IE 7.0 Technical Changes Leave Web Developers, Users in the Lurch

In a recent blog posting , Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) Lead Program Manager Chris Wilson revealed many of the technical improvements that Microsoft will add to IE 7.0 for its final release. Almost all the improvements are related to bugs in IE's implementation of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), an HTML-like technology that Web developers use to create Web sites. Many of these bugs aren't fixed in the currently available IE 7.0 Beta 1 release, Wilson noted. Wilson's post raises some serious questions about IE 7.0, not the least of which is this: If IE 7.0 Beta 1 doesn't include the fixes that most Web developers need, why did Microsoft release IE 7.0 Beta 1 only to a small group of Web developers and other testers, not to the general public as originally promised?

Wilson's post is disappointing because Microsoft doesn't plan to fully support the latest CSS standard in IE 7.0. Instead of using well-established Web standards, IE 7.0 will continue to foist proprietary technologies on Web developers, forcing them to choose between two competing ways of creating Web sites. "In IE 7.0, we will fix as many of the worst bugs that Web developers hit as we can, and we will add the critical most-requested features from the standards as well," Wilson said. "Our intent is to build a platform that fully complies with the appropriate Web standards, in particular CSS 2. I think we will make a lot of progress against that in IE 7.0 through our goal of removing the worst painful bugs that make our platform difficult to use for Web developers."

The most critical point in Wilson's post, in my mind, is Microsoft's admission that it will fail the crucial Acid2 browser-compliance test , which the Web Standards Project (WaSP) designed to help browser vendors ensure that their products properly support Web standards. Microsoft apparently disagrees. "Acid2 ... is pointedly not a compliance check," Wilson noted, contradicting the description on the Acid2 Web site. "As a wish list, [Acid2] is really important and useful to my team, but it isn't even intended, in my understanding, as our priority list for IE 7.0." Meanwhile, other browser teams have made significant efforts to comply with Acid2.

Microsoft blames backward-compatibility problems for the stalemate over true Web standards compatibility. Put succinctly, the company has gone its own way for so long and now has to support so many developers who use nonstandard Web technologies that it will be impossible to make IE Web-standards-compliant without breaking half the commercial Web sites on the planet. Furthermore, by halting all IE development for several years before reconstituting the IE team to create IE 7.0, Microsoft has set back Web development by an immeasurable amount of time.

My advice is simple: Boycott IE. It's a cancer on the Web that must be stopped. IE isn't secure and isn't standards-compliant, which makes it unworkable both for end users and Web content creators. Because of their user bases, however, Web developers are hamstrung into developing for IE at the expense of established standards that work well in all other browsers. You can turn the tide by demanding more from Microsoft and by using a better alternative Web browser. I recommend and use Mozilla Firefox, but Apple Safari (Macintosh only) and Opera 8 are both worth considering as well.

I'll update my IE 7.0 preview on the SuperSite for Windows today to reflect recent IE 7.0 developments. My IE 7.0 review will be available later this week.

End of Article

"Web developers are hamstrung into writing to it at the expense of established standards which work equally well"

If other methods work "equally well" what's the problem with MS sticking to their guns?? By your own statement it works equally well.

Or should MS spend ages, further delaying the security IE needs, in order to not progress any further??

Anonymous User August 02, 2005 (Article Rating:

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I noticed that line and figured he meant that the others do meet those web standards and those standards work just fine.

Anonymous User August 02, 2005 (Article Rating:

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Mr. Paul - you are jumping the gun. From what you say, the IE7 team realizes that it misses the web standards mark but that it is working to bring their browser in line with them as much as it can as it can. But you are all a scretchin' for a boycott !??

If a website doesn't meet web standards in how it is HTMLed and coded, is that Microsoft's fault?

It is up to the website owners to make sure that their public websites are coded to public standards. MSIE offers many technologies that as "extras", but thoses were really meant for "in house" use.

When a company designs a website and CHOOSES a non-standard technology for that website, who's fault is that? IBM's? RedHat's Microsoft's Apple's ?

