Slashdot Mirror
IE8 Breaking Microsoft's Web Standards Promise?
An anonymous reader points out a story in The Register by Opera Software CTO Hakon Lie which tells the story of how Microsoft's interoperability promise for IE8 seems to have been broken in less than six months. Quoting:
"In March, Microsoft announced that their upcoming Internet Explorer 8 would: use its most standards compliant mode, IE8 Standards, as the default. Note the last word: default. Microsoft argued that, in light of their newly published interoperability principles, it was the right thing to do. This declaration heralded an about-face and was widely praised by the web standards community; people were stunned and delighted by Microsoft's promise. This week, the promise was broken."
When things sound too good to be true, they usually are..
Full Tilt
Given MS' history this was almost a given.
It is MSFT's interest to promote their own quasi standards to encourage Windows platform lock-in.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
I'd imagine that there are a lot of intranet apps that are coded to work around a lot of IE only quirks, and would require a lot of effort to update.
MSes volume license customers probably asked MS to make IE7 mode the default. And when money talks, companies listen.
What do you expect? They said that their operating systems were supposed to be extremely secure, and were they? No. Microsoft is not a software company driven by good morals, they are driven by money and their marketing department. So it was a publicity stunt. Microsoft has had many publicity stunts in the past and have broken many promises.
Anything and Everything about the Net
The article only says that INTRANET pages are not shown in standards-compliant mode by default.
I think I'm going to put a "Download Firefox" button on every website I make from here on out. Assholes.
Sounds like the same old backward compatibility for corporate intranets, sharepoint, etc.
And the GUI shown that controls this can be changed with a single click of a checkbox.
Sounds good enough for me, though I suspect nothing MS does will be good enough.
P.S. Opera is my default browser, and I have used it since they made it free, but their CTO's claim
is mostly all wet.
The dirty secret is buried deep down in the ÂCompatibility view configuration panel, where the ÂDisplay intranet sites in Compatibility View box is checked by default. Thus, by default, intranet pages are not viewed in standards mode.
So they use standards compliant mode by default over the internet, but not for internal sites that are probably aimed at the specific browsers supported by the company's IT department. Sounds reasonable to me. Anyone have a problem with this?
MS is "breaking" that promise only for intranet pages and, honestly, intranet pages are a very different. If you think corporations are going to be updating all these internal applications when all they have to do is switch on compatibility mode, well you've got another thing coming.
And, if intranet pages stop working I'd wager a whole lot of users and corporations would just turn on compatibility mode for EVERYTHING and be done with it. One could argue even more people will use the regular IE8 mode if this is left as default.
Wait, I don't know what I was thinking. M$ IS EVIL LIAR!
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
It's Beta, you idiots.
1.) IE 8 is still in Beta. I'm sure most folks remember what that means. As in not quite feature complete yet?
2.) If people bothered to take a few minutes to read, you would see that it only impacts INTRANET sites, people do understand what that means correct?
I know a good portion of Slashdot just wants to flamethrower all that Microsoft does, but at least take the time to read.
PS: This post coming to you from IE 8 Beta2.
Compatibility View works. E.g Myspace loads badly in IE8 but does in Compatibility View mode.
It's not about web standards but about how good things look. How many developers code in XHTML strict? Few! If developers don't give a frak about standards, browsers should give a frak as well. I'm pissed off, sorry - I'm do get my XHTML Strict and CSS validated and they do get rendered well by browsers but when you consider the fact that the sites which are not rendered correctly are those which are not even validated properly.
What really peeves me is that our staff, part of a medium-size nonprofit, continually switch browsers to support our IE-only "Intranet" (thanks, MOSS!) and their favored method of browsing, through Firefox. The time we lose in training on this transition - and troubleshooting this transition - is unreasonable. It surprises me further that corporations would continue to push non-compliant products despite recent pushes for increasing computing efficiency in the workplace... Of course, MS is a business - but wouldn't their money be BETTER earned increasing my efficiency (making me more likely to purchase their products) than requiring me to take more time to accomplish everything? --Dave
...another reason for me to stay with Firefox! sometimes i feel tempted to switch to IE8, but i heard it's not easy to get it to run on Ubuntu. >:)
Do not trust this signature.
