That a search engine is able to harvest this kind of data just proves that some people don't know what they are doing. Forgive me if I seem judgmental, but these people are probably the same people who think Windows XP is the next step and that IE is the only browser in the world. But as is proven again and again, ignorance backfires. Not only are they attacked by viruses and worms and have all backdoors and security holes exploited - they are ignorant enough to leave users' data in the open, for everyone to get.
Google's comment was:
"The primary burden falls to the people who are incorrectly exposing this information."
This is where they should have stopped. Those who find their credit card information in a search engine will learn a lesson and use services that actually take care of their customers' security and privacy. Google shouldn't have to clean up incompetent people's mess.
In the long run, these things can only lead to the ignorant (wannabe?) players in the market slowly dying because they don't know what they are doing.
I personally hope someone gets a taste of reality here, and that only the serious players survive. The MCSE crowd may finally learn that there's more to it than blind trust in their own (lacking) ability.
I think "LionMan" perhaps was speaking in more general terms. Microsoft products are widely used, and therefore, there is a greater chance that someone will discover security holes. Generally, it would be easier to patch these holes and even check for other security holes if one had access to the source code.
Security through obscurity only works until someone discovers a security hole. Once it's "in the wild", you are at the mercy of the software vendor to fix the problem and release the fix to the public. This can often prove to be too little too late. With the speed a worm or virus currently spreads, the damage is most likely done before you can manage to install the fix.
This, of course, is common knowledge, and one could discuss advantages and disadvantages of closed-source and open-source all day. The fact is that both solutions have advantages and disadvantages. The problem with closed-source is that once a security hole is public, there's often nothing you can do to fix it, perhaps apart from taking down your server. This can prove to be catastrophic if your business relies on it.
If one absolutely wants to go for closed-source software (and security through obscurity), perhaps one should consider a product which is less widespread and therefore not under as much scrutiny as the big players?
- "How about CSS1 and CSS2. Mozilla has the best support of CSS1, while having partial support of CSS2. Opera has partial support of CSS1. (IE has broken support of CSS1 and broken partial support of CSS2)."
Correction - Opera supports all of CSS1. Opera also has just about complete CSS2 support with a few exceptions, like limited styling of form elements, aural CSS (Opera is a visual browser), as well as a couple of other things.
Opera is one of the browsers with the best CSS support. Mozilla and Opera both do CSS far better than any version of IE anyway.
But claiming that Opera does not support CSS1 completely (which it does 100%) and not CSS2 at all (which it almost does completely), is wrong. Just FYI:)
-"Mozilla does not have built in AOL."
And who needs AOL anyway? 8)
Apart from that, I agree with your points. I don't like WYSIWYG editors either, and Opera needs better support for themes (which will come soon, AFAIK). And yes, Opera costs money and isn't free as in speech either, which is probably an important point to some.
Yes, some have complained that the game looks like a Q3 mod. Thankfully, these people spoke too soon - before they actually got to see the real game in action. Judging from early reports, RTCW is actually a step forward for the genre. For example, you can now demolish just about any surface in the game. So rather than sneaking through doors, you could potentially blast the wall open and make a one man army attack. Must be a blast (sic).
I hope you realize that by doing a "feature by feature" comparison, you can make any product appear to stand out from the others, by selecting the features carefully. I can tell you why Pong is a better game than Quake 3, for example: Pong has a bouncing ball, Quake 3 does not. Pong is easy to get into, Quake 3 is not, etc. etc. Anyway, I want to respond to some of your points anyway.
- "Opera doesnt support even half the standards of Mozilla."
Is that so? I would like to see a list of these standards.
- "Opera doesnt have an email app."
Yes it does, actually. Not that I use it - I have already found my favourite e-mail client - "The Bat!". I don't think these features belong in a web browser anyway. Luckily, it does not slow down Opera.
- "Opera doesnt have spell checking, composer."
This is correct. However, what is the use of a spell checker if it does not have an e-mail client (as you falsely state above)?
- "Opera doesnt have very good bookmarking.
"Not very good bookmarking"... Wow, that says a lot. I find it to be excellent, though. The Hotlist is a powerful tool when you want to organize your bookmarks. Matter of opinion, I guess. Have you even tried Opera (see false comments above)?
- "Opera doesnt have good security features."
That depends on what "good security features" is supposed to mean. It sounds like you don't even know what you mean yourself.
