It would appear that Microsoft will finally take standards compliance in the browser world seriously, after dragging its feet for years. Back in November 2009, the Redmond giant already revealed that Internet Explorer 9 would come with CSS3 and HTML5 support, and now the cup runneth over, as Microsoft has requested to join the W3C’s SVG Working Group.
Every major browser has support for scalable vector graphics built-in – except, you guessed it, Internet Explorer. To get SVG support in IE, you need to download additional software, which of course isn’t an ideal solution for end users and developers alike. It seems as if Microsoft has finally seen the light, as it has requested to join the SVG Working Group.
“We recognize that vector graphics are an important component of the next generation Web platform,” writes Patrick Dengler, Senior Program Manager of the Internet Explorer Team, “As evidenced by our ongoing involvement in W3C working groups, we are committed to participating in the standards process to help ensure a healthy future for the Web. Our involvement with the SVG working group builds on that commitment.”
The SVG working Group has already responded in a very web-two-dot-oh kind of way by replying in the comments section of the post on the IEBlog. “On behalf of the SVG WG, let me welcome you to the group. We’re excited by your joining, and look forward to your participation… And hopefully SVG support in IE9!” writes Doug Schepers, W3C Team Contact for the SVG WG, “There is definitely room for improvement in the SVG specs, and some new features to make it even easier to author… Your help there will be really valuable.”
It seems like Microsoft is serious this time. The company has already been actively involved in the standards process surrounding HTML5, and had already indicated IE9 would support at least some HTML5 features, like the audio and video tags. In November 2009, CSS3 was added to that list, and even though the company didn’t actually confirm it, it’s pretty obvious SVG will be supported too.
Good times for the web!
…has awoken.
“The Sleeper Must Awaken” – Dune
I like your source reference better than mine. I was thinking more along the lines of WWII… but I like Dune.
You know what I haven’t read in ages? The Foundation Trilogy by Asimov. I need to go dig that out and read it again.
You do realize there’s seven books in that trilogy? 😉
Yeah but the 1st three books are the best
I think Microsoft’s position has changed because they can no longer assume that everyone just has to clone whatever they put out. With smartphones, Safari, Chrome, and Firefox, there’s no win for Microsoft in being different or having IE-only features; they’ll just be seen as bugs. When you are no longer the leader, there’s no point in doing anything other than having your people just code to standards.
Netscape was the same way: they didn’t care about CSS or HTML standards when everyone ran them, they only started to care when they lost the lead.
EXACTLY! Now that we (finally) have Internet devices that aren’t computers in the traditional sense (tablets, smartphones, etc…) making inroads in the consumer sector, standards may actually matter more than proprietary “wow factor” extensions that cause fragmentation.
Now that MS isn’t the sole proprietor of all things Internet (from a consumer standpoint), we might be able to see them play nice in the standards game for a change.
Actually Netscape did care about standards back then the problem was that the standards were very basic so Netscape and Microsoft added a lot of their own stuff additionally to the standards.
Both Netscape and Microsoft fullfilled the standards in their browser versions to 100%, back then.
And when they do finally ship a reasonably decent browser, most developers won’t have a clue how to target these new capabilities because they’ve been sitting around waiting for 2022 before learning how to do what has already been possible to do in other browsers for years now.
If you haven’t developed something that doesn’t work in IE yet, then you are already behind the times.
I won’t be changing my code to work with IE—I’ll be expecting IE to start working with my code.
You do realize that CSS3 and HTML5 are draft standards, right? Is your definition of a “decent” browser to mean one that ships with unfinished standards?
I’ve worked with IE8 and I’ve had very few problems with it. I really think a lot of this IE bashing is carried over from the IE6 days.
As for trying to replace Flash with (draft) HTML5 it won’t make a difference until Google switches youtube over. Google is actually in the best position when it comes to ridding the world of Flash but they seem to be taking their sweet time.
IE8 is very good, but it still lacks decent JS, lacks Canvas, lacks HTML5 Video/Audio, lacks client-side databases, lacks web workers and lacks SVG (a 9 year old standard).
Edited 2010-01-06 21:02 UTC
You want to complain about SVG, that’s fine. I doubt there would be an SVG revolution even if it was widely supported but that at least is a fair complaint.
