OSNews

Yeah, this is great news, 899mil cheers for this decision!

I am not exactly advocating tomcats point of view, but in the specific case, its not hard to believe that the standards compliance initiative is a genuine disire in the company. I know you aren't big in the microsoft developer world, but they have been hiring a large amount of really solid guys in the last while (like Scott Hanselman, Phil Haack, and Rob Conory). Since everyone blogs now, you kinda get to know many of the team leads, and most of the important ones are decidedly non evil (of what I read anyways, which is the developer platform side of things).

Microsoft is a *really* big place, with alot of different types of people in it, and it is really hard to pidgen hole the entire place one way or the other. My guess is that this is something certain people have been pushing for for awhile, and that the EU commission sabre rattling has just been what they needed to push it through the more evil types.

I know quite a bit more about the internals of MS than you might think. ;-p

My brother in-law works as a .NET software architect and project manager for MS at their European headquarters in Dublin, Ireland. No, I'm not gonna say he's evil, in case you where wondering ;-), he is actually a really nice guy. Doesn't mean he can flaunt what upper management decides.

I agree that MS employs many intelligent and innovative people, my brother in-law being one of them, but what they personally think is the right thing to do has very little impact on what they do do if they want to get payed, a bottom line I think we are all familiar with.

Sure, ideas filter upwards over time, but just because MS has been employing some very smart people recently does not mean that they suddenly decide to change the tried and tested tactics that made them the richest corporation on the planet.

Apart from that, the bus can be full to the neck with conscientious passengers, but if makes no difference if the driver is an ass.

Edit : Bloody typos!

Edited 2008-03-04 13:27 UTC

Well, I knew you were a linux guy, so I figured you wouldn't really any reason to know about this stuff ;-) Most linux guys kind of see MS as one giant death star, when in reality it is much more fragmented then that.

When it comes to developer power, IMO it depends what part of the company you are talking about. The new MVC framework and the DLR languages being open sourced were things that the dev teams and ScottGu pushed through (I didn't mention him when I was talking about non evil rockstar developers. Scott actually wrote the entire first version of the ASP MVC framework on his laptop on a plane ride).

Same deal with the .net source code release for the debugger. The silverlight guys specifically wanted Miguel and company to get Moonlight off the ground, which is why MS ended up helping with development, and paying for the propriatary codecs it uses. I know the .net team gives the mono guys their test cases so they can get maximum compliance, but that doesn't really count as it could be considered more of a skunkworx thing.

I'm not saying that its like that everywhere in the company, but in certain places (especially the ones I focus on as a .net guy) developers do have enough power to push through really big things.

Although I started with Linux, I'm really more of a all round *nix-head with some MS administration in my past, just to clear that up. No worries though, eh? :-D

As for what you are saying, it actually makes me happy to hear that. No wonder MS is known for having exceptional development tools.

Let's hope the revolution continues from both below and above, at lest then we can all benefit.

the more conspiracy theory minded people would claim that they're hiring these people simply so that no one else can. They have the cash flow to fill up a building with the best and the brightest in the field and then do nothing with their ideas. Paying out a few million a year simply to make sure that some really smart people don't work for Sun, IBM or on Linux is probably a worthwhile investment in itself. Just patent anything clever they come up with, file and forget until someone else tries to implement the same thing, then sue them.

Of course it's just a theory

Yeah, thats a pretty dumb theory.

They hired Scott Hanselman because he is a great technologist, and really enjoys both learning and teaching. His job is to basically be Scott Hanselman, just with a fat paycheck and some of his screencasts end up on microsoft sites. Scotts focus has always been on MS platforms, however he still has a very positive outlook at what is happening in other pastures.

Phil Haack gained prominence in the community for being the lead developer on the open source blog engine Subtext, and being a fantastic blogger. He was hired because one day Scott Guthry was showing him his new MVC framework for ASP.net. Phil was really excited about it, and basically told Scott he would do whatever he had to to be able to work on the project. Even after becoming a blue badge, he is encouraged to continue work on his SubText project.

Rob Conory was a really good ASP.net freelance guy who decided to learn Ruby on Rails one day. He was really impressed with alot of the ideas in it, about the focus on being painless to use, saving as much time as possible, convention over configuration, and simplicity. He started the SubSonic OR/M open source project with those goals in mind. Its a great project (I use it myself for anything not enterprisey), and got a fairly big following. When Scott was pulling in guys to work on the MVC project, Rob was one of the first he approached, due to his competance and obvious love of Rails. Rob is not only encouraged to keep working on SubSonic, but there is a possibility it will get pulled into the MVC framework at some later date.

