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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...
It can't even render simple fucking HTML properly. Simple little html table, written according to the guidelines. Looks spiff in Firefox, unholy mess in IE. The only way to make things line up properly in IE is to do illegal things that are correctly rendered as incompetent ass in Firefox.
Fuck IE and the modem it was downloaded on.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I don't get it. Why is everyone so surprised by this? Microsoft has been the biggest consumer of their own non-standard web technologies in both an effort to tie services to Windows and to convince other web developers to use their 'neato' technologies.
Has no one ever noticed that Microsoft.com had various effects, direct system access, and other features not found anywhere else on the web? Or that Windows Update only worked through Internet Explorer? Microsoft WANTS to be as non-standard as possible. And if you don't believe me, check out this wonderful document penned by none other than Bill Gates himself:
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I'm no web developer but how can google.com be on that list as well? It is one of the simplest websites around. A text field, few links and a bit of javascript.
How the hell can a web browser, that let's face it, is probably going to be the dominant web browser, not render that.
No wonder the general population get pissed of with 'the computer's not working again'. These days I tell them that I don't know Windows. I'm going to have to start walking around with a Ubuntu live on USB.
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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.
About ten years ago, as Web-1.0 was beginning, I decided to learn to write HTML for a personal website. At that time, MS released a beta program (I forget its name) to automate HTML authoring and I signed up, downloaded and installed it. Then I found its output while great for IE, did not render pages well in Netscape or even Opera. So I uninstalled it and wrote with WordPerfect-7, correcting the code by hand.
Some weeks later, MS emailed me (the beta program, of course, required registration with an email address) with a special offer: a free year-long subscription to an upcoming MS magazine if I would document my use of a feature on my home web page that worked under IE but not under Netscape -- that is, I would get a worthless pile of MS propaganda every month if I would break web standards to the benefit of IE.
It was always MS' plan to dominate ("embrace and extend" was what is was called then) the internet.
I believe if there was one event that caused them to change their minds and become web-standard compliant it was their losing fight with the EU monopoly courts and their punishment: to become standards-compliant with respect to APIs, networking and, apparently, at least in MS' mind, the internet as well.
Perhpas MS could take a feature from the Opera browser -- user agent spoofing, and let IE-8 users impersonate another brand so they can view standards-compliant sites as the designer intended them to be seen.
"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.
The problem is that many sites will check if the browser is IE, and then do various workarounds. So Microsoft is stuck: they can fix the browser, but then the sites have to be modified to say (if browser is IE, but version 7 then do the hack)
I think the only good workaround would be for Microsoft to change their user/agent string so it reports itself as Firefox :)