I'd like to talk about Microsoft Internet Explorer's, shall we say, "quirky" support of Cascading Style Sheets.

I think it's extremely irresponsible that Microsoft has refused to fully support CSS. I read an article (http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,1995,1776935,00.asp) recently that claimed Microsoft has again said they will not aim to fully support CSS 2 in their next IE release (IE 7.0). They claim CSS is "flawed" and they are waiting until CSS3 before attempting to fully implement it.

Whether Microsoft approves of CSS or not, as a company that produces the most widley used browser available, their job is to create a means of displaying websites and displaying them properly. It makes me so mad that they should be so pompous, that they believe 91% of Internet users (http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2005/April/browser.php) should have to wait until they are good and ready before they start doing their job.

If they're not careful, they will loose their #1 place as quickly as Netscape did.

...I feel better now.

With the current uptake of Firefox they're already losing a big share in the market place.

The browser stats for people visiting my site currently stand at:

Internet Explorer 22%
Crawler/Search Engine 22%
Safari 20%
Firefox 13%
Opera 6%
Lynx 2%
Undetermined 15%

definately, and I couldn't be happier about it.

Problem is there are a lot of people out there who don't realise there is even another option out there other than IE. These are usually causal computer users, like people who only use it for work or for email etc.

There are a lot of people who think Internet Explorer IS the internet. They actually thing the entire Internet is installed on their computer at the same time as IE.

I'm reminded of a time when my Mum was having serious problems with her computer (no doubt because of IE's security holes). I offered to re-install Windows for her, and she said to me:

"OK, but make sure you re-install Amazon.com; I use that all the time".

Makes me laugh to this day.

You are right, IE is a miserable thing to deal with when building sites, but unfortunately you have to live with it.

I have a slightly different approach from you, I regularly use IE. So when my newly developped site works on this piece of C##@R@##A#&%P software, I'm sure it'll work on professionally developped browsers.

When it comes right down to it, the fixes you have to build into your CSS (and sometimes to the HTML/XHTML you generate) are rather small and low impact. The web has always been about compromising ideals in design and embracing the lowest common denominator. It seems that's simply not going to change as each browser company does what they want. Yes, Firefox is closer to a "good" solution but it still has its issues.

You are right, IE is a miserable thing to deal with when building sites, but unfortunately you have to live with it.

I have a slightly different approach from you, I regularly use IE. So when my newly developped site works on this piece of C##@R@##A#&%P software, I'm sure it'll work on professionally developped browsers.

Don't be so sure of that.

Microsoft regularly invents HTML properties and objects (see Frames [iFrames, frameborder etc], scrollbar colouring, directX alpha shading and ActiveX) and it's up to the W3C to decide what makes it through into ratified standards (which standards-compliant browsers comply to, funnily enough).

The problem is, they're implemented in IE (and that abomination called FrontPage), so stupid, stupid, RIDICULOUSLY IDIOTIC web designers use them and it makes Firefox, Safari, Konqueror etc all look underpowered and unuseful.



IE is *the* reason why I feel Microsoft is so hated in the open-source community (which is almost entirely standards-based). Its flagrant ignorance of the established standards bodies in place (starting with the lack of JVM in XP, all the way through to their apparent hatred of the W3C). Rumour had it that IE7 will fix that for us all, but MS has said that they won't ever release another standalone web browser. Meaning maybe IE7 won't be released on XP, 2K, Me, NT or 9x.

Meaning we'll all still be writing to those pretend standards that IE 6 and 5 set up.

I just wish when they have problems they'd either FIX them, or LEAVE them, so you could have expectable behaviour every time.


Edit:

The worst part is, the unpredictable behaviour of IE when rendering standards-compliant code leaves people consistently writing TABLE-BASED layouts. Which stops forward advancement of the medium.

I admit, there're holes in the standards at the moment (no vertical-alignment is the glaring one), but the longer people are forced to learn tables as a layout technique, the longer it will take IE to change. It's a horribly vicious cycle.

Microsoft regularly invents HTML properties and objects (see Frames [iFrames, frameborder etc], scrollbar colouring, directX alpha shading and ActiveX) and it's up to the W3C to decide what makes it through into ratified standards (which standards-compliant browsers comply to, funnily enough).

I think we have the same opinion, just my previous post was maybe a little incomplete, I use standard html/css, none of the IE absurdities. Hence if it works on IE, I'm pretty sure it'll work elsewhere.