All three of these guys are still in their community leadership roles. If MS hired them to stop being out there in the world, they are doing a very poor job of it.

Which is why it was mainly a joke. I also wasn't really refering to the people you mentioned, but more to all their more theoretical people whom we see publish cool stuff from time to time that is never heard of again.

And that initiative will last only as long as the pressure remains. Microsoft is hoping that the world will forget about their transgressions and go on, thinking that the problem is now solved. I'm certainly encouraged that these measures have gotten real and positive results. But it is clear that MS needs a dedicated watchdog assigned for the duration of their desktop monopoly reign.

Edited 2008-03-04 13:49 UTC

You hit the nail on it's head there, at least as far as I am concerned. And there was a certain person talking about runaway bureaucracies. What a tool! ;-)

I'm hoping the EU doesn't slacken up, or that the other nations running their own anti competition investigations don't drop the ball.

If all goes well, MS will be dragged into playing fair. The may be kicking and screaming all the way, but they will be dragged into it.

RTFA is all I'm gonnna say about that statement. To even mention the childish 'duh'...


If I understand correctly, you are trying to say that MS trying to make IE more standards compliant has nothing to do with the impending ass kicking they are gonna get from the EU if they don't tow the line? What are you smoking? Never mind the childish 'Mr'...


Wow, you really are a sore loser. Walk on home kiddo ;-p

And other standard-compliant browsers maybe, no?

Other browsers have to compete with Firebug, not necessarily Firefox itself.

Amen to that. Until there is something even remotely as good as firebug on another browser, I wouldn't even consider switching. I don't know how we did web development so long without it, as it is just such an essential tool.

I think it is great too ... but note the caveat ... "interpret web content in the most standards compliant way it can"

It will still be quite a while before IE is actually standards compliant to any useful extent for your purpose. IE doesn't support SVG yet, and quite a few other web standards that a browser should support.

But it will fully support CSS now, better then FF2 does, which is the point he was trying to make. SVG support is kind of pointless at this point, as good webformats are the ones that focus on the smallest size possible, not the largest and most cpu intensive. SVG will be sort of like a poor mans flash when browsers start letting you script it, but until then I can't think of a single scenario where it would be a good choice for use on a web page.

As for other standards, which ones are you talking about? I would like everyone to standardize on XHR, but since MS was the ones that invented XMLHttpRequest in the first place, they could justifyably tell everyone else to take a flying leap on that one.

All that means is that instead of having to tweak you CSS to work around features not implemented in IE, you'll have to tweak your CSS to work around features not implemented in FF2. Until all browsers use the same rendering engine (which will probably never happen), web developers will always have to make a choice between.

1) Writing to the lowest common demoninator subset of the w3c spec implemented by all used browser, which will probably be a small subset for the forseeable future.
2) Tweaking pages for specific browsers
3) Accepting that some pages will render incorrectly in some browsers.

Don't get me wrong I think it's great that MS is taking w3c compliance more seriously and I applaud them. However anybody who thinks that soon all they'll have to care about is if their page is w3c compliant and then it will magically work in all browsers is probably quite mistaken.

All IE8 and FF3 will change is making the subset in point 1 a bit larger once IE6-7 and FF1-2 become so old no one uses them any more. Web developers will always have to target browsers rather than specs.

You are pretty much arguing my point ;-)

Why IE8 (and to a lesser extent, IE7), is that subset grew substancially. Right now, I can't reliably use things like min-width or min-height, if it weren't for IE, I could because everyone else supports it.

Uhmm, this is like apples to oranges, I mean how come you compare IE8's features (hypothetical as they are) to FF2 since we can fairly clearly see FF3's nose coming around the corner ?

Afaik Opera and Firefox 3.0 already support scripting of SVG (to some extent). Maybe even Safari, too. And with Adobe having no slightest intention to support BSD or x64 systems, SVG could prove pretty useful quite quickly once it itself has gained support from web browsers.

Exactly! It will be great when we can get rid of the "if IE" condition.

Also, when will be finally able to take IE6 out back and shoot it?

Can you imagine IE8 on Ubuntu? I think hell will freeze over first. Not that it would bother me if MS really did it, but they lost me as a customer years ago.

