Submitted by “We’ve decided that IE8 will, by default, interpret web content in the most standards compliant way it can. This decision is a change from what we’ve posted previously. Microsoft recently published a set of Interoperability Principles. Thinking about IE8’s behavior with these principles in mind, interpreting web content in the most standards compliant way possible is a better thing to do. We think that acting in accordance with principles is important, and IE8’s default is a demonstration of the interoperability principles in action. While we do not believe any current legal requirements would dictate which rendering mode a browser must use, this step clearly removes this question as a potential legal and regulatory issue. As stated above, we think it’s the better choice.” Ars has more.
I applaud this move by MS, though without the EU breathing down their neck this would never have come about. Check out the following from the Ars article:
I wonder where that initiative come from?
Time Tomcat ate some more crow pie. What was that about the EU anti competitive ruling having no impact on the IT industry? Sure it doesn’t!
Yeah, this is great news, 899mil cheers for this decision!
I am not exactly advocating tomcats point of view, but in the specific case, its not hard to believe that the standards compliance initiative is a genuine disire in the company. I know you aren’t big in the microsoft developer world, but they have been hiring a large amount of really solid guys in the last while (like Scott Hanselman, Phil Haack, and Rob Conory). Since everyone blogs now, you kinda get to know many of the team leads, and most of the important ones are decidedly non evil (of what I read anyways, which is the developer platform side of things).
Microsoft is a *really* big place, with alot of different types of people in it, and it is really hard to pidgen hole the entire place one way or the other. My guess is that this is something certain people have been pushing for for awhile, and that the EU commission sabre rattling has just been what they needed to push it through the more evil types.
I know quite a bit more about the internals of MS than you might think. ;-p
My brother in-law works as a .NET software architect and project manager for MS at their European headquarters in Dublin, Ireland. No, I’m not gonna say he’s evil, in case you where wondering ;-), he is actually a really nice guy. Doesn’t mean he can flaunt what upper management decides.
I agree that MS employs many intelligent and innovative people, my brother in-law being one of them, but what they personally think is the right thing to do has very little impact on what they do do if they want to get payed, a bottom line I think we are all familiar with.
Sure, ideas filter upwards over time, but just because MS has been employing some very smart people recently does not mean that they suddenly decide to change the tried and tested tactics that made them the richest corporation on the planet.
Apart from that, the bus can be full to the neck with conscientious passengers, but if makes no difference if the driver is an ass.
Edit : Bloody typos!
Edited 2008-03-04 13:27 UTC
Well, I knew you were a linux guy, so I figured you wouldn’t really any reason to know about this stuff Most linux guys kind of see MS as one giant death star, when in reality it is much more fragmented then that.
When it comes to developer power, IMO it depends what part of the company you are talking about. The new MVC framework and the DLR languages being open sourced were things that the dev teams and ScottGu pushed through (I didn’t mention him when I was talking about non evil rockstar developers. Scott actually wrote the entire first version of the ASP MVC framework on his laptop on a plane ride).
Same deal with the .net source code release for the debugger. The silverlight guys specifically wanted Miguel and company to get Moonlight off the ground, which is why MS ended up helping with development, and paying for the propriatary codecs it uses. I know the .net team gives the mono guys their test cases so they can get maximum compliance, but that doesn’t really count as it could be considered more of a skunkworx thing.
I’m not saying that its like that everywhere in the company, but in certain places (especially the ones I focus on as a .net guy) developers do have enough power to push through really big things.
Although I started with Linux, I’m really more of a all round *nix-head with some MS administration in my past, just to clear that up. No worries though, eh?
As for what you are saying, it actually makes me happy to hear that. No wonder MS is known for having exceptional development tools.
Let’s hope the revolution continues from both below and above, at lest then we can all benefit.
I think it would be fair to say that, in general, those of us in the Linux/Unix world are more familiar with what is going on in the Windows world, than Windows guys are with what’s going on in the Linux/Unix world. Even if one *tried* to completely avoid news from the Windows world, it would be a difficult thing to achieve.
And, of course, many of us hail from a time before there *was* such thing as Linux. I dislike it when people try to pigeon-hole me as a “Linux Guy” and then proceed to make all manner of assumptions from there.
