"This week I interviewed Microsoft's Chris Wilson, the Group Program Manager for IE, to address the issue of Web standards compliance and IE7. There has been controversy about this lately, sparked by a Slashdot thread last week that claimed IE7 was basically non-compliant with CSS standards. I then repeated those claims on my ZDNet blog, but I have to admit that I (and Slashdot too) missed one vital point - it was largely based on an article Paul Thurrott wrote in August 2005, so it was outdated information. Chris Wilson was naturally sensitive to all the criticism and so he vigorously defended IE's standards compliance in his blog. I hope my interview with Chris Wilson went some way to clarify Microsoft's current position on CSS and standards support for IE7. Although I personally still prefer Firefox's features, I do think it's important not to unfairly tar IE7 with the same brush as IE6."
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Sounds to me that it's pretty boring. Sounds to me like it has no real reason to exist or even be used!
Perhaps it's even a bad thing that IE 7 does many things half-right; it will be enough (as you said) for it's users to still not wake up.
It's sad that, in contrast to all other browsers, the most used one of them all doesn't need to be competitive, it just has the only criteria to "work somehow". It would be great if that bar would be raised, as obviously every IE user would benefit from that.
Edited 2006-08-21 18:13
Member since:2005-06-29
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Half-right is always worse than totally-wrong, it brings in complacency.
IE7 won't be "good enough" until Microsoft proves it won't disband the IE team upon reclaiming the throne. In 8 years, when they've worked hard on it, much like gecko (the netscape rewrite), then it'll be "good enough."
If they're no closer to standards compliance then (and standards compliance for the web isn't exactly easy, there's no reference implementation for one thing), then we should forget the company as a whole. The web is too important.
But of course, if you tell an average user that he won't care. He'll probably figure it's "technical mumbo jumbo" and ignore you, not realizing it's really political more than technical.
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IE7 won't be "good enough" until Microsoft proves it won't disband the IE team upon reclaiming the throne. In 8 years, when they've worked hard on it, much like gecko (the netscape rewrite), then it'll be "good enough."
If they're no closer to standards compliance then (and standards compliance for the web isn't exactly easy, there's no reference implementation for one thing), then we should forget the company as a whole. The web is too important.
The one reason why IE is not currently 'good enough' for the masses is because of its security problems, and that's why I moved all my family off of it. If it weren't for security, they'd still be using IE6. Honestly, they don't need anymore more than IE6. I don't think any of them currently using Firefox knows what tabbed browsing is, much less uses it. Of course, I did show them when I first installed it, but it went in one ear and out the other. So if IE7 fixes the security, then it'll be good enough.
As for advanced CSS, I say f**k advanced CSS. And Flash. And Java. And DHTML. And the whole Web 2.0 mess. In terms of pure content, these technologies have contributed very little to the whole web experience except making browsers more bloated and pages load slower. Not to mention all of the damn advertisements, which seems to be the only thing that makes real use of all these wonderful tools. Most of what is actually useful could've been done easier and better with client-side apps. But NOOOO!!!!! We have to shoehorn everything to run in a web page.
I'd be happy to go back to the point in time in the 90's where tables were introduced, and just leave it at that.
Edited 2006-08-21 19:02
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As for advanced CSS, I say f**k advanced CSS.
I disagree. It appears that you see benefit in "basic CSS" .. There is a LOT of CSS that is not widely supported (IE6 primarily) that can help maintain a higher degree of accessibility and usability for end users.
As far as Flash -- while there are AMPLE bad examples of Flash (particularly sites that assume flash), I do see a lot of really good uses of Flash.. Unfortunately with the inconsistent release and support of Flash by Macromedia/Adobe, cross platform Flash can be an issue.
I'd be happy to go back to the point in time in the 90's where tables were introduced, and just leave it at that.
Augh. No CSS? Font tags? Absolutely no respect for site accessibility? Animated GIFs?!? haha.. Browser wars without adherance to standards? So many imbedded tables that any sort of design modification next to impossible ? yikes.. no thanks.
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As for advanced CSS, I say f**k advanced CSS. And Flash. And Java. And DHTML. And the whole Web 2.0 mess.
You are mixing two very different things. Like you, I hate advertisements that try to grab my attention at the expense of what I'm trying to read. I try to block any ad that does.
But CSS is a simplification. It doesn't incorporate moving things, it simply separates style and content to make it easier and quicker for a developer to create and maintain a website.
CSS is good for everyone.
Member since:2006-01-06
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Have you tried IE7 yet? You probably should. IE7 is sandboxed and, consequently, you're not going to see the kinds of issues as Firefox or IE6.
Firefox doesn't exactly have a solid security track record.
http://secunia.com/product/4227/
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As for advanced CSS, I say f**k advanced CSS. And Flash. And Java. And DHTML. And the whole Web 2.0 mess. In terms of pure content, these technologies have contributed very little to the whole web experience except making browsers more bloated and pages load slower. Not to mention all of the damn advertisements, which seems to be the only thing that makes real use of all these wonderful tools. Most of what is actually useful could've been done easier and better with client-side apps. But NOOOO!!!!! We have to shoehorn everything to run in a web page.
