IE8 Breaking Microsoft's Web Standards Promise? 329
An anonymous reader points out a story in The Register by Opera Software CTO Hakon Lie which tells the story of how Microsoft's interoperability promise for IE8 seems to have been broken in less than six months. Quoting:
"In March, Microsoft announced that their upcoming Internet Explorer 8 would: use its most standards compliant mode, IE8 Standards, as the default. Note the last word: default. Microsoft argued that, in light of their newly published interoperability principles, it was the right thing to do. This declaration heralded an about-face and was widely praised by the web standards community; people were stunned and delighted by Microsoft's promise. This week, the promise was broken."
There's a saying.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:There's a saying.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Considering IE's pattern of "improving" standards compliance over the last decade, a "more compliant" IE8 wouldn't necessarily be a good thing. MICROS~1 seems to think that fixing support for one thing and breaking support for 50 others is an improvement. It isn't. Even IE8's true "standards mode" is just as non-compliant as IE 7, 6, and 5.5. The only thing that has changed over all these revisions is the nature of the rendering errors. One version might treat a certain block element as inline, while the next fixes that issue only to draw inline borders incorrectly. All they do is change the errors, never fix them.
Anyone who thinks IE standards support has improved from IE7 to IE8 is sadly mistaken, and while we'd all rather have a truly compliant IE, it just isn't going to happen. I know I'll get a lot of hate for this, but I'd rather have one broken web browser to develop hacks for than 4.
Re:There's a saying.. (Score:5, Interesting)
It has improved. The difference between 6 and 7 wasn't too great, basically just bugfixes and additional selectors, but there are significant improvements in Internet Explorer 8, for instance CSS tables. Internet Explorer 8 passes the Acid2 test now, where 6 and 7 were miles off. While it's not a conformance test, it does give a good indication of how far they've come, and it's a result of additional support, not merely "rearranging bugs" as you seem to think (which would actually be far more work than just doing things properly).
Re:There's a saying.. (Score:5, Informative)
Anyone who thinks IE standards support has improved from IE7 to IE8 is sadly mistaken
Well it passes Acid2 now (as long as it's hosted at webstandards.org) and currently gets 21/100 on Acid3 (compared to 14/100 for IE7) so there must be some improvement in IE8.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Well it passes Acid2 now (as long as it's hosted at webstandards.org)
My '72 Fiat can do 300 KPM and 0-100 in 3.6 seconds, but only on my private track where no one can see it. On the street it behaves like any other '72 Fiat so far as the layman is concerned.
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Easy question. The pages aren't made with standards compliance or cross browser compatibility in mind. They are made to render correctly in IE.
Re:There's a saying.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:There's a saying.. (Score:5, Insightful)
IE7 is a good browser. IE8 will be a better browser. This article is ridiculous. Not having standards mode for intranet is hardly breaking a promise.
I'm looking at that statement and I simply cannot believe that anyone said it. I work, these days, for my sins, in a Microsoft shop; everything we build is for Microsoft platforms, practically every tool we use is a Microsoft tool. But the one Microsoft product that no-one in the building will use except for testing is IE. Most people use Firefox, some people use Safari, I use Opera.
So why not? Is it because we care about standards? Well, a few of us do. But mainly, it's the dreadful 'lets hide all the controls' user interface, the 'helpful' 'we know what you want' features, and the slug-like performance.
IE is so bad that even brainwashed pro-Microsoft zealots won't use it.... and that's a good browser?
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boy do you miss the boat. Microsoft still has 75% of the web browsing market. Pages built for IE6 are still expected to work for banks, hotels, and intranets. When Microsoft changes a default 80% of the world suffers because internal developers write ONLY for IE. The original promise what that IE8 would render in W3C standards mode by default unless another page mode was triggered. This would have been huge, allowing people to properly write pages for Opera, Firefox, & Safari and have IE render them
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That's funny, because I recall having to fix pages when IE 5 came out, again when IE 5.5 was released, and again for 6 and 7. Each version of IE came with its own set of quirks and changes that caused non-trivial CSS layouts to render oddly. Conditional comments [microsoft.com] greatly aided the transition, but it was a transition nonetheless, so why not make a transition that actually makes web development more uniform for a change?
