3 ms·

The biggest issue I have with this article - which does an excellent job of explaining the issue - is that Joel seems to ignore the elephant in the room: EVERY

The biggest issue I have with this article - which does an excellent job of explaining the issue - is that Joel seems to ignore the elephant in the room: EVERY OTHER BROWSER MAKER HAS SOLVED THIS PROBLEM! Seriously: Opera, Firefox, Safari. All of these manufacturers have no issue rendering both pages designed to standard and table designed mishmashes. They're getting so good at their implementations of standards support that for 90% of the time, a design will look exactly the same in one browser to the next. The exception to the rule is IE. The EXCEPTION. Why? Because Microsoft, or forces within it, as far as this outsider can tell, continually wishes to revert the many-to-many market back to the one-to-many market. They use their size and position to force their way on everyone. Their way isn't necessarily bad, but it's different for the sake of being different to achieve the goal. From my POV, Microsoft is an increasingly irrelevant player in the web browser world. The imminent failure of Vista will make this more evident. Customers are getting sick and tired of having things break when they upgrade their software.

mixmax 19y ago
I wouldn't call a company with a marketshare of 81% in the browser market irrelevant - I'd call them marketleaders. Yes they are the exception, but like it or not you just have to deal with it. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers
- Hexstream 19y ago
  Alright then, let's just say they're rapidly gaining irrelevance status. Happy? 81% market share is not very spectacular when you used to have 97% a few years ago.
  - mixmax 19y ago
    81% market share is still spectacular - even if you used to have 97%. However you look at it they are the largest player, and you have to design for it. Having a website that doesn't work in IE is like having a store where you have a guy at the door telling 4 out of five people that they can't come inside to buy your stuff. I don't particularly like MS, and I don't agree with their tactics but that doesn't mean I make the naive mistake of dismissing them or thinking that in a few years they'll be gone. They won't, so be a little pragmatic. IE is in no way irrelevant, nor is it becoming so in the near future.
    - Hexstream 19y ago
      Agreed, but I can't shake the feeling this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. You're advising to act like they'll still be the dominant player in a few years, but by supporting them this way it's indeed true that this will be the case. See the vicious circle?
      - mixmax 19y ago
        I do - but unfortunately it's not really a matter of choice. Not if you goal is to make money that is.
alex_c 19y ago
I was thinking along similar lines while reading the article (why doesn't Firefox have this problem?) I don't think it's so much that the other browsers have SOLVED the problem, more that they never created the problem for themselves in the first place (to the same extent that Microsoft did, anyway). By sticking closer to the "standards" yesterday, they made backwards compatibility simpler to solve today, and Microsoft hasn't. None of this answers the real question: now what? IE isn't going anywhere soon, and we'll have to live with it either as web developers or as users for the foreseeable future. Even if Microsoft wants to do the "right" thing, how can they clean up their mess without breaking all the "if IE do this" sites out there?
- mechanical_fish 19y ago
  Exactly. The problem is that MS can't turn time backwards. The time to have "solved" the problem was back in the IE4 through IE6 days -- when, frankly, nobody realized how great "standards-complicance" was, because only about three people on Earth had seen a "standards-compliant" browser load a "standards-compliant" site. Before Firefox and Safari, everyone used IE. [1] The IE team seems to be properly repentant, now, and they're down with the idea that they need to conform to standards. But they're under pressure not to break all existing IE-specific sites at the same time. And they can't go back into the past and convince their old marketing team to emphasize "standards" instead of encouraging customers to develop around IE-specific features. The laws of physics don't work that way. [1] Cue irate reply from an old-school Opera user in: 3..2..1..
- dmoney 19y ago
  They could name the new browser something other than IE, and make sure the code testing for older IEs sees it as just another hopefully standards-compliant browser. Then the "if IE" code wouldn't trigger because the browser is Microsoft(r) MetalDog Home Premium, or whatever. Of course they probably wouldn't want to lose the brand recognition of IE.
TrevorJ 19y ago
I applaud you.

mixmax 19y ago

I wouldn't call a company with a marketshare of 81% in the browser market irrelevant - I'd call them marketleaders. Yes they are the exception, but like it or not you just have to deal with it. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers

Hexstream 19y ago
Alright then, let's just say they're rapidly gaining irrelevance status. Happy? 81% market share is not very spectacular when you used to have 97% a few years ago.
- mixmax 19y ago
  81% market share is still spectacular - even if you used to have 97%. However you look at it they are the largest player, and you have to design for it. Having a website that doesn't work in IE is like having a store where you have a guy at the door telling 4 out of five people that they can't come inside to buy your stuff. I don't particularly like MS, and I don't agree with their tactics but that doesn't mean I make the naive mistake of dismissing them or thinking that in a few years they'll be gone. They won't, so be a little pragmatic. IE is in no way irrelevant, nor is it becoming so in the near future.
  - Hexstream 19y ago
    Agreed, but I can't shake the feeling this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. You're advising to act like they'll still be the dominant player in a few years, but by supporting them this way it's indeed true that this will be the case. See the vicious circle?
    - mixmax 19y ago
      I do - but unfortunately it's not really a matter of choice. Not if you goal is to make money that is.

alex_c 19y ago

I was thinking along similar lines while reading the article (why doesn't Firefox have this problem?) I don't think it's so much that the other browsers have SOLVED the problem, more that they never created the problem for themselves in the first place (to the same extent that Microsoft did, anyway). By sticking closer to the "standards" yesterday, they made backwards compatibility simpler to solve today, and Microsoft hasn't. None of this answers the real question: now what? IE isn't going anywhere soon, and we'll have to live with it either as web developers or as users for the foreseeable future. Even if Microsoft wants to do the "right" thing, how can they clean up their mess without breaking all the "if IE do this" sites out there?

mechanical_fish 19y ago
Exactly. The problem is that MS can't turn time backwards. The time to have "solved" the problem was back in the IE4 through IE6 days -- when, frankly, nobody realized how great "standards-complicance" was, because only about three people on Earth had seen a "standards-compliant" browser load a "standards-compliant" site. Before Firefox and Safari, everyone used IE. [1] The IE team seems to be properly repentant, now, and they're down with the idea that they need to conform to standards. But they're under pressure not to break all existing IE-specific sites at the same time. And they can't go back into the past and convince their old marketing team to emphasize "standards" instead of encouraging customers to develop around IE-specific features. The laws of physics don't work that way. [1] Cue irate reply from an old-school Opera user in: 3..2..1..
dmoney 19y ago
They could name the new browser something other than IE, and make sure the code testing for older IEs sees it as just another hopefully standards-compliant browser. Then the "if IE" code wouldn't trigger because the browser is Microsoft(r) MetalDog Home Premium, or whatever. Of course they probably wouldn't want to lose the brand recognition of IE.

TrevorJ 19y ago

I applaud you.