CSS and why I hate Microsoft

[elander]

Originally Posted by texanpenguin

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…

[dmetzcher]

Originally Posted by thendis

It makes me so mad that they should be so pompous, that they believe 91% of Internet users 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.

[Thank The Cheese]

Originally Posted by dmetzcher

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 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.

[fryke]

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.

[Thank The Cheese]

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

[dmetzcher]

Originally Posted by Thank The Cheese

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 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.

[Thank The Cheese]

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.

[fryke]

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...)