IE7 standards compliant...

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2006-08-16 11:22am

...even at expense of backwards compatability?

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/16/1315237

"Microsoft's Chris Wilson, the Group Program Manager for IE addresses the issue of whether IE7 is CSS and Web standards compliant. Last week a Slashdot post claimed that IE7 was basically non-compliant with CSS standards. But Chris Wilson says that isn't true and that standards improvements is a big part of IE7. He admits that there were a ton of bugs from IE6 that have caused web developers a lot of pain, but says that IE7 will address those and be standards compliant. He goes as far to say that IE7 supports Web standards even at the expense of more backwards compatibility."

My impressions of IE7 from the Longhorn Alpha was terrible, but I don't have access to the Beta and Alpha software always sucks so I'm not going to judge it based on that.

I have a hard time believing Microsoft, but if it's true (standards-compliant at expense of backwards compatability, meaning websites "best viewed in Internet Explorer" that look bad in FireFox will look bad in IE7) I applaud them.

EDIT:

Chris: I think backwards compatibility has always been a big challenge for us and certainly today it's a huge challenge. Particularly for IE, as we have a lot of what I'd term 'non-enthusiast users' - my mother is always my canonical example here. And for my mother, if I automatically upgrade her machine [its IE browser] and suddenly one of her sites breaks or looks a little funny, she's going to be upset about that. On the other hand if she were to install an alternative browser, and it looks different in that browser - she could probably understand why that would happen, because it's a completely different product.

Or maybe not.

Well, I hope they prioritize the standards-compliance. I would rather that they force developers to make standards-compliant websites rather than IE6-compliant websites.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2006-08-16 03:30pm

IE6-only websites are a sign of idiocy and/or assholery on the part of the site developer. Unfortunately, since idiot developers aren't going to go away, it would indeed be better if IE7 broke backward compatibility.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2006-08-16 04:14pm

I see nothing but a good thing here. If MS can accept OpenGL more for Vista, then they can certainly uphold W3C standards like Firefox and Opera, and stop letting morons design flashy sites that fuck my browser up.

Speaking of flashy, the sooner an open source version of Flash comes out, the better. And who the fuck started off this moronic idea that glitzy, animated websites with horrible interfacing were superior to standard HTML which anyone can use without downloading megs worth of useless animation?

Comosicus · Post by **Comosicus** » 2006-08-16 05:32pm

As a person that has to deal with IE6 idiocy day and day again, I would be really glad to hear that IE7 breaks backwards compatibility and joins the web standards. Combined with the supposed installment of IE7 as a critical update, maybe the days when I was crying and swearing because IE (Idiot Explorer) decides to behave itself, would be a long forgotten bad memory.

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2006-08-16 06:34pm

Admiral Valdemar wrote:Speaking of flashy, the sooner an open source version of Flash comes out, the better. And who the fuck started off this moronic idea that glitzy, animated websites with horrible interfacing were superior to standard HTML which anyone can use without downloading megs worth of useless animation?

Thanks to the Browser Wars, the HTML standard became so fucked up and mangled because of Netscape's and Microsoft's extensions that people tend to distrust how straight HTML will render across multiple browsers. CSS is in a slightly different boat, with CSS2 and 3 being hugely complex standards that no one's managed to fully implement yet. Also, thanks to IE's utterly retarded CSS implementation, the more advanced things you can do with CSS go unimplemented.

So when Macromedia came around with a plugin that would let web designers be flashy and cool with scalable vector graphics that were guaranteed to render identically, regardless of the browser, they jumped at it. And abused it to shit. It's huge, bloated and designers go crazy with stupid layouts, but at least those stupid layouts look stupid in the same way whether you're using IE, Firefox, Safari, Opera or whatever.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-08-16 07:02pm

Aren't there HTML extensions (or something) that can do all the flash stuff?

Spyder · Post by **Spyder** » 2006-08-16 07:19pm

Stark wrote:Aren't there HTML extensions (or something) that can do all the flash stuff?

Scalable vector graphics in HTML?

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2006-08-16 07:51pm

Stark wrote:Aren't there HTML extensions (or something) that can do all the flash stuff?

SVG. It's not an HTML extension; it's a standard developed by Adobe.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-08-16 07:54pm

Durandal wrote:SVG. It's not an HTML extension; it's a standard developed by Adobe.

Yeah, I don't know anything about HTML. My HTML-knowing friends just hate Flash (as do all right-thinking people) and keep saying there are better ways to do all the 'Flash stuff'.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2006-08-16 08:51pm

It's more visceral with regards to my situation. I can't even view those sites that use Flash 8 (which, while slow on pick-up, is still annoyingly popular) because someone neglected to release that version of Flash Player on *nix systems. "Oh, sure, you'll get Flash 8.5 instead by summer", fuck no we won't, because Macromedia have just pushed that back so that we'll get Flash 9 by "early 2007".

