IE9 Preview Touts Cross Browser Compatibility

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 development team has announced the availability of the third IE9 platform preview release on the IE blog. Dean Hachamovitch writes, 'The third Platform Preview of Internet Explorer 9, available now, continues the deep work around hardware acceleration to enable the same standards-based markup to run faster. This is the latest installment of the rhythm we started in March, delivering platform preview releases approximately every eight weeks and listening to developers. You'll see more performance, same markup, and hardware-accelerated HTML5.' The announcement focuses on cross-browser compatibility, noting that when 'developers spend less time rewriting their sites to work across browsers they have more time to create amazing experiences on the Web.' Curiously, however, the video embedded in the page works only in some browsers. Dear Microsoft, IE9 supports many royalty-free, web-compatible formats out of the box (HTML, CSS, WOFF, PNG, and the like) so why not at least one more?"

Comments

Doesn't matter

[capnchicken]

I'll be writing shit web code for IE6 forever anyway.

Re:Doesn't matter

[WrongSizeGlass]

I'll be writing shit web code for IE6 forever anyway.

That really blows. We're informing our web clients that we're no longer supporting IE 6 and that any IE 6 visitor will land on a "nice, soft" page requesting that they upgrade to one of the many other available browsers. We just got one client to agree to upgrade their 25 employees from IE 6 to IE 8 (they already had FF installed but they have some 3rd party sites that require ActiveX).

If you're stuck doing it for an employer or client you may be better served by spending some time nudging them away from IE 6 because it will save you painful hours in the long run.

Re:Doesn't matter

[capnchicken]

When one of your biggest clients happens to be GM or Blue Cross, it doesn't happen very quickly or ever. I think there are still quite a few Win 2000 machines over there.

Re:Doesn't matter

[betterunixthanunix]

I am not a web developer, so I am a bit confused about why websites are unable to provide even a basic level of support for IE6 -- perhaps a simple page without any fancy effects that just gives people whatever information they were looking for. Is it really that necessary to use Javascript for everything?

Re:Doesn't matter

[FuckingNickName]

IE6 was the last time MS produced a fair browser rather than a poor "web app" delivery platform. Frankly, anything which doesn't work on IE6 probably doesn't need doing at all - I'm sure the content can be delivered without all the fancy effects.

If you're supplying me an app, choose or spec a client-server protocol / set of remote APIs and write a natively compiled client or one in a VM created for a well-engineered language and built to integrate properly with the native environment. That insidious free market will even be able to create competing front-ends so you get to deliver your services with the user's preferred presentation.

Re:Doesn't matter

[denis-The-menace]

Because IE 6 was designed to fail horribly when it can't understand the web page. Therefore web site developers have to make it work in IE or give it a way to fail nicely.

Re:Doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot is full of Javascript weenies. They're like the Visual BASIC coders of their time. Don't expect them to understand the engineering, quality of service, security and user interface problems inherent in delivering an app via Web 2.x.

Re:Doesn't matter

[capnchicken]

Because marketing won't like it unless it's the same across all platforms. I seriously got complaints one other time when text was shifted because of boxing or what the fuck all ever, I forget. It looked fine, independently, but QA has to make their money somehow. If I still worked at that last place I bet I would still have the ticket for it.

Re:Doesn't matter

[dagamer34]

Because that keeps enabling IE6. And providing even "basic support" takes a lot of work because of the number of hacks needed to make anything look decent. It's basically designing a different site just for IE6. No one likes doing that, which is why web developers want to explicitly not support IE6 to avoid that headache.

Re:Doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

Same problem here. Bank with 60,000 employers. All running IE6.

Now you try to explain the high up bank executive he needs to "upgrade his browser" without install rights when something "doesn't look quite right" during validation.

Nudging IT will only result in fear of taking risk ("it works now") and noone wanting to invest time and money in a upgrade while there are hundreds of projects running (planned up until 10 years in the future) and the IT-crowd already being under quite some load.

Cannot be done. IE6 slave myself until next client.

Re:Doesn't matter

[capnchicken]

Slashdot is full of Java weenies. They're like the Ada developers of their time. Don't expect them to understand the time to market, user interface ergonomics, scope creed, and pointy haired boss problems inherent in delivering an app on time.

Re:Doesn't matter

[hairyfeet]

They DO know that Win2K support ends in less than a month yes? I switched my 2K customers over to XP post SP2, and anybody that allows 2K loose on the net after EOL is just asking for it, as unlike Win9X most of the bugs that can hit XP WILL hit 2K as well and there won't be any patches.

As for TFA While I have been playing with IE9 I just haven't seen anything that would make me want to switch myself or my customers away from FF. Firefox with ABP has cut infections WAY down, and makes the web faster and easier to read to boot. Oh and for those that say I'm "ripping off web sites"? When I quit seeing drive by downloads and JavaScript malware o' the day I'll think about getting rid of ABP, not one minute before. JavaScript is becoming as big an attack vector as ActiveX was before it, and it is just too risky.

Re:Doesn't matter

[watermark]

IMO, with the existence of javascript libraries like jQuery or prototype, javascript isn't the issue. IE6 has so many bugs to keep up with (double margin, float bugs) that it forces you to create 1 1/2 websites (code that only runs on IE6 is the 1/2.) You tell it I want a a 6px border and place it 10px from the top and you can end up with a 12px border and 12px from the top. So you end up writing code to say, if its IE6, give it a 3px border and 8px from the top (knowing that it will double your 3px and add a few pixels to the latter.) So to answer your question, if we didn't write code specifically for IE6 (even without javascript) some sites would look so bad that they would be unusable in IE6. Stupid blue E.

Re:Doesn't matter

[Trevelyan]

If you still see websites as just online magazines then I guess you're somewhat stuck in the 1990's.

What you suggest is like asking: Why can't we make programmes also run on Windows 95, just without all the fancy effects of Aero?

Like it or not websites will become more interactive, even /. is using AJAX these days.
See also Google Docs, or http://www.jsdesk.com/

Re:Doesn't matter

[WrongSizeGlass]

We absolutely can provide 'basic' or better support for IE 6 but we make sure the entire site works the same in all browsers. The real questions is "how many man hours, and how much of our client's money, should we spend trying to handle IE 6 compatibility and functionality?"

Some of our sites are relatively simple and use formats & javascript libraries we've developed that support IE 6 without any issues at all. If a new or existing client wants this kind of site we don't "break" the IE 6 support - we simply let them know that any future upgrades or additions may not be able to do everything they want (either we can't add the 'fancy' stuff because it would require reworking of the infrastructure or it would break IE 6 compatibility). We always give them the option and if they are willing to spend the extra money on IE 6 compatibility we'll do it but we design the entire site to work the same in all browsers so they have a limited feature set to choose from.

We see dwindling IE 6 visitors but we're also aware that some of our clients still have a large percentage of IE 6 visitors. Because of that we don't offer certain features or enhancements to them. We're upfront about it and they are willing to live with the less fancy site as long as it meets the needs of their visitors.

Re:Doesn't matter

[WrongSizeGlass]

When one of your biggest clients happens to be GM or Blue Cross, it doesn't happen very quickly or ever. I think there are still quite a few Win 2000 machines over there.

Those monsters make changes at a glacial pace. You'll be on IE 7 by 2015. Good luck and invest in lots of ice cold beer.

Re:Doesn't matter

[betterunixthanunix]

"Like it or not websites will become more interactive, even /. is using AJAX these days."

Note, however, that the AJAX version of /. is not mandatory -- I do not use it, for example, because I prefer to keep Javascript disabled except when absolutely necessary.

Re:Doesn't matter

[betterunixthanunix]

"And providing even "basic support" takes a lot of work because of the number of hacks needed to make anything look decent"

So make it look indecent in IE6? Why is that necessarily worse than telling someone who, for reasons unknown, is continuing to use IE6 that they are not allowed to view your website unless they use the browsers you think they should be using?

Re:Doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

"Someone" is usually the person paying you to work. "Your website" may also be some critical piece of software that they need to operate their business. "Reasons unknown" is most likely some third party piece of shit web app that can't be upgraded without some major pain, ie obscene licensing costs, no upgrade path, whatever. Not everything is for public consumption.

Re:Doesn't matter

[Windows Breaker G4]

If you use CSS to format for the web, you hate IE6. It's basically that simple. Shit just doesn't work. Oh and it doesn't support transparent PNG files (unless they fixed that).

Re:Doesn't matter

[FuckingNickName]

I don't know about you, but I find it much easier to develop a cross-platform, high-level ("time to market"), integrated (SWT), and well-engineered (to handle "scope creep") client in Java than Javascript.

But I find it even easier to well separate the business and presentation aspects of my client (N.B. netizens: the client isn't only a place for rendering the Pretty) and write UIs using the native toolkit for the 2 or 3 environments I expect clients to use.

The whim of the PHB is a killer, but proofs-of-concept go a long way to demonstrate that you're an idiot to base your architectural decisions on the most awkward 2% of your potential clients. (N.B. if they aren't "potential" you cater for their particular devices, but still recognise that they're 2%)

Re:Doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

IE6 was the last time MS produced a fair browser rather than a poor "web app" delivery platform.