I don’t mind so much. I’d rather that than be pigeon-holed as an MSCE!
Well, there is a difference between knowing that Vista SP1 is coming down the pipe, and knowing who ScottGu is. I would also say you are a linux guy, cause thats what you use and advocate. If you used and advocated solaris, I would call you a solaris guy.
In a more general way I agree with you though, you would be shocked to see how many guys in the ms development community don’t know the difference between a BSDish liscence and the GPL. And don’t even talk about the various forms of unix, free or otherwise.
Edited 2008-03-04 16:33 UTC
But what about my remaining SCO OpenServer client? (I claim extenuating circumstances on that one.)
I’m a Unix guy before I’m a Linux guy, you see. I’m an OpenSolaris advocate… and a Solaris advocate. I’m a *BSD advocate… and I’m an OSX advocate.
I’m *vocal* about Linux, however, because Linux is the one that just might have enough momentum to make my hopes and dreams come true for all of the Unixes. With a little help from its friends, of course. Everyone’s efforts count.
I’m also an advocate of FOSS, but that came later. And my views… are not so easily categorized. (And I should know!) What you see here at OSAlert is the projection of my views and attitudes onto the plane of Linux.
I am an OSAlert fan, as well. And that is quite relevant. Because most of us OSAlert fans know a little more about the Windows world than simply that there’s a service pack coming out.
the more conspiracy theory minded people would claim that they’re hiring these people simply so that no one else can. They have the cash flow to fill up a building with the best and the brightest in the field and then do nothing with their ideas. Paying out a few million a year simply to make sure that some really smart people don’t work for Sun, IBM or on Linux is probably a worthwhile investment in itself. Just patent anything clever they come up with, file and forget until someone else tries to implement the same thing, then sue them.
Of course it’s just a theory
Yeah, thats a pretty dumb theory.
They hired Scott Hanselman because he is a great technologist, and really enjoys both learning and teaching. His job is to basically be Scott Hanselman, just with a fat paycheck and some of his screencasts end up on microsoft sites. Scotts focus has always been on MS platforms, however he still has a very positive outlook at what is happening in other pastures.
Phil Haack gained prominence in the community for being the lead developer on the open source blog engine Subtext, and being a fantastic blogger. He was hired because one day Scott Guthry was showing him his new MVC framework for ASP.net. Phil was really excited about it, and basically told Scott he would do whatever he had to to be able to work on the project. Even after becoming a blue badge, he is encouraged to continue work on his SubText project.
Rob Conory was a really good ASP.net freelance guy who decided to learn Ruby on Rails one day. He was really impressed with alot of the ideas in it, about the focus on being painless to use, saving as much time as possible, convention over configuration, and simplicity. He started the SubSonic OR/M open source project with those goals in mind. Its a great project (I use it myself for anything not enterprisey), and got a fairly big following. When Scott was pulling in guys to work on the MVC project, Rob was one of the first he approached, due to his competance and obvious love of Rails. Rob is not only encouraged to keep working on SubSonic, but there is a possibility it will get pulled into the MVC framework at some later date.
All three of these guys are still in their community leadership roles. If MS hired them to stop being out there in the world, they are doing a very poor job of it.
Which is why it was mainly a joke. I also wasn’t really refering to the people you mentioned, but more to all their more theoretical people whom we see publish cool stuff from time to time that is never heard of again.
And that initiative will last only as long as the pressure remains. Microsoft is hoping that the world will forget about their transgressions and go on, thinking that the problem is now solved. I’m certainly encouraged that these measures have gotten real and positive results. But it is clear that MS needs a dedicated watchdog assigned for the duration of their desktop monopoly reign.
Edited 2008-03-04 13:49 UTC
You hit the nail on it’s head there, at least as far as I am concerned. And there was a certain person talking about runaway bureaucracies. What a tool!
I’m hoping the EU doesn’t slacken up, or that the other nations running their own anti competition investigations don’t drop the ball.
If all goes well, MS will be dragged into playing fair. The may be kicking and screaming all the way, but they will be dragged into it.