As for still requiring Microsoft's Java (because of JDirect [codeguru.com] or the com.ms.win32 stuff, I a
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Re:There's a saying.. (Score:5, Informative)
The dirty secret is buried deep down in the "Compatibility view" configuration panel, where the "Display intranet sites in Compatibility View" box is checked by default. Thus, by default, intranet pages are not viewed in standards mode.
The article uses some dubious statistics to back up the sensationalist headline ("intranets account for about half of all page views on PCs"), but ignores the reality: many intranet systems use IE-specific extensions (normally because they were developed a while ago) and, unlike websites, don't often benefit from constant revision and attention from a development team. To me, viewing intranet pages in compatibility mode by default makes sense.
or it could be... (Score:3, Insightful)
Only intranet pages are not rendered in standards mode by default,
Because SharePoint (and other denizens of the MS ghetto) does not, and never will, comply with relevant open standards.
(Should we be thankful they still use TCP? Or should we pray for the ultimate ghettoisation - let them isolate themselves behind their own proprietary walls.)
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Only intranet pages are not rendered in standards mode by default,
Because SharePoint (and other denizens of the MS ghetto) does not, and never will, comply with relevant open standards.
(Should we be thankful they still use TCP? Or should we pray for the ultimate ghettoisation - let them isolate themselves behind their own proprietary walls.)
Yup, Sharepoint is ghetto when compared to the Linux alternatives...of which there are no real contendors. No. Stop. There aren't.
This makes sense for MS.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:or it could be... (Score:5, Insightful)
Which begs the question, why hasn't Mozilla put more effort in making Firefox easy for enterprise users to deploy?
It strikes me as a large market they are not particularly interested in.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You must be new here. Seriously. Go read the Hans Reiser post. People are often modded up for preachy, glib, and obvious. If all three it's almost a sure thing.
Re:There's a saying.. (Score:5, Funny)
You must be new here. Seriously. Go read the Hans Reiser post. People are often modded up for preachy, glib, and obvious. If all three it's almost a sure thing.
I really cannot believe that glib is a word, I had to look it up. My English is not perfect, but it's rare that I mix up Gnome dependency libraries and real words.
Re:There's a saying.. (Score:4, Informative)
for a cheap +5 informative
Adjective
glib (comparative glibber, superlative glibbest)
1. Having a ready flow of words but lacking accuracy or understanding; superficial; shallow.
2. Smooth or slippery.
Derived terms glibly & glibness
[GFDL]
Re:There's a saying.. (Score:4, Funny)
For a cheap +5 Funny:
$ sudo apt-cache search glib
glibc-doc - GNU C Library: Documentation
libavahi-glib-dev - Development headers for the Avahi glib integration library
libavahi-glib1 - Avahi glib integration library
libdbus-glib-1-2 - simple interprocess messaging system (GLib-based shared library)
libdbus-glib-1-dev - simple interprocess messaging system (GLib interface)
libdbus-glib-1-doc - simple interprocess messaging system (GLib-based shared library)
libglib-perl - Perl interface to the GLib and GObject libraries
libglib2.0-cil - CLI binding for the GLib utility library 2.12
libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil - CLI implementation of D-Bus (GLib mainloop integration)
libnm-glib-dev - network management framework (GLib interface)
libnm-glib0 - network management framework (GLib shared library)
libpulse-mainloop-glib0 - PulseAudio client libraries (glib support)
libpulse-mainloop-glib0-dbg - PulseAudio client libraries (glib support) debugging symbols
bglibs-dev - BG Libraries Collection
bglibs-doc - BG Libraries Collection (documentation)
glibc-source - GNU C Library: sources
guile-gnome0-glib - Guile bindings for GLib
libcglib2.1-java - code generation library for Java
