IE 8 Passes Acid2 Test 555
notamicrosoftlover writes to tell us Channel9 is reporting that Internet Explorer 8 has correctly rendered the Acid2 page in "standards mode". "With respect to standards and interoperability, our goal in developing Internet Explorer 8 is to support the right set of standards with excellent implementations and do so without breaking the existing web. This second goal refers to the lessons we learned during IE 7. IE7's CSS improvements made IE more compliant with some standards and less compatible with some sites on the web as they were coded. Many sites and developers have done special work to work well with IE6, mostly as a result of the evolution of the web and standards since 2001 and the level of support in the various versions of IE that pre-date many standards. We have a responsibility to respect the work that sites have already done to work with IE. We must deliver improved standards support and backwards compatibility so that IE8 (1) continues to work with the billions of pages on the web today that already work in IE6 and IE7 and (2) makes the development of the next billion pages, in an interoperable way, much easier. We'll blog more, and learn more, about this during the IE8 beta cycle." There's also a video interview regarding IE8 development on Channel9."
Would anyone mind if.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Would anyone mind if they had rewrite their web pages or at the very least, remove the code that checks for the version of IE and if it is IE in the first place? I wouldn't mind.
Cool. (Score:5, Insightful)
Opera's Lawsuit (Score:2, Insightful)
Good News/Bad News (Score:5, Insightful)
Web developers will finally be able to develop a page once, according to standards, and have it work on all major browser
Bad News:
what's so great about this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Whats the rush to IE8? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:any standard will do (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow, talk about moving the goalposts. It's reasonable to expect a Web browser to adhere to standards -- so when IE finally does, the new reason to hate MS is because IE also supports the pages that are on the Web today?
Making IE8 render pages the way IE7 does is the smart way to go for Microsoft. If people woke up one morning and none of their sites looked right, they'd be rightfully pissed off. IE8 will give people the time to make their "crap code" standards-compliant ... though if they haven't done it by IE9, they might be shit out of luck.
Oh, and BTW -- as long as people are coding, there will always be crap code. Standards will not make crap code go away.
Dump the backwards compatibility (Score:2, Insightful)
Sour milk (Score:3, Insightful)
Soooo... since you have created a community of non-standard web development practices in an otherwise open and standards-based world-wide community, you still feel like you should defend those who followed you in your path of non-standard lock-inery. No thanks. Suck it up and admit you made a big mistake by painting yourself into a corner.
This second goal refers to the lessons we learned during IE 7. IE7's CSS improvements made IE more compliant with some standards and less compatible with some sites on the web as they were coded.
Actually, that sounds exactly like your first goal. "As they were coded" really means "As they were coded to work with our non-standards-based web browser". Again, suck it up and just promise to follow the rules of the community, and we might actually start to respect you a bit more.
Many sites and developers have done special work to work well with IE6, mostly as a result of the evolution of the web and standards since 2001 and the level of support in the various versions of IE that pre-date many standards. We have a responsibility to respect the work that sites have already done to work with IE.
I'd like to hear about the 'pre-dated standards' you speak of. Most likely, You're talking about practices you implemented in IE that wandered from existing standards, which maybe became stabilized post-M$ implementation. You can't defend non-standardization by blaming the standards for being STANDARDS. If you break standards that everyone is supposed to adhere to, its YOUR fault, NOT those who didn't embrace your specific practices as their own, personal standards.
We must deliver improved standards support and backwards compatibility so that IE8 (1) continues to work with the billions of pages on the web today that already work in IE6 and IE7 and (2) makes the development of the next billion pages, in an interoperable way, much easier. We'll blog more, and learn more, about this during the IE8 beta cycle."
How about just making IE8 as standards-based as the other players in the field instead of feeling like you are required to ween your followers from your own sour milk?
As far as I'm concerned, the underlying goal is (and always has been for M$) in the very $ at the end of M$ that has become so popular for many. You can't mask the underlying motive with excuses like what you have given.
Suck it up and play by the rules, or you'll eventually be kicked out of the game.
Re:any standard will do (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently that's now changed, and that's a very good thing. Personally, I credit the fact that Gates has given up the role of "software architect" in order to spend more time on his philanthropy. When he left, he seemed to take a lot of organizational arrogance with him.
Somebody is going to point out that ACID2 is not that great an example of real world CSS usage. That's perfectly true (how often do you use CSS to make silly pictures?) but the mere fact that MS has made passing the test a priority indicates a shift in attitude that we should all applaud.
Re:Whats the rush to IE8? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Would anyone mind if.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Dump the backwards compatibility (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, it doesnt sound that unlikely.
Re:any standard will do (Score:3, Insightful)
The point? The point is I can write proper CSS now, without having to worry about how IE will fuck it up. I can use alpha channels in png's and all sorts of things without writing it two different ways, so it will render across all browsers. I don't care about how crappily written the rest of the web is, I can write my little bits of it properly. Standards compliance isn't about punishing content authors that don't adhere to the standard. It perfectly alright to be lenient about non-validating code. But validating code needs to be rendered properly, and Microsoft seems to be getting that point at last.