How hard is it to click Tools, Compatibility Settings and to add the most visited sites or the sites within your corporate network?
Come on! Broken promise? Maybe. But did the IE Team not provide the work around through Compatibility View? Yes. So, shut up!
IE is irrelevant anyway. It is just the masses that are slow to to realize this but they will eventually
When has Microsoft ever created a true web standards compliant browser?
Show me, and I'll retire to the jungles in the Amazon.
slashdot rocks
See it as a broken browser icon.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Why is this even considered news worthy enough to report. This goes on all through the picture, to quote my wife.
UNIX is truth, the Console is life. Use Evolution to send e-mail and not virii.
Microsoft is in my "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me" category. I don't believe much of what MS says. No more that I believe most politicians. Doing so in either case just leads to frustration and disappointment.
My employer's intranet spans dozens of domains and partner sites. How does a browser determine what's intranet and what's internet?
Are you dense or just an ms ballmer fan boy?
You misspelled "based pr ?firm? scriptdead mindphuking hypenosys".
It's correctly spelled "based pr ?!firm?! scriptdead mindphuking hypenosys".
Only Microsoft would come up with an icon to imply that standards are bad.
I will not be surprised if standards mode is even removed completely by the time it leaves beta. They're just easing people into the idea of not using standards mode by starting on intranet pages at the moment.
Why can't all browser developers like Apple,Micrsoft,Mozilla,Opera,etc. agree and make a nagging screen when the browser encounters a broken page?
Yes, in the name of unconditionally appeasing standards preachers everywhere, let's push a browser that could render a huge number of especially smaller businesses crippled due to their internal web apps being left broken from a usability perspective.
"Intranet" translates to "enterprise network" in the real world. Enterprise web applications are pretty much all written for IE compatibility. Taking this away by default would be pointless and downright ridiculous. Leaving it in, but letting you flick a switch once your apps are standards compliant, where exactly is the basis for outrage in that?
Does it really surprise very many people that Microsoft is acting in the same way it ALWAYS HAS in the past?
Come on, man! Metaphorically, it is about the same as expecting a long-time multiple-repeat-offense child molester to behave from now on, based on her claim that she has "Seen the light," and has been "Healed! Praise the Lord!"
Yeah, right.
For a number of years now, whenever I hear another claim from Microsoft, my response has been "I will believe it when I see it."
And sadly, the fact is that I haven't been seeing it.
"Thus, by default, intranet pages are not viewed in standards mode."
Wow. What a broken promise.
So let me see if I get this right...
Internet Explorer has three rendering modes: normal (IE6), standards (IE7) and super-standards (IE8).
Depending on the DOCTYPE, either "normal (IE6)" or "super-standards (IE8)" will appear.
For pages that appear in "super-standards" mode, they may appear broken if the page was built for IE6/7 and has an improper DOCTYPE. They put a button next to the link that someone can click to shift into the legacy rendering mode that looks like a broken page because most users are going to look for an obvious icon.
I'm not seeing the problem here.
RomSteady - I came, I saw, I tested. GamerTag: RomSteady / http://www.romsteady.net
Only intranet pages are not rendered in standards mode by default,
Because SharePoint (and other denizens of the MS ghetto) does not, and never will, comply with relevant open standards.
(Should we be thankful they still use TCP? Or should we pray for the ultimate ghettoisation - let them isolate themselves behind their own proprietary walls.)
you had me at #!
n/t
you had me at #!
already so finely tuned to the intricacies of IE6 that reworking them would cost too much
NOBODY SAW THAT COMING!
you had me at #!
Check if the site is on a routeable IP (or on a local subnet). Another is if its hostname is in the public DNS. Etc.
you had me at #!
Use this.
you had me at #!
