4 ms·

First: I use Chrome. IE is an awful browser. IE8 is bearable. I think that the advertising campaign that they are using for IE8 is disingenuous and despicable.

First: I use Chrome. IE is an awful browser. IE8 is bearable. I think that the advertising campaign that they are using for IE8 is disingenuous and despicable. As a Microsoftie, I'm not proud of it. I'm going to let it slide simply because I want as many people as possible to upgrade from IE 6 and 7. I do, however, believe there are more honest ways to go about it. I think people have found my defensive insight into Microsoft to be a valuable perspective. Let's keep the streak going... While the advertising teams have taken serious liberties, the engineering team has been honest. I can't find the source now, but I've heard that they were only aiming for CSS 2 support because CSS 3 is an unfinished draft: http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/current-work http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/current-work Many people complained about broken standards, so Microsoft decided not to ship a browser which map to unfinished standards. This would create future compatability issues. I think that's a reasonable call considering the critical mass of their browser which causes it to be a defacto standard. This looks to be in line with independent findings which show IE8 has fantastic CSS 2 support, but weak 3 support: http://www.quirksmode.org/css/contents.html http://www.quirksmode.org/css/contents.html Additionally, the IE team has made significant contributions to the W3C with CSS 2.1 test cases: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/03/06/ie8-and-css-2-1-testing.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/03/06/ie8-and-css-2-1-...

ZeroGravitas 17y ago
Doesn't IE8 support some of HTML5? Doesn't that make it obvious that the "unfinished" line is total BS to justify strategic standards compliance manouvres? Note they use the exact same excuse for dodgy ODF in Office and surely no one is gullible enough to believe Microsoft has a sincere desire to deliver on that standard.
rbanffy 17y ago
I always found it weird the file extension is .xht instead of .xhtml at as in http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/Test/CSS2.1/20061011/index.xht http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/Test/CSS2.1/20061011/index.xht I would never have guessed why.
dinkumthinkum 17y ago
Well, let's get real here. We know where this is going. Microsoft really needs to either a) give up on the browser business or b) rewrite/scrap IE. The previous PM of IE (can't be bothered to remember/google his name, maybe Dean) basically had a breakdown and a "please don't be mean to me" serious of blog posts. It's silly that a company like MS cannot build a browser that lives up to standards set by a project like Firefox (maintaining compatibility with badly written corporate apps targeted at IE5/IE6 is a non starter -- very simple technical solution).
cookiecaper 17y ago
I wrote this on Reddit recently: "It's about control, which leads back up to money. "Windows is the default OS and IE the default browser. This is also why IE is broken. Microsoft doesn't want IE to render the same as its contemporaries because then you don't need to test on IE anymore, which means you don't need Windows anymore. "Microsoft controls things this way and it's been part of their corporate philosophy for a long time -- Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. They make something mostly compatible with the standard or competing product and then add proprietary extensions or quirks, and their marketshare alone forces people to take notice, and the hope is that eventually people will forget about the non-IE stuff and not bother to test on it anymore, meaning that now things don't work unless you have IE, meaning that you can't use the internet without Windows. That doesn't happen as often with the internet anymore, but as most of us know, it was quite successful for a pretty long time, and it's still successful for many non-web technologies (see DirectX v. OpenGL, etc.). "And while things are no longer panning out to complete MS dominance, IE still plays a major role in defining what techs get on the web and what doesn't. For instance, crappy HTML 5 support because HTML 5 harms Silverlight. This is all intentional, don't fool yourself." Not sure what you mean by "Microsoftie", but it'd be interesting to hear an MS advocate's or employee's position on this.
- netsp 17y ago
  Microsoft doesn't want IE to render the same as its contemporaries because then you don't need to test on IE anymore, which means you don't need Windows anymore. Are you implying MS are purposely breaking IE in order to sell Windows licences to web developers? How many licenses exactly do you think are on the line here?
  - bengtan 17y ago
    There's one here. I'm an Ubuntu user, but I have a paid copy of XP that I use in VMWare so I can test IE6 & 7. EDIT: But I'm probably an outlier.
    - netsp 17y ago
      I'm not saying none exist. I have a windows machine that I use mostly for IE. But (a) I didn't buy it for that purpose, it already existed and (b) I would probably want to use sites I work on in IE even if it worked perfectly. It's the most popular browser. They don't have to break IE.

ZeroGravitas 17y ago

Doesn't IE8 support some of HTML5? Doesn't that make it obvious that the "unfinished" line is total BS to justify strategic standards compliance manouvres? Note they use the exact same excuse for dodgy ODF in Office and surely no one is gullible enough to believe Microsoft has a sincere desire to deliver on that standard.

rbanffy 17y ago

I always found it weird the file extension is .xht instead of .xhtml at as in http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/Test/CSS2.1/20061011/index.xht http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/Test/CSS2.1/20061011/index.xht I would never have guessed why.

dinkumthinkum 17y ago

Well, let's get real here. We know where this is going. Microsoft really needs to either a) give up on the browser business or b) rewrite/scrap IE. The previous PM of IE (can't be bothered to remember/google his name, maybe Dean) basically had a breakdown and a "please don't be mean to me" serious of blog posts. It's silly that a company like MS cannot build a browser that lives up to standards set by a project like Firefox (maintaining compatibility with badly written corporate apps targeted at IE5/IE6 is a non starter -- very simple technical solution).

cookiecaper 17y ago

I wrote this on Reddit recently: "It's about control, which leads back up to money. "Windows is the default OS and IE the default browser. This is also why IE is broken. Microsoft doesn't want IE to render the same as its contemporaries because then you don't need to test on IE anymore, which means you don't need Windows anymore. "Microsoft controls things this way and it's been part of their corporate philosophy for a long time -- Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. They make something mostly compatible with the standard or competing product and then add proprietary extensions or quirks, and their marketshare alone forces people to take notice, and the hope is that eventually people will forget about the non-IE stuff and not bother to test on it anymore, meaning that now things don't work unless you have IE, meaning that you can't use the internet without Windows. That doesn't happen as often with the internet anymore, but as most of us know, it was quite successful for a pretty long time, and it's still successful for many non-web technologies (see DirectX v. OpenGL, etc.). "And while things are no longer panning out to complete MS dominance, IE still plays a major role in defining what techs get on the web and what doesn't. For instance, crappy HTML 5 support because HTML 5 harms Silverlight. This is all intentional, don't fool yourself." Not sure what you mean by "Microsoftie", but it'd be interesting to hear an MS advocate's or employee's position on this.

netsp 17y ago
Microsoft doesn't want IE to render the same as its contemporaries because then you don't need to test on IE anymore, which means you don't need Windows anymore. Are you implying MS are purposely breaking IE in order to sell Windows licences to web developers? How many licenses exactly do you think are on the line here?
- bengtan 17y ago
  There's one here. I'm an Ubuntu user, but I have a paid copy of XP that I use in VMWare so I can test IE6 & 7. EDIT: But I'm probably an outlier.
  - netsp 17y ago
    I'm not saying none exist. I have a windows machine that I use mostly for IE. But (a) I didn't buy it for that purpose, it already existed and (b) I would probably want to use sites I work on in IE even if it worked perfectly. It's the most popular browser. They don't have to break IE.