IE8 has decent JS, Google docs works in it just fine. Yes it loses to other browsers in JS benchmarks but that doesn’t mean that AJAX developers are held back by IE. Those benchmarks are mostly used by Google for bragging rights. Real-world differences are minimal. Your browser is more likely to choke on a small Flash ad than a website filled with JS.
As for HTML5 the default video codec still hasn’t been decided. People are arguing over the what the standard should be and yet you are bashing IE for not supporting it. Web workers are a draft proposal as well.
I’ve worked with IE8 on a very AJAX heavy website and it was an absolute pleasure compared to previous versions. I also preferred working with it to FF OSX which annoyingly cannot be counted on to render websites identically to FF Windows.
Oh and I browse with Google Chrome 90% of the time.
Yes it loses to other browsers in JS benchmarks
By 100–1000×. IE8 is mind-blowingly slow.
Real-world differences are minimal.
Like taking almost 10 seconds to open a new—blank—tab.
As for HTML5 the default video codec still hasn’t been decided
There is no default video codec. That’s like saying there’s a default image format—there isn’t one.
FF OSX which annoyingly cannot be counted on to render websites identically to FF Windows.
Which is what it is supposed to do.
Where is it mind-blowingly slow? I just created new google docs in both Chrome and IE8, and the latter took about 3 seconds more at the most.
Takes 1 second on my machine. Are you using a P3?
There isn’t a default codec because there is currently a debate over which one it should use:
http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/07/decoding-the-html-5…
No I don’t think you understand. When you develop a complex AJAX website you can’t expect FF OSX and FF Win to render it in the same manner. I’m not just talking about different looking buttons but enough quirks between the two codebases to treat them as separate browsers. Kind of makes a joke of FF following web standards when you have to keep an instance of OSX to test in.
Interestingly I didn’t have any problems with the webkit browsers.
I use IE8 on brand new OEM machines I’m setting up for people and 10 seconds to open a tab is not out of the ordinary. It might take you 1 second, but the majority of users don’t get anything like that. The fact is that any other browser is simply faster than IE8 in every department.
As for FF OS X? The trick is to write in FF OS X and fix for Windows, not the other way around. FF/Mac’s rendering is much more accurate (even supporting better ligatures than Webkit).
Saying that FF OS X is more accurate than FF on Windows when rendering pages is facetious at best. A page will be most accurately rendered in the browser it was designed in.
All other browsers, even the same browser on different platforms will render differently.
I’m on a notebook with a core 2 duo at 2ghz. It’s about as typical as you can get for new computers. I just tried opening a tab on an old machine that has Vista and a 1.7ghz celeron and it took 4 seconds. You probably tried opening a tab at startup when the cpu was overloaded by crapware. That’s not the fault of IE.
That’s not true, IE8 is faster for Flash heavy websites, especially when compared to Firefox. Non-IE browsers are choked much quicker by Flash ads. But that is beside the point since I was taking issue when your claim that it has poor JS performance. IE8 doesn’t have poor JS performance, it just scores below the other browsers in synthetic benchmarks. Those benchmarks do not translate into equally distant performance gains when it comes to real world browsing.
I do believe that Chrome is overall faster than IE which is why I use it. But IE8 is not this slow monstrosity that you make it out to be. Most people wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between IE8 and FF 3.5 in a blind rendering test. There was a time when FF was clearly faster than IE but those days are over. The bandwidth is the real bottleneck when it comes to browsing.
You seem to have a grudge against IE which keeps you from judging it objectively.
You can speak of accuracy and tricks all day if you want but at the end of the day a lot of rendering leeway is left to the browsers which leaves subjective experiences and in my experience Firefox is the absolute worst when it comes to cross platform consistency. Silly me I guess for assuming that a program with the same name and version number that follows “standards” wouldn’t require constant checking for platform bugs.
I actually spent more time accounting for FF OSX/Win bugs than IE bugs, but partly because we didn’t support IE6. The webkit browsers were the best to work with and the few quirks they had weren’t show stopping. My advice is to test in FF OSX last since they are such a small percentage of all visitors. If it was a personal site I wouldn’t even bother. Mozilla treats their OSX build like an ugly stepchild and I’m not keen on encouraging its use.
