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Microsoft.com Makes IE8 Incompatibility List
nickull writes "Microsoft is tracking incompatible Web sites for its upcoming Internet Explorer 8 browser and has posted a list that now contains about 2,400 names — including Microsoft.com. Apparently, even though Microsoft's IE8 team is doing the 'right' thing by finally making IE more standards-compliant, they are risking 'breaking the Web' because the vast majority of Web sites are still written to work correctly with previous, non-standards-compliant versions of IE."
What if we could just define which rendering engine to use in pages, e.g. IE7 or IE8 in a meta tag...
The worst thing on the internet is a site that only works in IE. I just ran across one the other day that displayed nothing but a blank screen in Firefox and Chrome. There are many more that have crazy formatting issues in anything but IE. So, this is a good way to force these sites to update from their 1997 crapfest to the standardized modern web.
So slashdot, what should it be?
Break standards and keep compatibility? Or break compatibility and be standards compliant?
Either way they'll be unpopular it appears. At least in the short-term.
throw new NoSignatureException();
If finally coming into compliance is what they are doing, then, Duh! By default the sites that are built for the not-compatible versions are going to be broken. I think it is wonderful. If Microsoft comes into compliance and renders web pages by the book (the W3C standard), then it is a great thing for all. Having broken sites is the price that companies pay for jumping on the bandwagon when they had the choice to do the right thing or not.
Consider broken sites a small price to pay going forward to gain real compatibility and a much better web. Less time spent developing around the broken browsers means more time spent building true content - maybe even more time on better security.
InnerWeb
Freud might say that Intelligent Design is religion's ID.
Now web developers will need to test two more assuredly incompatible browsers, IE8 standards mode and IE8 compatibility mode!
Microsoft's stance that fixing IE will break the web is counter intuitive propaganda. They broke the web when they failed to keep IE's standards compliance up to date, and since they strong-armed themselves to the top of the browser share pile, much of the web is built to satisfy their flawed implementation.
MS is giving that chunk of the web an incentive to fix itself... it's already broken.
If MS would approach this with some humility and logic, more people would understand that it's not the sites that are broken, it's the blue E.
"Apparently, even though Microsoft's IE8 team is doing the 'right' thing by finally making IE more standards-compliant, they are risking 'fixing the Web' because the vast majority of Web sites are still written to work incorrectly with previous, non-standards-compliant versions of IE."
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
Amazingly, they chose the second option. Those of us who understand why this is important should be applauding right now.
Has no one ever noticed that Microsoft.com had various effects, direct system access, and other features not found anywhere else on the web?
Not really, no.
Or that Windows Update only worked through Internet Explorer?
Windows Update has been a freakin' Control Panel and Service in Windows for a decade now. Please update the rhetoric to the 21st century, thank you.
Yes, the web-based Windows Update still works. Yes, it requires IE. That's because IE is the only browser that ever implemented ActiveX. But the thing is, HTML was/is *designed* so that companies can extend it! (That's why HTML ignores tags it doesn't understand, for example.) ActiveX was fairly extended in the correct manner prescribed by HTML. Is it a good technology? No. Does it violate the HTML standards? Also no. Is there any technical reason Firefox can't implement ActiveX? No.
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