At this rate, the shareholders will sue.
Can you [deep] link to SharePoint content by URL?
What functionality is missing when you use a browser other than IE?
you had me at #!
Since when does a BETA release constitute breaking promises? Maybe the default setting just hasn't been changed yet, and will be by official release.
...planet Earth is still revolving.
Lets (that is us. The public) be honest.
They have always done that. Always!
MS is not to be trusted on anything (unless, of course, they come out with a statement saying: We are making an OS that will kill you and then rape your corpse. Then we would get ads featuring Seinfeld showing you the lighter side of having your corpse raped...) and we know this. They have done it consistently over the years.
The broken promises. The corruption. The underhanded dealings. The lies. The theft. The monopoly practices. Jeeze...
Honestly. Lets get a show of hands: Who of you, (yes even you; 7-digit-UID MS Fan Boi.) are surprised?
-RG.
What are we? Children? I cannot believe anyone can be adult, hear the word promise, and consider giving it any seriousness. Microsoft or anyone should never promise anyone anything. Just my advice.
Beyond that, IE 8 is still beta so I'd wait to see the final result. I know I will not be using it much because I am on Linux 90% of the time. It better be slipstreamable though.
This is inaccurate FUD. InTRAnet sites are internal corporate sites. That still means that any inTERnet site accessed from the corporate internet connection will still be displayed in standards-compliant mode. However, any COMPANY HOSTED site will not. Anyone saying that this qualifies for breaking a promise is really fishing for something.
You could always link to the alternative browsers alliance website
http://www.alternativebrowseralliance.com/
I have across every page i've ever coded.
They all detect IE and refer them to it (not directly, but i will annoy them with a header on every page, ABOVE the actual page header)
Duly noting all the other posters who have previously pointed out that the summary of this article is complete crap, here's a great page explaining general trickiness of this problem for MS and all browser companies (and you and me) when it comes to this issue:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/03/17.html [joelonsoftware.com]
The original decision was wrong.
Which would you prefer (and no you don't have a time machine)? A browser that, by default, works with all existing web sites or one that, by default, doesn't?
In any case a standard is a nonsense without a standard implementation and there isn't one for "web standards".
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
Of course, it's interesting to note that Hakon Lie has a vested interest in preserving quirks, because his company Opera has built its business on emulating IE (so called "IE5 bug-compatible") in mobile browsers.
So naturally, Opera would be opposed to any move by Microsoft to curb the chaos and make web pages easier to render. They couch this in terms of backward compatibility, and in fact Hakon Lie and other Opera employees event went so far as to found a new standards body to push their own agenda, and started with similarly threatened browser vendors as members. (Contrast this with the W3C, which invites both vendors and users of a technology to hammer out a standard that serves both ends of that economic stick.)
So, why support a Microsoft decision that seems so harshly standards supporting, as Joelonsoftware points out? Perhaps because a harsh position is unworkable, and perversely leads to delays in adoption of IE7 and IE8 with their new features and new implementations, thus leaving more time for Opera to milk the IE5 bug-compatible business, while they build up their new standards.
Oh, and it seems like the "backwards compatible" mantra has been dropped a bit, with all the hoopla over dropping "apparently unused" attributes such as "rel" from HTML5.
Given the choice, I'd rather just have to put up an FAQ page explaining how to "fix" IE8 (and point to that link when necessary) than to do what I've had to do up to this point: Build a page that's standards compliant, then look at it in IE and figure out how to work around the broken parts. So this will mean less work for me as a web developer, thankfully - for in-house stuff anyway (which is most of what I do).
Of course this is predicated on IE8's standards support being quite good - I'll believe that when I see it. Seriously, people were telling me how good IE7 was going to be prior to it's launch; so for now I'm from Missouri.
#DeleteChrome
If one 'widely praised' about face was good, two are better.
Have gnu, will travel.
....And, yes, I am a cynic.
I do not expect ANY promise, made by ANYONE, to be adhered to, until it actually happens.
