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

Target a standard

[BadAnalogyGuy]

HTML as a standard has been so bastardized over the years that the kind of incompatibilities that the article discusses exist not only across different browsers but also between browser versions.

Maybe it's time to start over. Flash and Java applets seem like a good place to start.

Re:Target a standard

[Samschnooks]

Agreed.

And at the bottom of your web page, instead of having some non-sense such as "This page best viewed with IEx", have something that says, "Page best viewed with standards compliant browsers, such as X,Y, and Z".

Re:Target a standard

[SirLurksAlot]

Maybe it's time to start over. Flash and Java applets seem like a good place to start.

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or serious, or if you're saying that we should move back towards Java applets and use more Flash or if they should go away. Care to elaborate?

Personally the idea of bringing Java applets back makes me cringe. I also have FlashBlock set to block all Flash by default, so you can guess my stance there as well. In fact the trend to include more Flash and the increasing use of Silverlight has me wondering what the future HTML and CSS will be if they have one at all. (I say as I format my post with HTML tags...)

Re:Target a standard

[Antique Geekmeister]

That's odd. All the webpages I create work just fine with flat text, maybe a .css file to capture the style, and no dancing bears of any kind. Keeping the silly behavior on the server side makes them vastly more robust, handicapped accessible to people with text->speech needs or with large typeface needs, and generally keeps their bandwidth and support requirements way, way, way down.

Re:Target a standard

[BadAnalogyGuy]

I haven't ever seen a fast Java applet

This is a temporary problem. As computers get faster, this problem will go away.

Re:Target a standard

[Darkness404]

This is a temporary problem. As computers get faster, this problem will go away.

Um, it has been stated that its a temporary problem ever since Java applets were introduced in the '90s, and even today with dual-core multi-ghz CPUs commonplace as Gigabytes of RAM, the problem still hasn't gone away.

Similarly, Flash seemed just as fast on a Pentium III with about 128 MB of RAM as it does today on the latest quad-core box.

Re:Target a standard

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

HTML rendering is actually pretty consistent among standards compliant browsers (Firefox, Safari, Chrome & Opera). The problem is that the largest browser vendor by marketshare (Microsoft) has a poor history of standards compliance; rather they ignore parts of standards for their own proprietary implementations, which change from version to version.

This has caused Microsoft their current position, where it becomes difficult for new versions of their browser to match the quirks and partial standards compliance of the past versions. It's hard to remove features from a browser when a popular site coded years ago is still using them. In essence, they have painted themselves into a corner.

The problem is not in HTML, the problem is the long term effect of proprietary technology instead of standards compliance. Vendor-owned technologies such as Flash or Silverlight are not the answer, in fact they're characteristic of the problem!

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: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:Target a standard

[Sleepy]

>Maybe it's time to start over. Flash and Java applets seem like a good place to start.

Yes. Because Microsoft has bastardized open standards like HTML and CSS, let's move a vendor-controlled standards.

After all, it's not like Microsoft went out of their way to bastardize Java RIGHT?

Never mind how locking up valuable data in ANY proprietary format, has NEVER turned around and bit mankind in the ass time and time again.

Our intranet has been standards-only for 5 years, and our public website is XHTML strict, with a few (validating) hacks to support IE 6 and 7.

The momentum for standards compliant browsing is pretty strong. The biggest obstacle are the people who make webpages in FrontPage or Office... they're getting calls from customers who can't read white text on a white background, because the MS tools still go out of their way to (deliberately) suck.

Big comment FAIL. Hope you weren't serious and not a troll

Re:Target a standard

[Anonymous Coward]

Java is plenty fast. It's just that applets haven't been used for anything worthwhile in a long time, so you remember Java performance from back when CPUs had clock rates in the double-digit MHz range. The only real problem with Java performance is the comparatively slow startup time of the runtime environment.

Re:Target a standard

[sjames]

It is fast. It's so fast that it can screw up spectacularly faster than I can make it stop. I must admit that nothing gets your message across faster than an all flash index page.