And now little more seriously - I wonder which feature will be implemented on Ubuntu as first - IE8.linux.pre-alpha become part of the "partner" repository or that little nasty icon appears right to the clock saying "you have now only 30 days to activate" ? ;-)

You know some people said Microsoft never did Open Source and never would be pro Open Source. They where wrong.

Microsoft is not stupid they are starting to realize that letting Google be the default search on all other's browsers is a bad decision and might start to trow some money that way to unseat Google as default search. It's a numbers game after all.

Ubuntu is not receiving any money from Google or Firefox , if Microsoft where to offer 25 + million to have the default search engine default to MSN and offer MSN live integration with no other tie-in that could be seen as acceptable. Beside Ubuntu is but one GNU/Linux offer. Novell/Suse , Xandros , etc ...

They could also see IE 8 on Other OS as a lesser expenses. Let's not forget Safari who as direct technological ties to Konqueror code , se we might also see an Apple offer too.

Contrary to popular belief they're is Billion to be made by being the default primary anything.

http://www.engadget.com/2006/05/25/google-outbids-microsoft-for-del...

They also need all the reason they can get to be seen as more friendly to other's , this could help in there anti-trust and monopoly cases around the world.

iTune did the same thing by offering a Windows version Apple is not complaining about that new income ...

Not holding my breath for it do.

Why?

Mac people sureley prefer Safari anyway.
And on Linux Firefox rules supreme.

The only thing I can see is for debugging purposes. (But if they are serious about the standards support the debugging will be much less needed.)

Well, I use either Firefox or Opera on Mac, Linux and Windows

But this is a welcome development. Less headache for web developers.

Historically, MS basically re-wrote IE on the Mac when they were still supporting that platform. There were many platform specific issues you had to test for, so it actually introduced more of a headache for web development.

actually, IE on MacOS was awesome. It was fast, it had a killer UI.. I loved it. i used to run IE5 on my Powermac 8500/120 with Mac OS 8.1 (horrible, horrible OS). IE for mac was much better than its windows counterpart.

IE for mac was awsome compared to netscape, but that wasn't really setting the bar that high.

I wasn't really talking about good or bad though. Every browser has bugs and quirks. But the origional poster said that if MS ported IE to every platform, it would make life easier for developers. I said that wasn't nessicarily the case, as ie for mac was really different then ie for windows.

IE5 on the Mac, was at the time, the single most standards compliant browser out there; ironically enough.

IE on windows was the most standards compliant for quite a few years. Netscape lost the browser wars fair and square, by the end it was downright horrible to use.

IE on Linux ?
No thanks.

When I have to use Windows, I try never to use IE.

Why would I corrupt a perfectly working system to put on what I consider to be a flawed application ?

I mean, I would also never want, and hope they never port, Amarok onto Windows.

That's where you and I , show a true difference in strategy , personnaly , I see IE on GNU/Linux as similar to IE on Apple Mac OS X , It help a lot with **switcher** at first.



Sometime you have no choice. When Firefox , Opera , konqueror and all the other's cant render a page or allow for use of specific Microsoft technology.



It's GNU/Linux , you don't want it you don't install it , but I am sorry to say that it's one application that gets to be high up on the list as reason why people don't switch or change OS.

"

http://amarok.kde.org/blog/archives/374-Amarok2-builds-on-Windows.h...

http://amarok.kde.org/wiki/Development/Win32

Personnaly I would not mind to have the option to offer the entire Microsoft portfolio of software on GNU/Linux. It would be hard core competition on the OS and would force the Free Software solution to compete at a higher level.

It could eventually lead to a IE Open Sourced or made to be Free Software.

What makes that statement funny is all of the distinctiveness of konq has already been assimilated, but not by microsoft, by Apple! Konq has been using webkit for awhile now.

Konqueror is still using khtml, even in KDE 4.0, as I believe qtwebkit wasn't ready yet for deployment. I've no idea what konqueror will be using in KDE 4.1. It looks like it's going to be used in plasma however.

I think kubuntu shipped a webkit enabled konqueror a while back, but I'm not certain on this.

Back on topic, good to hear Microsoft made the right decision...eventually.

Too late?

I think the recent news about IE8 and how it's developing shows change of focus on IE in general. This means that in a few years we might write a website *once*.

And isn't that better than in a few years time still having the same trouble because IE is lagging behind the standards?

I'm sick of people *always* dissing MS even when they are doing the right thing. Yes, they do bad stuff, even today.