libcglib2.1-java-doc - code generation library for Java
libdb1-compat - The Berkeley database routines [glibc 2.0/2.1 compatibility]
libghc6-glib-dev - A GUI library for Haskell (Gtk2Hs) -- GLib bindings
libglib-cni - GLib bindings for Java (native code)
libglib-java - GLib bindings for Java
libglib-java-dev - GLib bindings for Java (development files)
libglib-java-doc - GLib bindings for Java (API documentation)
libglib-java-gcj - GLib bindings for Java (native code for use with gij)
libglib-jni - GLib bindings for Java (native library)
libglib1.2-dbg - The GLib library of C routines (debug)
libglib1.2-dev - The GLib library of C routines (development)
libglib1.2ldbl - The GLib library of C routines
libglib2-ruby - Glib 2 bindings for the Ruby language
libglib2-ruby1.8 - Glib 2 bindings for the Ruby language
libglrr-glib-dev - Development library of Grift (glib)
libglrr-glib0 - Utility functions for glib of Grift
libpoppler-glib-ruby - Ruby bindinds for the libpoppler-glib library
libpoppler-glib-ruby1.8 - Ruby bindinds for the libpoppler-glib library
libsofia-sip-ua-glib-dev - Sofia-SIP library glib/gobject interface development files
libsofia-sip-ua-glib3 - Sofia-SIP library glib/gobject interfaces runtime
libtaglib2.0-cil - CLI library for accessing audio and video files metadata
libtapioca-base-glib-0.14-0 - Tapioca base glib library
libtapioca-client-glib-0.14-0 - Tapioca client glib library
libtapioca-core-glib-0.14-0 - Tapioca core glib library
libtapioca-glib-0.14-dbg - Tapioca glib library - Debug symbols
libtapioca-glib-0.14-dev - Tapioca glib library - Development files
libtapioca-glib-0.14-doc - Tapioca glib library - Documentations
libtelepathy-glib-dev - GLib Telepathy connection manager library (headers)
libtelepathy-glib-doc - GLib Telepathy library (documentation)
libtelepathy-glib0 - Telepathy framework - GLib library
libtelepathy-glib0-dbg - GLib Telepathy library (debug symbols)
libxmmsclient++-glib-dev - XMMS2 - glib client library for c++ - development files
libxmmsclient++-glib1 - XMMS2 - glib client library for c++
libxmmsclient-glib-dev - XMMS2 - glib client library - development files
libxmmsclient-glib1 - XMMS2 - glib client library
monodoc-taglib-manual - compiled XML documentation for taglib-sharp
libglib2.0-0 - The GLib library of C routines
libglib2.0-0-dbg - The GLib libraries and debugging symbols
libglib2.0-dev - Development files for the GLib library
libglib2.0-doc - Documentation files for the GLib library
libglibmm-2.4-1c2a - C++ wrapper for the GLib toolkit (shared libraries)
libglibmm-2.4-dbg - C++ wrapper for the GLib toolkit (debug symbols)
libglibmm-2.4-dev - C++ wrapper for the GLib toolkit (developme
Re:There's a saying.. (Score:4, Funny)
My English is not perfect
Yeah, you seem to be lacking a little aptitude; but take heart, it's not like you're speaking pidgin or anything. Your post has clearly evinced this.
HA HA HA. wtf, I kill myself.
Re:There's a saying.. (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, you seem to be lacking a little aptitude; but take heart, it's not like you're speaking pidgin or anything. Your post has clearly evinced this.
HA HA HA. wtf, I kill myself.
Oh, that's terrible. I'm sure that someone will give you a good bashing for that. Or maybe even the finger.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
glib (adj) fluent and voluble but insincere and shallow
I suppose "fluent" counts since the comment was both accurate and brief, but the brevity argues against "voluble", and I have no reason to suspect eebra82's sincerity on the matter. Also, given Microsoft's track record in the area, it comes across as an astute observation, rather than a shallow one. In short, Inigo Montoya has a sound bite for you.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
you killed my father. prepare to die?
Probably the corporate customers (Score:5, Insightful)
MSes volume license customers probably asked MS to make IE7 mode the default. And when money talks, companies listen.
Re:Probably the corporate customers (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree that it makes sense for the intranet pages to be viewed in Compatibility Mode.