Oh, don’t be silly. I’m forced to use IE8 on work websites (they check, the scoundrels), and waiting for a freaking tab to open is like waiting for the glaciers to melt. Not at start up, mind you – *normal* operation.
What’s worse is that I’m spoiled by Firefox and Chrome (can’t decide which to use… I’m not indecisive… well, yes, I am…) to hit control-T and immediately type the new URL. With IE8, in most cases this results in my EXISTING tab going to the new website, then switching leisurely to a new blank tab. Makes me want to throw the Dell D630 laptop across the room every time (not exactly an “ancient computer”).
Page rendering time seems lethargic as well, especially next to Chrome, and its lack of customization makes it pale compared to the custom fit that is Firefox.
IE8 is certainly better then IE6 or IE7, but that’s a bit like saying the economy is better now than in October. There’s a *reason* Microsoft is shedding market share like snake skin despite using their Windows desktop monopoly to push their own browser. It’s really just not a very compelling product in a lot of ways, your claim of a “grudge against IE” notwithstanding.
Are you confusing IE7 with 8? Because 7 was bad but 8 is almost instant. Either that or there is something wrong with the machine or IE install or something. IE8 is actually decent unlike 6 and 7.
I find the Firefox UI to feel the most sluggish. The order would be Opera, Chrome, IE8, Firefox.
When Firebug was first released it was amazing. But I am finding that IE8 and Opera are perhaps better at Javascript debugging right now.
Perhaps you haven’t used another browser then. JS on IE is orders of magnitude slower than JS on Gecko or Webkit based browsers.
Perhaps you didn’t read the part about me using Chrome 90% of the time.
You also didn’t read about my opinion on synthetic benchmarks.
A 1000x increase in a framerate doesn’t matter much if the user can’t tell the difference between 50 and 5000fps.
Google docs is as heavy as they get when it comes to AJAX and I used it in IE8 just fine. Did it load as fast as Chrome? No, but it loaded about as fast as MS Word which should make you question reaching conclusions from benchmarks without a proper context.
I wrote a site (using Google Web Toolkit) with a large amount of tabular data and the performance of IE is noticeably slower. IE8 is better than its ancestors but still painful compared to Firefox or Chrome. For some sites IE is just too slow with Javascript.
This isn’t about synthetic benchmarks. It’s about real-world use. Seven tenths of a second is the threshold at which most people notice lag. JS heavy sites can get annoying very quickly when using IE.
On the topic of 10-second tab open times, that’s mostly a function of what plugins are loaded (each tab is a new browser instance, so plugins need to be reinitialized).
Go to “Tools->Manage Addons…” and look at the ‘load time’ column of the addons list to see what’s taking all the time.
Yes, of course, but I’m saying what the end user sees and they don’t know how to manage the BHOs. I go to a user’s PC and IE is crawling. I install Firefox, and bingo, everything is instantly faster and the user is overjoyed.
Perception people, perception. What the average end-user experiences of IE8—regardless of outside interference from other apps and add-ons (because they don’t know about that)—is a pain-inducingly slow browsing experience.
That actually made a difference. I disabled all addons (Messenger, Research, Java etc.) and now my IE8 isn’t so much slower than FF.
I get the feeling that a lot of those addons could be loaded when I need them instead of each time a new tab is created. Take Java for example (which took ~1s to load). I would be just fine with waiting that extra second when I actually need Java…
Agreed; that is the only reason why I have Flash installed – so I can watch YouTube. If there was no need to use Flash with YouTube, it would be the first thing I would uninstall if I had the chance.
The problem is that there are still large numbers of online stores that use Flash extensively unfortunately – and Microsoft dragging their heals isn’t helping the situation.
As for draft; the whole HTML5 might be in ‘draft’ but there are parts of the draft that are finalised and static; they’ve already been hashed out and all the parties agree with it – why not implement those ones? Limur IIRC listed a huge array of technologies, some existing in stable form for over a decade that haven’t been implemented by Microsoft yet. Lets not try to kid ourselves, the moment that HTML5 does gain traction I can assure you Microsoft and Adobe will be running for cover.
