionally archived and maintained browser dominance with their own "take" on how web standards should work.

I don't see any reason they shouldn't shoulder the blame for the cleanup costs.

-Peter

Re:Let's Bash Microsoft!

[bunratty]

Why doesn't half the web break with all the other browsers when they are updated? I don't remember Firefox users complaining that Firefox 2 broke half the web. I don't remember Safari users complaining that Safari 3 broke half the web. I don't remember Opera users complaining that Opera 9 broke half the web. Why would IE users complain that IE 8 breaks half the web? You don't mean Microsoft has been doing something wrong for the past several years to bring this about, do you?

Re:Let's Bash Microsoft!

[dal20402]

retards that still use IE6

Not everyone who uses IE6 does so by choice. The admins at my last workplace refuse to upgrade, install an alternate browser, or allow users to install an alternate browser.

From a user perspective, the best thing about Microsoft's decision in IE8 is that it will force IT admins to phase out IE6 as sites increasingly stop working with IE6.

Re:Let's Bash Microsoft!

[thue]

The web developers will have 6 months to insert

<eta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=7" />

on their pages. Nothing else is needed to ensure their pages will continue working in the new IE. If they can't be bothered to do that then I don't care if their pages break...

Re:Let's Bash Microsoft!

[Metasquares]

Not to mention that the mere release of IE8 should be enough to attenuate IE6 support, since many web developers code for the latest n browser versions. For me, n=2, and I for one look forward to abandoning IE6 when IE8 is released.

Re:Let's Bash Microsoft!

[jalefkowit]

If moving to IE8 is going to "break" your site, it's already "broken" for anybody who views it in any browser other than IE. That's about 20% of the browsing population (and more every day).

If I was a corporation and my web development team had been shipping a site that flat didn't work for 1/5 of my customers, I'd have fired them long before this.

Lazy dumbasses

[Daimanta]

"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.

Re:Lazy dumbasses

[pezpunk]

just to play devil's advocate here, you're suggesting a designer should code to standards, and let the page be broken for 80% of his visitors? i don't think many designers would keep that job very long.

Re:Lazy dumbasses

[J0nne]

No, it's a skill. Most of IE's bugs are well-documented with workarounds and everything. It's really possible to write css-based layouts and have them work in IE, we do it all the time.

"it's better than nothing"

[TW Atwater]

That pretty well sums up the entire Microsoft experience.

Re:"it's better than nothing"

[Kjella]

That pretty well sums up the entire Microsoft experience. For those trying to mix Microsoft and non-Microsoft software, or that haven't paid the latest upgrade fees. Once you go a little past e-mail and word and into corporate software though like Sharepoint and Microsoft CRM, I'd say it's the norm rather than the exception. Try going with IBM or CA or SAP or IFS and you'll find they all tend to work much better with their own products than trying to piece together a best of breed. Make no mistake, Microsoft is out to make you an all Microsoft shop which can be fairly pleasant but expensive. The other option is to find alternative software for all of it, they rise and fall together. Some are quite good and the rest dragged along, so despite the best efforts by many there hasn't been that much falling...

Re:"it's better than nothing"

[memojuez]

You're absolutely right. American Businesses are more worried about reaching the most people, if non IE users, like myself, can't render their page correctly, I am insignificant consequence to mass marketing to them.

It's a shame that it took a European company like Opera Software to force European Regulators to stop the Microsoft's take over of the Web.

Unfortunately???

[VMaN]

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

Not that bad

[PhrostyMcByte]

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!

Pity the poor administrators

[sfritsche]

"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.

Microsoft is losing their competitive advantage

[FranTaylor]

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.

Re:I'll be happy with proper XHTML support.

[FishWithAHammer]

add a disclaimer at the bottom, "If your user agent has MSIE in it, then this page was served as text/html. Maybe you should stop using MSIE if you are, or change your user agent if you aren't." Or...you can make it work for them and stop bitching.

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.