Obviously don't have the first clue about IE6. The browser has a huge javascript/COM API for "web app" delivery. The part that sucks is the "browsing" part, specifically CSS support.

Re:Doesn't matter

[morgan_greywolf]

When one of your biggest clients happens to be GM or Blue Cross, it doesn't happen very quickly or ever. I think there are still quite a few Win 2000 machines over there.

Ah. An EDS...errr..HP employee? I remember when IS&S over at GM was spouting off 10 years ago about their 'new' IT model was going to move faster and how they would never be stuck with legacy platforms ever again. When I told them it wouldn't work, they just laughed. Who's laughing now?

Re:Doesn't matter

[imakemusic]

Because it could double your development time and therefore development cost.

I agree with you...most of the time. Most people should design their sites for standards compliance and leave as is for IE=6. You can use a "IF IE 6" tag to show a banner at the top of the site saying something to the effect of "This site doesn't look right. That's because your browser is a piece of crap. You can, however, continue to use this site. It just won't look very nice or work very well. Here's a link to list of reasons why IE6 should die in a ditch." This, I think, is the best way to deal with the problem.

This is all well and good if your site is relatively simple (as most are) but the problems come when you're making a site that relies heavily on something that has to be done differently for IE6, such as JavaScript. For example, I don't know if Google Maps works on IE6 but I wouldn't be surprised that, for something of that complexity, most of the client-side code would need to be written twice - once for the standards and once for IE.

When providing even a basic equivalent of your site for a tiny percentage of the sites users almost doubles development time it just might not be worth it.

(note: for most sites "double" is an exaggeration...but I think my point still stands)

Re:Doesn't matter

[betterunixthanunix]

"For example, I don't know if Google Maps works on IE6 but I wouldn't be surprised that, for something of that complexity, most of the client-side code would need to be written twice - once for the standards and once for IE."

As it turns out, Google provides a non-Javascript version of Google maps, on which all the processing is done server side and then returned to the client. So, click on "+" (which is just hyperlink text -- no CSS) and a new page loads with a zoomed in map, and likewise for the other features.

Re:Doesn't matter

[Sleepy]

"I am not a web developer, so I am a bit confused about why websites are unable to provide even a basic level of support for IE6 -- perhaps a simple page without any fancy effects that just gives people whatever information they were looking for. Is it really that necessary to use Javascript for everything?"

Good question, but it's not that simple.

See, CSS and Javascript were DESIGNED to "fail gracefully". You could put some useful style on say a list or a heading, then use CSS to format it. If the browser support was not there, you would see the base elements.

Now this failback would understandably be UGLY (your prettified CSS list menu would look like a 1994 bulleted list), but it would WORK.

If Microsoft chose not to support the CSS standards, they could have done so. It's optional.

The ONLY way Microsoft could ruin CSS and Javascript was by agreeing to go along with the standard, and then change all the meaning. It's like if you spoke a slightly different language than your neighbor, and every 3rd word you spoke had different meaning to your neighbor (as in, every 3rd word was a normal term to you, but an unexpectedly offensive curse word to them).

If a browser did not support said standards, we could have all designed for CSS and IE6 would get a vanilla plain text page.

Microsoft knew that novice web developers would code and test in the "popular" browser first, then test other browsers afterwards. If that was how you developed, you were an unwitting tool in Microsoft's effort to destroy the open web.

It worked, for a time.

Then web developers revolted, by figuring out how to document Microsoft bugs. In the end, we developed this pseudo-language that ran on top of CSS and Javascript, so we could "hide" markup and styles from either IE or from the standards browsers.

All this effort wasted uncountable hours of web developers.

Was this deliberate sabotage by Microsoft? Let's just say that in the US anti-trust trial against Microsoft, emails from Bill Gates were revealed. Bill's emails essentially stated he didn't want to see MS developers "wasting time fixing bugs in HTML that only affect competitive browsers". (Meaning, if your HTML/CSS generation in some desktop app generates horrible invalid code... DON'T fix it... just let the IE guys know so they can write undocumented code to show your page "properly").

Literally, there's a story here how grass-roots web developers fought back to save the "information highway" from being effectively privatized as one company's property.

This is why so many people HATE IE and IE6.. even if they're not the type of people who normally hate Microsoft.

Re:Doesn't matter

[gad_zuki!]

I'd like to see people with IE6 browser just forced to use the mobile page. Kind of a passive aggressive way of saying "upgrade now."

Re:Doesn't matter

[Hurricane78]

Actually, there was no designing involved in the failing parts. The code just ran into unspecified territory. You could say the outcome was determined by natural selection. ;)

Re:Doesn't matter

[tepples]

IE 6 supports transparent PNG files that use indexed color (like a still GIF), just not grayscale or RGB ones.

Re:Doesn't matter

[imakemusic]

Hmmm...that's interesting. And quite impressive, really. Congratulations to Google!

However Google are a big enough company, and Maps is an important enough product that gets enough visitors, that it was worth their while to do this. For most people the extra time, cost and the low percentage of IE6 hits makes it not worth the effort.

Re:Doesn't matter

[Windows Breaker G4]

OK they changed that then, back in the day it didn't support PNGs, they'd appear with a grey background. That shit was so annoying, had to use javascript to make it make the PNGs work as they should (well it sorta worked).

Re:Doesn't matter

[Windows Breaker G4]

Actually here's a link on the issue http://24ways.org/2007/supersleight-transparent-png-in-ie6

Re:Doesn't matter

[Hurricane78]

Well, not exactly. It does not force you to do anything. It’s the irrational need to support the die-hards and thereby reinforce the belief that their behavior is correct.
Meanwhile 99% of the web users regularly update their Flash client because otherwise the sites “stop working”.

So in my book it’s the own fault of the industry, that it did not have the spine but the irrational fear to lose the worst part of their customers.

I quickly dealed with this, by making using their “the site does not work” logic on themselves: The “browser outdated” error page I redirected them to, looked exactly like the genuine IE error pages. Including a link to complain to customer support to fix IE’s bugs. To the users it looked like their browser failed. So they fixed it. Done. :)

Re:Doesn't matter

[Rockoon]

The real questions is "how many man hours, and how much of our client's money, should we spend trying to handle IE 6 compatibility and functionality?"

Thats for the client to decide.

Its as if you think that if IE6 was eliminated from the landscape, that you would get to do the job in less time for the same money. Thats not how markets work. If your job gets easier, so does your competitions job.

Re:Doesn't matter

[ClaraBow]

Why couldn't you advice your clients to keep IE 6 for older sites and to use a newer browser for future development? Firefox with IE tab? Just curious why this isn't a solution.

Re:Doesn't matter

[BenEnglishAtHome]

If you still see websites as just online magazines then I guess you're somewhat stuck in the 1990's.

I am, I suppose, well behind the times. Some years ago, websites were able to publish information and update the databases they sat in front of (to do things like take orders for merchandise or carry on a conversation), all over secure connections. Thus, in the beginning the web established usefulness as a publishing medium. Then it was a tool to get things done.

Since then, pretty much everything I've seen in various "WebX.0" applications has done the same stuff in different ways.

So...beyond what we had years ago, what sorts of "interactivity" actually serve a useful purpose?

I'm not trying to be an obtuse old man. Seriously, I'd like to know. Maybe there's some really useful thing that I should be doing via the web that I'm not doing now. But I can't really think of what that might be and I'd like some help to figure it out. What new interactivity justifies the visual pollution and system crud that are (apparently) required to make use of it?

Note - "Mobile" apps don't count. I can understand why I might need some specialized program when I'm trying to get something done while moving around. I haven't bought into the "I live through my smartphone" lifestyle, though. I'm asking about things that are useful to me when I sit down at my desktop computer.

Re:Doesn't matter

[diegocg]

IE6 has approximatedly a 10% of browser share, and it's falling quickly. Why bother.

Re:Doesn't matter

[steelfood]

Easy. Just put it into a flash applet and you're guaranteed cross-browser compatibility.

And people wonder why Flash is so popular on the web.

Re:Doesn't matter

[pandronic]

Note, however, that the AJAX version of /. is not mandatory -- I do not use it, for example, because I prefer to keep Javascript disabled except when absolutely necessary.

Paranoia much?

Re:Doesn't matter

[b4dc0d3r]

What about using conditional includes, which IE supports, to display a message that says "this website will look like crap until your idiotic browser is updated"? You seem to be mostly worried about layout, a better example would be one of those bugs where legit code actually hides or overwrites content. An ugly but functional website is one thing, a non-functional website is a whole different story and equally possible.

If your customer is a corporate type entity then you code to what they want and inform them support is going away so you can't be responsible for an unsupported platform. But as long as they are paying your 1.5 websites are just more profit.

Re:Doesn't matter

[arclyte]

That's very true... but if you're developing a google maps mashup site you would need to develop maps using the static API, doubling your work...

Re:Doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

A browser is not a development tool, it's an information access tool for the users.

What you or your client use for web development is irrelevant, what mattes is what your *users* will use - and whether you can require them to use some specific browser or not to access your site.

Either way, expecting them to use one browser to use one site and another browser to use the newer sites is a horribly bad idea. I'd say it is an absurd requirement, but I've seen it happen enough in intranet environments and corporate web-applications for arcane reasons - suffice to say it does not work well.