Unfortunately, that message is "we're sorry, but our message is all hype and no substance. We were afraid you might figure that out if we didn't guide you firmly through our message with no opportunity to look behind the curtain, or for that matter, to think about what we're saying and realize that it adds up to nothing at all. On the bright side, since you block flash by default, at least we know you're the sort of "critical thinker" who we can never win over with gibberish.

I'm not saying flash is all bad, it seems to have it's place in the world (though it needs to be replaced with an equivalent that actually works on all platforms). I block it by default, but do have it installed for the few cases where it actually makes sense.

Too often, flash is resorted to to get around the apparent fact that MS has a whole division that does nothing but come up with the oddest and most brain damaged possible interpretation of a standard and makes sure that's what gets implemented. Their motto: "Those weirdnix guys are rank amateurs"

Re:Target a standard

[hairyfeet]

Yes, let us please kill that lie right now. Working with SOHO and SMBs I can tell that there are most likely millions of machines still doing their jobs in offices accross this country, as well as in many customers homes, that are between 1GHZ and 3.6GHZ with anywhere from 256MB to 2GB of RAM. In fact for purpose of this example i am typing this on a refurbed office machine I have had working as a Nettop(long before there was even such a word) for the past 9 years. This machine is a 1.1GHz Celeron with a maxed out 512MB of PC133.

For the Internet it works beautifully EXCEPT if the evil known as flash is allowed on. In fact let me quote the system requirements for Linux Flash Player 10 that a fellow Slashdot reader posted(Thanks McGuirk) "Minimum Requirements: Modern processor (800MHz or faster) & 512MB of RAM, 128MB of graphics memory For "Standard" and for HD playback:Intel Core Duo 1.8GHz, AMD Athlon(TM) 64 X2 4200+ processor (or equivalent) & 512MB of RAM & 64MB of VRAM"

I'm afraid I have to agree with his comments after reading the specs "Good God...that's more than many games" and you want to use THAT as the "standard" for making web pages? I have many 3d video games that aren't that damned bloated! But to me it simply highlights why Flash is bad: It is made by Adobe. No offense, but Adobe has always been a "throw more RAM and CPU at it" kind of company. There products have always gotten more bloated and buggy with every release. That is just who they are. But wanting to turn the whole WWW, which is used by countless millions across the planet, including businesses, charities, users rich and poor alike, into a giant flash site because the HTML and CSS code has gotten sucky is just insanity.

If the HTML and CSS standards suck, then have a fit and demand they change! But don't turn the web into a giant bloated playground for a single monopoly. We went through that in the 90s with "This site is designed for IE only" and I'm not really wanting to go back to that, Are you?

Re:Target a standard

[BikeHelmet]

You're kidding, right? Please tell me you are...

Flash certainly is popular, but I would not describe it as "fast". Its power comes from how easy it is to create flash stuff. Not from having a great backend.

Problems with Flash:
-Huge memory leaks
-Shitty scripting performance
-Mediocre rendering performance of rasterized graphics
-Poorly designed input handling (makes it unsuitable for games - ironically)

Problems with Java:
-Slow start time
-No easy to work with vectorized graphics
-Java is "Java", and thus is bad (because java is bad)

Here's the proof.

Claim 1: Flash rendering performance is very poor.
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/408513

Most flash game designs do silly stuff like putting a semi-transparent invisible square over the screen to manage fading. Those alpha-shades every rendering operation on the CPU, and precludes all hardware acceleration.

This game has very poor performance on a 2.2ghz Athlon XP w/ 1GB RAM + 7800GS. It uses many final-fantasy-style sprites/graphics, in addition to vectorized graphics for dialog and the interface.

In Java, even in an applet, simple sprite blits like that would run fine on a 300mhz P2. However, character portraits and the interface would have to be rasterized to work in Java.

Verdict: Both have negatives. Flash runs (very) slow, but is fast to create. Java runs fast(er), but is (very) slow to create.

Claim 2: Flash input handling makes it unsuitable for most games.
http://armorgames.com/play/2893/achievement-unlocked
http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FP-542

When a flash "movie" tries to run at a high framerate... Flash allows it. And then it fails.