*sigh*.
1.) CSS is not web 2.0, neither is CSS2. It's something you'll see used in every web2.0 project for other reasons.
2.) Java is not web 2.0.
3.) Flash is not web 2.0
4.) DHTML is not web 2.0, although there are _some_ small relations in the problems they solve.
And yes, CSS has done a lot for the web. It can best be stated that it provides a way to completely remove the layout from the structure of the document. So, when you say: <p>a paragraph</p> you aren't saying "endline a paragraph endline" but instead you're just saying "'a paragraph' is in fact a paragraph." Then, you tell the browser what to do with a paragraph.
This may seem theoretical and abstract and meaningless. But, the crux of it is this: No longer do you have to create the block structure of a table for your entire page to lay it out, now you can say in 20 lines how to put it out. It makes for less network traffic, easier development, and much much more efficient parsing and display.
If you don't like how CSS2 is implemented, ok. But I seriously doubt you care about that.
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When you hold the largest chunk of the market being "good enough" is not good enough.
Since web developers can not ignore IE (because of its market share) they'll have to support it, and since they have to support it they can not use advanced CSS features supported by other browsers but not IE.
So, if IE7 will only be "good enough" as far as rendering goes, it will continue being the one holding back the progress of the web.
Edited 2006-08-21 18:38
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About WHAT KIND OF STANDARTS you are talking about ?!?!
Somehow i can's see much improvements, when i look on this list
http://www.webdevout.net/browser_support.php#standards
There are only some fixes for long know css-bugs and removal of 90% css hacks.
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as a "monster." I always thought it was light and simple. Comparing to FireFox which is a RAM junkie (150megs/5tabs is normal?!?!?) and takes on too much CPU usage (digg shows this), I find IE is pretty much lightweight. Firefox needs to fix the menu widget too. And the longstanding flash embedded into web page bug.
They need to fix the UI in IE7. It's pretty horrible. And bland. And boring. It's a mess. The stop/reload buttons are on the right near the search textbox. IMO the IE team should let the Office team do the new IE's ui. That would rock. Sigh.
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By monster, and I'm surprised you haven't figured this out with a post count of 345, they mean its standards compliance causes a lot of pain for people developing web sites.
By monster they mean that you end up writing a site with two CSS files (even if they're dynamically generated from a diff), one for IE6 and one for everything else. Yes, every browser differs a little, but IE6 is missing enough stuff that many modern designs need several hacks to make them work. One example is in layout position:fixed, which IE6 just doesn't support at all. It's slightly broken in everything but Gecko (no text hilighting in Opera with many uses, scrolling sort of works in Konqueror, and I don't know about Safari but assume it fails where Konq does), but the page at least displays correctly and the user can use it.
There are many other examples, the favorite was always transparent png, which is fixed in IE7. See how that makes it a monster?
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To a web developer, yes. To the common user, no.
Most sites out there are designed to look NORMAL in IE6. All that the common user will notice is that 99% of sites look the same in IE6 and Firefox, except that Firefox is really slow and makes their computer chug.
I've received these comments from people on whose computers I have installed Firefox.
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give me a break! i have put firefox on EVERY computer i have installed... WinXP, OS X and linux... and NOT ONE person complained that it made there computer chug! on the contrary... the XP users have had nearly 100% of there maleware issues resolved by using firefox!!!!!
dont be ridiculous! if you use IE (any version) you are oandering to MS and are a fool!
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> if you use IE (any version) you are oandering to MS and are a fool!
Insulting someone's intelligence is not a way to get them to join your camp. I use Safari, and Opera on my Windows box.
Firefox is a disgusting resource hog, and anyone who denies it is just a plain fanboy.
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The standard is written, claiming to implement it and failing to continue to keep up with it, in any way, is not a matter of lack of customer request: It's a matter of not caring about the standard.
Parts of standards don't need hype to be implemented, that's the point of having standards.
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For those of us who already use firefox on a regular basis, I doubt IE7 is going to make any impact.
But for the rest of the Windows XP install base, which comprises the majority of PC users, IE7 will be a great and sorely needed upgrade to IE6.
The way I see it, IE7 is finally caught up with the times and works with most sites AS-IS, the same as firefox, opera, etc. Sure, there are bugs in each broswer's implementation, but that usually appears on experimental CSS and HTML that hardly any browser properly supports.
My own webpage, while simple, is XHTML 1.1 compliant and "just works" with any broswer the same, and that is without CSS hacks; just well thought out implementation of CSS. Of course it takes more time designing a webpage when there isn't a standard, so I give firefox and opera extra credit for sticking closely to the guideline.
I can also attest that Firefox uses much more RAM than IE7, but of course firefox has many caching systems that IE7 doesn't have, so more RAM is expected to be used. IE7 is also faster than firefox for me (been using firefox version 0.4 to 3.0a1) in terms of web page rendering and how fast it completes the page, forget about "benchjs" because that doesn't measure much in terms of actual user experience.