I suggest all those Microsoft apologists who can’t help but apologise for Microsoft to have a look at over a decade of obstruction or non-participation by Microsoft when it comes to open standards. They sat on OASIS for the ODF specification, knew that it didn’t fulfill the requierments of being suitable for Microsoft Office – but did they contribute *ANYTHING* so that it could be transformed into a first class file format for Microsoft Office? of course not. They sat by and did nothing – and when the format was finalised all they did was bash the OASIS group for having a format that didn’t address all the Microsoft features (where the hell were you Microsoft when you could have provided input in the design phase?!).
Then there is HTML5, again, what contributions have they made – there is a stalemate when it comes to the default video format – why doesn’t Microsoft office the VC-1 format royalty free for open source browser and CODEC projects? Silly me! that would actually require Microsoft to realise that the whole world doesn’t revolve around them and that they do actually have to contribute something to the larger ecosystem besides obstructing the development of standards.
Quite frankly, to put up the issue about IE6 for the bad reputation of Internet Explorer in general is disingenuous – the issue goes well beyond simply that of Internet Explorer and covers the entire company culture that encourages balkanisation of standards, obstructing standards from being developed or simply standing back not doing anything to improve standards then turn around a month later after it has been standardised simply to bad mouth it.
Edited 2010-01-06 23:48 UTC
I don’t see the real urgency, when today, now, at this moment, you can write RIAs in Silverlight and be more productive than with anything HTML5/SVG/CSS3 could possibly offer up.
Nice additions sure, but its not the end of the world. Flash just gives plugin based RIAs a bad name, Silverlight runs circles around it performance wise.
Silverlight still does things faster than every browsers Javascript implementation, especially with the GPU support in Silverlight3.
Assuming you live in a Windows only world; what about those on non-Windows machines? what about those who then end up creating non-portable Silverlight applications by using the new COM feature (in Silverlight 4) to call native code? If everyone was a first class citizen on Silverlight because Microsoft gave a crap about more than just the Windows implementation then I’d be happy to jump on the Silverlight bandwagon but when non-Windows users are relegated to second class citizenship (both plugin and development tools) one is stuck between either the abortion of a RIA called Flash or Silverlight where all non-Microsoft platforms are second class citizens.
Edited 2010-01-07 00:28 UTC
Silverlight is available on OSX and Linux (using Moonlight). Silverlight is also coming to Windows Mobile 7 and Symbian (so far)
Using COM interop in Silverlight really is like using COM interop in .NET. Used only in extremely specific situations. I highly doubt it will be this widespread thing.
With that said, I don’t like it. However it was apparently a really requested feature.
I can certainly see your point, but I think that with Silverlight4 its not an issue. For OSX Silverlight parity is like 0.9999999:1 with Windows. The exception being COM support.
However with Silverlight being given Full Trust Out of Browser support it is really a Cross Platform implementation of the .NET Framework.
It will all be up to how the developers use the technology, and I think that the developers using Silverlight do not act in lock step with whatever alleged diabolical scheme Microsoft has to lock people into COM+Silverlight apps.
There is a pretty pervasive mentality in the .NET scene where COM hatred is widespread. Personally I cringe whenever I have to do interop and think the entire idea is an abomination.
Besides for 99% of RIA work with Silverlight, you dont need COM at all.
As for the dev tools, I agree they need to be cross platform. A glimmer of hope being that Expression Blend is a 100% WPF application which offers some potential for being ported to Silverlight+Full Trust OOB in the future.
VS2010 is mixed mode, but more and more of it is being written in WPF opening up the future for it to go down that path as well.
I think they’ve done a commendable job of keeping OSX in the loop. In fact, if you stop to think, besides the COM automation, they have a spotless record of cross platform with OSX.
The current implementation of Moonlight is behind what Microsoft has provided – couple that with crap/non-existant development tools on non-Windows computers, if you’re a developer and on a non-Windows platform you going to be shit out of luck.
What Microsoft need to do is provide development tools for Mac and OpenSolaris – and I can assure you that very few would keep hanging around with Adobe for longer than necessary. The problem is that Microsoft is short sighted and I simply don’t see the changes required actually happening.