Flash rendering slows down, but input does not. This means that if a game wants 200fps, but the computer can only render 20fps, input can lag up to ~10 seconds because of how the flash input handling works. It buffers input, but doesn't skip any slots in the buffer. You get 200 slots per second at 200fps, but if it takes 10 seconds to clear the buffer, oh well. Once the buffer is clear, it accepts another second of input, then waits for it to clear again.

This makes playing flash games on slower computers (such as netbooks) quite challenging.

It's worth noting that flash also interferes with general IO. While the input buffer is overflowing (the time between the first second of receiving input until the buffer is clear) it garbages your keyboard presses and mouse movement/clicks, and also does something that screws up other IO on your system.

It has been reported that flash messes up monitoring software like SpeedFan, MBM, etc.; it's like it gets caught in an endless loop saturating all IO. I've seen systems reboot because they thought they were overheating, because of a flash movie not playing at 100% speed.

Adobe is ignoring these issues.

Verdict: It falls to the developer to pick a framerate that will run on slower systems.

Claim 3: Flash data handling makes it unsuitable for most games.
http://www.thewayoftheninja.org/n.html

Remarkable game. Unfortunately, your saved games may be cleared upon upgrading your flash player. Also, there's the insane input lag on slower systems.

Frequently I go to a website after upgrading my flash player, and all my old scores are gone. Oh well? I guess that may be a good thing - it also means every flash tracking cookie vanishes at the same time.

Verdict: Flash needs a second kind of storage - persistent storage - which is guaranteed not to be cleared at random intervals, or by upgrading the player.

Claim 4: Flash leaks like a bitch.
http://www.warpfire.com/
http

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.)

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

[RomSteady]

I think you are missing the point of the example given.

Microsoft isn't saying that they didn't implement both window.postMessage and window.addEventListener.

They are saying that if you want to test for the existence of feature A, you check for the existence of feature A and you don't infer its existence by checking for the existence of feature B.

Re:My favorite

[AKAImBatman]

I think you're missing my argument. The assumption that addEventListener should exist if postMessage exists is a good one. Why? Because postMessage relies on addEventListener. However, Microsoft decided that proper DOM support wasn't important to standards compliance, and implemented a bastardized version of the spec.

The example they gave as a solution is actually buggy. The original code checked for cross-document messaging and presumably would have fall-back logic if the feature didn't exist. Microsoft's "corrected" code does not correctly check for cross-document messaging. It simply assumes it exists and registers an event for it. Which is likely to break a lot of truly standards compliant browsers while "fixing" IE8.

Re:My favorite

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

IE8 will have full CSS 2.1 compliance? I'll believe it when I see it.

Instead of simply making assertions it's much more informative to compare CSS support by function, as in the following chart:

CSS contents and browser compatibility

From this it appears that IE8 DOES have improved CSS 2.1 support from previous versions, although it's still lacking in certain areas. The web's problem child has almost caught up to the rest of the class. Sadly, IE8's CSS 3 support is still far behind the curve :(

Re:My favorite

[AKAImBatman]

Just because they checked the box on the feature doesn't mean it works correctly. I'll grant that IE8 is better with CSS, but most of their "standards compliance" BS is just for show. Microsoft has no intention of supporting the standards that are in wide use. Instead, they focus on areas where their desktop APIs (i.e. Win32) won't be impacted. Thus the focus on complete CSS2.1 compliance. That lets them claim a commitment to standards without actually furthering the existing use of standards on the web.

Case in point: IE was the last major browser to reach ACID2 compliance (by a wide margin) and is the only upcoming major browser to score below 95 on the ACID3 test. (Around 20, if you're interested.) Most of the upcoming browsers that will directly compete with IE8 already support 100/100 on ACID3. That's a much more pragmatic test than Microsoft's checkbox fascination.

Microsoft isn't stupid. They know that the web is making their desktop lock-in obsolete. The last thing they want to do is help it along. That's why they're pushing Silverlight so hard. If they can provide Microsoft lock-in for web applications, they'll maintain the dominance of the Windows platform. In the meantime, they have to convince the public not to move to other browsers and give up their Windows/IE lock-in. Thus the box-checking on poor standards support.

