Text 12468, 67 rader
Skriven 2006-08-08 11:57:32 av /m (1:379/45)
Ärende: IE 7.0 Technical Changes Leave Web Developers, Users in the Lurch
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From: /m <mike@barkto.com>


http://www.windowsitpro.com/windowspaulthurrott/Article/ArticleID/47208/windows
paulthurrott_47208.html

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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.
===

 /m

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