"Reaction [beta]"
"This site is compatible with IE 8.0" 3 May 2007
The Register reports that Microsoft may fail to build full W3C web standards compatibility into Internet Explorer 8.0 - even though there's still two years to go before the browser is due for release. The article quotes Chris Wilson, IE's group program manager, who yesterday told MIX07 that Microsoft may "need authors to opt into standards", suggesting a "compatible with IE8.0" scheme. "By asking authors to say 'I want standards behaviors' means we don't have to worry about standards compatibility," Wilson continued, "That means we can break our compatibility with layout and CSS. We can change DOM APIs without breaking any current pages."
It's hard to tell what this last statement means. Is Wilson suggesting that Microsoft will abandon W3C web standards altogether? Or that Microsoft will abandon their own proprietary standards in favour of W3C web standards? Sounds like the former latter, but it's difficult to tell from the The Register's article.
Either way, it's hard to understand why standards support is such an issue for Microsoft. Surely all they need to do is read each web page's doctype and do one of two things. If it specifies adherence to W3C web standards, display it accordingly (i.e. use "strict mode"). If not, display it according to Microsoft's own proprietary standards (i.e. use "quirks mode"). This way, they get to support the new standards-compliant sites, without breaking the old "only in IE" sites. Seems almost too simple - are we missing something?
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4 comments so far
Kenneth Sundqvist (Evil Oatmeal) 3 May 2007 01:50 PM
The article isn't very clear, indeed. My understanding though is that MS wants to support W3C standards now, as much as they can (change CSS and DOM APIs part.) And when IE8 goes live, they want as many sites as possible to adhere to W3C standards so that they don't break in IE8, and they are therefore encouraging authors to enforce W3C standards (and other pseudo standards) upon their projects.
About the DOCTYPE detection; that's what they are doing now with IE7, but we can assume that MS do not want to keep working on their old quirksmode if they are going to embrace W3C standards fully. And so pleading to the authors to flesh out any need to support the old.
I really hope that I am right in my speculation, because having MS to help with killing off the old IE versions would be awesome (more so than what they are doing with the IE7 push.)
If I'm wrong though, and it's not W3C standards that they are aiming to move towards, but something of their own.. Well.. What....? Why would they. The only reason they made IE7 was Vista and probably the only reason they even bothered with trident any more was because the other browsers, namely Firefox, were taking too much market share for them to not care. So are they going to take trident in the other direction now? Sounds very strange to me.
Simon 4 May 2007 11:05 AM
Kenneth: Thanks for your comment.
I'm just puzzled as to why MS feels that it needs to encourage authors to adopt W3C standards before it will go all out to support them.
If an author has specified a doctype in her HTML, you can be certain that she wants browsers to render in strict mode and per the standard she has defined. There's no ambiguity there (unless I'm missing something). So why does MS feel that it needs to consult with developers before it can implement this behaviour in full? It is clearly desirable.
I doubt IE will ever ditch quirks mode as it's pretty much their unique selling proposition. It enables them to display thousands (millions?) more sites correctly than Firefox and other "quirks-mode-free" browsers. As such, ditching it (even for reasons of furthering the web) wouldn't make good business sense.
Kenneth Sundqvist (Evil Oatmeal) 4 May 2007 02:49 PM
"I'm just puzzled as to why MS feels that it needs to encourage authors to adopt W3C standards before it will go all out to support them."
Because they don't want to break the web. They did the same with IE7. Instructed people to prepare.
So many, the majority, of developers and authors are ignorant of what they are creating and that's why MS has to enlighten them so that when IEnext comes it does not show how truly broken the web is.
And the reason that I think MS wants to let their old broken quirksmode wither away is because it is severely broken to them as well. Keeping something so broken up to date is massive amount of work, and even more so when it's not even their main focus.
The new web is not defined by MS (except for Silverlight perhaps, we'll see,) so if they want to stay in the game they must go all out on what has already been decided as the future. No one can afford keeping such a monstrous abomination as their broken quirksmode up to par in that game.
IE's broken quirksmode is since long now dead; it does not innovate, and is behind the competition. People go truly crazy when they have to create for it-- if a man of science was to map its stability he would probably declare it the most dangerous of all substances known. How is that a positive unique selling proposition? IE only has strength in numbers and its users ignorance, both of which are fading.
And only a Strict Doctype is strict. A Transitional Doctype uses quirksmode. I do not believe the broken quirksmode will be removed from IE, but not further developed, and hopefully not desired to develop for by anyone.
Vitamin Discussion 14 Mar 2008 10:02 PM
You've really made your point there Kenneth. one thing I don't get thou. Why is MS trying so hard to undermine the competition in web-browsing? Firefox is already widely spread, so is Opera and some other browsers. What is their angle in this?