From customers. Duh.
Thanks for yet more random speculations, Mr Conspiracy Theory. Face it: You’re a hopeless ideologue who can’t even admit that Samba’s successful use of the interoperability docs from MS means that the fine levied by the EU is unjustified.
RTFA is all I’m gonnna say about that statement. To even mention the childish ‘duh’…
If I understand correctly, you are trying to say that MS trying to make IE more standards compliant has nothing to do with the impending ass kicking they are gonna get from the EU if they don’t tow the line? What are you smoking? Never mind the childish ‘Mr’…
Wow, you really are a sore loser. Walk on home kiddo ;-p
Because Firefox and w3c win the developer camp ?
And other standard-compliant browsers maybe, no?
Other browsers have to compete with Firebug, not necessarily Firefox itself.
Amen to that. Until there is something even remotely as good as firebug on another browser, I wouldn’t even consider switching. I don’t know how we did web development so long without it, as it is just such an essential tool.
This is great.
I look forward to the day when I only have to write one page not have thousand tweaks to make it works with various IE-versions.
I think it is great too … but note the caveat … “interpret web content in the most standards compliant way it can”
It will still be quite a while before IE is actually standards compliant to any useful extent for your purpose. IE doesn’t support SVG yet, and quite a few other web standards that a browser should support.
But it will fully support CSS now, better then FF2 does, which is the point he was trying to make. SVG support is kind of pointless at this point, as good webformats are the ones that focus on the smallest size possible, not the largest and most cpu intensive. SVG will be sort of like a poor mans flash when browsers start letting you script it, but until then I can’t think of a single scenario where it would be a good choice for use on a web page.
As for other standards, which ones are you talking about? I would like everyone to standardize on XHR, but since MS was the ones that invented XMLHttpRequest in the first place, they could justifyably tell everyone else to take a flying leap on that one.
All that means is that instead of having to tweak you CSS to work around features not implemented in IE, you’ll have to tweak your CSS to work around features not implemented in FF2. Until all browsers use the same rendering engine (which will probably never happen), web developers will always have to make a choice between.
1) Writing to the lowest common demoninator subset of the w3c spec implemented by all used browser, which will probably be a small subset for the forseeable future.
2) Tweaking pages for specific browsers
3) Accepting that some pages will render incorrectly in some browsers.
Don’t get me wrong I think it’s great that MS is taking w3c compliance more seriously and I applaud them. However anybody who thinks that soon all they’ll have to care about is if their page is w3c compliant and then it will magically work in all browsers is probably quite mistaken.
All IE8 and FF3 will change is making the subset in point 1 a bit larger once IE6-7 and FF1-2 become so old no one uses them any more. Web developers will always have to target browsers rather than specs.
You are pretty much arguing my point
Why IE8 (and to a lesser extent, IE7), is that subset grew substancially. Right now, I can’t reliably use things like min-width or min-height, if it weren’t for IE, I could because everyone else supports it.
Uhmm, this is like apples to oranges, I mean how come you compare IE8’s features (hypothetical as they are) to FF2 since we can fairly clearly see FF3’s nose coming around the corner ?
Afaik Opera and Firefox 3.0 already support scripting of SVG (to some extent). Maybe even Safari, too. And with Adobe having no slightest intention to support BSD or x64 systems, SVG could prove pretty useful quite quickly once it itself has gained support from web browsers.
Exactly! It will be great when we can get rid of the “if IE” condition.
Also, when will be finally able to take IE6 out back and shoot it?
Would be nice that they offered it for all there Windows OS for a start. Some people are still on older version then XP service pack 2.
The best would be to offer it for all mainstream OS :
Windows , Mac OS X , GNU/Linux.
The utopia would be that they partner with anyone OS who want it.
Can you imagine IE8 on Ubuntu? I think hell will freeze over first. Not that it would bother me if MS really did it, but they lost me as a customer years ago.
And now little more seriously – I wonder which feature will be implemented on Ubuntu as first – IE8.linux.pre-alpha become part of the “partner” repository or that little nasty icon appears right to the clock saying “you have now only 30 days to activate” ?