Re:Doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to deal with an old busted BMC web app that manages to crash Firefox with IETab at a low enough level that the crash handler doesn't even get involved. IETab is more of a convenience than a real solution.

Re:Doesn't matter

[kimvette]

I'd like to invite you to check out the lynx and links web browsers.

The problem with MSIE6 is that it adds nonstandard extensions to HTML and CSS, does not (natively) support the full PNG spec, it is pathetically insecure, it adds padding to certain HTML elements in a lot of situations where everybody else assumes padding=0 so by making a web page in standard HTML/XHTML that looks gorgeous in every single other web browser will be horribly broken in MSIE6.

MSIE7 and MSIE8 have progressively gotten a TON better but they still don't handle broken pages gracefully (see the acid3 test) and will still degrade to MSIE6 compatibility mode, encouraging corporate web developers to be lazy and keep things as-is.

Now, as far as "fancy effects" go - those "fancy effects" led to the possibility of google docs, web-based photoshop elements replacements, online banking that doesn't take weeks to navigate (do you have an AmEx account? Log into your account on AmEx and you will see online commerce done right), and even legal free and low-cost on-demand video programming, and online classes. It also allowed for the building of "community" web sites that made the whole world a lot smaller, connecting people from nearly every nation.

It also allows us to research products better before we buy, so when companies post their products online they can post a LOT more detail than they ever did in printed brochures, and you can educate yourself so that salespeople who nothing about the product beyond what their commission is won't steer you wrong.

You can stick to the web as it was circa 1997. I'll take today's "web 2.0" (wait, did I just say web 2.0?), thankyouverymuch. And, I'll be very happy using non-Microsoft browsers.

Re:Doesn't matter

[DarkWicked]

As a web developer with more than ten years experience who doesn't use any kind of "IE only" hacks and code, I disagree.

IE wastes time, because it's the only browser that needs extra care, but when you know what it can and can't do properly, you know how to code css that just works on every browser, IE 6 included, without hacks and without extra CSS files for IE.

Writing extra IE-only css code is a sign of incompetence.

Javascript is a different matter, but jQuery takes care of that problem just fine (mostly).

Re:Doesn't matter

[cc1984_]

Surely something like this at the top of any intranet page that requires IE6:

<!--please_render_using_ie6-->

would solve it. You'd get a better browser for most sites, and anything that requires IE6 could be sandboxed away into a separate tab/process with minimal effort on the company's part (just grep the html header and add the comment underneath. The only problem is that Microsoft would have to bundle IE6 with all versions of windows along with the current IE

Re:Doesn't matter

[RobertM1968]

I'll be writing shit web code for IE6 forever anyway.

That really blows. We're informing our web clients that we're no longer supporting IE 6 and that any IE 6 visitor will land on a "nice, soft" page requesting that they upgrade to one of the many other available browsers. We just got one client to agree to upgrade their 25 employees from IE 6 to IE 8 (they already had FF installed but they have some 3rd party sites that require ActiveX). If you're stuck doing it for an employer or client you may be better served by spending some time nudging them away from IE 6 because it will save you painful hours in the long run.

When your "clients" are "anyone who uses the Internet and may be interested in your product or information" such a tactic does not work. Trying it, and checking the bounce rate on Google Analytics will confirm this.

Re:Doesn't matter

[tlhIngan]

That really blows. We're informing our web clients that we're no longer supporting IE 6 and that any IE 6 visitor will land on a "nice, soft" page requesting that they upgrade to one of the many other available browsers. We just got one client to agree to upgrade their 25 employees from IE 6 to IE 8 (they already had FF installed but they have some 3rd party sites that require ActiveX).

If you're stuck doing it for an employer or client you may be better served by spending some time nudging them away from IE 6 because it will save you painful hours in the long run.

Ironically, companies are using that "feature" as a reason to stay on IE6. Seems people can't view YouTube/Facebook/etc using IE6, which means companies avoid having to actually do filtering. The IT policy simply states that IE6 is the only browser, rather than saying YouTube/etc are blocked.

So businesses may pay to stick with IE6 just because all those "non work" websites don't support it. And suppliers get stuck supporting IE6 because otherwise they'd lose a customer.

Just for a few more years, though. A few more years... business can't stay with IE6 forever, after all. But for the next few years, everyone trying to push people away from IE6 may just keep people on it...

Re:Doesn't matter

[RobertM1968]

When one of your biggest clients happens to be GM or Blue Cross, it doesn't happen very quickly or ever. I think there are still quite a few Win 2000 machines over there.

Ah. An EDS...errr..HP employee? I remember when IS&S over at GM was spouting off 10 years ago about their 'new' IT model was going to move faster and how they would never be stuck with legacy platforms ever again. When I told them it wouldn't work, they just laughed. Who's laughing now?

Probably those in management who got nice bonuses or kickbacks for selecting the platform they did. And when they can (and probably do) justify the relentless improvement/upgrade cycles to upper management as the "cost of technology advancement" and repeat the same scenario ad-infinitum, I doubt a single red flag is raised. If you think about it that way, chances are, you will be the one to stop laughing, while those who picked and set up such a system will keep on laughing...

Re:Doesn't matter

[RobertM1968]

I am not a web developer, so I am a bit confused about why websites are unable to provide even a basic level of support for IE6 -- perhaps a simple page without any fancy effects that just gives people whatever information they were looking for. Is it really that necessary to use Javascript for everything?

Or anything but the most basic HTML? Or CSS? Yeah... I guess if you skip all of those, it's possible...

But here's the thing... doing that also means doing a bunch of extra work for the "IF IE6..." section. It is more intelligent to spend that time adding a bunch of IE6 workarounds to get the same functionality that users of better browsers have.

The only other alternative is to have a very basic site with limited capabilities for everyone - in this day and age, for any complex site, or content driven site or high content site, that's not really an option.

Re:Doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

This. It's trivial to serve up a basic page, or even a working page without some of the bells and whistles - in fact getting them looking exactly the same isn't really difficult if you're allowed to reign in the designs, but when the designers/marketers want pixel perfect cross-browser visuals AND lots of visually impressive things going on, that's where you hit the big issues. And in any event the code will be full of horrible kuldges and IE-specific fixes which makes it difficult to port or maintain in the future.

Re:Doesn't matter

[RobertM1968]

Actually, there was no designing involved in the failing parts. The code just ran into unspecified territory. You could say the outcome was determined by natural selection. ;)

Or... you could say it was designed into it in many areas where Microsoft intentionally ignored standards and inserted their own method of doing things. I would agree with you, if it weren't for all the memos, emails and such that went back and forth at Microsoft about trying to kill Netscape dominance by doing such things (see the DOJ case against MS for more info).

While the PP may seem like a conspiracy theorist, the fact is, ensuring web code would fail on IE unless written to Microsoft's specs/"standards" was indeed an intentional move on their part, combined with their push into the business world for their various technologies that only worked on IE. The intent, as I noted above, was to ensure that they would gain more marketshare over Netscape and take the Internet playing field away from them. They succeeded, and hence, we have IE6 (and IE7 and IE8) to code workarounds for.

I for one still remember the day of going to websites that were IE6 only...

Re:Doesn't matter

[RobertM1968]

Well, not exactly. It does not force you to do anything. It’s the irrational need to support the die-hards and thereby reinforce the belief that their behavior is correct.

It's RATIONAL to support the 60% plus Internet base out there, in order to have a site that can continue to make money (because one sells a product or information) regardless of one's desire to see IE6 die a horrible and quick death. Fixed that for ya!

Meanwhile 99% of the web users regularly update their Flash client because otherwise the sites “stop working”.

So in my book it’s the own fault of the industry, that it did not have the spine but the irrational fear to lose the worst part of their customers.

I quickly dealed with this, by making using their “the site does not work” logic on themselves: The “browser outdated” error page I redirected them to, looked exactly like the genuine IE error pages. Including a link to complain to customer support to fix IE’s bugs. To the users it looked like their browser failed. So they fixed it. Done. :)

Meanwhile... prompting people with what seems like a malware message, since they already ignored Windows' suggestion to upgrade IE to a more recent version (via Automatic Updates), probably wont work very well. While it works for high profile software that people need to see their pron and YouTube (Flash), it for whatever reason, doesnt seem to work very well when applied to IE - instead, people simply dont come back to the site (unless you've got something very unique to offer).

Re:Doesn't matter

[RobertM1968]

As a web developer with more than ten years experience who doesn't use any kind of "IE only" hacks and code, I disagree.

IE wastes time, because it's the only browser that needs extra care, but when you know what it can and can't do properly, you know how to code css that just works on every browser, IE 6 included, without hacks and without extra CSS files for IE.

Writing extra IE-only css code is a sign of incompetence.

Javascript is a different matter, but jQuery takes care of that problem just fine (mostly).

Makes a rather boring and "old fashioned looking" site... heck, you cant even do xmlHTTPRequests without an IE only hack. Or border spacing of certain elements. Or border thickness. Or dynamic and static DIV placement. Or a variety of other very simple CSS stuff.

But yeah, I guess if one skips all of that, one can make a site that works in everything without IE conditionals. Probably not a good idea nowadays except for simple sites.