I simply don’t trust developers from refraining from using COM having see how lazy developers are when push comes to shove. I understand you don’t need COM at all but that isn’t going to stop developers from making extensive use of it when made available. It is like the win32 extensions to Java – sounds like a nice idea in theory but we can all imagine what will happen in reality.
Yes, but Linux is behind the eighth ball for example, there are no development tools for Linux or Mac. I really want Microsoft to beat Adobe into a bloody pulp but it won’t happen if they’re refusing to provide the necessary tools for developers. I want to use Silverlight and learn how to exploit its power but I’m stuck here with a Mac unable to do it.
It’s not really as bad as it seems. COM interop can only be used by elevated trust, out of browser Silverlight applications. So you won’t see it used at all for Silverlight embedded in a web browser since it is not available. Not to mention that COM interop requires the use of the dynamic keyword which means you lose intellisense and all compile time checking on COM objects making programming tedious in a C# environment. I imagine it will only be used for internal LOB applications which require integration with systems and processes where Microsoft Office is already in heavy use.
Moonlight implements most of Silverlight’s functionality (with the exception of matured OOB support for example) but they can run 99% of the Silverlight apps out there. They even include some SL3 stuff like (iirc) gpu acceleration.
It sounds like it’s really behind Moonlight2 vs Silverlight4, but really it is actually very close.
I think they are certainly considering it, and certainly going to do it. You see Visual Studio moving more and more towards C# and WPF with large parts of VS2010 being written in WPF, and Blend is 100% C# and WPF..so it is not that farfetched to envision them both as Silverlight Out of Browser apps like Office Live Web Apps.
Well one deterrent is that you need to run full trust OOB applications to use COM automation. This means that normal embedded Silverlight content on the web wont be incompatible at all with Moonlight or Silverlight for OSX.
I agree and am hopeful that they go in the direction you suggest. However speaking from the perspective of just the plugin, it does a commendable job (Certainly better than Flash on OSX or Linux)
MonoDevelop has Moonlight support, it’s no Blend or Visual Studio but its usable.
Moonlight doesn’t have silverlight drm
There is nothing stopping somebody else from implementing COM on Linux or any other platform, it is just a specification for implementing interfaces to binary objects, no different from CORBA.
Except that COM represents the memory model of an i386 with the specific layout of little-endian MS VS C++. Not the same as cross-platform CORBA really. Certainly no where near as portable as SOAP webservices for remote operations. So, no wonder nobody wants to waste time implementing the archaic, obsolete and cumbersome COM system. Sure they could do it, but the community came up with and standardised vastly superior ways of doing IPC/RPC.
Edited 2010-01-07 06:52 UTC
COM is not obsolete. Actually most of new the Win32 APIs in Vista and Windows 7 are COM based and no longer simple C APIs.
On that basis programming in raw ASM is not obsolete either. Sure, once in a while people do revert to ASM when they have to but for all intents and purposes it is such a small proportion of source and so niche it is considered obsolete (or at least somewhat obsolescent) by most reasonable folks. Same with COM, no sane person starts a *new* project using that technology when there are newer, easier and more portable technologies about.
Who cares whether the Win32 API is C or COM? The bulk of development is moving away from writing at that level and has been for some time. Holding on to proprietary technologies like COM is keeping Micrsoft back. Developing in COM doesn’t make you l33t, it makes you someone looking backward and missing opportunities arising in the future (hint, they’re not using platform-specific cruft like COM).
Back to the topic: Bravo Microsoft have finally seen fit to adopt SVG. Will that mean they’ll ditch their proprietary XPS rubbish too? Will they embrace-extend-extinguish as before? Will their involvement cripple the standard? Will a half-assed implementation come out of Redmond (as in their OpenGL and other implementations of real standards)? I hope not.
Edited 2010-01-07 09:36 UTC
So no way to convert from big-endian to little-endian exists? Netscape back in the day had a plugin that would run ActiveX controls, thats COM.
Now I don’t think running COM objects is a good idea, I’m just saying it could be done.
Oh yes it can be done but my point is, why would you bother when there are better things out there that don’t make you have to think which endian you are, or what memory model you use.
Thanks no I wont write things in silverlight, a semi closed technology only working in Windows… The current situation is that it is better to stick to plain ole web without too much fancy, then you also can support mobile devices rather swiftly.
