141 Untitled

“IE6’s rendering behavior was not updated for five years, leading many developers to assume its rendering was both accurate and unlikely to change”

What? I couldn’t disagree more… do you have stats to back this up. My experience is very different – everyone knew there were issues and that any hacks implemented would not work indefinitely.

posted at 07:34 pm on January 23, 2008 by t itan

142 Whole new world of Exploits

Still disappointed that only a few people have recognized the possible security issues this multiple browser version idea will cause. I can guarantee this will open up a whole new world of exploits for IE .

Banner Ad companies and Hackers will use this to their benefit. This will cause more problems then it will fix.

posted at 07:45 pm on January 23, 2008 by David Gutierrez

143 Conditional comments

What’s wrong with conditional comments to keep the old code at bay?

How about this as a way forward…

Any document that doesn’t have a well-formed DOCTYPE is rendered in quirks mode. This will account for most of the FrontPage generated pages and other rubbish – so these pages will carry on working as they always have. No problem.

Any document that does have a well-formed DOCTYPE is rendered in standards mode by default. Mostly these pages will have been written by someone at least semi-competent. Mostly, these will work in IE8, but if they don’t, they’ve probably got someone at the helm who can fix them, as below.

If a page breaks in IE8, when it is launched, it’s very likely that it already breaks in Opera and Firefox, unless it is using IE-specific hacks.
If it does already break in Opera and Firefox, it can get knotted – we shouldn’t be going out of our way to dig other people out of a hole if they won’t even provide the shovel.
If it uses IE-specific hacks to make it IE6/7 compatible, as long as they’re in conditional comments that target IE lt 7 or whatever the code is, no problem.

If IE8 offers a “view basic page” option, this is all completely irrelevant. When users get to a page that’s in a mess, just turn off CSS and bingo, you’ve got a page that you can read. Problem solved, no need for developers to get in a tizzy about it. Another one of those problems that isn’t for us to solve.

posted at 08:40 pm on January 23, 2008 by Stephen Down

144 Not Happening

Having built my first site 12 years ago and following Web Standards now, I make a living dev websites.
My favorite byline on pages is:
Best viewed in anything you want.

As it should be.

But for Microsoft to have the audacity to come out with a lame bowser and tell everyone that they have to add a s
poecial meta tag to every webpage on planet earth, is the ultimate in not only audacity, but foolishness.

If Microsoft is incapable of keeping up with Opera, Safari, and firefox then it well deserves to go the way of the dinosaurs.

This web development firm will never under any circumstances add this tag to clients sites, and will explain why not publically, and, unfortunately, add a special tag for ie8 users to upgrade to a real browser for the first time.

I am amazed that this article seems to think it’s just fine and dandy. It is not.

posted at 08:43 pm on January 23, 2008 by Bruce Prochnau

145 Untitled

I think it makes sense for IE to do this just this one time. If they can keep their standards support on part with the other browsers going forward then they shouldn’t have to do something like this again for another 7 years.

There really isn’t any reason to force the other browsers to support it…. as long as they all keep up with each other.

And for those of you who didn’t know, (almost) near-future css and html specs will be standardising the rendering behaviour of “Quirks Mode” so new browsers companies won’t have to emulate a half dozen other rendering engines, just Standards Mode and the new standardised “Quirks Mode”.

posted at 09:42 pm on January 23, 2008 by M C

146 This is so moronic, it makes conditional comments

The reasoning behind browser versioning and/or its advocates:

1. “Standards are buggy in themselves”.
Maybe Microsoft-backed standards, but not real ones. W3C standards, for example, go a tortuous way to recommendation in order to avoid recommending buggy standards. And, as fas a I know, browser vendors play a significant role in this process. Go figure.

2.“You are part of an endangered species of people who know what a doctype is”.
OK, this “non-savvy” as an euphemism for “incompetent” really puzzles/upsets me. For that matter, let’s relax credit requirements so that people who don’t qualify for a loan can get one. It’s not like we’re going to have any problems with irrecoverable loans or some sort of crisis, are we? Lowering standards leads to disaster. Period.

3. “Too many Web apps have been made for IE6 and it would be too expensive to migrate them to accommodate IE7+”.
So much for software life cycle, let alone Web standards. If I hired a Web design studio/programmer/high school script kiddie to make a Web site a couple of years ago, it’s only natural that the site has to change because my company could offer new products/services, change its corporate image and/or name, have new business processes, etc. The least of my concerns would be whether my old site looks “uncool” in standards mode. The same goes for Web applications, which need to deliver new services at least once in a while to stay competitive. Web applications that did not upgrade their code to the latest standards mostly died with the first dot-com bubble. Even sites like Yahoo!, invalid code, DTD-less and everything, have a fairly consistent look among browsers.