Re:Doesn't matter

[FuckingNickName]

"Web app" referred to HTML+Javascript, not an ActiveX control. ActiveX is essentially a method for throwing a native Windows app into a browser window, and Slashdotters hate it because in a corporate environment it just gets the job done. And why just get the job done when you can push new, bloated tech for its own sake?

Straight information (a web of hypertext) can be presented with the limited CSS support of IE6. But the pointless marketing department demands to make the page look pixel perfect (I don't want a bloody sales brochure, I want content) will fail. As will attempts to build a modern app UI using HTML+Javascript.

Re:Doesn't matter

[nschubach]

They DO know that Win2K support ends in less than a month yes?

What if you don't need support? ;)

Re:Doesn't matter

[RobertM1968]

Not according to NetMarketShare and others. The marketshare is still higher than that.

As a point of reference to how it would affect us... with 17% marketshare, one of my sites has 170,000 unique visitors that would be "left out in the cold" if I did not support IE6. That number is higher per other browser share sites that point to around 20% and around 23%... meaning near a quarter of a MILLION potential lost site visitors/customers.

Perhaps if you run a small site with a few visitors, (let's say 1000), then losing 170 or 200 or 230 of them isnt a big deal (well, to me it would be, but to each their own)... but as it is now, our site is moving to a very big high profile site that gets 10 times the unique visitors... meaning 1.7 million visitors (to 2.3 million) that cannot properly use the site.

Not bothering is thus not an option for us....

Re:Doesn't matter

[Noughmad]

Microsoft would have to bundle IE6 with all versions of windows

Oh the horror!

Re:Doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll be writing shit web code for IE7 and IE8 forever anyway....

IE8 even when it's css2 is a lot better, it still has problems, and doesn't support any of the fancy css3 styles...

IE7 is still a headache... Thank god we dropped IE6, for the last 2 projects...

Re:Doesn't matter

[WED Fan]

Funny, that's what they told the Navy. They still have IE 6, with some workstations having IE 7, and they are just beginning to roll out Office 2007.

Re:Doesn't matter

[Hal_Porter]

Yeah, I don't get it either. A long time ago I worked on a web app that supported IE3, IE4 and Netscape. All the layout was done with tables. Validation was done both on the server and in JavaScript. We sniffed the browser and turned off JS if the browser was not whitelisted. The site would still work - it just needed to round trip to the server if a form contained an invalid date for example. On a browser with decent JS support you could skip that step and reduce the server load a bit.

IE3 was very quirky, IE4 wasn't too bad and Netscape got most stuff right even though it was a bit old. But the corporate desktops we were aiming at demanded IE3 compatibility so we made sure that we didn't need much sophistication on the client.

Why it's "OMG totally impossible" to support IE6 is frankly beyond me.

Re:Doesn't matter

[blai]

Flashy does not imply interactive.

Re:Doesn't matter

[Nadaka]

Opera isn't the only browser that needs extra care, its just that it needs a retarded amount of extra care.

Example: Take a select, input, button and textarea. Set them to have the same width, border, padding and margin (non-zero). Look at it in every browser. Do they appear the same width? NO! they do not. The margin of error is different between gecko, webkit, opera and ie.

Re:Doesn't matter

[jellomizer]

Because designing a page for modern browsers. You put in all the new cool effects to enhance the user experience... (Normal non-tech people actually like a nice modern interface). If you are going to make a non-effect version that is just more work for you to do... For a small group of people who should upgrade anyways.

Re:Doesn't matter

[betterunixthanunix]

"those "fancy effects" led to the possibility of google docs, web-based photoshop elements replacements, "

Neither of which I use -- there are plenty of desktop applications, including no-cost applications, which are just fine for that and generally do more.

"online banking that doesn't take weeks to navigate"

I have never had any trouble with online banking, and I doubt it is because I am some kind of super-leet hacker.

"even legal free and low-cost on-demand video programming"

Which I saw and used prior to the existence of Youtube and similar websites.

"online classes"

Which I have seen done just fine without any Javascript

"It also allowed for the building of "community" web sites that made the whole world a lot smaller, connecting people from nearly every nation."

Hm... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fidonet

You know, part of the problem here is that you are failing to separate the implementation of an idea from the idea itself. Really, Javascript is only necessary to implement half the things you said on the web, and the web is not necessary to implement any of the things you said. None of what you said is even unique to the web.

Hey, you can make fun of me all you want, and claim that I am stuck in the 90s, but there is really nothing that Javascript heavy websites bring to the table except for fancy effects in web browsers.

Re:Doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

because I prefer to keep Javascript disabled except when absolutely necessary.

luddite

Re:Doesn't matter

[wastedlife]

So you will be writing security updates for Windows 2000 by yourself, or backporting them from XP? Or just hoping that firewall and antivirus are all the updates you need?

Re:Doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

My Win2k clients run in a virtual machine with no network adapter on an Ubuntu host. What's your next excuse why I should "upgrade" to the new shiny?

Re:Doesn't matter

[wastedlife]

Swing and a miss. This thread is quite obviously discussing large corporations running windows 2000 on its workstations. These boxes will no longer receive security updates. I don't care where they move to(linux, mac, or update windows), but they should get off that sinking ship.

Re:Doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

These boxes will no longer receive security updates. I don't care where they move to(linux, mac, or update windows), but they should get off that sinking ship.

Yep, our sentiments exactly.

Re:Doesn't matter

[Tubal-Cain]

Why? If they're ripping up their old infastructure to upgrade, it makes no sense to move to IE7 when moving to IE8/9 would be just as easy. Then again, moving to a proper browser shouldn't be much more difficult, either...

Re:Doesn't matter

[VGPowerlord]

er... Windows XP is 9 years old... not exactly "new shiny".

Out of curiosity, which Ubuntu version are you using? 6.06?

Re:Doesn't matter

[VGPowerlord]

Just minor things like... form input validation for your database update forms without having to do a form submit. Auto-complete for common fields. Drop-downs that can be updated based on what you select from another drop-down.

Oh, and fancy UI stuff too, but since you wanted information related to publishing information and updating databases, I limited my response to those activities.

Re:Doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

Out of curiosity, which Ubuntu version are you using? 6.06?

8.04 and it's been very true to it's name. In 2 years when the next LTS comes out we'll upgrade then. Going from one version of Windows to the next is not even comparable with upgrading to newer versions of Linux. For one, negotiating the license fees for Ubuntu is a hell of a lot easier:). Guess that's why we made it through the recession while many of our competitors didn't. Keep our little secret between us though. It's always nice to have an ace in the hole.

Re:Doesn't matter

[danaris]

Why? If they're ripping up their old infastructure to upgrade, it makes no sense to move to IE7 when moving to IE8/9 would be just as easy. Then again, moving to a proper browser shouldn't be much more difficult, either...

Because part of the reason companies like that take so long to change is that they've got to test a given piece of software for 5 years before they can certify it as reliable enough. So they're going to start testing IE7 later this year, and then certify it in 2015 ;-)

Dan Aris

Re:Doesn't matter

[danaris]

Hey, you can make fun of me all you want, and claim that I am stuck in the 90s, but there is really nothing that Javascript heavy websites bring to the table except for fancy effects in web browsers.

And there's nothing that a GUI brings to the table except for fancy effects on a computer screen?

If you seriously can't see any useful purpose for Javascript, then I submit that you really don't understand people, software functionality, or the ways of the world in general.

Dan Aris

Re:Doesn't matter

[nschubach]

Well, if they are single purpose boxes sitting behind a firewall, with few/no users (depending on corporate purpose) then having a security update is going to matter in about fractions of a percent of the time. If you have someone constantly downloading and installing crap, you might have an issue.

I ran 2000 right up until two years ago then XP with little to no updates or virus software. I ran/run this box without issue (and yes, I did check every so often to see if there was a problem.) In fact, this box (my gaming XP box) remains without virus software and the latest SP because it's simply not needed.

Re:Doesn't matter

[ya really]

It was probably developed more for phones that do not have great javascript abilities (such as black berries) than for IE6.

Re:Doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and the prices for web development go down across the market. The barrier to the higher market is eroded and competition returns or grows more fierce.

Even if they are getting paid to do it, most honest people don't like to waste time. So, spending 1.5-2 times as much on web development just so your client's site can support a 10 year old, intentionally shitty browser probably isn't the best use of resources for your client, and it's likely frustrating for the people doing the work - even if they are paid to do it. They would like to code to worldwide standards a single time and get on to handling the next job/client.

Re:Doesn't matter

[ClosedSource]

Sure, but those "painful hours" may be all that's keeping your job from being outsourced.

Besides what business succeeds by putting developers ahead of customers? And customers don't really like you to train them even if it's better for them in the long term - they'll just find someone who will do it their way.

Re:Doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have the first fucking clue what you are talking about, slashtard. You really don't.

Come back when you've stepped up from FrontPage.

Re:Doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one still remember the day of going to websites that were IE6 only...

And as an old Mosaic (slightly modified) user, I still remember those Netscape-only sites that predated the IE-only sites. Netscape had a lot of bling-bling, but less actual functionality than Mosaic, so I stuck with Mosaic as long as I could. Then I had to run IE for a year, before Opera could render most web pages on the web. I still miss a decent web-site visualising/mapping/preloading tool in todays browsers, there are some firefox extensions and a similar built-in tool in Opera, but they aren't nearly as good.