- "Opera doesnt have password auto complete, form complete etc."
Yes, it can auto-complete forms.
- "Opera may have tabbed browsing but so does everything else."
Good attempt to minimize a great feature in Opera. Opera has "tabbed browsing", and does it better than any application. In fact, you can choose between full MDI and enhanced SDI.
- "Opera doesnt have themes."
Yes it does. Skins and button sets can be customized any way you want.
- "Opera doesnt support MathML."
True. But so what?
- "Opera to me is at the level of Netscape 3x Its a slim downed browser, compareable to other slim browsers, but not to something like Mozilla.
Opera has built in ICQ but so what, Mozilla is owned by AOL and will always has the best built in ICQ and AOL support so lets not go here."
Useless, empty statements. If you are going to bash Opera (or any browser), at least go for its weaknesses, and don't think up a random list of things you know little or nothing about.
- "MOzilla has built in AOL, opera does not."
Thank God for that:)
- "MOzilla has a full functioning news reader, Email Client"
Opera's got both.
- "Composer, Spell checker, IRC chat,"
True, but I have no use for these things.
- "Address book features, Multiple Language support, Themes, Security features, Full plugin support, Java support, XML support"
WRONG. Opera supports all of these. Oh, and you mentioned themes and these vague "security features" of yours again. And Opera has support for LiveConnect (communication between JavaScript and plugins/Java), which Mozilla does not, due to its changed plugin interface.
- "XUL support. Opera is more compareable to konq for linux, or kmeleon for windows than to Mozilla. Mozilla beats it feature for feature, standard for standard."
I beg to differ. You carefully selected features. Sadly, you don't quite seem to know what you are talking about. It sounds like you haven't even used Opera.
Yes. For example, Opera gives you easy access to numerous useful function (in fact, pretty much all functions) through the use of keyboard shortcuts. If I just want to read the text, I can press G to toggle images on/off. In Opera 6, a Quick-Prefs menu has been added. Pressing F12 will allow you to enable and disable a number of things, including popups, JavaScript in general, Java, etc. without wading through several levels of irrelevant settings. You can also switch between your own user style sheet and the web page author's style sheet with Ctrl+G.
This is a level of user control which leads to IE feeling limited. What keyboard shortcuts are available for IE? Do they allow you to control your surfing like that?
And then there's mouse gestures. Both Opera and Mozilla have these. It might sound like a gimmick, but once you try them, you will be hooked.
These are examples of why surfing with IE feels like being trapped. It doesn't feel like the user is in control.
No, IE does not have the best CSS1 support, and especially not CSS2. Opera has lead the race here, and Mozilla is doing rather well. IE has too many mistakes, such as their misunderstanding of padding and margins, and absolute positioning.
Let's face the facts here. Web browsers do not work the same. Nor will they ever - they all have different features. However, what they should do is to implement the same standards, and do this correctly. Other than that, one browser is not the same as the next.
"Ever see how slow a page with lots of nested tables loads in Netscape? No problem for IE, though."
Netscape 4? It is a bad excuse for a browser. It was decent once, but it is hopelessly outdated today. As for pages working better in IE - has it occurred to you that this perhaps is because most pages are created specifically for IE, taking all bugs, errors and problems in IE into account, often ignoring other browsers?
I also think you should look at the quality of Mozilla 0.9.6. Imagine what Mozilla 1.0 will be like if they can squeeze some more speed and stability out of it.
"Ever try to execute methods in a Java applet through JavaScript in Opera?You can't."
Yes you can. LiveConnect is supported in Opera 6.
Finally, let me repeat that no browser is the same, but out of all browser, I find IE to be the worst. It completely lacks basic keyboard shortcuts for people who want to use the keyboard for surfing. Its support for CSS is a bad joke - buggy and badly implemented. Their box model just doesn't cut it. Ever tried absolute positioning of elements? IE can't even do this correctly.
Yes, I am bashing IE, and people should. It is the biggest (sic) browser, not because it is a good browser, but because it is distributed with an operating system. It caters for developers' needs but completely forgets things like security, privacy and accessibility for the user. It is horribly bloated and unstable as well.
Believe me, I have to work with browsers like Opera, Mozilla and IE every single day.
"Rendering HTML is not rocket science, and it is actually kind of amazing how many megabytes people manage to expend on it."
This would be true if everyone was to stick firmly to the standards. However, due to the sloppy web page coding out there, today's browsers need error correction. It can't just stop loading a page because it finds an error in the HTML code.
