Site Compatibility and IE8

Kelson writes "As the release of Internet Explorer 8 approaches, Microsoft's IE Team has published a list of differences between IE7 and IE8, and how to fix code so that it will work on both. Most of the page focuses on IE8 Standards mode, but it also turns out that IE7 compatibility mode isn't quite the same as IE7 itself."

Comments

My favorite

[AKAImBatman]

This is actually a pretty good list and will allow me to encourage action on some standards-compliant bugs I know of in sites I work on. (e.g. Some programmers previously relied on getDocumentById searching "name" elements.) However, there is one bug in this list that has me both bemused and disgusted:

Object Detection

Object detection works great when used correctly. However some pages assume the existence of one feature based upon the presence of another, leading to problems when both features are not implemented in the same release.
if(window.postMessage) {
        window.addEventListener(
                "load",
                myHandler,
                false
        );
}

SOLUTION: Perform proper object-detection for each feature used.

if(window.addEventListener) {
        window.addEventListener(
                "load",
                myHandler,
                false
        );
}

Hmmm... maybe that's because Microsoft didn't implement the fucking standard correctly? The standard is more or less DEPENDENT on DOM2 events. (At the very least, I doubt anyone expected someone to implement the standard with a dysfunctional DOM.) That's why you can assume that you can use addEventListener to set a postMessage event receiver. But Microsoft didn't implement DOM2 events, despite helping develop the standard 10 years ago.

IE8 standards compliance is a joke. A sick joke played out by millions of unsuspecting users everywhere.

Re:My favorite

[AliasMarlowe]

Can you explain why that page indicates all green for CSS 2.1 on WebKit based browsers, except for the "static" classifications, yet WebKit claims that their CSS 2.1 support is not yet complete?

Maybe you just looked at the CSS 2.1 Selectors section, which is mostly green for Webkit browsers (but with a few marked "static").

However, if you also look at the Webkit browsers in the CSS 2.1 Declarations section, you'll notice that one item (content) is marked as "almost", while another (table columns) is marked as "incomplete". Perhaps this is why Webkit does not claim complete support.

Perhaps using the W3C standard test suites would be a better measure than some guy putting green boxes next to features?

Obviously.

Re:My favorite

[vadim_t]

Acid2 tests aspects of HTML markup, CSS 2.1 styling, PNG images, and data URIs. It should render correctly on any application that follows the World Wide Web Consortium and Internet Engineering Task Force specifications for these technologies. The idea is that if both web sites and web browsers follow agreed-upon industry standards, then any web site will work the same in any web browser.

So, it's a page you can point a viewer to, and quickly see how standard compliant it is.

For your question, it would mean that Browser Foo is more likely to misrender a page coded according to the standards it tests than Browser Bar.

So if pretty much every modern browser passes it, but IE does not, it would mean that a page made according to standards should render well in pretty much every browser, except probably IE. And in reverse, a page made to render well in IE would likely look bad on pretty much anything else.

Re:My favorite

[Anonymous Coward]

But they're making a good try here at fixing the problems

Not these ones. They've done no work on DOM2 Events at all, even though this particular feature depends on them. They skipped ahead and used a hack to make it look like they are catching up, when in reality this is a huge deficiency. Why don't you check out the bug report for lack of DOM2 Events on their public bug tracker - it was closed with their equivalent of WONTFIX.

fucking relax already

I've personally put in probably over a thousand hours working around IE's many shortcomings. This is one of the biggest computer companies in the world. They can do better, they choose not to, with costly consequences for a lot of people. Every shortcoming in IE8 will cost me time and money, and cost clients money and features. Don't tell people to "fucking relax".

Re:My favorite

[vadim_t]

See the list

Yes, it tests for markup errors. It also tests for other things, like PNG transparency and CSS paint order and positioning.

Re:My favorite

[pizzach]

From Wikipedia:

Acid2 tests aspects of HTML markup, CSS 2.1 styling, PNG images, and data URIs. It should render correctly on any application that follows the World Wide Web Consortium and Internet Engineering Task Force specifications for these technologies. The idea is that if both web sites and web browsers follow agreed-upon industry standards, then any web site will work the same in any web browser.

