21 Let's just get on with developing useful websites

I can’t help but feel this decision has already by made. So spending a lot of time debating the pros and cons seems like wasted time. There’s a good and a bad side to this. MS are the big boys in town and until that changes we will always have to accomodate their quirks. Just use “edge” and that should do for most of us me thinks.

My own feelings on this can be summed up like this:

Can’t Microsoft just release an intranet version of their browser for people to use when IE8 doesn’t seem to work?

I guess not, but for me the best compromise is to actually let the user decide using a “Does this site look broken” button which users can click on to switch to IE7 mode. I know that’s probably far too much to ask of users, but wouldn’t that be nice?

Finally, I still don’t believe that IE42 will ship with support for IE41 all the way down to IE7. MS will pull the plug on this eventually, once the “business case” has been made for it.

posted at 03:56 pm on February 19, 2008 by Robin Massart

22 HÃ¥kon Lie, Opera CTO

“If Microsoft can’t live up to the standards of the web, I suggest they leave the browser business.” – http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/19/hakon_ms_reform_plan/

posted at 04:10 pm on February 19, 2008 by David One

23 This is stupid

Surely IE7 and conditional statements already cleared a path for IE8?

How can IE8 ‘break the web’ if there are already conditional statements in place to ‘fix’ the site for previous versions?

Won’t it just look the same as compliant browsers?

posted at 04:18 pm on February 19, 2008 by Tony Knibb

24 An excellent summary

Jeremy:

…less savvy developers … should be encouraged to continue to write to the quirks of one specific browser version from the market leader. That their documents will “breakâ€? in other browsers is not Microsoft’s problem. The counterpoint to this condescending worldview is that standards-aware developers are the ones best placed to add a single line of markup to their documents…

This is an excellent summary of what’s wrong with the proposal — it’s predicated on an eternal continuation of an out-of-date status quo.

Thanks for writing this article — it adds some clarity to the anti-targeting argument (and I agree 100%).

posted at 04:20 pm on February 19, 2008 by Jonathan Kahn

25 Why change track now?

Surely MS should stick with the method of version targeting they have already started rather than introducing a new META tag.

Why not just add a new conditional comment, something like

[div class=“codeblock”]
<!— [renderAs IE 7] —> 

[/div]

At least then there’s a modicum of consistency.

posted at 04:23 pm on February 19, 2008 by Pete Eveleigh

26 The Problem with Backwards-compatibility

The only issue with this that I haven’t seen addressed is how Microsoft is going to handle all this backwards-compatibility in IE47. It’s going to be one bloated browser. This is obviously a doomed plan unless they’re only going to use it for a few iterations and then drop off support for it at a later time. If that’s the case, why introduce it in the first place?

I’m not saying that I have a better solution for Microsoft’s problem, but I don’t understand what happened to the web standards movement. Instead of promoting standards, we’ve moved on to accepting ignorant developers and even catering to them with this new idea of versioning. So, some websites don’t work in an antiquated browser? It’s not like they can’t be fixed (if they’re even worth fixing), and it points out who the competent developers really are. The advantage of the Internet is that it’s flexible; it can be re-made. You can’t “break the web”.

posted at 04:37 pm on February 19, 2008 by Thomas Higginbotham

27 Who broke the web?

Microsoft broke the web when they decided to include the MARQUEE and BLINK tag, and decided not to follow standards.
Microsoft broke the web when they realized that Javascript was not in their control and created Jscript to fill their corporate needs.
Microsoft’s been broking the when since I have memory of it, including it’s own non-standard technologies (like ActiveX), ignoring the direction the WWW was taking and creating their corporate bubble, an ill fated environment where rules are different that those of the real world.
And now they want us not to broke the web?
Which web, Microsoft’s web or the W3C web?
Frankly speaking, I’m tired of MS. I’m tired of always playing by their rules. I’m tired of always have to take care of their problems, of their lousy browsers, of they not playing by the rules and adapt all I do to fit their peculiar view of the web.
It’s like one of those bad relationships that you just can’t get out of.
That I’ll have to modify my code every time a version of IE comes out to use the last engine of the browser? Yeah, sure…
Either they create an Intranet Explorer or something like that with the same engine of IE6 to satisfy their corporate customers or they get out of the browser business at all.
This time, I’m not going to help them fix their web.

posted at 04:39 pm on February 19, 2008 by Damian Vila

28 Broken web: No - Poor Vista corporate sales: Yes

We have all been hearing the “broken web” argument. I think that’s a red herring which hides other reasons. Knowing those reasons might help us make better decisions about what we want to do.

For example, David One said:
[blockquote]This has nothing to do with “helping build a better web�, “saving clueless web devs from themselves�, “helping standartistas build better sites�, or any of the other nonsense coming from the Zeldman camp.

This is all about protecting Microsoft their market share, which is being paired away every day by secure, standards-compliant browsers.[/blockquote]

I have yet another that I have not seen mentioned in the various places discussing the proposal. Yes, we hear “intranets” as a factor, but let’s explore that a bit further. I know that one very large corporation (over 300,000 licenses) said “No Thanks” to Vista last year. Others have too. The reason isn’t exclusively about IE breaking intranet applications, but IE is definitely a factor. Other reasons include the need for more memory, faster machines, and long arduous testing cycles before upgrading.

When a firm has 50,000, 100,000, or 380,000, seats, saying “No Thanks” to Vista is a gigantic revenue loss for MS. MS is used to nearly automatic upgrades from these large firms and now they’re hearing far to many “No Thanks” from them.

The biggest thing this proposal does is enable those large firms to upgrade with no IE changes at all. From what I see, this is definitely not about breaking the “everyman’s website,” but about Vista revenues.

So, should we agree to freeze the web at the IE7 level so that MS can regain their lost Vista revenues?

posted at 05:21 pm on February 19, 2008 by Bob Easton

29 Astounding Eloquence

Just had to point out my favorite line of the article, very well said my friend :)

“The proposed default behavior for version targeting in Internet Explorer solves the problem of “breaking the webâ€? in much the same way that decapitation solves the problem of headaches.”

posted at 06:36 pm on February 19, 2008 by Daniel Dilworth

30 unbroken Intranets, Extranets, World Wide Web?

I’m a bit amazed that people still defend the move of Microsoft by saying “but otherwise intranets that are based on IE6 will break” or “old unmaintained sites will still function”.
The brilliance is the inclusion of the HTTP header, intranets could be fixed on IE8 by adding one single entry to the webserver fo the whole company. Cheap, easy to maintain, applauded by every manager garding a budget.

What I don’t understand is why people insist that old sites won’t be broken. What they mean to say is that IE6 rendering won’t be broken, but if mom and dad replace their old Dell PC by a shiny iMac they will very much get a broken website. Microsofts domination will end, that is for sure. The question is when. Galbraith has shown in his studies that not a single monopoly is sustainable.

The whole point of this article is the argument that Microsoft made this decision driven by fear, but what they fear will happen anyway at some point in time and will only work in their disadvantage, not in their advantage.

I’m not implying that the decision has been made by the IE team alone, but that they had to negotiate this as a viable option to move forward.

posted at 07:03 pm on February 19, 2008 by Martijn ten Napel

Got something to say?

Discuss this article. We reserve the right to delete flames, trolls, and wood nymphs.

Create a new account or sign in below if you’d like to leave a comment.

Forgot your password?

Subscribe to this article's comments: RSS (what’s this?)