In addition to this, the web is not only HTML anymore. You have other things like images - JPG, GIF, PNG, all of which need to be viewed correctly, and this requires an image viewer built in to the browser.
A browser today also needs a JavaScript interpreter, which also adds to the size of the code.
You also have plugins...
The web isn't just about HTML anymore. It's about displaying a page even if the code is sloppy, and it is about the new technologies that offer improved interactivity and even eye candy. A browser is a complex piece of software - imagine all the different things it has to do!
I don't think you've through the above comment through. If you look at what is actually going on, you'll see that a browser is a lot more than a HTML interpreter.
"- Mozilla won't accept activeX or other such nonsense
Which limit's its use on heavily scripted, harmless, usefull sites. True, it saves you from mailicious porn webmasters who want to install their dialer programs, but that's not a problem if you know how to set up your internet security zones on IE.
The problem is that ActiveX is a proprietary Microsoft technology, and it has a proven track record of insecurity. Don't expect Joe Schmoe who just got his first PC to understand anything of what's going on. He'll go on surfing anywhere, and he will be at the mercy of the webmaster and Microsoft.
Sadly, Microsoft have failed to take security into consideration when creating their developer-friendly, yet user-unfrienly technologies.
ActiveX is supposed to make things easier to the user, but just ends up making things worse than ever, since security is near non-existant, unless you are a veteran, and since Microsft forcing their proprietary, insecure technologies on webmasters means that alternative, better software (browsers) will be locked out.
"- You can disable Mozilla's JS window.open()
A nice feature, true, but what happens when you go to click on a "help" icon and it can't open a new window?"
You can disable it for onLoad() and onUnLoad(), which pretty much avoids popup-spam, while still allowing user initiated popups.
"- Mozilla is standards compliant
Which is again nice, but means nothing if developers dont make their sites for standards, which they dont....
That kind of depends on what kind of sites you visit. You are also underestimating people if you think no one knows about open standards. You obviously haven't been paying attention lately. For example, the MSN.com fiasco meant that millions of people learned about alternative browsers like Mozilla and Opera. People who previously had no idea there was something outside Microsoft land opened their eyes.
You see, when you dominate a market like Microsoft does now, the only way is down. Microsoft cannot increase their market share, because it is based on ignorance. As more and more people learn the truth about what is going on, Microsoft will slowly start losing its dominance of the browser/Internet market.
"Opera, on the other hand, can't even handle transparency, let alone alpha-blending."
Close, but no cigar. Opera 6.0 has perfect support for PNG alpha transparency. Opera 6.0 beta 1 for Windows was released a week ago, and Opera 6.0 for Linux is just around the corner.
"Because Opera can't do what Mozilla can do"
This is the worst argument of all. To counter it, one can simply say that "Mozilla can't do what Opera can do". Why can't we all just accept that Opera and Mozilla are two different browsers? Both of them are damn good at what they do. Comparing Mozilla and Opera is like comparing apples and oranges.
If anything, Mozilla and Opera users should unite, since they all share the same ideas about open standards and a web accessible to everyone.
At least, with two great browsers like Opera and Mozilla out there, users have a choice! They don't have to use Microsoft's inferior (my opinion only, not stated as a fact*) product. Both Opera and Mozilla are great browsers - why fight over it? Some like Opera, other like Mozilla.
Opera still has mouse gestures (Mozilla's still aren't really comparable), keyboard shortcuts for everything, and now even has the choice between MDI and SDI, where SDI is a lot more powerful than any other browser.
Yes, Opera lacks the "modularity" of Mozilla and other things, but as I've said, Mozilla lacks a lot of what Opera has. But who cares? Use the browser which best suits your needs.
To see that Opera can actually be used for advanced HTML, CSS and JavaScript, have a look at this gem:
You never thought those things were possible in Opera, did you?
*) To explain why I think IE is inferior: One example is that it fails to provide the user with basic functionality. IE appears to be created to allow the web page author to control where the user goes (much in Microsoft's tradition), while Mozilla and Opera both allow the user to control more of their surfing. IE just fails in such basic areas, so for me, it is an inferior product. There are other things as well (such as terribly buggy CSS and XHTML support), but I think I'll stop now, because this is very much off-topic.