My Swedish banks homepage is IE-/Netscape-/Safari-only. It won't work fully in Opera or Chrome (and if a transaction goes wrong, its your fault, the bank takes no responsibility if you use the wrong browser), and not at all in Links2 (despite support for all the important stuff (certificates and encryption)). As there are more Opera and Chrome users respectively in Sweden then there are Safari users, this shows that Mac users are more important than any other people.

Most Swedish government and regional government sites only supports IE and Firefox and you can't use NosScript on them, not even in blacklist-mode, despite that they have very little interactive content.

If you wan't to do taxes or do any other online interaction with the Swedish governement, you have to use Microsoft Windows (at least XP) or Mac OS X. Despite that most "poor" people run an old computer that won't run any of those operating systems (I would guesstimate half of them use W95 and half of them use Ubuntu). "Poor people" in Sweden means immigrants (even if they have an higher education (or get one in Sweden) or some valuable skills, they usually get stuck at low pay jobs, it is much harder to learn a useful level of Swedish than English, but thats only part of the problem).

Re:Doesn't matter

[BenEnglishAtHome]

I don't write code so I would have never thought of those things. You're right; those are nice bits of useful functionality (as long as we don't pay too high a price in speed or security - but that's another discussion).

Thanks. I appreciate the response.

Re:Doesn't matter

[Rockoon]

Even if they are getting paid to do it, most honest people don't like to waste time.

Citation needed.

... just so your client's site can support a 10 year old, intentionally shitty browser ...

Citation needed. You know what Steve Jobs said about that so called "intentionally shitty browser"? Oh look, its in my sig.

... probably isn't the best use of resources for your client

If its not the best use of the clients resources, then why are they paying for it? Are you claiming that your clients are stupid and that they dont actually benefit from legacy browser support? Really?

They would like to code to worldwide standards a single time and get on to handling the next job/client.

Yeah, everyone wants their job to be different. Cry me a fucking river.

Re:Doesn't matter

[hairyfeet]

Hmmmm...why does that sound familiar? Maybe because I've heard the same kind of bullshit here and here.

Of course what is sad is that you insist on jumping into the middle of what was obviously a discussion about large enterprises that are still running Win2K on their workstations with a completely pointless and off topic "But I run Linux!" and didn't even have the balls to stand up for your supposed "beliefs" and post from a real account. Is your self esteem running Linux REALLY that low?

Re:Doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, get a life, jackass!

Re:Doesn't matter

[RockDoctor]

So you will be writing security updates for Windows 2000 by yourself, or backporting them from XP? Or just hoping that firewall and antivirus are all the updates you need?

Plus sacking a couple of employees each month for going outside the company intranet. "Pour encourager les autres", as Voltaire used to say.

Re:Doesn't matter

[RobertM1968]

I for one still remember the day of going to websites that were IE6 only...

And as an old Mosaic (slightly modified) user, I still remember those Netscape-only sites that predated the IE-only sites.

Yes, but the part you forget to mention is that they also predated Internet Explorer as well.

Re:Doesn't matter

[badkarmadayaccount]

Oh, yeah, that's why they were so happy to drop it for Safari. Also, it was, and technically is a good browser - for its purposes - namely, to lock people in.

Re:Doesn't matter

[hairyfeet]

At least I'm not the one jumping into discussions of enterprise OS management to brag about using an OS that is simply a poorly made ripoff of OSX.

Cross Browser Compatibility?

[tsalmark]

Is that a euphemism for standards compliant?

Re:Cross Browser Compatibility?

[The MAZZTer]

Browsers can be made to be standards compliant. Web pages can be made to be cross-browser compatible (since not all browsers are standards compliant).

Re:Cross Browser Compatibility?

[capnchicken]

Nope, they don't want to be tied down to such non-marketable terms such as "standard" or such constricting terms like "compliant".

"Cross Browser" sounds WAY sexier and "compatible" sounds much less like they HAVE to do something.

Re:Cross Browser Compatibility?

[tsalmark]

Right, so how is a Browser development team working towards cross-browser compatibility? Me thinks it is market speak for "embrace extend extinguish".

Re:Cross Browser Compatibility?

[starfishsystems]

Nah. Microsoft seems pathologically unable to acknowledge the possibility of an objective standard.

A few browsers which more or less by accident behave similarly, now that's a vision that Microsoft can get behind! That situation can be manipulated. Objective standards, on the other hand, are the enemy of relativism.

Re:Cross Browser Compatibility?

[Dracos]

Yes, that makes it seem like they're going out of their way to avoid using the phrase "standards compliant". People familiar with IE's history of compliance should take this with a grain of salt. Maybe redmond is slowly starting to realize that the web isn't about their browser, it's about standards. Or it's just another case of their usual corporate verbosity.

Re:Cross Browser Compatibility?

[Anonymous Coward]

If multiple browsers behave the same way, it's a de-facto standard, even if it's not blessed by ISO or the W3C.

Re:Cross Browser Compatibility?

[Richard_at_work]

Even when following standards to the letter, not all browsers produce the same result - there are plenty of examples where both Firefox and Safari 'get it right' according to the standard, and yet produce different results. Accommodating these sorts of things is also covered under the term cross-browser compatibility.

Re:Cross Browser Compatibility?

[IntlHarvester]

No, "cross browser" accurately describes what people want. Nearly always, when some internet nerd starts whining about "standards-compliance", they no clue what the standards actually are, and what they really mean is "Make it work like Firefox".

Realistically, there are hundreds of "standards" which no browser supports, and there are numerous de facto unofficial standards which people expect to work. (Prime example of the latter is transparent PNGs.) "Cross-browser" accurately describes this set of common pratices.

Re:Cross Browser Compatibility?

[IntlHarvester]

Actually, Microsoft is generating a tons of CSS test cases, which more of an objective measure than the checkbox marketing which usually is used by browser vendors.

Re:Cross Browser Compatibility?

[IntlHarvester]

(Apologies for replying to myself.)

The biggest problem when discussing web standards is that the vendors themselves propose the standards. So Apple is the most compliant with Apple's proposed standards, while Microsoft is the most compliant with Microsoft's proposed standards, etc. From the W3C's POV they are all the same, while the marketplace sorts these things out into common "cross-browser" features versus things which are considered "proprietary".

In other words, nobody cares that CSS3 rounded borders aren't an official "standards compliant" feature, it is a "cross browser" feature and they want rounded fucking corners on their website.

Re:Cross Browser Compatibility?

[Sleepy]

If you are an optimist, Microsoft's promise of "cross-browser compatibility" means:
      We will properly support the standards - AND THIS TIME we REALLY mean it!!

If you are a pessimist (or I might add, a realist) then Microsoft will make this an OPTION - and non-default at that... and when you select it, you are warned about losing certain web features or compatibility (similar to how they warn you against saving Office files in any "open" file format).

Re:Cross Browser Compatibility?

[naoursla]

Easy. When the spec is ambiguous you look at the competition and implement the spec in the same way as the majority.

Re:Cross Browser Compatibility?

[Blakey Rat]

I don't know if you've noticed, but the standards are pretty shit. (Well, HTML5 is much better.) All browsers venture outside of the standards for various things, so it's more important to be cross-browser compatible (i.e. venture outside of the standards in the same direction the other guys are going) than it is to be strictly standards-compliant.

Re:Cross Browser Compatibility?

[Simetrical]

Nope, they don't want to be tied down to such non-marketable terms such as "standard" or such constricting terms like "compliant".

"Cross Browser" sounds WAY sexier and "compatible" sounds much less like they HAVE to do something.

It's very easy to write standards-compliant pages that don't work in any browser at all. Just try writing up some XHTML2, for instance. It's even easier to write standards-compliant pages that don't work in all browsers consistently: not all specs are implemented by all browsers, specs are sometimes vague, and implementations have bugs.

No, the important thing is that the same markup works, exactly the same, in all browsers. Standards are only a means toward interoperability, and a lot of people tend to forget that. It's why we don't have standards for things that don't affect interoperability, like UI or black-box-invisible implementation details. Microsoft is totally correct to focus on the goal of getting their browser to work the same as others in practice, not just mechanically following standards to the letter.

Re:Cross Browser Compatibility?

[Simetrical]

(Apologies for replying to myself.)

The biggest problem when discussing web standards is that the vendors themselves propose the standards. So Apple is the most compliant with Apple's proposed standards, while Microsoft is the most compliant with Microsoft's proposed standards, etc. From the W3C's POV they are all the same, while the marketplace sorts these things out into common "cross-browser" features versus things which are considered "proprietary".

In other words, nobody cares that CSS3 rounded borders aren't an official "standards compliant" feature, it is a "cross browser" feature and they want rounded fucking corners on their website.

Okay, so you've never actually participated in the W3C or any other standards organization. Thanks for letting us all know. Implementers pay some (not all) of the people who write and edit standards at the W3C (and elsewhere), but they write things that all implementers are willing to implement, and do.

In fact, W3C specs cannot progress to Proposed Recommendation unless they have two fully independent, interoperable implementations of every single feature. The HTML5 spec at the WHATWG has an even stronger requirement: if any major implementer refuses to implement a feature, the feature is dropped, and this has happened more than once. (Most famously, the Theora support requirement, but also Web Databases, etc.)