Re:So let's geek this out (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't help be slightly suspicious. I'll believe it when I see it.
Re:Wonder how long (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry if that's not inflammatory enough. I could try harder. I must say, though, this is good news and I'm glad the IE 8 team is working on this. Better late than never. Oh, and I can't get Firefox 2 or the beta of 3 to pass Acid2 either.
While we're on the subject of Firefox, whose bright idea was it to solve the memory leaks in 2.0.0.8 or so by making 2.0.0.11 use more and more processor time instead of more memory? Seriously, it's easy enough to kill a 200 MB Firefox instance and reopen the browser, but this 97% processor usage is just a pain in the ass. Infinite loops are not progress. I don't have to worry about that particular problem in any version of IE I've ever seen from 3.0 to 7.0 inclusive.
Re:Sour milk (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think you have the right historical perspective here. When IE was initially becoming popular, the "standard" was "however it rendered in Netscape" - and to "look at the standard" you needed a knife and some goat entrails. I'm all for MS following standards, but I'm also happy to grant them that choices weren't quite so clear back then - and I can't really begrudge them for some of the decisions they made in that context (even if they seem odd now).
I'm just glad I don't have to do anything with "layers" anymore.
Re:So let's geek this out (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So let's geek this out (Score:1, Insightful)
Platform compatibility (Score:4, Insightful)
That depends on when IE8 is released. It took them 1.75 years to get from announcing IE7 (Feb 2005) to releasing it (Nov 2006). Presumably they've been working on IE8 for a while, but if it takes them another 21 months, we're looking at fall 2009. Who knows what the Windows install base will look like then?
Personally, I'm hoping it'll be out by the end of 2008, though my current goal is to get people the hell off of IE6. Upgrade to IE7, switch to Firefox, Opera, Safari, whatever, just ditch that aging monstrosity of a browser if you possibly can (and aren't barred by your IT department, or a need to access some critical site that only works in IE6).
Re:So let's geek this out (Score:3, Insightful)
Only with standard DOCTYPE (Score:5, Insightful)
Everybody is in a pickle when it comes to rendering broken HTML. The only solutions are to do the best you can, or display an error message rather than a page. Also, to be fair, most of this mess is indeed caused by Microsoft, but even they can't fix it in a day.
I think it would be nice if browsers continued to fix spaghetti, but also showed a message somewhere that indicated that the page was buggy. Not a pop-up or anything, but a small, unobtrusive icon that was green and happy for a good page, or red and frowny for a bad. If IE had this by default, I think there would be a lot less bad pages on the internet.
Re:So let's geek this out (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So let's geek this out (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So let's geek this out (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Good News/Bad News (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So let's geek this out (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like the old Microsoft Cairo project. Each time a competitor was about to release a new product or new version of a product, Microsoft would launch a press release stating how much better everything would be with Cairo, who would be just six months away. The press and potential customers turned away from the competitor and started to talk about the marvelous Cairo future instead.
Except that Cairo never materialized.
Re:So let's geek this out (Score:5, Insightful)
Nah, check out the low UID.
More likely the voice of bitter experience.
In case anyone believes the troll (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So Microsoft is good again? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:So let's geek this out (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So let's geek this out (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So let's geek this out (Score:5, Insightful)
As much as I was bemused by considering a UID > 100,000 as low, I still understood that the post wasn't serious.
Netscape (Score:3, Insightful)
Netscape started it!
Re:Tabs are evil (Score:3, Insightful)
In short, it's more efficient for what I do. For those that only open 1 or 2 pages at a time and leave one page when they visit a new page, maybe it's not worth their while. I have 8 sessions of firefox open right now with an average 5-6 tabs open in each. One's got 10 tabs open to comic strips I like to read in the morning. Another has 5 slashdot tabs open. Another has e-bay and a college text book selection open with multiple shopping sites in tabs, etc. My task bar couldn't hold 40 or so firefox windows on it along with all of the other programs I have running and be as efficient at finding what I want when I wanted to switch tasks.
As another user stated, it saves on memory resources to use tabs as well. You don't have to use them -- you can even turn tabs off completely in many browsers. I think they're the best invention for the web since the search engine, but maybe they're not for you. Tabs are just a tool. I find them incredibly useful for what I do, but maybe some people like yourself don't have a use for them.
Re:So let's geek this out (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why aren't other browsers standards compliant? (Score:3, Insightful)
If something is implemented by only one application, it is not a standard.
And MS is a member of the W3C, if I'm not severely mistaken.
There is no such thing as "IE standard". If there were, then different versions of IE wouldn't render pages completely differently.
Re:Tabs are evil (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm often switching between tabs with CTRL+Tab or CTRL+Shit+Tab (with Firefox) improving my navigation between web pages.