It's a test, nothing more nothing less. The World Wide Web Consortium, also known as the W3C for short, is known for their definitions of CSS and HTML standards. That's the connection. Hope it helped.

Re:Target a standard

[aurispector]

They had all the resources they needed to produce perfectly compliant browsers, so one must inevitably conclude that the incompatibilities were deliberate. If your average clueless Joe has trouble with anything but the bundled IE, there's big incentive not to change, right? It's not done 'til Firefox won't run!

It's quite ironic that MS's shenanigans are coming back to haunt them.

Re:Why web developers should be dragged out and sh

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

People, the web is fine for multimedia and information presentation, but why is there this constant push to integrate everything into the web?

That's easy. The desktop OS market is monopolized and innovation has slowed to a crawl. The market is attempting to route around the damage. It's not working well, but that's what is happening.

Re:Target a standard

[tecnico.hitos]

Somehow Flash isn't as fast to me.
I can barely watch a Flash animation in low Q mode at half Speed

I have a Athlon XP, 2 GB RAM.

Re:IE8 Standards mode??

[tecnico.hitos]

IE is not compliant with IE standards.

Re:Don't get "Compatibility View"

[kestasjk]

Even Firefox has different rendering modes depending on what sort of site it's looking at. Most web-dev plugins for it will tell you whether it's rendering in Standards mode or Quirks mode.

It's more about pragmatism than sloppiness; they need to support new sites which need a correct implementation of standards, and they need to support the old sites used in corporate internets which are kludgy messes, that no-one would dare try and update.

Re:Why web developers should be dragged out and sh

[hkmwbz]

why is there this constant push to integrate everything into the web?

Because web is, in theory, accessible from anywhere, from any kind of device, any kind of connection. It's easy to develop web applications. It's faster and easier to develop web apps than native apps.

But then Flash came along and suddenly you've got crap that can't be indexed and is inaccessible to people who are blind or deaf

Which is why web standards need to replace Flash, and that's exactly what Mozilla, Opera, Apple and others are working on with HTML5 and such.

PRESCRIPTION FOR THE SHORTSIGHTED

[Onymous Coward]

WTH? Relax? Fuck that.

You obviously fail to understand the gravity of the situation. Does the web seem like a trivial thing to you? Are you one of those people who says "oh, it's just another thing on the Internet -- no need to take it seriously"?

You think that it's okay to pain "a very, very small percentage of the population" with compatibility problems? I guess you wouldn't give a damn about sewer system engineers or transportation system engineers or power grid engineers either, eh? That's pretty idiotic myopia.

"Yeah, you're suffering. Big deal, there aren't many of you. Just relax." Fuck that.

If you'd been following along you'd have noticed the 5 year languish of IE6. Microsoft dominated the market using its distribution and then just stopped. "Tada! The World-Wide Web! Let it rot." What, you never had to clean up a friend's IE6-spyware-infested machine? Only when their dominance was threatened did they rouse themselves to make any changes. And now you think "they're making a good try here at fixing the problems"? And you're ready to take what they serve you? You trust these guys? The same purveyors of stagnation?

The self-serving protocol pollution and dominance games of Microsoft are only half the problem. You are the other half. Ignorant users (and developers) who fail to see the importance of standards and who are either virtual amnesiacs about Microsoft's track record of standards subversion or are just acting like battered wives.

What happens with standards and the web is pretty damn important. Get some glasses, jackass.

Re:PRESCRIPTION FOR THE SHORTSIGHTED

[Onymous Coward]

Standards don't benefit anybody except web developers.

This is the foundation of your failure to understand.

If you can't see how fragmentation impacts more than the people who build the websites, you are shortsighted. If you don't see how Microsoft's incompatibility is a matter of their choice, you are blind.