Typically, browser vendors use the W3C to agree on what sort of functionality authors and users want most, and then cooperate to work out a standard. Usually they try focus on the same areas and implement things more or less in sync, because a) that way authors will be able to use the features faster, and b) as soon as one browser implements something, everyone starts pestering the others with "Why does this work in their browser and not yours?"

And by the way, a version of border-radius was in W3C drafts since at least 2002. It was implemented with vendor prefixes per CSSWG policy, because it wasn't in a Candidate Recommendation yet and was subject to change. In fact, it did change, so -moz-border-radius (IIRC) behaves slightly differently from the final border-radius. It was always a standards-compliant feature.

Re:Cross Browser Compatibility?

[IntlHarvester]

My goal wasn't to discuss the W3C process, rather to highlight how it's not that important in terms of what developers perceive to be "standards".

And no, I don't think littering the web with "-moz-" and "-webkit-" counts as "standards compliance".

Re:Cross Browser Compatibility?

[Anonymous Coward]

hurrrrrrrrrrrrrr, we don't have standards for behind the scenes implementations
duuuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrrr, try writing a web page to comply to a non-implemented, non-recommended working draft spec it won't work ANYWHERE and that's a STANDARD
Stop implying that maybe you know a thing or two about participating in W3C and waving your little e-penis around for all to see.
Can you be anymore of a know-it-all dick?

Re:Cross Browser Compatibility?

[Simetrical]

My goal wasn't to discuss the W3C process, rather to highlight how it's not that important in terms of what developers perceive to be "standards".

I agree with that: de facto standards are more important than de jure standards, and the goal of the latter should only be to establish the former (or else they'll be ignored). However, it's not at all true that "Apple is the most compliant with Apple's proposed standards, while Microsoft is the most compliant with Microsoft's proposed standards, etc."

Now accelerated to pwn your machine 100% faster

[Rogerborg]

With smoother and more convenient Ring 0 integration than ever!

Re:Now accelerated to pwn your machine 100% faster

[Hurricane78]

Hey, he’s not trolling but exactly right. This exact thing is the single biggest problem with IE.
If I missed them taking it out of there (Got proof? Since MS did already lie about this more than once.), I take my statement back.
But if not, the moderator is the troll here.

Re:Now accelerated to pwn your machine 100% faster

[cnettel]

What part of IE is or has ever been running in ring 0?

Better Is Better Than Worse

[WrongSizeGlass]

At least IE 9 will be much closer to "standards compliant" that all the other versions of IE combined.

Dear Microsoft, IE9 supports many royalty-free, web compatible formats out of the box (HTML, CSS, WOFF, PNG, and the like) so why not at least one more?

I guess it can't hurt to ask, but I doubt MS is going to come that far in just one major version upgrade.

Re:Better Is Better Than Worse

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 7 vs. Vista?

Re:Better Is Better Than Worse

[L4t3r4lu5]

IE9 supports many royalty-free, web compatible formats out of the box (HTML, CSS, WOFF, PNG, and the like) so why not at least one more?

Is this a game of "Spot the Star Trek reference"? Because I think they spelled his name wrong...

Re:Better Is Better Than Worse

[TheRaven64]

Apparently it's actually a font format. I had to look it up - it looks more like a racial slur than a standard name.

Re:Better Is Better Than Worse

[Anonymous Coward]

They changed the interface in Vista and they changed the kernel in 7 ... or did they?

WebM will probably fail

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet Google doesn't even care if it succeeds; odds are, they have it out there to put pressure on MPEG-LA with respect to licensing fees. They're not going to suddenly switch YouTube over to all WebM.

I know y'all want a totally unencumbered codec to win out here, but there probably isn't one in existence, and the leading candidate isn't as good h264.

Also, companies like Apple and Microsoft aren't actually conspiring against open source, nor do they have a financial incentive to see WebM lose out on patent litigation grounds (they don't make money from MPEG-LA licensing).

Re:WebM will probably fail

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet Google doesn't even care if it succeeds; odds are, they have it out there to put pressure on MPEG-LA with respect to licensing fees.

Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner.

Re:WebM will probably fail

[betterunixthanunix]

Also, companies like Apple and Microsoft aren't actually conspiring against open source,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents

Re:WebM will probably fail

[westlake]

I bet Google doesn't even care if it succeeds; odds are, they have it out there to put pressure on MPEG-LA with respect to licensing fees. They're not going to suddenly switch YouTube over to all WebM.

The enterprise cap on H.264 royalties is $5 million/year.

That is the cost to Google.

The cost to Disney/Pixar - and it covers every distribution channel and outlet the mega media corporation owns.

Broadcast. Cable. Satellite. Internet. Cellular...

The independent tv broadcaster has the option of paying a one-time charge of $2500 per H.264 encoder or on a sliding scale beginning at $2500 for markets of less than 500,000 households.

If you are self-hosting freely distributed - feature length - videos on the net - and god alone knows why - this is probably the limit of your exposure.
               

Re:WebM will probably fail

[Anonymous Coward]

... (they don't make money from MPEG-LA licensing).

Actually they do, especially MS (apple has only one patent in the pool; MS has many.) But both probably pay out more than they earn

Re:WebM will probably fail

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't; MS pays in far more than they get from MPEG-LA:

Microsoft pays into MPEG-LA about twice as much as it receives back for rights to H.264.

That's not making money. Having patents in the pool doesn't mean you profit from it, which is what some stupider slashtards seem to assert when the topic comes up - that Apple (and Microsoft) somehow make money by supporting H.264.

Re:WebM will probably fail

[Midnight Thunder]

The enterprise cap on H.264 royalties is $5 million/year.

That is still a hell of a lot of money. You can charge me a one off distribution fee (even that is OTT), but taking a slice of my distribution costs, especially for content I am not charging for is ridiculous. Is a site simply showing holiday videos or product samples meant to be pay every time it is shown?

Re:WebM will probably fail

[shutdown -p now]

They're not going to suddenly switch YouTube over to all WebM.

Huh? They're already doing that.

the leading candidate isn't as good h264.

There have been some tests on Theora vs WebM vs H.264. The latter rips everyone to shreds in high profile, with WebM in the middle, and Theora far behind.

But that isn't really used for web streaming today in practice, and e.g. most smartphones can't decode it fast enough. Compared to H.264 base, it's a match - depending on the specific video, either WebM or H.264 gives picture that is very slightly better, for the same file size. Theora still lags behind in most cases.

Long story short, for web streaming, it's "good enough", and better than the only other open option available at the moment.

Re:WebM will probably fail

[Ant P.]

You're the one with no grasp on reality.

Do you seriously think people watching Youtube videos give a shit about microscopic differences in encoder quality?

Re:WebM will probably fail

[Rockoon]

I think the uploaders of videos do.

TRANSLATION OF MS SPEAK:

[Anonymous Coward]

CROSS BROWSER: It works on multiple flavors of Internet Explorer
STANDARDS BASED: MS Standards, 'natch!
LISTENING TO DEVELOPERS: No, actually they do listen. MS doesn't actually DO anything, but they do listen.
THE WEB: Any site written to work with Internet Explorer. The rest of the sites are NTW (Not The Web).

Cross Browser - Hehe

[Herkum01]

Bill Gates: IE9 will support ALL browsers

that's right both of them.

IE6 AND IE7!

And yes I like country music!

Re:Cross Browser - Hehe

[cjjjer]

FYI: Bill Gates has nothing to do with M$ anymore, if you are going to bash M$ please use Steve Ballmer as the whipping boy now.

kthanksbye

Re:Cross Browser - Hehe

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, Steve is a bigger target.

Re:Cross Browser - Hehe

[KarmaMB84]

I'm pretty sure Bill Gates is still the chairman but no I don't think they has a LOT to do with Microsoft anymore.

Re:Cross Browser - Hehe

[TangoMargarine]

Dang! I was going to make that joke. But what about IE 8?

freetards

[Anonymous Coward]

another freetard wanker article. joy.

Whoah that's about time, i'd almost believe it..

[SchizoDuckie]

Too bad that the IE example doesnt properly in Chrome because it *requires* hardware accelleration (if that's either to their crappy javascript or the amaaaazing speedup they finally got working i'll leave in the middle) The Good thing though: It really works! I put it through it's paces with Peter Nederlof's (A.k.a. Clay) 3d javascript engine to see what part is crappy and what's working, and for now it looks AWESOME! The only thing that doesn't seem to work is click tracking on the canvas. speed wise it's quite similar to Chrome! Test urls: http://www.xs4all.nl/~peterned/3d/ http://www.xs4all.nl/~peterned/demooo/duck.html http://www.xs4all.nl/~peterned/demooo/cubes.html

Cross browser compatibility

[dimethylxanthine]

Except it's not much use when your 20% of browsers are still on IE6 (stats).

Microsoft supports H.264

[Yvan256]

And that's a good thing. I'd rather see them support H.264 than WMV.

Re:Microsoft supports H.264

[PerfectionLost]

H.264 is still a proprietary codex.