But when they do the right thing they should be apploaded for it.

I agree with your sentiment and think you have a very good point, it's just the reasoning behind MS's shift in policy that is so grating.

The only reason MS is doing this is because of the vast amount of money the EU fined them for not being in compliance with the anti trust ruling. If it takes $1.3b to get them to start supporting standards by default, then I don't think MS should be applauded.

I don't applaud someone for not breaking into a house or for not going to jail, those are things you should be trying to do anyway. If a repeat offender stops robbing people and start trying to make amends because s/he feels regret, that I applaud. On the other hand, if s/he stops stealing/extorting people because the law has thrown the book at them, then frankly it serves them right.

Don't get me wrong. I'm personally glad that this move is happening, but I refuse to sing MS's praise for doing something they should have been doing from the start.

Well, any for-profit businesses who have shareholders to answer to do not do the right thing simply because it is the right thing to do. They either do it because they are forced to or because they think it will make them more money. What, did you really expect MS to bust out with a standards compliant browser one day for no other reason than, "Yeah, we realized we were jackasses, so here ya go!"

If you think about it, the only reason that Firefox exists is because Netscape once got its ass handed to it by MS. If it weren't for that, we'd be dealing with the LAYER tag and its ilk.

What makes you think it was the EU and not just the general feeling of web-developers who have been complaining about this issue from left to right?

I personally prefer the meta solution, but I guess not forcing it on people is okay. If you're really serious about having a reliable webpage, you should definitely test it in IE8 and place a meta tag specifying that browser and the prevailing version of Firefox at the time the page is tested.

Ideally you should only have to specify the version of the standard your page should comply with. Which is already the case.

Well, FTA:


That's a pretty good indicator of why they are doing it, don't you think?

You completely missed the point. Nowhere did I say anything negative about IE8, did I? Believe me, I'm very happy Microsoft is releasing a better standard compliant browser, even though I'm not using it. But it's too late. Why? From your words I see you have none or little experience with professional web development. I'm talking about big corp/news/presentation/B2B sites, serving tens/hundreds of thousand and more users daily. When a website targets general population, there are tons of people (about 20 - 30% of all) out there still using IE6 - users either didn't update or they are on office computers with lazy administrators. If you won't fix your code to work fine in that browser (some clients require even IE5.5 or 5.0 as minimum) you'll get tons of mail daily, people complaining. Unhappy visitor won't return, meaning less pageviews meaning less money from advertisements (that cover many costs). And visitors complaining means client complaining to me..that means less satisfaction meaning less money. The main problem/point here: we need to spend extra time to fix and adjust layouts and scripts to work on every user's browser like it should. Doing that can take some time and time means money. Most people don't even realize how bad IE was before 7.0 (and no, 7.0 is no miracle either, but it's quite good).

So you see, it's not all about what someone just did, never forget the past. We all make mistakes, of course, daily, but mistakes by others that cost me money....that's something different. Again, I welcome this effort from Microsoft, but the damage is done and it'll follow us for quite some time. Maybe it's just me, but I'm really not impressed by this...what, so they've finally done it right in 8th (or more) attempt, few years too late? Yapee, let me start the fireworks [/sarcasm]

Now who was dissing who for no reason?

Edited 2008-03-05 00:49 UTC

PNG works correctly in IE7

Transperency works, but it does still not support gamma-correction.

(Photoshop CS3 automaticly does some magic that makes PNG still look good in IE7 though, not sure what it is.)

See, I didn't even know that (I use PS when it comes to web images). You learn something new every day.

Edited 2008-03-04 13:43 UTC

MS have a weird history when it comes to their PNG-support.

IE 6 does in fact support a weird kind of transperency. If you set background color in the PNG-meta stuff it works. That is, it's transparent to that color. (So if you have a webpage with white-background set it to white.)

I've used this as a way to have PNG-images degrade gracefully(on IE6) where I've used PNG transperency.

Edited 2008-03-04 14:26 UTC

Oh yes :-) I've tried googling and found lots of example. thx for the info.

Yeah, that is about 90% of the comments to the announcement on the IE team blog

The age old discussion of intention vs. result. (Well, not really versus, but at least a discussion of how important the intent and reason behind it is.)

Although I do not belive MS are becoming angels, and are their commitment to standards are probably nothing more than adapting to the market I still think it's good.

Also: this really show how much power the customer *really* have. Demand for following standards will make companies follow standards. So, remember to demand following of standards!