I just wish every web designer had heard of the W3C and knew about http://validator.w3c.com

Another real pain is someone using IE'S DOM for development knowing that the other browsers out there won't support it.

Stats for Jasoco.net / GeekPub forums as of August:
MS Internet Explorer 40.1 %
Firefox 34.7 %
Safari 21.8 %
Opera 0.9 %
Netscape 0.8 %
Mozilla 0.7 %
Camino 0.4 %
Unknown 0.1 %
OmniWeb 0 %
Konqueror 0 %
Others 0 %

A few months ago, IE was much higher. I'd agree alternate browsers are finally catching up.

Just not fast enough.

looks like even IE designers are fed up with it:

http://www.scottberkun.com/blog/?p=115

I've been working with my web designer a lot the last 6 months and we're working on a brand new site that uses heavy CSS and JS, and it's been a lengthy process getting it to work right with IE. All the other browsers (Firefox win/mac, Safari, Opera) work very well, but IE is so stubborn, and often there are stupid CSS hacks you have to do to get around its short comings... I'm really looking forward to IE 7 - hopefully it fixes a lot of these issues.

And when can web designers get rid of IE 6 or even IE 5 support? IE 7 will be final at the end of 2006, IIRC, and probably won't have more than 20% of the web browser market until mid-2007. And since users of earlier versions of Windows might be left back... 'ts a drag.

I definitely agree. For the past month I've been building my own .com, and while I test my web page primarily in Safari, I also know to test in Firefox and Opera which are the next most popular. Internet Explorer for Mac, who cares no one uses it. I then go to Internet Explorer on my PC. While most of the site is fine, there are always elements that I have to fix in it. And it's not just a simple solution either, IE is so stubborn. Go to hell Microsoft! :mad:

Stats for Jasoco.net / GeekPub forums as of August:
MS Internet Explorer 40.1 %
Firefox 34.7 %
Safari 21.8 %
Opera 0.9 %
Netscape 0.8 %
Mozilla 0.7 %
Camino 0.4 %
Unknown 0.1 %
OmniWeb 0 %
Konqueror 0 %
Others 0 %

A few months ago, IE was much higher. I'd agree alternate browsers are finally catching up.

Just not fast enough.

Is that on the PC and Mac platform?

if that was cross platform, wouldn't that be a firm figure on the world market share fo rapple? apple computers have nearly 30% of the world share!

I just wish every web designer had heard of the W3C and knew about http://validator.w3c.com
Except that the URL is http://validator.w3.org/

Just nitpicking again… :D

It makes me so mad that they should be so pompous, that they believe 91% of Internet users (http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2005/April/browser.php) should have to wait until they are good and ready before they start doing their job.

If they're not careful, they will loose their #1 place as quickly as Netscape did.
They are doing their job, frankly. Their job is to provide products that people want. If you don't like their browser, you would use someone else's browser, and they would have to figure out why, and make changes to their product to correct the loss of market share. They are pompous because they can be. If most people are using your product, you might tend toward being a little less interested in making sweeping changes (not that CSS2 is a sweeping change at all). They don't have tabbed browsing yet, when everyone else does. Why? Simple. They don't need to. They have no incentive to. The only way to give them an incentive is to stop using their browser. On Windows, I use FireFox, and I use it on the Mac as well. It's a better browser, by far, and I like not having to rely on MS apps.

The simple answer to all this is simple. Bill Gates and the upper-management of MS need to be removed. Now, that won't happen, because he owns more of the company than any other stockholder, but my point still stands. If they were to leave and put someone in there who could be innovative, which they are not anymore, the company could release better software. You can complain about their browser, but remember that all their software is like that. It's rushed to market and then forgotten about for two years at a time. In their effort to control the software industry, they have moved into too many markets, and spread themselves far too thin. Look at their OS. What is innovative about that? Unlike browsers, there are no real standards in the OS world. You can build whatever you like, but when you have other companies (Apple and Sun, to name two) that are putting features into their systems that are far superior than yours, you have to wake up at some point.

Regarding Netscape, it died because MS started giving their browser away (oh, and they used anti-competitive tactics to force OEMs to stop packaging Netscape with thier computers). You can't go any lower than free (unless you pay someone to use your browser), so Netscape was finished. Their business model made reacting to MS impossible.

They are doing their job, frankly. Their job is to provide products that people want.