You know some people said Microsoft never did Open Source and never would be pro Open Source. They where wrong.
Microsoft is not stupid they are starting to realize that letting Google be the default search on all other’s browsers is a bad decision and might start to trow some money that way to unseat Google as default search. It’s a numbers game after all.
Ubuntu is not receiving any money from Google or Firefox , if Microsoft where to offer 25 + million to have the default search engine default to MSN and offer MSN live integration with no other tie-in that could be seen as acceptable. Beside Ubuntu is but one GNU/Linux offer. Novell/Suse , Xandros , etc …
They could also see IE 8 on Other OS as a lesser expenses. Let’s not forget Safari who as direct technological ties to Konqueror code , se we might also see an Apple offer too.
Contrary to popular belief they’re is Billion to be made by being the default primary anything.
http://www.engadget.com/2006/05/25/google-outbids-microsoft-for-del…
They also need all the reason they can get to be seen as more friendly to other’s , this could help in there anti-trust and monopoly cases around the world.
iTune did the same thing by offering a Windows version Apple is not complaining about that new income …
Not holding my breath for it do.
Why?
Mac people sureley prefer Safari anyway.
And on Linux Firefox rules supreme.
The only thing I can see is for debugging purposes. (But if they are serious about the standards support the debugging will be much less needed.)
Well, I use either Firefox or Opera on Mac, Linux and Windows
But this is a welcome development. Less headache for web developers.
Historically, MS basically re-wrote IE on the Mac when they were still supporting that platform. There were many platform specific issues you had to test for, so it actually introduced more of a headache for web development.
actually, IE on MacOS was awesome. It was fast, it had a killer UI.. I loved it. i used to run IE5 on my Powermac 8500/120 with Mac OS 8.1 (horrible, horrible OS). IE for mac was much better than its windows counterpart.
IE for mac was awsome compared to netscape, but that wasn’t really setting the bar that high.
I wasn’t really talking about good or bad though. Every browser has bugs and quirks. But the origional poster said that if MS ported IE to every platform, it would make life easier for developers. I said that wasn’t nessicarily the case, as ie for mac was really different then ie for windows.
IE5 on the Mac, was at the time, the single most standards compliant browser out there; ironically enough.
IE on windows was the most standards compliant for quite a few years. Netscape lost the browser wars fair and square, by the end it was downright horrible to use.
Depends upon what you mean by fair and square.
Netscape needed an overhaul. But how well do any of us code when a multi-hundred billion dollar company with tens of billions of dollars of ready cash to burn decides to “cut off our air supply” in any way it can?
Do we say “Hey! Let’s overhaul this subsystem and that subsystem, because they really need it”? Or do we fight for our very lives, in the short term, gasping for whatever oxygen we can while we still have life left in us? That scenario was more of a mugging than a business interaction.
Fair and square? Well, I suppose the mugger might think so.
Dude, it was more then an overhaul, by the end it was a fundamentally terrible codebase. We know that because the first few years of the Mozilla foundations existance was rewriting and refactoring. By the end, Mozilla was only really netscapes successor in spirit, and even now the code is still a mess compared to say, webkit.
As for web development, the way that web guys hate IE now, they hated netscape then. It was buggy, and didn’t support alot of really cool things. It was a cool company, and a good product at the beginning, but by the end it was a self parody, and I don’t understand how anyone can say that it shouldn’t have been wiped off the map.
Rewriting. Not really refactoring. The Mozilla guys made a fundamentally terrible mistake:
http://tinyurl.com/4gus
I know I have linked that many times before… but usually I present it as an analogy to some blunder made, or about to be made, by some other project. Never before have I linked to it in such a literal way.
The Netscape code base needed help. But not the kind of “help” that the Mozilla guys gave it. (It’s ready when it’s ready.) Poor decisions made by the Mozilla Foundation cost us all very dearly. (It’s ready when it’s ready.) We’re still paying interest today. (It’s ready when it’s ready.) And cheering about having regained a tiny fraction of the market share we lost while we were waiting for it to “be ready”. And when we thought it “was ready”… it still wasn’t. And then finally, enter Firefox, and a clue about marketing. Because by the time the completely rewritten product was (finally) ready, the Foundation had forgotten what marketing was, and had to be reminded.