Re:My favorite

[BasharTeg]

Acid2 isn't a standard. It also isn't a part of the test suite of W3C. Acid3 isn't a standard. It also isn't part of the test suite of W3C. It's a marketing gimmick of Opera and people lap it up like it is more important than real standards work from the W3C. Plus, Acid3 is more about DOM than CSS, and Acid3 tests for features that have not yet been standardized.

You can push for implementation of standards, but to knock someone's products because they haven't implemented DRAFT standard recommendations is just stupid.

And your claims that Microsoft isn't really implementing the CSS 2.1 standard correctly and that they're just "checking a checkbox" don't actually stand up to the test of reality:

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2009/01/27/microsoft-submits-thousands-more-css-2-1-tests-to-the-w3c.aspx

Your arguments are a subjective standard, you want to appeal to the W3C for "standards" authority, but then set the bar for judgement to be whatever "people are using" or whatever marketing gimmick "standards" test IE fails and others ALSO fail, just fail less.

Stick to the W3C standard test suites for an actual measure of standards compliance and leave the Acid tests to the fanbois who are out to prove a point. And don't talk about "standards" that are not yet standards.

Re:My favorite

[BasharTeg]

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?

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

If WebKit claims their CSS 2.1 support isn't done yet, I'm going to take their word for it.

Re:My favorite

[AKAImBatman]

Amusingly, I never stated that ACID2 and ACID3 were standards. I stated that supporting these tests are a pragmatic approach to optimizing resources for implementing parts of the standards. (The stated purpose of the ACID tests is to promote implementation of standards with immediate applications.)

The truth is that the fine details of the CSS standards are hard for EVERYONE to support. Including Microsoft. No one except Microsoft claims 100% CSS 2.1, because it would be disingenuous to do so. I've only heard that claim (incorrectly) assigned to Microsoft.

You can push for implementation of standards, but to knock someone's products because they haven't implemented DRAFT standard recommendations is just stupid.

This would be a good argument, except for one problem: Microsoft is implementing DRAFT standards while NOT implementing the RECOMMENDED standards they're based on. Want an example? Look up to the top post. Cross Document messaging is not yet recommended, but Microsoft is bound and determined to mis-implement it.

In any case, your argument betrays a misunderstanding of how web standards work. The current approach being used is that standards will not reach a recommended status until at least two successful implementations of the standard exist. The idea is that this will determine if the spec is actually implementable or not. (One of the primary reasons why CSS 1 & 2 are not fully implemented is because the spec was written without implementations. The spec ended up being extremely difficult to implement correctly.)

Now if Microsoft wanted to be the browser that would only implement recommended standards I would be fine with that. But they're not. They're explicitly picking and choosing, being careful to avoid the standards implemented by everyone else. ESPECIALLY the RECOMMENDED standards that would make IE compatible with other browsers.

What is the point of standards compliance if you're explicitly trying not to be compatible?

And that right there is why their standards compliance is a farce. A sick joke that's all about control for Microsoft. It's just sad that people are buying into Microsoft's friendly veiner, all while Microsoft slides the knife even deeper in their backs.

Re:My favorite

[hey!]

This is getting into the philosophy of ontology.

AKAImBatMan says: If exists(A) -> exists(B) and exists(A), then we should be able to assume exists(B).

RomSteady says: it it possible to test for exists(B), then we should test for exists(B), even if we believe exists(A) -> exists(B).

I think that you are both right. It comes down to a simple principle of design: contain unnecessary assumptions.

A web app developer, assuming that the browser won't violate your expectations is bad unless there is a compelling reason to rely on those expectations. It doesn't matter whether those expectations are reasonable, because even if the browser developer intended to honor them there many be bugs in the implementation.

For a web browser developer, assuming that developers won't rely on some aspect or implications of the standard that isn't (in your opinion) necessary) is bad. You should strive to meet as every expectation that is demonstrably implied by the standard.

I tend to wide with AKAImBatman's view a bit more, though. In practice the accumulation of "best programming practice" can result in code that is cluttered with exception testing. Developers when coding should deal with concepts rather than implementations, and creators of platforms should make this feasible as far as humanly possible.