However showing a broken page icon next to standards-compliant web pages is another issue altogether. Clearly the broken page icon should apply to pages that aren't standards compliant!
Re:Probably the corporate customers (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Probably the corporate customers (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree, having installed IE8 beta for the first time about five minutes ago. I clicked the broken page button, and sure enough, the page broke (on a site I've been working on and haven't gotten to IE6/7 hacks yet). Works as promised, I guess. Thankfully, the default strict compliance mode either works correctly or close enough that my lack of IE-conditional stylesheets didn't matter.
I think a little explanation that pops up in that first-load box would be sufficient. They could even use it to paint themselves in a good light - "By default, IE8 will show websites using the latest web standards. Some websites have not been developed to the latest web standards, and may not appear correctly. If this happens, click the compatibility mode icon (image) and the page will be drawn in a less standards-compliant mode that should be closer to the website designer's intentions."
Seriously, attack the web devs and designers in the firstrun message if you have to. Use it as an opportunity to brush up on your doublespeak and make us look bad. We don't care, so long as you render the page as well as the Gecko and Webkit engines by default.
Intranet sites, whatever. I think that should be done within the network rather than the browser's defaults directly, but that's not a major concern to me really.
Re:Probably the corporate customers (Score:5, Insightful)
Companies with intranets that don't work in a standard web browser can set all their clients to use the broken backwards compatibility mode by default as part of their policy settings.
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It is simple as "If site is on local intranet, emulate IE6/7" if they wanted and if it was the reason (excuse?).
INTRANET only (Score:5, Informative)
The article only says that INTRANET pages are not shown in standards-compliant mode by default.
Re:INTRANET only (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess this all reflects the same woe preventing any standard's adoption: is it cheaper for the corporate sector to go with it or go against it? In the case of Intranet apps, I suspect the answer is a resounding "no," and it would most likely just be seen as breaking compatibility for an abstract reason.
I bet that, with enough poking and shit from the community, however, the MS guys could be convinced to have it default to compatibility mode for intranet sites only on Business versions of Vista.
wow (Score:2)
already so finely tuned to the intricacies of IE6 that reworking them would cost too much
NOBODY SAW THAT COMING!
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And beyond that this is a BETA release, not the final release. But hey, why let reality get in the way of a good Microsoft trashing.
Re:INTRANET only (Score:5, Interesting)
The article only says that INTRANET pages are not shown in standards-compliant mode by default.
Yeah the article is too harsh on this point, but...
Furthermore, web standards are discriminated against in IE8 by the icon that appears next to standards-compliant web pages
This is just terrible. This sounds like Ballmer came down there personally and mandated this. On the other hand...
First, I suggest that IE8 not introduce version targeting which only perpetuates the problem of non-compliant pages. Instead, IE8 should respect the established conventions which don't need manual switching between modes.
One of the things Microsoft does very well is maintain backwards compatibility. This is of tremendous value to enterprise customers. The least evil way to do this is with rendering modes. You can argue that standards should be the default, but to suggest that Microsoft should stab its most profitable userbase in the back and completely break backwards compatibility just to altruistically further the state of web standards compatibility is ridiculous. Don't get me wrong, I wish it would happen, but it would be a pretty stupid move.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Who knows? Maybe you're too young to remember, but there was indeed a problem with Word 97 saving to Word 95 format. This caused a great deal of resentment in that either an entire organization and its partners had to stay on Office 95 or all upgrade to Office 97 together. A mixed environment was not simple. The only workaround at the time was to save a Word 97 document in RTF so that the earlier version could read it, albeit with a loss of functionality. The frustration was coupled with the fact that
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Well, grasshopper, when you get a real job (not at McDonalds') you
No, intranets are not the web (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds like the same old backward compatibility for corporate intranets, sharepoint, etc.
And the GUI shown that controls this can be changed with a single click of a checkbox.
Sounds good enough for me, though I suspect nothing MS does will be good enough.
P.S. Opera is my default browser, and I have used it since they made it free, but their CTO's claim
is mostly all wet.
