The whole adherence to standards argument is based on an entirely different premiss to that which motivates Microsoft. You guys all think Microsoft should adhere to standards in order to make the web a better place, and to make the work of web developers and designers faster. If MS produced a browser that was compliant across several key standards (lets say (X)HTML, CSS1, DOM1 and XML) then design time would be drastically shorter, web design as a discipline would advance and the web would be a better place. There would also be a large range of user agents with which you could view all this standardised content, and IE would have a smaller market share.
Why would Microsoft want to do anything that might open up a market to competitors? If you can come up with a compelling reason for MS to give away market share (and you aren't Government) then let them know. If it standards-compliance guaranteed better dividends for MS stock holders, you can be damn sure they'd be doing it.
As regards MacIE5 - total standards compliance got them a lot of coverage and I imagine increased the MacIE userbase considerably. In this scenario it suited them to follow that course. Why should they act any differently?
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The whole adherence to standards argument is based on an entirely different premiss to that which motivates Microsoft. You guys all think Microsoft should adhere to standards in order to make the web a better place, and to make the work of web developers and designers faster. If MS produced a browser that was compliant across several key standards (lets say (X)HTML, CSS1, DOM1 and XML) then design time would be drastically shorter, web design as a discipline would advance and the web would be a better place. There would also be a large range of user agents with which you could view all this standardised content, and IE would have a smaller market share.
Why would Microsoft want to do anything that might open up a market to competitors? If you can come up with a compelling reason for MS to give away market share (and you aren't Government) then let them know. If it standards-compliance guaranteed better dividends for MS stock holders, you can be damn sure they'd be doing it.
As regards MacIE5 - total standards compliance got them a lot of coverage and I imagine increased the MacIE userbase considerably. In this scenario it suited them to follow that course. Why should they act any differently?