Re:Microsoft supports H.264

[Hurricane78]

And still, nobody cares. ;)
The specs are available. There are open source codecs (=encoder/decoder) for it.
And nobody cares what MPEG LA wants.
They gave the information out, and did not demand something in return. Now it’s too late. <stew-beef>MPEG LA, go fuck yourself!</stew-beef> ;)

Re:Microsoft supports H.264

[Anonymous Coward]

H.264 is still better than the alternatives, and it's already in wide spread use. Not only that, but because most movies on blue ray already use it, backing it allows for multiple devices to play it without needing to transcode/re-encode the video which will always result in a loss of quality.

http://techdrag.com/

[Anonymous Coward]

ohh nice to hear but i love firefox....IE should work a lot to beat firefox

Quick!

[WeatherGod]

Someone check the temperature in Hell!

Re:Quick!

[Crudely_Indecent]

Still rather warm.

The problem I foresee is supporting multiple versions of the same browser. IE6, a 10 year old browser (in August) still holds 7.1%, IE7 (nearly 4) holds 9.1%, IE8 holds 16% and now yet another IE version on the way. http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

How many conditional statements will I need to support 4 versions of IE?

If anything, it's getting hotter (for developers)

Re:Quick!

[butlerm]

Unless you are writing a wide audience Internet facing e-commerce site, I would forgo any special measures to support IE6 completely. That is what Microsoft wants you to do. IE6 is so old that going out of your way to support it is usually a waste of time.

IE7, on the other hand, probably needs to be supported for two more years, and IE8 for five, on most general purpose websites. Seven years is more than enough.

Re:Quick!

[KarmaMB84]

The idea is for IE9 you'll be running the same code as for Firefox, Chrome and Safari... then you only have to worry about the other IEs until they die off.

Re:Quick!

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe try feature detection rather than regex'ing the user agent string?

the same can be argued about every browser on any given support matrix; write platform-version proof code instead of forking for every browser.

Re:Quick!

[Crudely_Indecent]

Oh, right....because the 7% still running IE6 are going to stampede over to IE7/8/9.

I'd be willing to bet that after 3 or 4 more years, the IE6 share will be as low as 4% maybe even 3%. By then, we'll have IE10, and 5 IE versions to support.

Re:Quick!

[Crudely_Indecent]

Feature detection, wow, what a concept.

I could then bank on 38% effectiveness (lowest score held by IE)

https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Browser_Feature_Detection

Relevance

[DIplomatic]

Maybe IE9 will offer a plugin that removes annoying, offtopic /. comments.

Headline: IE9 TOUTS IMPROVED WEB PERFORMANCE, OFFERS TEST DRIVE

Slashdot Community: "IE6 blows!" "Down with M$!!!!1" "You'll have to pry Firefox from my cold, dead fingers!"

Come on guys, can a brother get some comments on the facts of the article, or what?

Re:Relevance

[innocence18]

I've always wanted to say this....you must be new here

Without Firefox...

[Hurricane78]

Did anyone else think that we really have to thank the Mozilla team for this? Without Firefox, none of this would have happened. Wed’d still use IE6.

Firefox tends do go a bit downwards in quality, lately. But I don’t care. Thank you, Mozilla team! Every single one of you. Everyone who installed and promoted it. And the team who made the great logo and CI, that’s so fashionable that non-geek women put in on their t-shirts.
*grabs web-Oscar, steps down from the podium and runs away with it!*

Re:Without Firefox...

[shutdown -p now]

Firefox tends do go a bit downwards in quality, lately.

I don't want to debate this point in general, but it's worth noting that Firefox 3.7 alphas (which also have Direct2D hardware acceleration) match IE9 performance on those canvas demos.

Still, it's a good thing that IE9 brings this to the table. It's like what Chrome did to JS - after they rolled out V8 with its insane speed improvements, and everyone saw the numbers, there was a rush of all browser writers optimizing their JS engines, adding JIT and whatnot - so even those who don't use Chrome benefit from it. Now we'll see the same thing with hardware acceleration of SVG and canvas - again, even if you don't use IE9, you benefit from it.

Re:Without Firefox...

[Blakey Rat]

Did anyone else think that we really have to thank the Mozilla team for this? Without Firefox, none of this would have happened. Wed'd still use IE6.

Firefox tends do go a bit downwards in quality, lately. But I don't care. Thank you, Mozilla team! Every single one of you. Everyone who installed and promoted it. And the team who made the great logo and CI, that's so fashionable that non-geek women put in on their t-shirts.

And if Netscape hadn't screwed the pooch in the first place, IE wouldn't have obtained monopoly position, and Microsoft wouldn't have been able to stall on one version for 5 years without losing marketshare. Remember, Netscape is the one who said, "competing with Microsoft is *hard!* Let's just give up!"

And it's great that the Mozilla team was able to take the baton and run with it, but they also wasted years on an idiotic suite-type product when it was obvious to everybody that what people wanted was *just* a web browser. Imagine how much time was wasted by their adding in the kitchen sink before Firefox took over their development attention. So Mozilla screwed the pooch there.

And there's also the issue that the standards were such shit at the time IE and Firefox were being developed that IE's biggest crimes are basically: 1) wanting to implement a standard before it's implementation was clarified from the vagueness that is all W3C 1.0 drafts, and 2) wanting their browser to be backwards-compatible with pages made for the previous version of their browser. So there's the W3C screwing the pooch... (with a minor assist from Microsoft)

So, you know, there's all that.

Re:Without Firefox...

[ducomputergeek]

I would argue that Apple et. al. and Webkit is forcing Microsoft to up their game rather than Mozilla/Firefox because of the mobile market. Very few outside of Mozilla uses FireFox's rendering engine. Google, Palm, Apple, and soon Blackberry are all adopting webkit. That means in the mobile market there is webkit with an overwhelming dominance in that market. Especially when RIM switches their browser. I see very few Windows Mobile devices anymore and even those I do see are usually running some version of Opera.

Mobile, whether you like it or not, is where the growth in browsers are now. People are going to start going towards appliances rather than computers at home. Now in my 30's I'm part of that group. I've had a MacMini hooked up to my TV for years. It rarely gets used as a computer, it's a media appliance. I use an iPad for surfing the net and email. I also have a Wii, which if it wasn't for 5 years worth of iTunes purchases I could probably get buy with just the Wii and NetFlix + Hulu.

HTML5 Canvas Support

[butlerm]

The best part about this preview is the addition of HTML5 Canvas support, the lack of which would be a serious impediment to cross platform deployment of a large number of useful applications.

Re:Whoah that's about time, i'd almost believe it.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a chrome problem, not a test problem or even a webkit problem. Safari runs the new Asteroid Belt demo just fine at about 15 FPS.

oww shut up you!

[superduude]

there is no best concerning internet explorer, except for the announcement that microsoft apologizes for it, and all ie's will self destruct..

IE9 and WebM

[VGPowerlord]

I saw another article over at The Register about the new IE9 preview.

There was one section I found particularly interesting in there:

And speaking of standards, director of IE product management Roger Capriotti told The Reg that although patent-backed H.264 is Microsoft's video codec of choice for IE9, it will also support Google's recent open source gift to the world, WebM/V8, if a user has that codec on their machine. However, Redmond has yet to make a decision, Capriotti said, about how to handle the open source Ogg Theora codec.

So... IE9 will support WebM if it's installed, but not Theora.

While this is not supported out of the box, this could actually be a tipping point for WebM.

Without IE9's WebM support, things looked like this:

H.264 support: IE, Safari, Chrome
WebM support: FireFox, Chrome, Opera

In that case, H.264 looked like the winner. But if you add IE9 to the WebM column, you suddenly have support for WebM from everyone but Apple.

Now the trick will be to convince MS to support this out of the box...

Re:IE9 and WebM

[shutdown -p now]

Now the trick will be to convince MS to support this out of the box...

I suspect it would go like this:

1. Wait for a few years to see if Google (or someone else) gets sued over WebM.

2. If the above doesn't happen, add support for WebM out of the box.

Why risk it when you can let others do so at their own expense?

In the meantime, if WebM becomes the codec for YouTube, I'd expect OEMs to preinstall it on sold machines in the same way they typically preinstall Flash (and other crap) today. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised to see Google pay them for it (they already have some deals with them regarding Chrome, IIRC).

Re:IE9 and WebM

[Infernal Device]

IE9 will support WebM if it's installed, but not Theora.

I somewhat support this. Codecs should be system libraries and provide support equally to all requestion applications, rather than an application specific library.

Re:IE9 and WebM

[RocketRabbit]

I think that Google is only half-interested in WebM. If they were really interested in seeing it take off, they would switch YouTube to WebM only.

Until we see a move like this, I am pronouncing WebM dead on its feet, or at best an also-ran like Realplayer is now.

Re:IE9 and WebM

[FredMenace]

Probably doesn't matter that much, because the main reason to use HTML5 video anytime soon will be to support the iPhone/iPad - everything else must still support Flash (for the ~50% of browsers that are IE 6-8). But the Flash will work in other desktop browsers, and on Android phones going forward, leaving only the iPad/iPhone incompatible. So the predominant HTML5 video format for the next few years will likely be whatever Apple is supporting (H.264), with others being entirely optional.

Re:IE9 and WebM

[mxh83]

It does not seem to be having any impact currently even if it gets built in. Youtube still asks for flash unless you explicitly ask for the webm or H264 version. It would be trivial to detect the browser agent and accordingly send in H264/webm if supported, but no, flash is still used.