It's the responsibility of the website owners to comply with web standards. Why go screaming "Boycott!" ??

Anonymous User August 02, 2005 (Article Rating:

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"My advice here is simple: Boycott Internet Explorer. It is a cancer on the Web, and must be stopped. IE is insecure and is not standards-compliant, which makes it unworkable for both end users and Web content creators. However, because of user base, Web developers are hamstrung into writing to it at the expense of established standards which work equally well in all other browsers. You can turn the tide by demanding better from Microsoft and using a better alternative Web browser. I recommend and use Mozilla Firefox, but Apple Safari (Mac only) and Opera 8 are both worth considering as well".

NUFF SAID: STOP THE ROTT

Anonymous User August 02, 2005 (Article Rating:

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Theres more compatability issues with Safari than IE if you ask me. Theres loads of code which displays fine in opera, IE, Firefox, Netscape, but does not display correctly in Safari. Take css opacity for example.

Anonymous User August 02, 2005 (Article Rating:

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I said this months ago when IE7 was announced: "IE 7 will be underwhelming." IE7 is just MS's response to the success of Firefox. They are not going to put any money or energy behind a free web browser, especially one as mangled as IE, when they have the ever-delayed Vista to get out the door. C'mon, you really thought MS would finally turn IE into the browser it should have been?

Anonymous User August 02, 2005 (Article Rating:

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"If a website doesn't meet web standards in how it is HTMLed and coded, is that Microsoft's fault?"

Normally I don't jump on the 'bash MS' bandwagon - I usually attempt to view any issue from a fairly level-headed perspective. But this one is so starkly, incredibly obvious, that there is almost zero justification for taking any other position. Is it MS's fault? Um, why, yes, yes it is.

If a web developer codes a 100% standards compliant website and 80%-90% of the viewers of that site not only cannot get it to render correctly, but it is so badly broken that they cannot even NAVIGATE it, the web developer has NO CHOICE but to hack through his/her 'formerly' 100% standards-compliant website to accommodate the significant, and well documented shortcomings of the most popular browser on the planet.

Microsoft, in deciding that IE won the browser war and needed no resources assigned to its continued improvement, condemned web developers to a type of programmer's hell. I'm not a web developer, but I certainly can appreciate the absolute nightmare Microsoft has created for the web development community.

Paul is right. The only way to get Microsoft to realize that backwards compatibility for IE is just plain stupid, is to try and get as many people as possible to quit using it. If the user base is small, then backward compatibility is irrelevant.

Unfortunately, I don't think anyone will have much luck in significantly shrinking the IE user base, but I certainly applaud all efforts to do so. This product space needs competition - it has been almost devoid of innovation for 4 years. If we see how impressive the web can become with full utilization of already established standards, I think we'll be surprised.

Unfortunately I have to use IE (too long to explain here), but I look forward to the day when choosing a browser has nothing to do with how it renders pages, because they all do it the same way.

Anonymous User August 02, 2005 (Article Rating:

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"Microsoft will fail to fully support the latest CSS standard in IE 7."

Microsoft? Ignoring STANDARDS?

What a shock. I think I'm going to DIE from that shock.

Anonymous User August 02, 2005 (Article Rating:

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And you wonder why so many of us find Microsoft distasteful...these b a s t a r d s hijacked the web, muddied it up with a bunch of proprietary crap, and now refuse to play by the rules.

Like a buncha playground thugs, they are.

Anonymous User August 02, 2005 (Article Rating:

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What's the big deal. Use the browser you wish to use. No one is stopping anyone from using firefox. I don't like it because it takes years to even open up. Microsoft IE works much better, considering the sites I visit. I don't really care about standards, I care about a site that is functional, I haven't had any problems visiting sites in IE like I have other sites.

That's not my take, but it's the take of 4 billion people who use the web and IE, they don't know the product doesn't work, they are still going to buy vista with a brand new bloated Pentium which costs 20 percent more than it should.

Anonymous User August 02, 2005 (Article Rating:

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