Honestly, I am pleasantly surprised to find out how much easier my life has become since I made that admission/realization to myself.
And people are SURPRISED?!
Microsoft, like politicians, lies whenever it suits them, then does whenever it takes to control the market.
Bill Gates once said, in a private conversation overheard at Comdex in the 1980's "The way to conquer the world is to control the way communications are processed, managed and disseminated. Whoever controls the flow of information TO a population can directly control that population."
Microsoft has been running on that premise ever since by trying to become the ONLY standard for datacommunications, data processing and information technology at the OS and software levels that there will be.
If they succeed, they will, in essence, take over the world without firing a shot and without the public even realizing it.
Considering the author is the CTO of Opera, i.e. one of the competitors in the browser market, you have to take whatever he says about IE, or Firefox or Safari for that matter, with a grain of salt.
It's a very dark ride.
If it were an alpha release then that's fine. But...
You seem to think that MS follows the 'traditional' method of development phase naming schemes: alpha means still adding features, beta is bug fixes only, etc. But that's obviously not the case with MS or (most?) other major software vendors, and hasn't been for YEARS. MS (and others) still add features even in very late beta, if not 'release candidate' phase. Hell, what MS and others usually *release* is what most of us older computer folk would have considered *beta* back in the day.
As far as IE8, just remember: IE ain't done till CSS won't run.
Prove me wrong, MS. I'll hold my breath; I look great in blue.
In addition to that, administrators can add sites/domains to the Intranet 'zone'.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Microsoft could have dealt fairly with this in a hundred ways. The essence of fairness here would have been to present this to the user as a conscious choice to be made.
For example, during installation, or at first start, the browser could query the intranet in some well-defined way to determine whether the intranet administrators wanted "compatibility view" for intranet pages. Then it could ask the user: "Your company, Amalgamated Widgets, recommends "compatibility view" mode when you are accessing intranet web pages. Accept this recommendation? [x] Yes [ ] No."
You can think of dozens of variations on this.
What Microsoft chose to do instead was to make the choice that best serves Microsoft's interest, rather than the best interests of its corporate customers (let alone the end-users), without telling the user that it is making this choice. And carefully finding the golden mean: making it a preference, thus deflecting criticism, but cagily burying the preference where 99% of users will not know that a choice has been made for them, or even that a choice exists.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I think we need to extend Godwin's Law to include child molesters...
thats why I switched to firefox long ago!
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=651859&cid=24683041
We must not forget that IE8 is still in beta. Maybe this is just a ploy fo MS to force webadmins to get their stuff sorted before IE8 with different compatability modes is released. That said, its a big step forward from 7 - much much faster
Loaded up IE8 and seemed to be working fine for a while, until I loaded up Netflix to watch an Instant View movie. Got the good ole Not Compatible screen that you get if you are trying to run anything other than IE6 or IE7 to view Netflix movies. Guess it was too good to be true after all. And yes, I tried setting the site to compatibility mode, and it still did not work.
Although I should have written "child abuser" rather than "child molester".
In this case, though, it's a valid analogy. Microsoft has behaved that way since the beginning, all the while claiming that it won't anymore, and that it has changed its ways. Yet it has kept offending, regularly and consistently. And then saying the same thing. Then offending again...
My only question is why they have not been put "in jail" (antitrust suits) for their behavior, here in the U.S. There was a very large such case being tried some 8 years ago, which appeared to be proceeding quite well for the prosecution, but which seemed to mysteriously disappear just about the day George Bush was elected...
The product is still in beta so this was a good way to test to see what people would say about it not being the default. The product has not been released so please let Microsoft know about the problem as a bug report.
..in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee -- that says, fool me once, shame on... shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again.
Who gives a sh*t about IE 8 anyways? This must be one of the most unexciting browser releases ever.
Requiem for the American Dream
After all, they had to change their site from something before IE7 turned up, even if it was IE6.
And before IE6? Well, they had to port from IE5.5.
Before IE5.5? ....