According to the update at CNet, Microsoft specifically stated that they are watching for Opera versions because they aren't fully compliant with XHTML 1.0, and want the user to use only compliant XHTML browsers to view MSN. (Microsoft's claims)
Microsoft are spreading FUD. Both Opera and Mozilla do a far better job at rendering XHTML 1.0 correctly. IE has several problems with XHTML.
They claim that browsers should be standards compliant to access MSN.com, when the page itself doesn't even validate as valid XHTML. Anyone can verify this by running it through W3C's HTML Validator:
http://validator.w3.org/
In other words, Microsoft are spreading misinformation, and yet again ignoring existing open standards.
This is worrying, but hardly surprising, considering Microsoft's track record.
This is stooping to an all-time low - if that is even possible. I would go so far as to call Microsoft "XHTML standard compliance" claims blatant lies, and an insult to people's intelligence. They appear to think that anything they say goes.
If only one had the money to sue Microsoft. Sadly, they have the money, so suing them won't help. They will walk all over you.
Slashdot Mirror
Google's comment was:
"The primary burden falls to the people who are incorrectly exposing this information."
This is where they should have stopped. Those who find their credit card information in a search engine will learn a lesson and use services that actually take care of their customers' security and privacy. Google shouldn't have to clean up incompetent people's mess.
In the long run, these things can only lead to the ignorant (wannabe?) players in the market slowly dying because they don't know what they are doing.
I personally hope someone gets a taste of reality here, and that only the serious players survive. The MCSE crowd may finally learn that there's more to it than blind trust in their own (lacking) ability.
Security through obscurity only works until someone discovers a security hole. Once it's "in the wild", you are at the mercy of the software vendor to fix the problem and release the fix to the public. This can often prove to be too little too late. With the speed a worm or virus currently spreads, the damage is most likely done before you can manage to install the fix.
This, of course, is common knowledge, and one could discuss advantages and disadvantages of closed-source and open-source all day. The fact is that both solutions have advantages and disadvantages. The problem with closed-source is that once a security hole is public, there's often nothing you can do to fix it, perhaps apart from taking down your server. This can prove to be catastrophic if your business relies on it.
If one absolutely wants to go for closed-source software (and security through obscurity), perhaps one should consider a product which is less widespread and therefore not under as much scrutiny as the big players?
Correction - Opera supports all of CSS1. Opera also has just about complete CSS2 support with a few exceptions, like limited styling of form elements, aural CSS (Opera is a visual browser), as well as a couple of other things.
Opera is one of the browsers with the best CSS support. Mozilla and Opera both do CSS far better than any version of IE anyway.
But claiming that Opera does not support CSS1 completely (which it does 100%) and not CSS2 at all (which it almost does completely), is wrong. Just FYI :)
-"Mozilla does not have built in AOL."
And who needs AOL anyway? 8)
Apart from that, I agree with your points. I don't like WYSIWYG editors either, and Opera needs better support for themes (which will come soon, AFAIK). And yes, Opera costs money and isn't free as in speech either, which is probably an important point to some.
Yes, some have complained that the game looks like a Q3 mod. Thankfully, these people spoke too soon - before they actually got to see the real game in action. Judging from early reports, RTCW is actually a step forward for the genre. For example, you can now demolish just about any surface in the game. So rather than sneaking through doors, you could potentially blast the wall open and make a one man army attack. Must be a blast (sic).
- "Opera doesnt support even half the standards of Mozilla."
Is that so? I would like to see a list of these standards.
- "Opera doesnt have an email app."
Yes it does, actually. Not that I use it - I have already found my favourite e-mail client - "The Bat!". I don't think these features belong in a web browser anyway. Luckily, it does not slow down Opera.
- "Opera doesnt have spell checking, composer."
This is correct. However, what is the use of a spell checker if it does not have an e-mail client (as you falsely state above)?
- "Opera doesnt have very good bookmarking.
"Not very good bookmarking"... Wow, that says a lot. I find it to be excellent, though. The Hotlist is a powerful tool when you want to organize your bookmarks. Matter of opinion, I guess. Have you even tried Opera (see false comments above)?
- "Opera doesnt have good security features."
That depends on what "good security features" is supposed to mean. It sounds like you don't even know what you mean yourself.
- "Opera doesnt have password auto complete, form complete etc."
Yes, it can auto-complete forms.
- "Opera may have tabbed browsing but so does everything else."
Good attempt to minimize a great feature in Opera. Opera has "tabbed browsing", and does it better than any application. In fact, you can choose between full MDI and enhanced SDI.