4. “A bug in a new version of the rendering engine could break a previously working Web app”.
What is this, PowerPoint? Development teams are specifically trained to avoid that at all costs. Even if that’s the case, that’s exactly why you don’t upgrade blindly, no matter what Windows Update says.
Besides, this is one case where browser versioning proves itself useless. Imagine that my AJAX-based site works flawlessly in Explorer 7. If Explorer 8’s engine contains one of this absurd bug scenarios, then versioning protects my users. But what if more probably, the bug comes with Explorer 7 SP1? Or, just for kicks, patch # KBB00BF4C3? Then <meta http-equiv=“X-UA-Compatible” content=“IE=7” /> will mean absolutely dick, because I would have to specify subversions. Should we write <meta http-equiv=“X-UA-Compatible” content=“IE=7-sp1-KBB00BF4C3” /> or cut the crap already? Oh yeah, and let’s not forget IE5Mac and platform-dependent bugs.

5. “Bloating browsers with several engines won’t be an issue because some of them could be deprecated”. No. Browser versioning’s goal is precisely to avoid that. Besides, The deprecation of IE6 would mean a more expensive pandemonium than it is right now.

If anything, this could be used alongside conditional comments, such as <!—[if IE] <meta http-equiv=“X-UA-Compatible” content=“IE=8” /> —>, but it would be redundant. Or even leave <meta http-equiv=“X-UA-Compatible” content=“IE=7” /> and let real browsers ignore the tag safely, standards-compliant-ly. But urging or even hoping “other browser vendors join Microsoft in implementing this functionality” is downright irresponsible.

posted at 11:30 pm on January 23, 2008 by J. A. Rodriguez

147 Absurdity abounds...this is only the latest slap i

Standards aren’t. That’s what this ‘so-called’ fix from Micro$oft says to me.

Why bother coding to ‘Standards’ when the UA with the most desktop ownership flies in the face of the rules?

Surely, the W3C will balk, no? Can it be that we’re truly living in a Micro$oft-centric cyberspace now?

I recognize that coding to W3C standards is what I should be doing. They (W3C) are the standards bearer for things (X)HTML. The problem with the standards bearer is that there are no ‘teeth’ to speak of. W3C says: this is how it is done, so that all may enjoy a similar experience. When it’s not done like that, what happens? Designers and users suffer while the M$ folk go happily upon their way, making frequent stops at the banking institution of their choice.

This is pure absurdity. Like all things Micro$oft, they win because they have more assets and time to waste making sure that we play ball by their rules because, after all, it’s their ball.

Perhaps it is finally time for W3C endorsements of UAs. Of course, that’d be lovely if people would actually recognize that the W3C are the authority. Problem is, the authority is nothing more than a figurehead.

My .02, which is clearly what this rant is worth.

I await Godot…and M$‘s realization that this is pure insanity and a blow to forward thinking re: the web.

-DdD

posted at 12:17 am on January 24, 2008 by Donante DelDolor

148 This is a start, could be a good one

I don’t see why most previous comments are calling this browser sniffing. I’ve done it, browser sniffing is when you perform javascript tests against the browser to determine it’s capabilities.

This is the reverse, this is really document sniffing and it’ll be performed by the browser which means you as the developer aren’t writing any code. The browser sniffs the document, ascertains its capabilities and renders accordingly.

In theory this sounds quite nice (really depends on how well the browser vendors implement this proposed solution if at all), I’d love not to have to apply patches to my html/css/or javascript everytime a new browser version comes out but when the time/budget permits.

I hated it when ie and netscape were battling and breaking the web with each new release, at least this way the only casualties with this fix and the new wave of browser wars will be the vendors and not your web applications.

posted at 12:45 am on January 24, 2008 by Dylan Oudyk

149 ugh!!

By the time you get to read my message here after wading through 15 pages of comments, you will have already sensed how the community at large feels about this idea, and despite that, I am still compelled to add my opinion as more fuel the fire: it’s simply crap.

We have STANDARDS so that browsers can be made to render predictably. That’s the solution to the problem, it’s here today and it has been embraced by the development community already. It makes the most sense for the USERS and puts the onus on the developers to hone their craft and know what they’re doing.

posted at 01:10 am on January 24, 2008 by rich cirminello

150 All software has bugs

“Let’s say that a new browser version launches 3 months after the application is brought online and the team has coded to web standards, has used unobtrusive JavaScript, and everything else that is considered a best practice right now. If that browser has a single bug that affects a critical part of the application, the team has to scramble to fix the break as soon as they hear about it from a user (or several hundred).”

I know I’m late to the game, but this is about the most ludicrous thing I’ve ever heard. This is a problem with all software, not just browsers. Who’s to guarantee that when IE9 comes out that the IE8 or IE6 rendering engine won’t have some critical bug that has to be worked around? Obviously you don’t even comprehend the most fundamental concepts of software engineering.

posted at 01:31 am on January 24, 2008 by Craig Ching