The fact that you started your career writing "actual software" may be what's got you confused. The web is basically a single platform. It's not a proliferation of distinct operating systems that require ports. Microsoft intentionally creates and allows/maintains incompatibilities for the sake of vendor lock-in. (Netscape did this, too. I don't just hate on MS.) That's self-serving, needless infliction of wide-scale inefficiency. You don't get that this adds up? The people who pay for websites pay more and get less. The people who use websites and web apps end up paying through a variety of inconveniences and at times complete breakage to the point of being unusable. The people who were locked into using IE suffered more downtime and cost us more in support. The overall loss in human productivity has not been limited to web developers, hello. Glasses.

Take a look here:

• IE1 - 1995-08 - ...
• IE2 - 1995-11 - 03 mos.
• IE3 - 1996-08 - 09 mos.
• IE4 - 1997-09 - 13 mos.
• IE5 - 1999-03 - 18 mos.
• IE6 - 2001-08 - 29 mos.
• IE7 - 2006-10 - 62 mos. == The Great Languish
• IE8 - 2009-05 - 31 mos.

Try correlating that period, 2001-08 through 2006-10, with what's going on this graph. Microsoft only cared about bettering their browser as much as it helped them maintain control. If you weren't fed up with IE6's impact on you and everyone else for the first half decade of this millenium, you weren't paying attention. No, that behavior was not "...Ok?" It was bullshit and I'm not lying down to take more of it.

Anyway, I don't think there's any convincing you and other battered wives like you that Microsoft's embrance-and-extend behavior is something requiring opposition. You seem to have the dog pack mentality that believes domination is equal to righteousness. And you call the needless extra work QA, but you fail to understand what you're actually doing is grovelling compliantly with your multi-browser ports and hacks. You enable Microsoft. I'd love it if you figured out what was going on then stood up and pushed back some. I suppose being antagonistic with you only serves me to feel better for a moment as I vent my anger rather than actually gives you space to think the matter through. I call you a jackass because of your belligerent and harmful ignorance, but that only sets you up to resist these ideas rather than to be ready to see their merits. My mistake. You're still a fool, but it's a disservice to us all that I failed to take a tack with you that stood some chance of helping you be enlightened rather than entrench you in your idiocy. I guess I'm just talking to myself at this point. No hard feelings!

I'm just glad that Microsoft's dominance is quickly coming to an end in the browser market, as you can tell by the right side of that graph. I'll continue to work to hasten it, and to hasten broader compatibility. Evidently by the rise of Firefox et al. there are enough people working towards this end even if there's some number out there who think like you. I hope your attitude of enabling another Great Languish is ineffectual. No hard feelings, but please don't try to convince anyone that IE is a good choice, thanks.

Humanity's got enough problems. Needless inefficiency is needless. I imagine your more fundamental misunderstanding is regarding the concept of independence. I hope the current financial crisis is driving home for

Re:Great....

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow now i need to test my site in at least 4 browsers, this is getting fucking ridiculous.

only 4?
ff, opera, chrome, safari, ie7 & now ie8

ms should just pull out of the browser market, they can't adhere to standards they should not be allowed to participate, simple

Re:Target a standard

[Anonymous Coward]

Every single Java applet I've had to run in both Windows (IE and FireFox) and Linux (FireFox) on computers ranging from quad cores to pentium 4's run pathetically slow. I still see GUI elements refresh slowly. I still see slow loading/initialisation times which almost always lock up the browser for between 4 and 15 seconds. I still see delays in response time to interactive elements. It's still slow god damn it!

Re:Target a standard

[DiegoBravo]

From my observation, Java Applets and Flash run at similar speeds (indeed, there is no real reason for them to differ.) The single and big problem was the Java Applet startup time that was really BIIIIIG and consumed resources to the point of freezing the PC.

Since many people in the 90's used Applets just for trivial and short animations, that startup time turned to be the principal contributor to the total user experience.

Flash had a lot less ambitions (in the beginning), so their initialization time was as expected (i.e. non detectable.)

Re:Not truly Adobe

[martinX]

Well, going back a little further, FutureWave Softwave made FutureSplash Animator, which was bought by Macromedia and became Flash 1.0.