- "Opera doesnt have themes."
Yes it does. Skins and button sets can be customized any way you want.
- "Opera doesnt support MathML."
True. But so what?
- "Opera to me is at the level of Netscape 3x Its a slim downed browser, compareable to other slim browsers, but not to something like Mozilla. Opera has built in ICQ but so what, Mozilla is owned by AOL and will always has the best built in ICQ and AOL support so lets not go here."
Useless, empty statements. If you are going to bash Opera (or any browser), at least go for its weaknesses, and don't think up a random list of things you know little or nothing about.
- "MOzilla has built in AOL, opera does not."
Thank God for that :)
- "MOzilla has a full functioning news reader, Email Client"
Opera's got both.
- "Composer, Spell checker, IRC chat,"
True, but I have no use for these things.
- "Address book features, Multiple Language support, Themes, Security features, Full plugin support, Java support, XML support"
WRONG. Opera supports all of these. Oh, and you mentioned themes and these vague "security features" of yours again. And Opera has support for LiveConnect (communication between JavaScript and plugins/Java), which Mozilla does not, due to its changed plugin interface.
- "XUL support. Opera is more compareable to konq for linux, or kmeleon for windows than to Mozilla. Mozilla beats it feature for feature, standard for standard."
I beg to differ. You carefully selected features. Sadly, you don't quite seem to know what you are talking about. It sounds like you haven't even used Opera.
This is a level of user control which leads to IE feeling limited. What keyboard shortcuts are available for IE? Do they allow you to control your surfing like that?
And then there's mouse gestures. Both Opera and Mozilla have these. It might sound like a gimmick, but once you try them, you will be hooked.
These are examples of why surfing with IE feels like being trapped. It doesn't feel like the user is in control.
No, IE does not have the best CSS1 support, and especially not CSS2. Opera has lead the race here, and Mozilla is doing rather well. IE has too many mistakes, such as their misunderstanding of padding and margins, and absolute positioning.
Let's face the facts here. Web browsers do not work the same. Nor will they ever - they all have different features. However, what they should do is to implement the same standards, and do this correctly. Other than that, one browser is not the same as the next.
"Ever see how slow a page with lots of nested tables loads in Netscape? No problem for IE, though."
Netscape 4? It is a bad excuse for a browser. It was decent once, but it is hopelessly outdated today. As for pages working better in IE - has it occurred to you that this perhaps is because most pages are created specifically for IE, taking all bugs, errors and problems in IE into account, often ignoring other browsers?
I also think you should look at the quality of Mozilla 0.9.6. Imagine what Mozilla 1.0 will be like if they can squeeze some more speed and stability out of it.
"Ever try to execute methods in a Java applet through JavaScript in Opera?You can't."
Yes you can. LiveConnect is supported in Opera 6.
Finally, let me repeat that no browser is the same, but out of all browser, I find IE to be the worst. It completely lacks basic keyboard shortcuts for people who want to use the keyboard for surfing. Its support for CSS is a bad joke - buggy and badly implemented. Their box model just doesn't cut it. Ever tried absolute positioning of elements? IE can't even do this correctly.
Yes, I am bashing IE, and people should. It is the biggest (sic) browser, not because it is a good browser, but because it is distributed with an operating system. It caters for developers' needs but completely forgets things like security, privacy and accessibility for the user. It is horribly bloated and unstable as well.
Believe me, I have to work with browsers like Opera, Mozilla and IE every single day.
This would be true if everyone was to stick firmly to the standards. However, due to the sloppy web page coding out there, today's browsers need error correction. It can't just stop loading a page because it finds an error in the HTML code.
In addition to this, the web is not only HTML anymore. You have other things like images - JPG, GIF, PNG, all of which need to be viewed correctly, and this requires an image viewer built in to the browser.
A browser today also needs a JavaScript interpreter, which also adds to the size of the code.
You also have plugins...
The web isn't just about HTML anymore. It's about displaying a page even if the code is sloppy, and it is about the new technologies that offer improved interactivity and even eye candy. A browser is a complex piece of software - imagine all the different things it has to do!
I don't think you've through the above comment through. If you look at what is actually going on, you'll see that a browser is a lot more than a HTML interpreter.
Which limit's its use on heavily scripted, harmless, usefull sites. True, it saves you from mailicious porn webmasters who want to install their dialer programs, but that's not a problem if you know how to set up your internet security zones on IE.