IMO their 'job' in the context of IE is to provide a web browser. The definition of a web browser is "software that allows a user to access and view HTML document" (University of Guelph (http://www.uoguelph.ca/history/urban/glossary-01.html) definition).

If MS is actively refusing to update their software to support components used by that HTML document, that contradicts the very definition of a web browser. Thus, they are not doing their job.

It's like an automotive company creating a car with no steering wheel.

This is like using a bad comparison instead of a good one. (All comparisons are bad. Just talk about what you're really talking about instead.)

Btw.: IE _does_ "allow a user to access and view HTML document" (shouldn't that be "documents"?) alright. It's just not top-notch at its job.

it doesn't display the documents correctly. And the reason it doesn't display it correctly it NOT because of a software bug microsoft is unaware of, or because the webpage uses non-standard or non-valid code. rather, it is because microsoft has gone out of its way to prevent the document from displaying correctly. This hinders on the user's ability to "access and view [the] HTML document" - sometimes preventing them from viewing it at all.

i'm gonna be a stubborn ass on this one, sorry :P

IMO their 'job' in the context of IE is to provide a web browser. The definition of a web browser is "software that allows a user to access and view HTML document" (University of Guelph (http://www.uoguelph.ca/history/urban/glossary-01.html) definition).

If MS is actively refusing to update their software to support components used by that HTML document, that contradicts the very definition of a web browser. Thus, they are not doing their job.

It's like an automotive company creating a car with no steering wheel.
Point taken, but you took my comment out of context. I was making the point that when a company does not offer products that people want, they won't use their products, so long as better ones exist, and they know about them. Most Windows users don't know that there is another browser other than IE, and that's the problem. It's also why MS has not bothered to support certain things in their product. They are doing what they think people want. They happen to be wrong, is all. :D

yeah, it annoys me how many ppl don't understand that there are alternatives to IE.

Thendis' story about his mother thinking the entire Internet was installed with Explorer is a good example of how the average non-tech person thinks.

*sigh*

I guess we're talking about corporate responsibility more than anything else.

Then again, there's a fine line between things. Often. For example: Standards are good. They enable a common ground. But without moving off of old paths, there's no evolution. And why leave all evolution to standards organisations. So you develop something new. It's good. You want to push it towards a standard. It doesn't get accepted. Now what? Kill the product or let it live and thrive?
I'm personally not a fan of Flash-based sites, but without Macromedia, vector content would maybe never (or much later) have found its way into webpages.

Don't get me wrong: I agree that it would be better for the world if Microsoft _had_ that corporate responsibility thing. The way they entered this market (web browsers) however, it wasn't really expected, was it. Then again, at the time, IE 5 for the Mac was the most standards compatible browser ever. And stayed so for quite some time. That it was also a bridge to those pages that could only be viewed in IE for the PC before is also something that the Mac crowd actually welcomed.

I still think that as a web developer you just don't have much choice. You either close out a lot of people or have to base your work on older standards that are supported by more than 90 percent of active browsers. (Although there probably _are_ still people using Netscape 4.78 on Macs running OS 9 - or [gasp!] Mac OS 8.61...)

Then again, there's a fine line between things. Often. For example: Standards are good. They enable a common ground. But without moving off of old paths, there's no evolution. And why leave all evolution to standards organisations. So you develop something new. It's good. You want to push it towards a standard. It doesn't get accepted. Now what? Kill the product or let it live and thrive?



This is a good point if I am interpreting it correctly.

Look at JavaScript for example. IE has a lot of functions/objects that no other browsers support, and it has set some standards that other web browsers have adopted, XMLHttpRequest for example.

A lot of the problems we non IE people have with JavaScript sites we can't blame on Microsoft, because most of their JavaScript implemention follows web standards, they just have some extra functions they thought would be cool that they put into their browser. We really have to blame the web designers that used those features for our issues. A lot of times there are ways to do the same thing that just take a little more work with standard code.

Now once we get into css thing, I don't see a whole lot of innovation on MS's part there, they just missed the mark, worse than most browsers. Not a whole lot of browsers complete the Acid2 test succesfully, including Firefox which just moved to v1.5. That said Firefox is a lot closer than IE.

IE 7 looks and feels like Firefox (http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=28807) (Inquirer mini-article)

*sigh*

i don't know what annoys me more: the fact that they're copying firefox, or the fact that the general public will eat it up with a spoon.

(of course, security is another matter altogether...)