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Umm... okay. I have tried IE7 at work, and regardless of the fact the Chris Wilson "vigorously defended IE's standards compliance..." try using IE7 with digg. It can be a mess. Is it IE7's CSS handling? Is it non-standard CSS from digg? I dunno, but it just works with Firefox.
And does IE7 have a Chatzilla plugin? :-)
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Maybe it is more compliant than IE6, but that isn't saying much. Here is one bug that still drives me crazy: Try to position a box absolutely, or fixed, and set the width with percent. Won't work. IE ignores the percent. It wants the size to be defined by pixels. IE also only honors the top and left position properties.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/position/positioning.asp
Notice that all of their examples conform to this wacked way of doing things.
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Before annoucing a good old fashion fatwa against Microsoft and collating all the pocketing protecting geeks for a jihad on the Microsoft offices, that most of the effort with Internet Explorer 7 has been on bug correction - if you have a look at the interviews, the main focus as it seems to be that bugs are being corrected first before anything else.
For me, thats a *GOOD* approach; fix those rendering bugs, so that the standards supported today are actually rendered correctly, and in the future, then concentrate on spanning out further to support more standards.
It is about creating a stable foundation on which future development can occur; if you keep moving forward without correcting known bugs, it will not only frustrate customers but could possibly cause problems in future via a trickle down effect, when a future feature realies on past features, and one of those aren't properly implemented or incredibly buggy.
As for 'non-compliant' websites; a better way would be this; an extension to Visual Studio .NET that scans the source code of the CSS/HTML file, and highlights possible issues that could arise usingg Internet Explorer 7 (and future releases) and suggest possible ways of working around the said problem whilst maintaining compatibility.
For me, I tested for a very limited time, and even then, I was very impressed, the stability and reliability has jumped dramatically, and hopefully by the time Windows Vista and Internet Explorer 7 is released, Microsoft will be on the path to progress in regards to future Internet Explorer development.
Edited 2006-08-21 19:37
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Did he even say that it was going to be compliant in that article? Because I read through it, and may have missed it, but it sounds like he was arguing over how Slashdot said it wasn't compliant, but didn't really say otherwise either.
Comments like this are frustrating.
"but I don't understand the problem"
Because other people are using it fine (Which have been severely hacked together) rather than a nice easy and standardized way, he can't understand what the problem is?
All browsers should be completely standardized and made compliant, coding for the differences can really be a nightmare some can live without.
I'm sure IE will become compliant, but not when it's released, maybe not even 6 months down the track, but "One Day" it will be.
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2006-02-16
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using IE (i dont care what version....) is Totally Socially Irresponsible! the Web must stay open!!!!! and as long as IE is the "standard" the open internet is at risk!
public web site should always adhear to open standards...PERIOD!!!!
and the public should should stop relying on what is in the start menu as the deterinaing factor for what apps they use!
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YES... i am being obvious!!!!!! why the hell should i be more subtle?!?!?!?
IE is BAD for the open web.... that fact has been proven! once MS was able to dominate the browser market MS STOPPED innovating..... PERIOD! development on IE came to a screaching halt!!!! which stunted the the growth of a quality web experience!
LUCKLY, there have been enough people out there that were NOT going to allow MS to destroy OUR web, (mozilla devs and users, the World Wide Web Consortium, and non MS OS users... much thanks!)
so development of amaizing technologies like Firefox, and CSS marched on!
now look... IE has totally fallen behind after 5 years of being left in the closet and Firefox and opera and safari are kicking its ass....much to Microsoft suprise... and yet there are still people out there that defend MS and IE....
call me a troll!!!! maybe that what i am! but you know what?.... the web is still OURs because of trolls like me!
if it we up to trolls like YOU.... there would be one OS, one browser, an internet complete controlled by ONE company!
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Testing summary for CSS2
http://www.webdevout.net/browser_support_css.php#support-css2confor...
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Imagine you've got 1,000 web pages on a site.
Then imagine you have 10 separate stylesheets managing these regions on the site.
Put these stylesheets in an external folder /css
Every typographical, positional, background, float, list, form, etc., in presentation is controlled by these 10 separate stylesheets which can be embedded within parent stylesheets to have a finer grain of presentation control.
Edit 10 stylesheets to effectively present 1,000 web pages across the entire site.
Take this to the context of XML:
Use XML/XSL/XSLT/CSS and focus on the client interface and be able to present your site in multiple formats with a main XML structure to manage it.
With this MVC approach to web design, that clearly separates Presentation and Structure, it gives one the ability to manage very large sites.
This then makes one realize how damn annoying it is that sites are developed with embedded stylesheet rules within each page, instead of an external link to your CSS.
Edited 2006-08-22 02:17
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" [...] there isn't an official test suite that exhaustively tests whether you comply with the standard or not [...] " ... So, what's http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/Test/ about ?
Bah, thanks to (the mass adoption of) IE7:
1°) some "big" sites will be fixed for standards
2°) these users will know about RSS and use it