Re:My favorite

[Blakey Rat]

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.

Yeah, they didn't. But they're making a good try here at fixing the problems, so fucking relax already. The only people who give a shit about web standards are web developers, and that's a very, very small percentage of the population. The amount of kicking and screaming and tantrum-throwing I read on this site on a daily basis is just crazy. Relax!

The example posted above is common sense, anyway. If you want to use "addEventListener," check for the existence of "addEventListener." Duh. Why would you check for anything else, anyway, except for being retarded?

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.

IE8 Standards mode??

[nurb432]

How about following the standards the rest of the world uses instead?

Re:IE8 Standards mode??

[Midnight Thunder]

How about following the standards the rest of the world uses instead?

Habits are hard to break ;)

Re:IE8 Standards mode??

[SirLurksAlot]

The rest of the world where? I'm as pro-standards as anyone else, but I hate to break it to you that most of the world is still using IE.

Yes, standards-compliant browsers are gaining more support every year, but it doesn't change the fact that with such a huge market share MS is still setting the defacto standard. This is especially true in the corporate environment. The great majority of corporate intranets are still using IE as their supported/required browser, and there is still A LOT of legacy web applications out there that rely on technologies like ActiveX to function. All that being said I'm glad to see Microsoft is finally starting to get with the program with IE8. Whether or not businesses start following suit and update their sites to be standards compliant is another question entirely, but I would hope that would be the case.

Re:IE8 Standards mode??

[tecnico.hitos]

IE is not compliant with IE standards.

Great....

[Chrono11901]

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

Re:Great....

[Blakey Rat]

Poor baby. If you were writing a desktop app, you'd have to test it in:
Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7 (possibly Server 2000, 2003, 2008 also)
Mac OS 10.3, 10.4, 10.5
Linux -- God knows! 3-4 versions of top 5 distributions, perhaps.

The only people who cares about web standards are web developers, and web developers already have less QA work than most other software fields. I feel like breaking out the tiny violin when I hear stuff like this.

I say forget IE

[Vu1turEMaN]

My websites will block IE8, and a message will pop up telling people to go download Firefox, Opera, or Chrome.

I tried IE8, and it is a pitiful joke. I'm not going to work around it, and Microsoft should realize I'm not gonna jump through hoops just to please their idiotic decisions.

*fully extends third finger in direction of Microsoft*

Re:I say forget IE

[Samschnooks]

I would suggest, if I may, that instead you show the web page without IE specific code showing all its ugliness and with a message that states that IE isn't standards compliant, you don't have the resources to code around IE's hacks, and that the user would be best served by Firefox, Opera, or Chrome.

This accomplishes two things: one, it shows that their browser isn't that good, and two, it shows other browsers are available and lastly, it doesn't just throw those folks out - otherwise, they'll just move on; unless you're the coder for the Wall Street Journal or some other website where the viewers are captive.

Re:I say forget IE

[Kozz]

My websites will block IE8, and a message will pop up telling people to go download Firefox, Opera, or Chrome.

For those whose whom their website is not tied to their livelihood, I suppose one can afford to be smug.

Re:I say forget IE

[Vu1turEMaN]

One could also consider that the time is ripe to throw IE off of its throne, and trying to conform to such shitty standards might actually make your website worse.

If MS really cared about the quality of their products, they wouldn't be releasing something that is this poor. In reality, they want to have their own set of standards for people to follow. We followed them for IE6 and IE7, and IE8 is where I draw the line.

Re:I say forget IE

[Blakey Rat]

So you dislike IE's lack of standards support breaking the web. And in response, you ... break the web.

Brilliant!

Why web developers should be dragged out and shot

[girlintraining]

People, the web is fine for multimedia and information presentation, but why is there this constant push to integrate everything into the web? There's all this crap being tacted onto what constitutes a "web browser" that it's becoming less and less a browser and more and more a platform every day. This is not the direction we want to go right now. A lightweight browser that can present information in a variety of devices is where the web needs to stay: Accessibility is more important than features. HTML, XML, CSS, and maybe some javascript is all the farther anyone needs to go. 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, and increasingly devices like mobile phones which have enough power to do the basics aren't enough because the standards are getting jacked up to the point that we have to cram a laptop's worth of computing resources into a form factor that can fit in your hand, and a battery life of less than a day.