So you really can’t say that Netscape died because the code base was not salvageable. They died from asphyxiation, as Microsoft intended… and called the keystone cops with their last dying breath. (“Sorry… Wrong Number.”)
And as per your previous post, it was because IE was so much more compliant with web standards, right?
Edited 2008-03-04 23:03 UTC
IE on Linux ?
No thanks.
When I have to use Windows, I try never to use IE.
Why would I corrupt a perfectly working system to put on what I consider to be a flawed application ?
I mean, I would also never want, and hope they never port, Amarok onto Windows.
That’s where you and I , show a true difference in strategy , personnaly , I see IE on GNU/Linux as similar to IE on Apple Mac OS X , It help a lot with **switcher** at first.
Sometime you have no choice. When Firefox , Opera , konqueror and all the other’s cant render a page or allow for use of specific Microsoft technology.
It’s GNU/Linux , you don’t want it you don’t install it , but I am sorry to say that it’s one application that gets to be high up on the list as reason why people don’t switch or change OS.
”
http://amarok.kde.org/blog/archives/374-Amarok2-builds-on-Windows.h…
http://amarok.kde.org/wiki/Development/Win32
Personnaly I would not mind to have the option to offer the entire Microsoft portfolio of software on GNU/Linux. It would be hard core competition on the OS and would force the Free Software solution to compete at a higher level.
It could eventually lead to a IE Open Sourced or made to be Free Software.
Here you are. There is no reason to bother with Konqueror anymore. Internet Explorer becomes better – even better than Firefox! And the public has another bold reason to drop that text-based OS of yours, and come back to well known operating system environment.
We are expecting you, and please be sure – all that distinctiveness of yours will be added to our own. Hesitation is futile.
(I’m sorry, I cannot stop myself from writing this!)
What makes that statement funny is all of the distinctiveness of konq has already been assimilated, but not by microsoft, by Apple! Konq has been using webkit for awhile now.
Konqueror is still using khtml, even in KDE 4.0, as I believe qtwebkit wasn’t ready yet for deployment. I’ve no idea what konqueror will be using in KDE 4.1. It looks like it’s going to be used in plasma however.
I think kubuntu shipped a webkit enabled konqueror a while back, but I’m not certain on this.
Back on topic, good to hear Microsoft made the right decision…eventually.
While this is a good thing, it doesn’t help much. We still need to adjust CSS and everything for IE6 users (cca. 40% of users, mostly corpo). Microsoft made a mistake with IE6, this won’t help a lot for at least another year or two. I hope they learned a lesson.
Too late?
I think the recent news about IE8 and how it’s developing shows change of focus on IE in general. This means that in a few years we might write a website *once*.
And isn’t that better than in a few years time still having the same trouble because IE is lagging behind the standards?
I’m sick of people *always* dissing MS even when they are doing the right thing. Yes, they do bad stuff, even today.
But when they do the right thing they should be apploaded for it.
I agree with your sentiment and think you have a very good point, it’s just the reasoning behind MS’s shift in policy that is so grating.
The only reason MS is doing this is because of the vast amount of money the EU fined them for not being in compliance with the anti trust ruling. If it takes $1.3b to get them to start supporting standards by default, then I don’t think MS should be applauded.
I don’t applaud someone for not breaking into a house or for not going to jail, those are things you should be trying to do anyway. If a repeat offender stops robbing people and start trying to make amends because s/he feels regret, that I applaud. On the other hand, if s/he stops stealing/extorting people because the law has thrown the book at them, then frankly it serves them right.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m personally glad that this move is happening, but I refuse to sing MS’s praise for doing something they should have been doing from the start.
Well, any for-profit businesses who have shareholders to answer to do not do the right thing simply because it is the right thing to do. They either do it because they are forced to or because they think it will make them more money. What, did you really expect MS to bust out with a standards compliant browser one day for no other reason than, “Yeah, we realized we were jackasses, so here ya go!”
If you think about it, the only reason that Firefox exists is because Netscape once got its ass handed to it by MS. If it weren’t for that, we’d be dealing with the LAYER tag and its ilk.