Alarmist article. Boring. (Score:5, Insightful)
The dirty secret is buried deep down in the ÂCompatibility view configuration panel, where the ÂDisplay intranet sites in Compatibility View box is checked by default. Thus, by default, intranet pages are not viewed in standards mode.
So they use standards compliant mode by default over the internet, but not for internal sites that are probably aimed at the specific browsers supported by the company's IT department. Sounds reasonable to me. Anyone have a problem with this?
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Don't be ridiculous. Of course it's configurable by group setting. The default is a good one so that existing corpnets can upgrade without worries. And any IT department that's ready to make their corpnet standards-compliant will CERTAINLY know how to either (1) incorporate the DOCTYPE tag to force standards mode on each page, or (2) set group policy so that all machines in the company use standards mode by default instead.
Misleading summary.... it's INTRANET ONLY (Score:5, Insightful)
MS is "breaking" that promise only for intranet pages and, honestly, intranet pages are a very different. If you think corporations are going to be updating all these internal applications when all they have to do is switch on compatibility mode, well you've got another thing coming.
And, if intranet pages stop working I'd wager a whole lot of users and corporations would just turn on compatibility mode for EVERYTHING and be done with it. One could argue even more people will use the regular IE8 mode if this is left as default.
Wait, I don't know what I was thinking. M$ IS EVIL LIAR!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If corporations need this it still doesn't have to be the default. They can set it in group policy. It's Microsoft that needs nonstandard IE mode (aka compatibility mode) to be the default for intranets, to lock in SharePoint.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If only... I have a few businesses from which my company subscribes services and some are actually using Sharepoint as a portal to those services and completely blocks out my Firefox browser. Another is a security company that will only allow Safari and MSIE. But perhaps they aren't using a newer Sharepoint installation.
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Even when I had to work with MOSS2005 at school a couple years ago, it worked fine in Firefox (for a given value of fine anyways - this is MOSS we're talking about).
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I'm surprised (Score:2)
At this rate, the shareholders will sue.
Can you [deep] link to SharePoint content by URL?
What functionality is missing when you use a browser other than IE?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Basically the only thing I have found in several months of using MOSS 2007 with FireFox is that you can't drag and drop webparts around in 'edit page' mode - you have to move them through the webpart settings. Otherwise, everything seems to work fine.
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Re:Misleading summary.... it's INTRANET ONLY (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Misleading summary.... it's INTRANET ONLY (Score:5, Informative)
The same way IE7, IE6, IE5 and I'm pretty sure lesser IEs did? IE has long allowed different security settings for intranet vs. internet pages.
As I hinted about above, the dynamics of Intranet and internet are very different.
Change on the Internet is very difficult because site developers must develop towards the most common denominator and this is rarely the cutting edge. Even if it's better for everyone to move towards the standards, there is a disincentive for anyone to move first.
An intranet is completely different. If a company finds there is an advantage to moving off of IE6/7 and on to IE8, well they just need some guy in IT to sign off on redeveloping any things that would be broken.
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It's a guess.. and a pretty poor one on anything other than a simple home network.
Once you have multiple IP ranges it falls apart and just assumes everything is internet.
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Ok, what about http://intranet/ [intranet] ? Obviously the local domain controller is handling things there; shops with intranets that only work in IE6 are almost certainly using an MS-based server.
I just opened up the IE8 beta in a VM, and went to 192.168.0.11 (my OS X webserver's local address) and it doesn't detect automatically as Intranet. It also misses my router at 192.168.0.1, however it does get the WAMP install at http://localhost/ [localhost] unsurprisingly. Doubleclicking the internet icon in the bottom to check th
I wonder if people can read... (Score:5, Informative)
2.) If people bothered to take a few minutes to read, you would see that it only impacts INTRANET sites, people do understand what that means correct?
I know a good portion of Slashdot just wants to flamethrower all that Microsoft does, but at least take the time to read.
PS: This post coming to you from IE 8 Beta2.
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IE 8 is still in Beta. I'm sure most folks remember what that means. As in not quite feature complete yet?
Ixnay on the condescension there MSFanBoi2. While there are no hard and fast rules, beta software usually is feature complete (in as much as the term 'feature complete' applies to anything that dribbles out of Redmond).