The problem is that ActiveX is a proprietary Microsoft technology, and it has a proven track record of insecurity. Don't expect Joe Schmoe who just got his first PC to understand anything of what's going on. He'll go on surfing anywhere, and he will be at the mercy of the webmaster and Microsoft.
Sadly, Microsoft have failed to take security into consideration when creating their developer-friendly, yet user-unfrienly technologies.
ActiveX is supposed to make things easier to the user, but just ends up making things worse than ever, since security is near non-existant, unless you are a veteran, and since Microsft forcing their proprietary, insecure technologies on webmasters means that alternative, better software (browsers) will be locked out.
"- You can disable Mozilla's JS window.open()
A nice feature, true, but what happens when you go to click on a "help" icon and it can't open a new window?"
You can disable it for onLoad() and onUnLoad(), which pretty much avoids popup-spam, while still allowing user initiated popups.
"- Mozilla is standards compliant ....
Which is again nice, but means nothing if developers dont make their sites for standards, which they dont
That kind of depends on what kind of sites you visit. You are also underestimating people if you think no one knows about open standards. You obviously haven't been paying attention lately. For example, the MSN.com fiasco meant that millions of people learned about alternative browsers like Mozilla and Opera. People who previously had no idea there was something outside Microsoft land opened their eyes.
You see, when you dominate a market like Microsoft does now, the only way is down. Microsoft cannot increase their market share, because it is based on ignorance. As more and more people learn the truth about what is going on, Microsoft will slowly start losing its dominance of the browser/Internet market.
Close, but no cigar. Opera 6.0 has perfect support for PNG alpha transparency. Opera 6.0 beta 1 for Windows was released a week ago, and Opera 6.0 for Linux is just around the corner.
"Because Opera can't do what Mozilla can do"
This is the worst argument of all. To counter it, one can simply say that "Mozilla can't do what Opera can do". Why can't we all just accept that Opera and Mozilla are two different browsers? Both of them are damn good at what they do. Comparing Mozilla and Opera is like comparing apples and oranges.
If anything, Mozilla and Opera users should unite, since they all share the same ideas about open standards and a web accessible to everyone.
At least, with two great browsers like Opera and Mozilla out there, users have a choice! They don't have to use Microsoft's inferior (my opinion only, not stated as a fact*) product. Both Opera and Mozilla are great browsers - why fight over it? Some like Opera, other like Mozilla.
Opera still has mouse gestures (Mozilla's still aren't really comparable), keyboard shortcuts for everything, and now even has the choice between MDI and SDI, where SDI is a lot more powerful than any other browser.
Yes, Opera lacks the "modularity" of Mozilla and other things, but as I've said, Mozilla lacks a lot of what Opera has. But who cares? Use the browser which best suits your needs.
To see that Opera can actually be used for advanced HTML, CSS and JavaScript, have a look at this gem:
http://www.cross-browser.com/
You never thought those things were possible in Opera, did you?
*) To explain why I think IE is inferior: One example is that it fails to provide the user with basic functionality. IE appears to be created to allow the web page author to control where the user goes (much in Microsoft's tradition), while Mozilla and Opera both allow the user to control more of their surfing. IE just fails in such basic areas, so for me, it is an inferior product. There are other things as well (such as terribly buggy CSS and XHTML support), but I think I'll stop now, because this is very much off-topic.
According to the update at CNet, Microsoft specifically stated that they are watching for Opera versions because they aren't fully compliant with XHTML 1.0, and want the user to use only compliant XHTML browsers to view MSN. (Microsoft's claims)
Microsoft are spreading FUD. Both Opera and Mozilla do a far better job at rendering XHTML 1.0 correctly. IE has several problems with XHTML.
They claim that browsers should be standards compliant to access MSN.com, when the page itself doesn't even validate as valid XHTML. Anyone can verify this by running it through W3C's HTML Validator:
http://validator.w3.org/
In other words, Microsoft are spreading misinformation, and yet again ignoring existing open standards.
This is worrying, but hardly surprising, considering Microsoft's track record.
This is stooping to an all-time low - if that is even possible. I would go so far as to call Microsoft "XHTML standard compliance" claims blatant lies, and an insult to people's intelligence. They appear to think that anything they say goes.
If only one had the money to sue Microsoft. Sadly, they have the money, so suing them won't help. They will walk all over you.