What makes you think it was the EU and not just the general feeling of web-developers who have been complaining about this issue from left to right?
I personally prefer the meta solution, but I guess not forcing it on people is okay. If you’re really serious about having a reliable webpage, you should definitely test it in IE8 and place a meta tag specifying that browser and the prevailing version of Firefox at the time the page is tested.
Ideally you should only have to specify the version of the standard your page should comply with. Which is already the case.
Well, FTA:
That’s a pretty good indicator of why they are doing it, don’t you think?
If I recall correctly, the EC head trashed the Interoperability Initiative, essentially saying “It’s not for real”. So maybe Microsoft was already planning to do make this move, not in response to the EC (or Opera (give me a break)), but in response to the outcry from web devs, and simply cited the Interoperability Initiative as an opportunity to say, “See EC, it is too for real!”. And it may work. They’ve got *you* admitting that the Interoperability Initiative is for real, after all.
Bit late now though, isn’t it?
I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss ’em. Sure, compared to MS they are less than small fry, but with the European Commission on their side…well, we can all see what the EC can do.
As I have said before, I’ll be the first to back em up if they are for real. Until then, they have much to do to change my, or it seems the EC’s, mind about how they operate. Here is to hoping for the best.
Lol! They most certainly do. Never even thought of it that way.
Glad to see your back. It’s about time we had a real pro-MS heavy weight around here again, not these new wannabes that keep popping up. (Not that I’m saying your fat, or anything, just that…anybody got a bigger shovel for me?).
You do not recall *quite* correctly. They were very understandably skeptical. However, they did say that they would be pleased if Microsoft actually followed through with their promises. The gist of their message was that they were taking a wait and see attitude. This is a reasonable and easy first step that MS is taking. But it is still very early in the process to know if they are really sincere. Talk is cheap.
The EC also stated that while they would take note of what Microsoft may or may not be doing today, it does not change history regarding transgressions which they may have made in the past, just as you or me being good citizens now would not change our histories regarding any laws or regulations we might have broken in the past.
I am what one might call “optimistically skeptical” about the situation at this point. That’s about a notch down from “cautiously optimistic”. As a Unix advocate, I’ve been at odds with MS in my professional life for coming up on 20 years. It’s going to take a little more than some promises made under threat of having even more discovered about their activities back when they thought no one was looking and that they were untouchable, in another investigation, to convince me of their sincerity. If and when I am convinced that they really are sincere, and for the long term, I assure you that I will be dancing on air, flying through rainbows, and doing figure eights around cloud nine; I do not begrudge MS a prominent position in the IT landscape, you see.
But in the mean time, I’m going to monitor OSAlert for further information.
Edited 2008-03-04 19:40 UTC
You completely missed the point. Nowhere did I say anything negative about IE8, did I? Believe me, I’m very happy Microsoft is releasing a better standard compliant browser, even though I’m not using it. But it’s too late. Why? From your words I see you have none or little experience with professional web development. I’m talking about big corp/news/presentation/B2B sites, serving tens/hundreds of thousand and more users daily. When a website targets general population, there are tons of people (about 20 – 30% of all) out there still using IE6 – users either didn’t update or they are on office computers with lazy administrators. If you won’t fix your code to work fine in that browser (some clients require even IE5.5 or 5.0 as minimum) you’ll get tons of mail daily, people complaining. Unhappy visitor won’t return, meaning less pageviews meaning less money from advertisements (that cover many costs). And visitors complaining means client complaining to me..that means less satisfaction meaning less money. The main problem/point here: we need to spend extra time to fix and adjust layouts and scripts to work on every user’s browser like it should. Doing that can take some time and time means money. Most people don’t even realize how bad IE was before 7.0 (and no, 7.0 is no miracle either, but it’s quite good).
So you see, it’s not all about what someone just did, never forget the past. We all make mistakes, of course, daily, but mistakes by others that cost me money….that’s something different. Again, I welcome this effort from Microsoft, but the damage is done and it’ll follow us for quite some time. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m really not impressed by this…what, so they’ve finally done it right in 8th (or more) attempt, few years too late? Yapee, let me start the fireworks [/sarcasm]
Now who was dissing who for no reason?
