121 OK THEN, SPECIFICS...

Can anyone tell me exactly what HTML/CSS is likely to render fine in IE7 yet break in a standards-mode-by-default IE8? Seriously, I ask someone to name me just one thing. Because sure, IE8 may have support for generated content, columns, etc etc – but this won’t break anything that worked (degradedly) before. What will break? Because if no-one can name anything, then what’s the point of even suggesting this?

If we’re just talking the odd gap in layout – well, I get emails from MSN to my Hotmail account that break in the Windows Live Mail interface. How can Microsoft guarantee support for their customers if they don’t even support their own interfaces?

posted at 10:45 am on January 23, 2008 by Douglas Greenshields

122 Best viewed in...

MS reinvents the “Best viewed in…” practise, using a meta tag this time.

Any other software vendor must deal with the crap they’ve delivered in the past. It’s time MS deals with theirs (as do ‘IE-only’ developers).

The default render mode in IE8 should be the one that is most standards compliant. The targeting fix should only be needed for IE-only websites. Or the option to switch between current and previous engines should be given to the users in case a page doesn’t render properly. That way bad practices from the past will only show off on MS and IE-only sites.
I know it’s naive to think that MS would implement such a solution, making them look bad. But it doesn’t seem just to bother developers, who follow the standards, and web development in general (slowing it down) with a ‘solution’ for problems generated by MS and IE-only developers (who did not bother to do any extra work in order to make their website work cross browser).

MS, deal with your own mistakes and do it quick. Otherwise this fix will probably need a fix of its own in IE 9 or 10.

posted at 10:56 am on January 23, 2008 by Sander Aarts

123 Untitled

@Nicholas Sloan:
Your suggestion for emulation of older engines can not be guaranteed to work as the rendering differences are in many cases the results of bugs and quirks. To make this all behave in the same manner probably just needs the same buggy engine.

posted at 11:15 am on January 23, 2008 by Sander Aarts

124 Untitled

The fact is that websites are subject to dynamic changes over time. This fix assumes they are coded once then set in stone, requiring a meta tag to indicate the browser rendering that matches when the site was finished. But the web ain’t like that. Sites evolve over time, get completely remade, and so on. So all the browser has to do is render them according to standards.

Sadly now we have a situation unthinkable before where Microsoft has alienated many leading web standards stars like Zeldman and Meyer and the developers who have followed them for many years. Nice one Bill.

posted at 12:13 pm on January 23, 2008 by Chris Hester

125 what part of the web did you not understand ?

This proposition is so disconnected from reality I have difficulties to believe it is featured on ALA.

so now the “website designed for …” or “this page optimized for …” is proposed to become a meta tag backed up by standards ?
Wasn’t that one of the worst era of the web, when the 2 biggest market share browsers were trying to take control of the web ?

this proposition will hinder any browser that has a low market share today to be taken into account. If this were implemented since the beginning of web, how would it help to have a page designed for mosaic or netscape ?
If you kept your archives on obsolete magnetic tapes and forgot to transfer them to a medium nowadays computer can read, it’s your problem and shouldn’t affect those who are doing it right.

Having trouble to render old pages in a given brower, isn’t that why web standards exist in the first place? you know as to not be locked-in to a specific browser.

I’d rather have developpers working on improving browsers instead of keeping their codebase (bugs included) to be able to render an old web page.

Seems the problem is shown from the wrong viewpoint.
webpage rendering breaking when switching from IE6 to IE7 is a browser problem. if IE6 were standard compliant, this would have not happened in the first place.
What matters in a webpage, for the sake of archiving, is content not style, isn’t that why guidelines advocates separating content from style ?
To me, the solution is obvious: forward compatibility, graceful degradation and progressive enhancement.

posted at 12:47 pm on January 23, 2008 by Peter Brown

126 This is a Microsoft problem

No other browser seems to be suffering from the sorts of problems IE is suffering from. So why should all browsers have to suffer the pain of solving a Microsoft-only problem? It doesn’t make any sense.

Still, Microsoft have to do something to allow legacy sites to work as-is, while also being able to move forward with web standards. The obvious answer to me is a fork. Microsoft need to be able to split their browser development into two, one old and unchanging browser for legacy sites, and a new browser to go forward.

IMO, the best solution would be for Microsoft to freeze a standalone version of IE6 for legacy use, forget IE7, and treat IE8 as the first step to a more unified web.

posted at 01:03 pm on January 23, 2008 by Andrew Gregory

127 I've changed my mind... This is a brilliant idea!

All you have to do is insert a META tag like the following:

<meta http-equiv=“X-UA-Compatible” content=“FF=3” />

..and IE knows it has to switch to the FireFox 3 rendering engine!

Genius idea from Microsoft.

posted at 01:58 pm on January 23, 2008 by Gareth Adams

128 Untitled

The idea is good. The default is bad.

IE8 should default to rendering in it’s best mode. If I have a site that breaks in it, then there are two options:

1. The site’s owner adds the meta tag to set it to IE6 mode.
2. I have a compatibilty dialog in IE8 that works like the one in Explorer’s File->Properties where I can override IE8 and tell it to use IE6 for this site. (i.e. same solution as trying to run Win98 stuff in WinXP)

Regards,

Rob…

posted at 02:29 pm on January 23, 2008 by Rob Allen

129 End of line

Very interesting article about this subject: End of line Internet Explorer by Mike Davies.

He compares the current position of IE with that of Netscape 5 and suggests that MS should start all over (in the Netscape case this resultet of course in the development of Firefox).

Instead of putting the name IE with the garbage. It might enough to have the User Agent verification string completely altered to such extend that current browser sniffers wont identify it as IE (did I read that here or somewhere else?).
This would leave 2 variations of IE:

• IE Classic
  versions up to IE7, maintained for a number of years for backward compatibility

• IE Superdooper New and Improved – significantly better
  IE8 and onwards, with similar level of web standards support as Fx, Sf and Op

This would mean:

• no pollution of web development and code with yet another ‘fix’
• MS would finally prove that they really want to support web standards
• IE-only developers will know for sure that have to update their skills
• Organisations using applications that rely on proprietary features in the current IE versions will have enough time to update these to ones that rely on open standards
• IE will not become bloatware because of all the old engines they will have to keep supporting
• ‘progressive enhancement’ will not become an endangered species

• MS will not be painfully remembered till the end of time of their past mistakes in browser development and front-end developers might even start to like MS and even IE again

pease brothers and sisters ;-)

posted at 02:56 pm on January 23, 2008 by Sander Aarts

130 Untitled

— sorry for the bad writing —

posted at 02:57 pm on January 23, 2008 by Sander Aarts

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