CSS and why I hate Microsoft

[thendis]

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 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 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.

[Timmargh]

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%

[thendis]

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.

[aicul]

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.

[chornbe]

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.

[texanpenguin]

Originally Posted by aicul

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.

[aicul]

Originally Posted by texanpenguin

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.

[texanpenguin]

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