Of course, if they'd rewriten it to standards they would only have to change it if they wanted something new, a new feature.
But you think that paying a little over and over again is better than paying a little more once.
Meh. Maths.
Wow. Talk about reading what you want to see!
He's complaining that IE8 isn't standards compliant. You say he is touting HIS browser as best compatible with IE5.5 apart from IE5.5 itself.
Well, what will people do?
Like they did when IE5.5 was discontinued, rewrite their pages or don't upgrade. It's not as if MS make money off IE8, is it, so no loss there. And then what happens? Opera is easier to write but no longer touts better IE5.5 compatibility.
NOTE: Unless they have the IE6 and IE5.5 binary in IE8, MS won't be 100% compatible with those versions in IE8. Heck, what about IE7? Either four browsers in one or you lose compatibility.
Might want to read the article - no promises broken at all. This is for the intranet, not the internet. This is one place where the choice to do so by default (it can be changed easily by sys admins via group policy) is both logical and correct.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
So IE8 will use bug mode on intranets, and standards mode on the internet. Can someone explain to me how the hell IE will know the difference between www.example.com and myIntranet.example.com ???
I don't recall seeing an intranet meta tag in my html books... so I don't get how IE will know if something is an intranet site or an internet site.
Which makes me wonder if it will simply think everything is an intranet.
Microsoft should call it IE812
Can anyone confirm which way IE8 actually does it?
Will it be be possible to trick IE8 into thinking it's not Intranet, without having to modify the HTML?
This was predicted back in March by Joel Spolsky, but looks like they've got a good compromise going if it applies only to the Intranet. Don't know as release time comes, whether they will stick to it.
Load up Internet Explorer 6, feed it a valid, HTML 4.01 Strict document, and test it for yourself.
What about a valid, HTML 4.01 Transitional document? HTML 4.01 Strict does not have the value attribute of the li element. This means that it doesn't support ordered lists with any value other than starting at 1 and increasing by 1, except in those (non-existent) user agents that support CSS counters.
Just Say NO to IE8!
What is this? This policy makes sense in every single way and yet Microsoft is still being bashed for the decision?
Working in quirks mode by default for intranet pages (meaning local pages, such as the ones that businesses have paid good money to have designed for them to be used by employees internally via older versions of IE).
Internet pages, like every single page that home users and business users access that is not hosted internally will default to working in standards mode by default.
This saves businesses money by not having to redesign internal pages just yet, but getting time to work with the new version of IE8. It also satisfies people attacking Microsoft for not rendering CSS and XHTML pages following standards.
They FINALLY do something right and still get attacked by news outlets. That's pretty damned sad!
IE8? You mean to tell me there are people out there who still haven't switched to Firefox?!?!?! Those savages!
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
And this sort of behaviour would come as a surprise why exactly? I'd have been more surprised if M$ had kept their "promise".
It doesn't matter, if this wasn't checked by default all corporate rollouts of IE would check it anyway, because companies don't care if their intranets are compliant or not. If an employee calls up the help desk and says "hey, I can't fill out my timecard in Firefox" the help desk will just say "use internet explorer", and what's the employee going to do, boycott it?
So long as *external* sites aren't in compatibility mode by default, that's enough, because that's a default that's got a chance of sticking.
Look, I hate MS as much as the next guy but IE 8 is beta software. Who knows what the final release will be? Let's not count our eggs before they hatch, so to speak.
One thing I always wondered when I developed websites was why all these browsers didn't have an abstraction layer that would let my site define a certain rendering engine to use. That way no matter who was using what browser that at least if it had that functionality It could fall back to the way I intended for it to look like. I know the W3C never got back with me probably because it would "render" them useless. The only way for standards to be followed is to have them worded like many laws are written. Said dog jumps x feet over fence clearing by y feet at z speed. You get the idea.
After giving up after a few months of trying to tie together various hacks to get my client's sites to halfway resemble what they are supposed to look like with supposed web standards browsers I concluded that the internet should just be tossed into the trash, and start over.