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You have to remember Microsoft's terminology differs from the conventional meanings. Rough approximations follow:
beta == early alpha
RC == late alpha
1.0 == early beta
SP1 == RC1
2.0 == first version that does anything useful
3.0 == first version you actually consider worth using
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I know a good portion of Slashdot just wants to flamethrower all that Microsoft does, but at least take the time to read.
What I love about that is that most 'Microsoft haters' I know use Windows. Years of bitching, but still using it.
I use it too, and Linux, lots of Linux, and Unix. Not Macs though, the ones I would need cost too much.
The trick is to quit foaming at the mouth about Microsoft and realise that actually a lot of their stuff is pretty good, and where they fall down, there's always a FOSS alternative.
For me they fail on HPC, badly, so I use Linux or freeBSD for that.
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There really is a difference when they choose to compete. I mean their hardware products are usually pretty solid, as are there non-Office, non-Windows software offerings.
Ms Money is significantly less evil than that Intuit crap is. MS software users can't even begin to comprehend vendor lock in until dealing with an outfit like Intuit. Want to move to Intuit from a current version of Money, no you don't get to do that, just buy an older copy and import through that. Want to use a non approved bank, you're
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Re1: Just picking your nits here, but a beta should really be feature complete. It would be setting your self up for the epic fail if you introduce new features AFTER the beta-cycle.
Betas are usually the first release outside your closed development environment and at this stage you should have sorted your shit out and focus on fixing bugs and critical errors that usually don't show up until you release your software to the "monkeys" (so to speak).
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The Beta2 of IE8 is feature complete.
(Intranet vs. Internet) & Efficiency (Score:3, Insightful)
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What really peeves me is that our staff, part of a medium-size nonprofit, continually switch browsers to support our IE-only "Intranet" (thanks, MOSS!) and their favored method of browsing, through Firefox.
What problems are you having? I browse MOSS 2007 daily using Firefox as my main browser without issue - and I'm a full blown site admin.
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Have you tried using the IE Tab Extension [mozilla.org]?
Re:(Intranet vs. Internet) & Efficiency (Score:4, Funny)
Have you tried using the IE Tab Extension [mozilla.org]?
No, I haven't. When it's available for Ubuntu let me know.
What's that you say? I should install Windows so that I can have IE so that I can view broken webpages? Or better yet, install a compatibility layer so that I can install the two-versions outdated IE6 against that software's EULA (I have no Windows license, remember) so that I can view broken webpages?
IE Tab is for people who want a woman with their current girlfriends clothes, yet with their old girlfriend's diseases.
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MS is a business - but wouldn't their money
By 'their money', you mean, of course, money that was yours before you gave it to them.
There's your answer - save your money in the first place and use the better free products.
it's good they did it this way... (Score:4, Funny)
Don't see it as a broken page icon (Score:5, Funny)
See it as a broken browser icon.
Genius (Score:2, Insightful)
I will not be surprised if standards mode is even removed completely by the time it leaves beta. They're just easing people into the idea of not using standards mode by starting on intranet pages at the moment.
Uh. (Score:2)
Yes, in the name of unconditionally appeasing standards preachers everywhere, let's push a browser that could render a huge number of especially smaller businesses crippled due to their internal web apps being left broken from a usability perspective.
"Intranet" translates to "enterprise network" in the real world. Enterprise web applications are pretty much all written for IE compatibility. Taking this away by default would be pointless and downright ridiculous. Leaving it in, but letting you flick a switch
SURPRISE! Not. (Score:2, Insightful)
Come on, man! Metaphorically, it is about the same as expecting a long-time multiple-repeat-offense child molester to behave from now on, based on her claim that she has "Seen the light," and has been "Healed! Praise the Lord!"
Yeah, right.
For a number of years now, whenever I hear another claim from Microsoft, my response has been "I will believe it when I see it."
And sadly, the fact is th
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Might want to read the article - no promises broken at all. This is for the intranet, not the internet. This is one place where the choice to do so by default (it can be changed easily by sys admins via group policy) is both logical and correct.