Silverlight is yet another Microsoft attempt to take over the web instead of playing nicely. Before using Silverlight I even would use flex, it is more portable and the proprietarity factor is about the same.
Remember that Microsoft once had IE versions for the Mac and Unix that is what you get if you go into bed with Microsoft solutions which do not adhere to standards, in the long run you will get a lockin, been there done that never again!
There’s Moonlight, but you can choose to ignore that if you want, I won’t stop you.
Watching a Silverlight movie feed with Moonlight + ffmpeg (or whatever codec can decode it) on Linux makes you infringe on patents owned by Microsoft.
And the wording of Microsoft’s “covenant not to sue” leaves enough loopholes to allow Microsoft suing everyone but the biggest players into oblivion.
Microsoft won’t do it in the near future, because this would for sure mean no web developer ever again would touch Microsoft-0wn3d web protocols with a 3 meter long pole.
But if ever again Microsoft manages to establish a market share near 80% – 90% of web protocols used, it will start raining FUD by Microsoft.
Moonlight can’t use Silverlight’s DRM (which nearly every Silverlight website requires – the DRM is why they’re using it), so I have no choice but to ignore it – its not an option.
But MS will.
Silversight does not replace SVG!
SVG is accessible and can even be rendered on text browsers, blind people can get a description, etc…
Silversight is designed to replace java and in my opinion is inferior to java anyway. Java has many implementions on many platforms. It runs on AIX as well as on S40. Nobody uses Silversight on the Web, except Microsoft.
Really, this has nothing to do with SVG. SVG can be tightly integrated into xhtml and you can do whatever you want with XSL. Silversight is for annoying ads that you won’t be able to block on 80% of desktop computers.
Edited 2010-01-07 10:53 UTC
XAML is a markup language for UI layout and vector drawing. SVG is used for vector drawing, but for UI layout it’s really not anywhere near XAML which offers the tightest object model integration of any declarative markup out there.
It seamlessly merges vector drawing with layout positioning as opposed to in XHTML where there is a hard distinction.
Silverlight includes a subset of the .NET Framework. C# code executed by Silverlight is faster than any Javascript implementation out there.
I believe there is no point in silversight, java or flash in the browser anyway. What a browser does is render xhtml. If what you want is RIA, then just skip the browser. XHTML separates content from layout and positioning. Blind and semi-blind people can read content, disabled people can click on links with their head, people with old computers can read the text… It’s what xhtml is about. SVG is a nice addition because it is accessible too and it integrates nicely in xhtml and CSS. If you don’t use XHTML in the browser, then just don’t use a browser!
Edited 2010-01-07 22:01 UTC
After working with Google Web Toolkit I’m pleased with it for simpler sites.
For more complicated sites I’ve switched back to Java applets/WebStart. Yes they’re generally discredited but what you can do with them is incredible. Now that the Java VM in preloading in Windows and Java 6 has fully hardware accelerated graphics you can do some really snazzy stuff (called ‘filthy rich clients’) that is just not possible with Javascript.
With Java can also do a lot of stuff that’s hard to do with Flash. Silverlight just isn’t a starter as it has wrinkles on other platforms (and I switch between Windows, Ubuntu and MacOS for development depending on what computer I’m closest to at the time).
For those of you with open minds take a second look at Java on the web – it is very nice these days. For those of you without open minds, ignore what I just said, no need to flame.
Edited 2010-01-07 19:27 UTC
Why would those stores switch to HTML5 when everyone installs Flash? It isn’t as if HTML5 offers bandwidth savings. There isn’t a default codec so are you suggesting that those stores build multiple formats? What is to be gained?
If you want to blame anyone for holding back HTML5 video it is Google, not Microsoft. Google is the one that keeps youtube in Flash even though they have the resources to convert the videos to the Theora format. But guess what? They don’t want to. Sure they ship Chrome with Theora support but that doesn’t matter when they keep youtube in Flash. As you said that’s why you install Flash in the first place. Most people will install anything to watch youtube. Does Google take advantage of this to move the web away from flash? Nope, in fact they have partnered with Adobe to bring flash to their phones.