This problem is only getting worse with chrome integrating flash and even pdf. With such behavior can you realistically tell me that browsers are the reason why google is not ditching flash? No, there are other factors involved.

Re:IE9 and WebM

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you not have any concept of how much video YouTube hosts? Not that I have the figures myself, but it is a hell of a lot, and even with Google's resources it will take them a long time to convert it all, they are already offering it on some of YouTube videos, but I doubt they are anywhere near being ready to offer it on all of them.

If Google didn't really care about WebM, why go the to expense of buying On2 for the codec? And why open themselves up to potentially very expensive patent lawsuits?

What Google could (and should) do is offer a download of the codec for visitors to YouTube using IE9, but IE9 hasn't been released yet, so it is a bit premature for that.

Reminds me of a situation I had with a new phone..

[SharpFang]

back then I was scrapping for money, camera phones were relatively new, I needed a digital camera and couldn't afford one, and I could get a phone with decent camera, with a contract, for very reasonable money. And I needed a new phone anyway.

So I picked one. It could make photos okay, but to get them I could only send them through MMS to my email, for exorbitant fees. To download them I needed a special RS232-based cable... and the dealer didn't have them. No import, not available, if ordered from the net, including shipping, it would cost more than the phone, and about as much as a digital camera. But hurray, there are cheap chinese USB cables that supposedly work!

And they do, for everything EXCEPT downloading the photos. A 3rd party app can download thumbnails of the photos. The official app doesn't recognize the cable. The fora are filled with people asking how to get the photos, the universal answer is "get the official cable".

Quite pissed off, I first hacked together a RS232 cable using the plug from the chinese one and a handful of electronics. I found out the only difference from the "unofficial RS232" was that official had DTR and RTS shorted, the knock-off - unconnected. Still not satisfied I began reverse-engineering the AT command set the phone used to talk with the computer. I found commands to request list of photos, download and delete them, then how to extract the photo from the junk the phone sends as reply to request... I wrote a Perl app that worked with any serial, even the emulated RS232 over USB. It was clunky, it worked from command line only, but it worked with any cable.

I posted it on the official fora. To my surprise, instead of ban&delete, I received a surprised question from the developers: Why? Why would anyone want to use it? We have the official app which is infinitely better!

I explained how there are no official cables in my country. How I bought a phone for the camera, and I can't use the camera. That I understand they want to profit from their cables, but sorry, I feel cheated, I want to use the camera. Oh, and I listed an extract from first page of the support forum, about 20 posts of cable problems, to which my program was a solution.

That was the last I used my app. A new version of the official app was released less than a week later, and it ignored the DTR/RTS, working correctly with all cables.

Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot looks like hardware accelerated shit in IE9. I can't blame Microsoft because I know how nasty slashdot's open sores really are...

because...

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Microsoft, IE9 supports many royalty-free, web-compatible formats out of the box (HTML, CSS, WOFF, PNG, and the like) so why not at least one more?"

the reason they dont add that one more format is because fuck you.

not a grammar error, it's because fuck you.

apple is the new microsoft and microsoft is just a conglomerate of fuck you.

am i the one...

[Anonymous Coward]

am i the only one that realizes that microsoft is touting less fail in their browser? they didnt get close to beating any browser they are competing with.

IE9: now with 50% less fail!

Selective FUD marketing

[gedw99]

The video shows the demos playing in IE and then shows them not working properly in other browsers.
Its a very aggressive way to do a demo and quite hideous because the intetn with html5 is to allow harmonious support, but instead MS use these demos to highlight what they can do and other browsers cant.

This is chilling different from how Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome do their demos. They are not using their demoes to create FUD about other browsers.

It pisses me off how aggressive MS are and they cant help themselves resorting to FUD again and again.

This marketing tactic USED to play well into Microsoft hands, because they had market dominance and control over what browser comes with the OS.
NOW, its actually closer to the other way around in many countries where in reality Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox are the dominate player.

So, i would like to invite Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox to actually start playing this FUD back onto Microsoft and selectively doing demos that show their features working better then Microsoft's. Its really a pertinent point because they are now in the dominant position in many markets.

It is actually Microsoft's horrible FUD tactic being played back on them - pay back.

Re:Selective FUD marketing

[KarmaMB84]

No, instead of creating demos to show IE is bad, Google researchers just publish zero-day exploit code for Windows.

Safari has that level of support already

[ThrowAwaySociety]

So... IE9 will support WebM if it's installed, but not Theora.

While this is not supported out of the box, this could actually be a tipping point for WebM.

Without IE9's WebM support, things looked like this:

H.264 support: IE, Safari, Chrome
WebM support: FireFox, Chrome, Opera

In that case, H.264 looked like the winner. But if you add IE9 to the WebM column, you suddenly have support for WebM from everyone but Apple.

Apple/Safari will support Theora if the Xiph quicktime component is installed, too. So Apple already offers the same level of "support" for Theora that Microsoft is promising.

Requiring users to download and install some codec is probably a non-starter in both cases, though.

Re:Safari has that level of support already

[ToddDTaft]

Requiring users to download and install some codec is probably a non-starter in both cases, though.

While it would be better if free codecs were included "out of the box", I wouldn't say it's a non-starter. There are an awful lot of systems out there where the user has chosen to install Flash. If major "trusted" web sites required WebM, Theora, etc., I would expect that most users would install the appropriate software to view that content, just as many users install Flash today.

Re:Whoah that's about time, i'd almost believe it.

[Rockoon]

Safari runs the new Asteroid Belt demo just fine at about 15 FPS.

For me:

Opera 10.54 : 31 FPS
Safari 533.16 :20 FPS, but doesnt work right (only animates when receiving user input, FPS is mostly without displaying anything)
Chrome 5.0.375.70 : 1 FPS
IE9 Preview : 60 FPS

So Opera is the only official browser that can run that Asteroid Belt Demo.

Cross Platform?

[toddbloom7]

Great. I can't wait until they post a .dmg file so I can download it myself and try it out! Oh, wait....

Thanks, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Microsoft,

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me repeatedly, shame on me.
You've made non-compliant (and crap) browser, time after time - and you expect to be trusted?

No chance. Give up
Sincerely,

Anyone with an IQ above about 80

Re:Thanks, but...

[VGPowerlord]

No, no, no...
It's:

Fool me once... shame on... shame on you.
If you fool me, can't get fooled again!

-- George W. Bush

Because those are standards; WebM is not

[gig]

HTML, CSS, WOFF, and PNG are vendor-neutral open standards. So are AVC and AAC. WebM is not a standard.

W3C and ISO/IEC are standards bodies and Google is not. An AVC-based YouTube competes fairly with all other Internet video, but WebM creates incompatibilities and confusion that will drive publishers to YouTube.

HTML, CSS, WOFF, PNG, AVC, and AAC are not vulnerable to submarine patents, and WebM is.

There is a ton of content in HTML, CSS, WOFF, PNG, AVC, and AAC, and there is nothing in WebM.

AVC is the same video from iTunes, iPod, iPhone and other smartphones, Blu-Ray, QuickTime Player, FlashPlayer, set-top boxes, and is built into all the hardware, including PC GPU's. If the Web uses nonstandard video publishers have to work in 2 formats, defeating the standard.

The point of HTML5 is to standardize the Web. Using a nonstandard video format defeats the that purpose. If you're not going to respect standards then just make HTML4 or Word documents. Replacing Flash with WebM is not standardization.

Re:Because those are standards; WebM is not

[butlerm]

Using a nonstandard video format defeats the that purpose

You have got to be kidding. WebM is freely available. H.264 is not. Both are well specified. The former is likely to become far more predominant than the latter due to the lack of patent encumbrances. That means WebM is likely to become far more "standard" than H.264 will ever be.

H.264 is well on its way to becoming the Mac of the codec word. Precious, rare, and expensive.

I have some questions about text and HTML5

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not a web developer and I use the web primerily for reading. So I'm mostly interrested in how HTML5 and future CSS (whatever version number that will have) will effect how text is presented on a web page.

1. Do any HTML5-browser plan to support a decent word-wrapping algorithm and good handling of white-space. Do the future HTML/CSS specification allow better word-wrapping or is it standardised on the current worst common denominator.
2. Do any browser plan to support Opentype Advanced features and, again, will the future HTML/CSS standards allow it.
3. Do any browser plan on adding real support for OpenType CFF, using cubic Bézier spline outlines, or will they continue to approximate those with quadratic Bézier splines. And, again, will the HTML/CSS standard allow it.
4. Will the future HTML/CSS standard be flexible enough to support turning of font hinting (effects the size of glyphs and hence the layout of a page). So that those that use high resolution screens get an optimum reading experience (today high resolution screens is mostly used in small screen devices and ebook readers).

Without support for basic typographic features, support for custom "Quality Fonts", becomes something of a joke.

I would also like to know where Microsoft put up those demo web pages in the video, so that I could try them with other browsers.

Re:Reminds me of a situation I had with a new phon

[badkarmadayaccount]

That phone wouldn't be a Nokia 1680 classic, would it?

Re:Reminds me of a situation I had with a new phon

[SharpFang]

nope. Sagem MyX5-2