Usability Trumps Image (Score:3, Funny)
So let me see if I get this right...
Internet Explorer has three rendering modes: normal (IE6), standards (IE7) and super-standards (IE8).
Depending on the DOCTYPE, either "normal (IE6)" or "super-standards (IE8)" will appear.
For pages that appear in "super-standards" mode, they may appear broken if the page was built for IE6/7 and has an improper DOCTYPE. They put a button next to the link that someone can click to shift into the legacy rendering mode that looks like a broken page because most users are going to look for an obvious icon.
I'm not seeing the problem here.
Promises? (Score:2)
What are we? Children? I cannot believe anyone can be adult, hear the word promise, and consider giving it any seriousness. Microsoft or anyone should never promise anyone anything. Just my advice.
Beyond that, IE 8 is still beta so I'd wait to see the final result. I know I will not be using it much because I am on Linux 90% of the time. It better be slipstreamable though.
Misleading (Score:2, Insightful)
Absolutely the right decision. (Score:2)
Which would you prefer (and no you don't have a time machine)? A browser that, by default, works with all existing web sites or one that, by default, doesn't?
In any case a standard is a nonsense without a standard implementation and there isn't one for "web standards".
Treasure in the cave (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, it's interesting to note that Hakon Lie has a vested interest in preserving quirks, because his company Opera has built its business on emulating IE (so called "IE5 bug-compatible") in mobile browsers.
So naturally, Opera would be opposed to any move by Microsoft to curb the chaos and make web pages easier to render. They couch this in terms of backward compatibility [zdnet.com], and in fact Hakon Lie and other Opera employees event went so far as to found a new standards body to push their own agenda, and started with similarly threatened browser vendors as members. (Contrast this with the W3C, which invites both vendors and users of a technology to hammer out a standard that serves both ends of that economic stick.)
So, why support a Microsoft decision that seems so harshly standards supporting, as Joelonsoftware points out? Perhaps because a harsh position is unworkable, and perversely leads to delays in adoption of IE7 and IE8 with their new features and new implementations, thus leaving more time for Opera to milk the IE5 bug-compatible business, while they build up their new standards.
Oh, and it seems like the "backwards compatible" mantra has been dropped a bit, with all the hoopla over dropping "apparently unused" attributes such as "rel" from HTML5.
Not the best solution; but... (Score:2)
Given the choice, I'd rather just have to put up an FAQ page explaining how to "fix" IE8 (and point to that link when necessary) than to do what I've had to do up to this point: Build a page that's standards compliant, then look at it in IE and figure out how to work around the broken parts. So this will mean less work for me as a web developer, thankfully - for in-house stuff anyway (which is most of what I do).
Of course this is predicated on IE8's standards support being quite good - I'll believe that whe
Obvious logic (Score:3, Funny)
If one 'widely praised' about face was good, two are better.
Something I have learned the hard way.... (Score:2)
....And, yes, I am a cynic.
I do not expect ANY promise, made by ANYONE, to be adhered to, until it actually happens.
Honestly, I am pleasantly surprised to find out how much easier my life has become since I made that admission/realization to myself.
Re: (Score:2)
Note that you can't run a strict Standards mode intranet and use compatibility mode for the Internet. Hm... What's that about? Does Microsoft perhaps sell some non-standards compliant intranet services?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I wouldn't say that personally. I don't think that the security issue is a morality problem so much as they apparently don't employ people that are going to say that something doesn't work.
I'm not sure what other explanation there could be. MS hires some of the best experts in the world and yet has an OS which really, really doesn't reflect the talent. It's almost as if the CEO is demanding the design be a specific way without keeping current on technology.
You can suggest immorality or conspiracy, but reali
Re: (Score:2)
Take that back! MSIE is excellent for downloading Firefox.
Exactly - tag: AndThisSurprisesYouBecause (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why should this surprise anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a ridiculous thing to say. Internet Explorer 6 was the first Windows version that had doctype switching, which enabled them to ditch the 5.5 engine as "quirks mode" and do things like fix the box model, add real auto margins, etc. Internet Explorer 7 included additional selector support, min/max-* support and fixed positioning. Internet Explorer 8 includes further selectors, the selectors API, CSS tables, generated content, DOM Storage, data URIs, and more.