HTML5 is really all about video. Flash has been the bane for alternative operating systems which is why HTML5 is being pushed.
If you think browsers should support subsets of HTML5 then state them, but people shouldn’t bash IE for not following HTML5 when the W3C explicitly describes it as a working draft.
http://www.w3.org/QA/2009/05/_watching_the_google_io.html
You have a grudge against Microsoft that prevents you from judging their products individually. That’s ok, it’s a common bias.
However try not to let your hatred blind you from the current reality of Google buddying up with Adobe which will ensure that Flash is around for another 10 years.
I have a common bias against Microsoft? then what the heck do you call this:
http://www.osnews.com/permalink?402924
Apparently I heap praise on Microsoft and apparently I am against Microsoft overall. Nice to see that you ignore my other posts regarding Microsoft; it isn’t an all or none approach; I attack what I dislike and I heap praise on what I do like.
Half of your reply to me was a rant against Microsoft.
I don’t really care about your other posts. Maybe you have a love/hate relationship.
No, its just that I’m not a ntjerkface who seems to thing that it is either all love or all hate. The fact that you can’t even be bothered reading the post in the full context tells me you’re all about egos and grandstanding than contributing anything worthwhile to the discussion.
+1
I have firefox and IE6 on my Win2k machine. Firefox for everything and IE6 with flash enabled for youtube. When I get my Win7 laptop later this year, I will finally “upgrade” from Firefox to Chrome — ie. Chrome for everything and Firefox for youtube.
I really hate Flash, it’s slow, and from time to time my broswer crashes because of it. All non-youtube flash sites won’t be visited by me.
Rayson
what should they have done in your opinion?
make odf an ooxml clone and render it virtualy unimplementable for everyone else?
Microsoft’s software is awful, I agree, but it is not intrinsically un-implementable.
All that needs to be done is for it to be specified, and it can be implemented in other products.
The objective from the outset for ODF was to make an open specification for a document storage format that anyone could implement. Even Microsoft. Royalty free. Microsoft were invited to participate, to give input on what needed to be included in the format specifications in order to satisfy the storage requirement for Microsoft’s own Office products, and Microsoft chose to not co-operate.
Microsoft sat through every meeting when ODF was being formulated, and said not one word the whole time.
This incident with SVG is entirely similar. An open standard for scalable graphics (capable of being animated) was being formulated, with a view that anyone could implement it, royalty free. Microsoft made no input. The standard was agreed, and later expanded with additional functionality. Microsoft refused to implement it.
Now, here we are, ten years later, and Microsoft finally want to say something about it.
Talk about recalcitrant. When it comes to standards (which all may implement), Microsoft define that word.
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=define%3A+recalcitrant&ie=utf…
Edited 2010-01-08 01:46 UTC
Why not? All the other serious browsers do – Firefox, Chrome, Safari. More than that, the people making those browsers are, in part, the same people making the standards – implementing those drafts allows people to actually try them out, feeding their experience back into the standards process.
Agreed, IE8 is a huge improvement over it’s predecessors, and a fairly decent browser – it’s corrected the worst of those predecessor’s idiosyncrasies, and it’s design seems robust.
Problem is, it’s still a long way behind where it’s competitors are now, and with it’s long release cycles, IE doesn’t evolve quickly enough to catch up. By the time IE9 is released in a year or two, it’s capabilities will probably be comparable to what the other browsers do *now*. Where will those browsers be by then?
You obviously haven’t worked with ie7 much.
Yes, you can and should use HTML5. Here is why:
http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/FAQ#When_will_HTML5_be_finished.3F
http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/FAQ#When_will_we_be_able_to_start_using…
The main reason is that HTML5 will become a recommendation, as soon as all bigger browsers support it. This won’t happen until IE also adopts it (or it market share shrinks to a negligible size). So yes, IE needs to have HTML5 support to be decent!
Edited 2010-01-10 13:30 UTC
And I wonder what kind of super standar code are you writing that IE won’t render you know, because if the NASA community page its being writen with ASP.NET Ajax and ASP.NET MVC then your code must be a lot superior.
Edited 2010-01-07 02:10 UTC
http://camendesign.com for starters, but that doesn’t include any of the more advanced unfinished stuff I’m doing with Canvas.