I know I get sick of waiting for some big corp to get off of their collective ass and implement a new feature. Wouldn't it be nice if just an individual could release a new engine after a few days? Just a thought. Anyways back to my implementing a new dynamic wireless network to give a small town free networking. Soap box off
DrkWatr
Qorona
It would be great if IE8 was released for Vista only. It's be a race to see how fast IE8 gets adopted via Windows Update--you know, by the 50 or so Vista users out there...
There's no place like
As a web developer, all I care about is that the browser will work in strict mode if I tell it to do so. I noticed quite early on that if a DOCTYPE was missing the system identifier, IE would revert to quirks mode. This isn't a big deal for people like me who actually study the guidelines and use a proper DOCTYPE, but to people who tend to copypasta code from a quick Google search, they will continue to write bad code without even realizing that the browser isn't in strict mode after all. You can't force people to research, but you can still beat them over the head with rendering problems if they just piecemeal their projects together. Maybe it'll encourage the company to get a proper web developer instead of asking the clueless secretary to perform updates.
The DOCTYPE has still not made its way into old, lousy HTML tutorials, so using its presence as a way to determine strict mode would be a good idea. If IE still has exceptions for malformed DOCTYPEs and is too eager to uses quirks mode, then these rendering issues will go on forever.
To me, having strict mode on by default sounds like a major corporate headache, and I don't blame Microsoft for second guessing their promise. But, they should tighten the rules for when quirks mode is selected.
Let's hope the developer mode in IE8 final is more vocal about standards compliance issues, too. Even Firefox is loath to complain about issues unless you have an extension like Web Developer installed. Giving errors to normal people is of course a bad idea, but it shouldn't be so hard or require so much 3rd-party software for developers to get the information they need.
If corporations and such finally ditch IE6 for (i guess) more secure and standards compilant browser, I won't have to bother with IE6 anymore while making websites targeted at people browsing from work.
So yeah, I thank MS for defaulting to Compability mode in intranet, and Standards in internet. Finally, a >very< good decision by them.
Just to clarify - my Job is programmer at mid-small telecom company, where we have just one PC with Windows - and thats for testing only. Rest of them are Linux - so its not like it will benefit my job - I can use cutting edge tech while making intranet sites, all they care is "it works" on their constantly updated FF and Opera browsers.
Its good for my hobby/side jobs.
If anyone bothered to read and see what the icon was for. It shows up when you view pages in Standards mode,... So you can switch broken pages to compatability / quirks mode and possibly get a better view. The message? If your page isn't standards compliant it's broken. Personally I whish they make the icon bigger, maybe put a audio message "FAIL" on non standards pages. The only thing they could do to make it better is when viewing in compatability mode, put up a message like "This page is BROKEN".
Can we just get rid of all of twitter's accounts? Please? Anyone? CmdrTaco? PLEASE!?
how you complain about Linux being crap because games or newest hardware won't work on it when this is not Linux's fault but the game producer or hardware manufacturer.
Does it really matter? I'll bet my graphics card 99% of everyone on here use firefox anyway!
http://www.frontmotion.com/FMFirefoxCE/index.htm
Have fun.
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
This is news?
I don't quite get the question. But my understand is that you'll be able to explicitly set the IE render mode through a HTTP header, which can easily be set in your web server.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Want to see IE8 crash? Copy and paste a URL into the address bar!
Yeah, I know as web developers we need to continue to make the web accessible to everyone (including IE users), but I say (like many others) we should quit correcting Microsoft's mistakes. This is the only way to knock some sense into that user base. Just think, when they realize that not too many pages look great in IE any more they might begin to wonder why. Aside from that, I know how much money companies can save if their web devs weren't tracking and 'correcting' IE bugs when the site validates and works fine in standards based browsers. Go ahead and argue that 80%+ users use IE. The only way to budge that number is to take a stand. Microsoft will never change.
He's called Mr. Lie for God's sake!