Open up the standard, like you did with PDF and then see how it goes. MS knows they can't fight it, so what makes these eejits think they can? Shafting a few million knowledgeable developers is a good way to lose your slice of the pie.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2006-08-16 09:08pm

Admiral Valdemar wrote:It's more visceral with regards to my situation. I can't even view those sites that use Flash 8 (which, while slow on pick-up, is still annoyingly popular) because someone neglected to release that version of Flash Player on *nix systems. "Oh, sure, you'll get Flash 8.5 instead by summer", fuck no we won't, because Macromedia have just pushed that back so that we'll get Flash 9 by "early 2007".

Open up the standard, like you did with PDF and then see how it goes. MS knows they can't fight it, so what makes these eejits think they can? Shafting a few million knowledgeable developers is a good way to lose your slice of the pie.

See, this sort of shit (among other things) is exactly the reason why I wouldn't switch unless I really had to.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2006-08-16 09:11pm

I really had to, because Windows just pisses me off. Aside from not viewing some lame Flash animations from a would-be programmer, I'm coming off better.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2006-08-16 09:14pm

What I hate is when companies design their entire website in Flash. Hey, it's not like anyone would ever want to bookmark and return to a specific page, right? Everyone wants to see those flashy animations again and again, right?

Reminds me of that scene from The Simpsons...

"I designed the commercial where the guy screams at you really loud!"
"That was you?! *Homer punches the ad-man*"
"OW!!! ...heh, happens all the time."

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2006-08-16 09:18pm

Then just e-mail them that they've lost a potential customer. It's the same with companies that send Word documents or something else that they assume everyone has. Let them know that they can be more open and less arrogant in their assumptions.

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2006-08-16 11:27pm

No shit. Why anyone distributes Word documents over the Internet is beyond me. PDF is guaranteed to preserve all formatting (which Word is not) and will open virtually anywhere. Maybe I'm just spoiled since OS X will export pretty much anything to a PDF.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2006-08-17 12:19am

It's not that confounding really; a lot of people don't know anything but Word, so when someone says "we need to put such-and-such a document on the web", the other person just mashes a few buttons to upload the Word file that he typed the document in, and says "there it is, I put a document on the web!" without so much as a second thought on interoperability.

And I know quite a few people at work who, if they were in a position where they had to upload documents and they were uploading DOCs and not PDFs, I'd just as soon let them go about their merry way rather than try and drag them through the various steps of creating a PDF.

Then you also have the people who are just too lazy to take the extra step.

So it really just boils down to either ignorance or laziness, or both.

Admiral Valdemar wrote:Then just e-mail them that they've lost a potential customer. It's the same with companies that send Word documents or something else that they assume everyone has. Let them know that they can be more open and less arrogant in their assumptions.

I think last time I had this gripe, it was when I needed to download a file for a product (can't remember the company), and it'd be sort of self-defeating to boycott the website when I still need the file.

Although next time I might just decide to bitch at them. Worst-case, nothing happens, best-case, the web design folks get canned and better ones get brought in. I'm not irked nearly so much by the bandwidth consumption and lack of interoperability as I am about the fact that such websites are just less usable in general; such folks would be shitty web designers even without Flash to fuck around with.

Xon · Post by **Xon** » 2006-08-17 01:37am

Durandal wrote:with CSS2 and 3 being hugely complex standards that no one's managed to fully implement yet.

Lets not mince words here; those "standards" arent even complete, they are drafts. They are moving targets themselves!

Same for CSS1 when IE6 was in active development and the 5 years between IE6 and IE7 dont count as "active development"

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-08-17 02:43am

I don't have flash installed, so I've encountered several sites like the ones U235 mentions - there isn't a single piece of non-flash content, all the links/menus are in flash, etc. Even worse are the sites I use that apparently have popup menus and stuff that I can't even see and never knew was there. :S

Post by **Edi** » 2006-08-17 04:06am

Durandal wrote:No shit. Why anyone distributes Word documents over the Internet is beyond me. PDF is guaranteed to preserve all formatting (which Word is not) and will open virtually anywhere. Maybe I'm just spoiled since OS X will export pretty much anything to a PDF.

Then there's the angle of security, which you don't have with Word files. I'm not very damn likely to just open any strange shit written in Word that I get in email or that is uploaded because of these things called macro-viruses. Not something you could get from a PDF.

Edi