This so-called progress is a step in the wrong direction. We need to work on a set of standards that can be implimented with minimal computational resources, is flexible enough to offer a range of presentation options sufficient for most information (images, text, some video and audio) -- and leave it at that. By extending the web into areas reserved for applications and then trying to do everything at once (cross-platform, intensive computations, entire application suites stuffed into web browsers) we are opening a can of worms that promises to segment the web into a million incompatible methods.

We need to work on making this information as available and accessible as possible, not coming up with fancy new ways to make it inaccessible to larger and larger groups of people in the name of progress.

Don't get "Compatibility View"

[krou]

Am I missing something here? Why the hell even introduce the idea of "Compatibility View"? That's just pure sloppiness.

Since when was it the browser user's responsibility (or even the browser's) to decide what mode a page should be viewed in? Isn't it the developer's job to tell the browser how to behave, and the browser does so accordingly, in a consistent fashion?

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

[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.

Bring back JAVA

[bussdriver]

JAVA: ahead of its time! NOW the things we want to do are what it could have been doing way before Flash could have filled the demand.

Applets were dismissed back when our needs were simple and our computers were slow.

1) Javascript is SLOWER than JAVA! (browser and flash use it)

2) Flash started out as a vector graphics format; now its a Director/HyperCard mess that is moving towards becoming an Applet platform itself. Flash 10 is NOT anywhere near the same as Flash 1. Its not just an animation format.

3) We have battles over JavaScript 2 at ECMA trying to turn JavaScript into a clone of Java and now the browsers are runtime compiling the script-- next will we start seeing pre-compiled javascript bytecode? (Maybe in Flash?)

4) "safe" platform independent access to web cams and audio hardware-- we have people running ARToolkit in FLASH from a webcam in real time! Its not a vector format anymore... its another kind of applet.

5) Java Applets need better integration; they've not progressed since people dismissed them in the 90s. Now its open; we should be trying to integrate it; catch up to where it should have been now if it were not so ahead of its time.

6) Java was designed to take on massive projects; flash and javascript are not. Java Applets should get DOM access so complex web apps can be made without making javascript a rerun of java-- this means tight integration and FASTER startup times. It could be done.

7) New formats can be done using Java without installing client-side plug-ins. Sure, it is not quite as fast and has overhead; these issues can be addressed-- Flash games are not so simple to startup-- its pre-loaded with the browser... and it has built-in loading screens... Java sure beats being unable to access something in Flash 10 when your setup is too old to install Flash 10. JVM is open now; flash is still risky (and crashes my browser more than anything else.)

ACID 2 Test

[caffeinejolt]

Currently less than 25% of browser usage can pass the ACID 2 test. It will be interesting to see how the release of IE8 affects this. Luckily for JS developers, projects like JQuery make cross-browser scripting WAY easier and less error prone. Hopefully broad support for an increasing subset of web standards will make cross-browser layout quirks less annoying for web developers. Overall I think the ACID tests are a good thing to measure this.

Re:ACID 2 Test

[socsoc]

The only thing that ACID does is encourage browsers to pass the ACID test. It does barely anything to encourage them to uniformly and accurately implement proper standards.

Bc/ of craptastic intranets

[Nicolas MONNET]

Early Microsoft web frameworks, circa 1998, generated code so ugly it should qualify as crime against humanity. The stench has contaminated many enterprises, which are stuck with those unmaintainable festering sores.
Looking at the javscript those beasts produced is fascinating; they could put ";" in places you never expected.

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

[Blakey Rat]

Is this a joke, or are you serious?

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"?

No. No.

You think that it's okay to pain "a very, very small percentage of the population" with compatibility problems?

Sure.

I guess you wouldn't give a damn about sewer system engineers or transportation system engineers or power grid engineers either, eh?