I'm a web developer. I'll be holding a grudge against Microsoft for years to come. But even I can recognise that there has been actual progress. You don't have to invent reasons to criticise them, their actions are appalling enough without having to resort to making things up.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm a web developer. I'll be holding a grudge against Microsoft for years to come. But even I can recognise that there has been actual progress. You don't have to invent reasons to criticise them, their actions are appalling enough without having to resort to making things up.
Yes!
Is there a i-developed-a-website-that-had-to-support-IE support group?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
IE7 also was the first IE to support full PNG alpha transparency. IE6 only did it in a half-assed hackathon way that was completely useless.
The problem with IE8 is not that it's not standard compliant enough (or that it's not out yet, for that matter). This is the trend MS must follow to stay relevant. The problem is that there are still the unwashed masses of IE6 users on Windows versions earlier than XP that have to be catered for. Displaying a message like "IE6 users go to hell or update" is not going to
Re:Why should this surprise anyone? (Score:5, Informative)
The broken box model problem was where Internet Explorer 5.5 and below included padding in the width of content boxes when it should not. This brought about some of the earliest CSS hacks, for instance Tantek's box model hack [tantek.com], designed to feed Internet Explorer 5.5 and below one width, and other browsers another width.
Internet Explorer 6 introduced doctype switching, where pages using an up-to-date document type got a better rendering, and invalid pages got the Internet Explorer 5.5 rendering with all its associated bugs. Internet Explorer 6, in its better rendering mode, had the box model problem fixed. Unfortunately, there are legions of web developers who don't know what they are doing, and kept writing invalid code that kicked Internet Explorer 6 into its buggy backwards compatibility mode. And then complaining that widths weren't right.
When Microsoft was planning on releasing Internet Explorer 7, 5 years after they fixed the box model problem, they were still swamped by clueless web developers demanding that they fix the box model problem. Somehow it has passed into "common knowledge" that Internet Explorer 6 did not fix this bug. It's not true, you fallen for rumour and hearsay. Load up Internet Explorer 6, feed it a valid, HTML 4.01 Strict document, and test it for yourself. They fixed it in 2001, seven years ago - it's time to stop complaining about that particular bug.
better yet - (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Did you read the article? I hope not, because if you did, you're pretty stupid. As others have already noted, this "broken promise" only affects internal intranets. Internal intranets are in the vast majority of cases only viewed using IE, don't receive regular maintenance, and rely heavily upon backwards compatibility.
The reaction to biased anti-Microsoft stories here at Slashdot really pisses me off. Most users here are probably of above-average intelligence but the mindless, unquestioning and baseless at
Re:Laughable (Score:4, Informative)
Tasman [wikipedia.org] had excellent CSS support for its time. In its later incarnations, it had good DOM support and even had support for some parts of CSS 3. Even Internet Explorer 8 won't support web standards as well as Tasman did years ago. For instance, Internet Explorer 8 still won't support DOM 2 Events. Tasman supported that specification five years ago.
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, please define "broken". How is a browser supposed to know that the designer intended to position a div 100 pixels above where it's actually rendered?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Public opinion of Microsoft is a strange thing. When viruses and worms live in the holes and cracks of the Windows platform, people blame the writers of said malware exclusively and hold Microsoft blameless, or worse, paint them as the victim of being so successful.
What world do you live in ? Microsoft consistently get the blame for just about everything that goes wrong with computers in general, even when it's not even remotely their fault.
Microsoft is the enabler in most of these situations and the p
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I live in a much bigger world that hasn't heard of the RIAA or MPAA before, the world where most people think "PC" means Windows, the world where Linux doesn't quite exist yet.
Yes. That would be the world where everyone blames Windows (and Microsoft) whenever something goes wrong on their computer.
Is your heard buried in the sand or buried in your world?
Apparently yours is, if you think anyone except Microsoft gets the blame whenever, say, someone's game crashes, or a dodgy video card BSODs their mach