[thelist] Internet Explorer 7

[Ken Schaefer]

: -----Original Message-----
: From: thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org
[mailto:thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org] On
: Behalf Of Rob Smith
: Subject: RE: [thelist] Internet Explorer 7
: 
: >Here's a link to the announcement:
: >http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/02/15/373104.aspx
: 
: >No mention at all from the IE team about better web standards support,
: 
: Agreed. I perused through the Blog while people are congratulating them on
: the new security fixes, a LOT of people used this opportunity to complain
: about the lack of support for web standards.

Well, security fixes are kinda important... :-)

: Doesn't it make you feel warm and fuzzy inside that MS 
: doesn't put the practicality and primary use of IE
: (web developers) at the higher priority.

This is where you are wrong:
a) Web developers aren't the primary users of IE - end users are
b) There is an enormous amount of legacy code out there (and not on public
websites) that relies on the various bits owned by IE. By enormous, we'd be
talking about billions of lines of code (or more). Microsoft has obviously
chosen not to break backwards compatibility for ISVs and large customers to
make changes to rendering in IE. I think they're drawn a line underneath
Trident (the current IE rendering engine). Do not wait for anything to be
changed there - it appears that the next rendering engine will come in
Longhorn

:They'd rather fix security bugs, than fix the aesthetic ones.

Well, if it came down to fixing one or the other, I would go with security
rather than aesthetic things. Of course, I'd prefer both to be fixed, but
security is much more important that rendering stuff. And lots of people have
been telling Microsoft that for a long, long time.

And IE's poor security record is one of the reasons I tell non-expert SOHO
computer users to use Firefox instead of IE...

Cheers
Ken