Edited 2010-01-07 07:57 UTC
That side loads fast with FF 3.6 beta2 but the scrolling is slow.
Drop shadows are a killer on Firefox. You’ll see a big difference in scroll speed with Chrome. Mozilla engineers are working on a large patch to restrict repaints to the sync (instead of repainting more times than the monitor is refreshing) but this may be some time before it’s in a release.
Fist thing – they initiative to “clean up windows” with WIndows 7 is finished (from an article posted on osnews, no time to look it up), so they have the leeway to now start to compete again.
Second thing – they are going to “innovate” the same way they always did – seem to get involved, “embrase” what they like, create new tangental technology to “extend” the current standards, and block anything else. I really can’t see anything about what they have been saying, or more importantly how they have been behaving, that would lead me to believe they have changed their tune.
On smart-phones – they are in the same process as with Vista (current version of WinMo is like Vista) – they are continuing to clean up their core OS kernel (windows 7) to make it fit on the phones – when they have completed that, you’ll start to hear again about the Zune phone, and a competitive Windows Mobile/Phone/whatever again (they’ll probably change the name).
MS is not that hard to figure out – especially when they (rarely) tell you what they’ve been up to and have been competing the exact same way for decades.
Long time ago, I was extremely excited when SVG was introduced and first implementations in browsers (excepting IE, of course) started to show the potential of documents enriched with SVG: Animations, diagrams that looks quite professional without having the need of high resolution bitmaps, etc.
Thanks to the reluctance of MS, available documentation rich in SVG is quite limited and I think it is a shame. Many graphical objects in webpages could be represent by a vector representation with the advantage of requiring much less space in servers and requiring less bandwidth. By example, a SVG object (such as an ellipse) with a nice color gradient takes a few hundred of bytes of coding. The size of the code remains practically the same for a tiny ellipse covering a few hundreds of pixels on the screen or the full page, and both of them look beautiful.
Years have passed and maybe finally we’ll see a shift in how new web content will be created. SVG is not ideal for everything that is graphics, but definitively it will help to have webpages showing much more efficient graphical content. For once, thanks MS for getting late to the date, at least you got there.
As long as a commonly used browser like the ie doesn’t support SVG, web developers will not use it in their sites. If Microsoft finally decides to support SVG in future browsers, this would change.
That would be gret for mobile devices where small screens may require scaling of the graphics, and where the the bandwith may be limited.
Interesting Microsoft getting involved with SVG! WOW I never thought that would ever happen.
Oh, crap, we’ve been here before.
http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG10/#AuthorList
Stupid facts.
There is now apparently a possibility that IE will at long last support SVG.
Fantastic (even if very belated). Microsoft have also hinted that they will adopt CSS 3.
Outstanding!
Now there is just DOM level 2, correct and reasonably performing ECMA script and SMIL left to go. It wouldn’t hurt if they included royalty-free open codecs (Vorbis and Theora) and HTML5 directly in IE as well. They might then even catch up to the rest of today’s browsers within this very decade!
Edited 2010-01-07 01:43 UTC
What?
No trollish comments like “embrace and extend”?
Men, you must be in rehab or something.
Did you really not notice the sarcasm in there?
Man, lemur, you must start being less subtle!
Now, to go on topic. It’s nice to see Microsoft working on it in some way, but I’d really like to see their implementation on IE before they start having influence in the directions of the thing itself.
It’s almost like a foreign politician trying to join the current government or something. All in the realm of bad analogies, of course.
it isn’t that bad. It tends to run about the same speed as Firefox 2, or the current version of Konqueror. Which, OK, are pretty slow compared to the current state of the art. But nothing monstrously bad. Wait until this time next year, when all the other browsers have had speed updates and people are still using IE8, then it will seem slow.
HTML5 is *not* just about video. Did you know that the iPhone browser, Android V2+ browsers, and the Palm Pre browser all support the new client side database facilities of HTML5? Did you know that they also support the local caching API? When you put it together this means you can develop rather sophisticated applications that run *in* the browser, and yet do not require a fast or persistant Internet connection. This means that for data collection / forms based applications, developers can truly write once, deploy to multiple platforms, and do it all using common web dev tools. IMHO the potential here is huge.