Edited 2008-03-05 00:49 UTC
Does anybody knows if PNG will finally work correctly under IE8 ?
Edited 2008-03-04 13:08 UTC
PNG works correctly in IE7
Transperency works, but it does still not support gamma-correction.
(Photoshop CS3 automaticly does some magic that makes PNG still look good in IE7 though, not sure what it is.)
See, I didn’t even know that (I use PS when it comes to web images). You learn something new every day.
Edited 2008-03-04 13:43 UTC
MS have a weird history when it comes to their PNG-support.
IE 6 does in fact support a weird kind of transperency. If you set background color in the PNG-meta stuff it works. That is, it’s transparent to that color. (So if you have a webpage with white-background set it to white.)
I’ve used this as a way to have PNG-images degrade gracefully(on IE6) where I’ve used PNG transperency.
Edited 2008-03-04 14:26 UTC
Oh yes I’ve tried googling and found lots of example. thx for the info.
That’s all
Yeah, that is about 90% of the comments to the announcement on the IE team blog
That Microsoft can’t use their monopolistic ways anymore, if they do a number of things will happen. They will get fined, Firefox will take market share faster and web developers will move away.
I just find it sad that people actually think Microsoft is actually changing, maybe a new president and anti-trust laws are making them do it just incase they get battered like in the Clinton era. Microsoft never listen to the users, so this is a strategy based on the above in my view.
The age old discussion of intention vs. result. (Well, not really versus, but at least a discussion of how important the intent and reason behind it is.)
Although I do not belive MS are becoming angels, and are their commitment to standards are probably nothing more than adapting to the market I still think it’s good.
Also: this really show how much power the customer *really* have. Demand for following standards will make companies follow standards. So, remember to demand following of standards!
Yay!
We are seeing a lot of positive changes at Microsoft. This would not have been conceivable 2 years ago.
But who would care then about IE if they are able to choose any browser and have any page rendered in exact same way? I presume it’s not the end of lock-in just because they say it will be standards-compliant.
If IE suddenly drops the ability to render all those crippled pages written by the crippled people who could care less about your OS/browser choice or accessibility or other such nonsense then IE loses, not in the least because of the bad reputation it has gained over the years.
Of course , this has nothing to do with this :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7266629.stm
and isn’t it fitting that the death of the only competitor that inspired it’s non compliance policy in the first place is now gone ?
“Final goodbye for early web icon “,http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7270583.stm
It will now make cross browser compatibility a lot easier,than what it used to be, which has been likened ,by even the most conservative of opinions,to passing kidney stones each time one takes a trip to the little boys’ room.
I, like many – no,like myself. I shall speak for noone else but me. I ,like myself, welcome this day with joy and jubilation,that microsoft has FINALLY decided to produce a standards compliant browser when the browser market no longer really counts or matters.
I am delighted,because of the future development agony that has now been averted, but is it not a bit sad, tragic even, that we rejoice because someone does what they were suppossed to have done in the first place ?
While this is certainly good new moving forward, I think people are too soon to forget that most of the problems with IE were born out of the divergent paths with DHTML and the like taken by Microsoft and Netscape during the so-called “browser wars” of the late 90s before any of these web standards were formalized or adopted. By the time it was all over, Microsoft had a large userbase that had become dependent on its version of the web, and if anything Microsoft should be criticized for being too cautious in not wanting to disrupt legacy support for these people (especially corporate users). This legacy problem is something the Mozilla and KHTML teams had a luxury of not having to deal with, which of course has been a great benefit to them, as supporting legacy requirements is often a dead weight that restricts progress.
Seriously, putting “Microsoft” and “standard compliant” in the same sentence must be considered to be a violation of the natural order of things.
Honestly, I don’t believe for a second that Microsoft will make IE8 play fair. Fool me once, shame on you. Foll me 235 times, shame on me!
Great!! now osnews starts censoring comments.. Go china^H^H^H^H^Hosnews!!!!
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I find it funny they announce that they’re going to follow standards for once.