I'd wager that the web environment already has *orders of magnitude* more standardization than any of those jobs. But let's assume that's not true: you're asking:

"Do you also think that sewer system engineers should have to do more work because of a lack of standards in sewer systems?"

If that additional work is tied in to the success of their business, then hell yes I do. I think you were trying to paint me as a hypocrite there, but I'm not entirely sure.

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

I'm not against web standards. You seem to think I'm opposed to them; I'm not, I just don't think they're that big a deal. I'd much rather see Microsoft (or Mozilla or Apple or whoever) add more features for *users* of the browser and fewer for web developers. Web developers are already getting their share, let's make browsers easier for mom and pop for a change.

For example, Word has had splittable scrollbars (allowing you to see two parts of a document at once) for close to 20 years now. There's a standard OS widget for it in Windows and OS X. Why has *no* browser implemented this? I'd find that 100 times more useful than Microsoft making "object.textContent" work.

What, you never had to clean up a friend's IE6-spyware-infested machine?

You're changing subjects. The insecurity of IE6 has nothing to do with its lack of standards support. There's extremely little in the standards relating to security, and IE6 had all those parts nailed anyway.

99% of spyware is installed by people who pressed "Ok" when asked whether to install the software. I agree it's a problem, but it's a human problem and has nothing to do with the quality of IE6 as a product.

(Note: the only time I got a virus from the web was when using IE7. And the virus installed itself using a *Java* exploit.)

Only when their dominance was threatened did they rouse themselves to make any changes.

Ok...?

And now you think "they're making a good try here at fixing the problems"?

Yes, I do.

And you're ready to take what they serve you? You trust these guys? The same purveyors of stagnation?

Yeah. But part of the reason is that I'm not a brainwashed zealot like you are.

BTW "Purveyors of Stagnation" would be an awesome band name.

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.

Explain to me the importance of standards. Pretend I'm the average man-on-the-street, and tell me why Firefox's rendering of webpages is better than IE's. Seriously.

(It's hard, isn't it? Standards don't benefit anybody except web developers.)

What happens with standards and the web is pretty damn important.

Please. I'm a *web developer* and I don't think it's "pretty damn important." This is what I do for a living. The difference is that I started my career writing actual software, so I understand this concept that a lot of web developers have issues with, called "QA".

See, whether or not Microsoft or Mozilla or Apple or whoever follows the standards, you *still* have to QA in every browser. People on this thread are griping, gnashing their teeth, because Microsoft makes web developers (a tiny percentage of the population) do a couple more rounds of QA on their product. Get a grip.

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

I hate IE8

[ducomputergeek]

We have an online shopping cart system that renders correct in most browsers even going back to MSIE 5. We have a lot of users still browsing the site with IE 6 because of where they work and their lack of ability to install anything else. Still 70%+ of the traffic is MSIE. It renders fine on all platforms with Opera, FireFox, Safari, and Chrome. Even works on most cell phones with a javascript enabled browser including LG phones, Opera Mini, Blackberrys with 4.7 or greater installed, Blackberry storm, android, and of course the iPhone.

But MSIE 8.....the div with the "Add to cart" button doesn't even render. In MSIE 7 compatibility mode, it renders, but it splits the div into two elements on separate sides of the page for no reason that I can find. I am considering redirecting MSIE 8 users to page that says:

"Due to incompatibilities Microsoft creating in MSIE 8, we are unable to support your browser type. Our website will work with previous versions of MSIE or any standards compliant browser such as firefox, opera, safari, or chrome. We recommend you switch to one of these browsers for improved browsing of the internet."

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.

Re:No need for an article

[Rockoon]

Well Opera is "officialy" only at 9.64, so they got 36 more versions to actualy tackle this problem before it adversely effects its users.

Quite honestly, I love the browser. I have always been an Opera user from way back when I ran Win3.1. Opera was the smallest fastest graphical browser at the time and is still one of the best by those metrics. It has also always been ahead of its time in the feature war.

And even though its "browser share" is pretty pathetic, that doesnt count the real business that Opera is in: Browsers for devices, where it is pretty much the indisputed king.