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."

Comments

There's a saying..

[eebra82]

When things sound too good to be true, they usually are..

Re:There's a saying..

[mrbah]

Considering IE's pattern of "improving" standards compliance over the last decade, a "more compliant" IE8 wouldn't necessarily be a good thing. MICROS~1 seems to think that fixing support for one thing and breaking support for 50 others is an improvement. It isn't. Even IE8's true "standards mode" is just as non-compliant as IE 7, 6, and 5.5. The only thing that has changed over all these revisions is the nature of the rendering errors. One version might treat a certain block element as inline, while the next fixes that issue only to draw inline borders incorrectly. All they do is change the errors, never fix them.

Anyone who thinks IE standards support has improved from IE7 to IE8 is sadly mistaken, and while we'd all rather have a truly compliant IE, it just isn't going to happen. I know I'll get a lot of hate for this, but I'd rather have one broken web browser to develop hacks for than 4.

Re:There's a saying..

[jmpeax]

Actually, the summary is misleading. Only intranet pages are not rendered in standards mode by default, presumably to encourage enterprise customers to upgrade (most I know of use IE6 at the moment). From TFA:

The dirty secret is buried deep down in the "Compatibility view" configuration panel, where the "Display intranet sites in Compatibility View" box is checked by default. Thus, by default, intranet pages are not viewed in standards mode.

The article uses some dubious statistics to back up the sensationalist headline ("intranets account for about half of all page views on PCs"), but ignores the reality: many intranet systems use IE-specific extensions (normally because they were developed a while ago) and, unlike websites, don't often benefit from constant revision and attention from a development team. To me, viewing intranet pages in compatibility mode by default makes sense.

Re:There's a saying..

[Bogtha]

Anyone who thinks IE standards support has improved from IE7 to IE8 is sadly mistaken

It has improved. The difference between 6 and 7 wasn't too great, basically just bugfixes and additional selectors, but there are significant improvements in Internet Explorer 8, for instance CSS tables. Internet Explorer 8 passes the Acid2 test now, where 6 and 7 were miles off. While it's not a conformance test, it does give a good indication of how far they've come, and it's a result of additional support, not merely "rearranging bugs" as you seem to think (which would actually be far more work than just doing things properly).

Re:There's a saying..

[Rhapsody Scarlet]

Anyone who thinks IE standards support has improved from IE7 to IE8 is sadly mistaken

Well it passes Acid2 now (as long as it's hosted at webstandards.org) and currently gets 21/100 on Acid3 (compared to 14/100 for IE7) so there must be some improvement in IE8.

Re:There's a saying..

[dotancohen]

You must be new here. Seriously. Go read the Hans Reiser post. People are often modded up for preachy, glib, and obvious. If all three it's almost a sure thing.

I really cannot believe that glib is a word, I had to look it up. My English is not perfect, but it's rare that I mix up Gnome dependency libraries and real words.

Re:There's a saying..

[Simon Brooke]

IE7 is a good browser. IE8 will be a better browser. This article is ridiculous. Not having standards mode for intranet is hardly breaking a promise.

I'm looking at that statement and I simply cannot believe that anyone said it. I work, these days, for my sins, in a Microsoft shop; everything we build is for Microsoft platforms, practically every tool we use is a Microsoft tool. But the one Microsoft product that no-one in the building will use except for testing is IE. Most people use Firefox, some people use Safari, I use Opera.

So why not? Is it because we care about standards? Well, a few of us do. But mainly, it's the dreadful 'lets hide all the controls' user interface, the 'helpful' 'we know what you want' features, and the slug-like performance.

IE is so bad that even brainwashed pro-Microsoft zealots won't use it.... and that's a good browser?

Probably the corporate customers

[Coopjust]

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.

Re:Probably the corporate customers

[hattig]

I agree that it makes sense for the intranet pages to be viewed in Compatibility Mode.

However showing a broken page icon next to standards-compliant web pages is another issue altogether. Clearly the broken page icon should apply to pages that aren't standards compliant!

Re:Probably the corporate customers

[Bogtha]

Companies with intranets that don't work in a standard web browser can set all their clients to use the broken backwards compatibility mode by default as part of their policy settings.

Re:Probably the corporate customers

[Firehed]

I agree, having installed IE8 beta for the first time about five minutes ago. I clicked the broken page button, and sure enough, the page broke (on a site I've been working on and haven't gotten to IE6/7 hacks yet). Works as promised, I guess. Thankfully, the default strict compliance mode either works correctly or close enough that my lack of IE-conditional stylesheets didn't matter.

I think a little explanation that pops up in that first-load box would be sufficient. They could even use it to paint themselves in a good light - "By default, IE8 will show websites using the latest web standards. Some websites have not been developed to the latest web standards, and may not appear correctly. If this happens, click the compatibility mode icon (image) and the page will be drawn in a less standards-compliant mode that should be closer to the website designer's intentions."

Seriously, attack the web devs and designers in the firstrun message if you have to. Use it as an opportunity to brush up on your doublespeak and make us look bad. We don't care, so long as you render the page as well as the Gecko and Webkit engines by default.

Intranet sites, whatever. I think that should be done within the network rather than the browser's defaults directly, but that's not a major concern to me really.

INTRANET only

[tankrshr77]

The article only says that INTRANET pages are not shown in standards-compliant mode by default.

