[thelist] Re: IE and Standards Compliance (was: Re: news.com article on browsers and mainstream sites etc..)

James Aylard evolt at pixelwright.com
Tue Jul 9 16:40:00 CDT 2002


Tim,

> I think of it like I think about household chores.  Imagine you give a
> list of things that you expected to be done:
>
> 1) Clean Garage
> 2) Empty Trash
> 3) Wash dishes

    Except in reality, that list is hundreds or thousands of items long,
which is why I think the analogy -- as all analogies inevitably are -- is
too simplistic. If Microsoft has done 950 out of 1,000 items (pulling
numbers out of thin air), I think that is worthy of consideration. Sure, the
other 50 things -- especially pet items that are especially important to a
particular developer -- are going to chafe a bit. But it's not like the
job's only half done.
    In rough guesstimation, I'd say Microsoft has about 95% compliance on
HTML 4, and probably nearly that on CSS 1. CSS 2 support is quite spotty,
admittedly. Lack of support for CSS 2 selectors, especially, and everyone's
favorite "position: fixed", is disappointing.

> Don't get me wrong either, it's not just Microsoft, although their power
> gives them a particular advantage over their proprietary hacks.... I

    "Proprietary hacks" misses the mark, IMO. Very few of these are hacks in
the common sense -- they are features, technologies, extensions, what have
you.

> You don't get any credit for the "innovations" (which benefit your
> market share and stranglehold over the industry) until you get to the
> level of standards compliance.  The irony is that Microsoft has the

    That's a bit absolutist for me. I give credit for innovations on one
hand, and dings for shortcomings on the other, although lacking full CSS 1
and HTML 4 support carries more weight than adding scrollbar coloring, for
instance.

> biggest team of developers/testers in the world and has the most
> resources available for creating a compliant browser, and yet they
> don't.  If they did that, if their browser was 100% standards compliant,
> then all we'd be able to blast them on would be security and speed.  To
> whom much is given, much is expected.

    Agreed. But accomplishing full standards-compliance has not
traditionally been Microsoft's goal -- garnering users has been. One of its
key target markets, IMO, has been corporate Intranets, and many of the
proprietary features implemented in IE are geared toward this. As
developers, we can argue whether this is good, bad, or indifferent -- but
this is certainly part of the reason for IE's success.
    Now that IE has achieved nearly complete market domination, hopefully
Microsoft will show a stronger interest in standards compliance, and wield
its software development weapon for this purpose.

> Don't give me colored scollbars before you can handle "border-type:
> outset" or <q> or "float: right" ... I don't know what showModalDialog()
>  is, but I'm guessing JavaScript (not even EMCAScript) -- the land of

    I'm pretty sure you mean "border-style: outset", right? IE does support
that, and has since IE 4. Lack of full support for <q> (or any support for
<abbrev>, for that matter) is disappointing.
    showModalDialog() is a browser object model method. Is opens a modal
dialog that must be closed before focus can return to the main browser
window, which can be immensely helpful when designing Intranet applications.
I suppose it would have to be folded into the DOM specification to become
part of a non-proprietary standard.

> proprietary extensions and one of the main reasons why I have to use IE
> at certain sites.  Is there a published "standard" anywhere (even on MS'
> website) for other browser developer groups to follow, or is this like
> the "innovation" of making Word load faster than WordPerfect because of
> hidden and proprietary hooks built into the OS that no one outside of MS
> knows about?

    Published standard? Actually, Microsoft has done a pretty good job of
documenting its HTML, CSS, and scripting support, etc. [1] -- some of it may
take a little digging to find, but that is in part testament to the volume
of documentation available.

> I hope I don't sound rabit-anti-MS or anti-IE... I'm not really... I've

    Oh, you don't like Microsoft! I hadn't noticed... :)

1. http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/

James Aylard




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