Re:INTRANET only

[Samantha Wright]

Presumably because internal corporate apps are going to be a dozen years old and already so finely tuned to the intricacies of IE6 that reworking them would cost too much—and so companies wouldn't upgrade to IE8. I think The Register is being a little unfair in this case, although their comment about the icon (which takes up too much space and uses language so loaded ("discrimination") that it verges on being connotatively wrong) is much easier to appreciate. Perhaps the CTO of Opera is not the ideal person to expect to deliver an unbiased commentary.

I guess this all reflects the same woe preventing any standard's adoption: is it cheaper for the corporate sector to go with it or go against it? In the case of Intranet apps, I suspect the answer is a resounding "no," and it would most likely just be seen as breaking compatibility for an abstract reason.

I bet that, with enough poking and shit from the community, however, the MS guys could be convinced to have it default to compatibility mode for intranet sites only on Business versions of Vista.

Re:INTRANET only

[telbij]

The article only says that INTRANET pages are not shown in standards-compliant mode by default.

Yeah the article is too harsh on this point, but...

Furthermore, web standards are discriminated against in IE8 by the icon that appears next to standards-compliant web pages

This is just terrible. This sounds like Ballmer came down there personally and mandated this. On the other hand...

First, I suggest that IE8 not introduce version targeting which only perpetuates the problem of non-compliant pages. Instead, IE8 should respect the established conventions which don't need manual switching between modes.

One of the things Microsoft does very well is maintain backwards compatibility. This is of tremendous value to enterprise customers. The least evil way to do this is with rendering modes. You can argue that standards should be the default, but to suggest that Microsoft should stab its most profitable userbase in the back and completely break backwards compatibility just to altruistically further the state of web standards compatibility is ridiculous. Don't get me wrong, I wish it would happen, but it would be a pretty stupid move.

Alarmist article. Boring.

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Misleading summary.... it's INTRANET ONLY

[aengblom]

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!

Re:Misleading summary.... it's INTRANET ONLY

[aengblom]

The same way IE7, IE6, IE5 and I'm pretty sure lesser IEs did? IE has long allowed different security settings for intranet vs. internet pages.

As I hinted about above, the dynamics of Intranet and internet are very different.

Change on the Internet is very difficult because site developers must develop towards the most common denominator and this is rarely the cutting edge. Even if it's better for everyone to move towards the standards, there is a disincentive for anyone to move first.

An intranet is completely different. If a company finds there is an advantage to moving off of IE6/7 and on to IE8, well they just need some guy in IT to sign off on redeveloping any things that would be broken.

I wonder if people can read...

[MSFanBoi2]

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.

it's good they did it this way...

[paniq]

...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. >:)

Don't see it as a broken page icon

[John Hasler]

See it as a broken browser icon.

better yet -

[toby]

Use this.

Re:Why should this surprise anyone?

[Bogtha]

They haven't truly improved standards support since IE 5.5

This is a ridiculous thing to say. Internet Explorer 6 was the first Windows version that had doctype switching, which enabled them to ditch the 5.5 engine as "quirks mode" and do things like fix the box model, add real auto margins, etc. Internet Explorer 7 included additional selector support, min/max-* support and fixed positioning. Internet Explorer 8 includes further selectors, the selectors API, CSS tables, generated content, DOM Storage, data URIs, and more.

I'm a web developer. I'll be holding a grudge against Microsoft for years to come. But even I can recognise that there has been actual progress. You don't have to invent reasons to criticise them, their actions are appalling enough without having to resort to making things up.

Re:Why should this surprise anyone?

[Bogtha]

The broken box model problem was where Internet Explorer 5.5 and below included padding in the width of content boxes when it should not. This brought about some of the earliest CSS hacks, for instance Tantek's box model hack, designed to feed Internet Explorer 5.5 and below one width, and other browsers another width.

Internet Explorer 6 introduced doctype switching, where pages using an up-to-date document type got a better rendering, and invalid pages got the Internet Explorer 5.5 rendering with all its associated bugs. Internet Explorer 6, in its better rendering mode, had the box model problem fixed. Unfortunately, there are legions of web developers who don't know what they are doing, and kept writing invalid code that kicked Internet Explorer 6 into its buggy backwards compatibility mode. And then complaining that widths weren't right.

When Microsoft was planning on releasing Internet Explorer 7, 5 years after they fixed the box model problem, they were still swamped by clueless web developers demanding that they fix the box model problem. Somehow it has passed into "common knowledge" that Internet Explorer 6 did not fix this bug. It's not true, you fallen for rumour and hearsay. Load up Internet Explorer 6, feed it a valid, HTML 4.01 Strict document, and test it for yourself. They fixed it in 2001, seven years ago - it's time to stop complaining about that particular bug.

Re:or it could be...

[hairyfeet]

And let us not forget that many Intranet sites are ancient,buggy,old crap. Hell,most of them I have run into are still using old ActiveX hacks! try getting THAT junk to render properly in any decent browser! The simple fact is MSFT HAS TO render Intranet sites the old way,since many of them ARE old and businesses are loath to update them.

Personally seeing how quick Firefox has been spreading I kind of doubt that by the time IE9 comes out anyone that isn't on a corporate Intranet will really care. And the reason why I haven't seen Firefox taking off in business is because the Mozilla Corp hasn't put out good Group policy controls that would allow admins to easily deploy and manage it. If someone at Mozilla would put out some really good Group Policy controls I doubt that even businesses would care about IE anymore. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV

Re:or it could be...

[jregel]

Which begs the question, why hasn't Mozilla put more effort in making Firefox easy for enterprise users to deploy?

It strikes me as a large market they are not particularly interested in.