I am certainly not a Microsoft fan, but I’m not anti-MS either. Much of my livelyhood, on many levels is dependent on Microsoft, but it almost scares me to publicly state that I am anticipating the release of Internet Explorer 7….I think!
The extent of my web development amounts to me sitting there trying new things and seeing what happens, I certainly am not anywhere near being a professional web developer. But I am married to one and that’s probably better. She’s the one that bangs her head on the desk on a somewhat regular basis because web pages are displaying differently in different browsers. That’s what I mean when I say it’s better to be married to one than to be one because I hear the frustrations and that means I can really sound like I know what I’m talking about.
According to Chris Wilson, of the IEblog,
I want to be clear that our intent is to build a platform that fully complies with the appropriate web standards, in particular CSS 2 ( 2.1, once it’s been Recommended). I think we will make a lot of progress against that in IE7 through our goal of removing the worst painful bugs that make our platform difficult to use for web developers.
This is why I’m excited about IE7, they intend to take it up a notch and be fully compliant with appropriate web standards. In particular, the intention is to be CSS2 compliant, which is a big deal since CSS is the new standard in web development. (remember, I know this because I’m married to a web developer)
However, in the same post, Chris goes on to state:
In that vein, I’ve seen a lot of comments asking if we will pass the Acid2 browser test published by the Web Standards Project when IE7 ships. I’ll go ahead and relieve the suspense by saying we will not pass this test when IE7 ships.
Acid2 is a test for browsers to ensure they meet the web standards.
The post also states:
We fully recognize that IE is behind the game today in CSS support. We’ve dug through the Acid 2 Test and analyzed IE’s problems with the test in some great detail, and we’ve made sure the bugs and features are on our list – however, there are some fairly large and difficult features to implement, and they will not all sort to the top of the stack in IE7. I believe we are doing a much better service to web developers out there in IE7 by fixing our known bang-your-head-on-the-desk bugs and usability problems first, and prioritizing the most commonly-requested features based on all the feedback we’ve had.
Actually, I have nearly banged my head on my desk with this frustration, but when I hit the end of my rope in this regard, I hand it over to Mary and ask her to fix it. Anymore, all I hear is ‘get in line’. Since I’m not exactly a paying customer, I am low priority, so I am learning more CSS all the time.
C’mon IE7 team, CSS standards are one of many things that are critical and need to be addressed.
Plus, someone needs to give Firefox a run for their money before they become complacent too!
“Acid2 is a test for browsers to ensure they meet the web standards.” is not completely true. A more accurate description
comes from the Acid2 site itself – “Acid2 tests features that web designers have been requesting.” This an important difference
to me. While I think it would be neat if IE7 passed the Acid2 test, it is FAR more important (in my opinion) that they build an
HTML 4.x, CSS 1.0/2.0, and XHTML 1.0 compliant browser. They’ve committed to doing that and that should be sufficient for 99%
of developers out there. Plus, full Acid2 compliance would break a lot of sites in IE7 and I’m not sure it would be worth that
side effect just to get Acid2 compliance.
All I really want is to write standards compliant code and have it work in all browsers. Right now I’m working on a site that validates as XHTML 1.0 Strict, has valid CSS and looks like it is supposed to in Firefox. It doesn’t line up right in IE6. This is a head-banger for me. I want to be able to write valid code, position without code-bloating tables and have things look right.
My concern is that Microsoft will do just the bare minimum to get by and as the standards change we’ll have the same compliance problems we have now.
****but when I hit the end of my rope in this regard, I hand it over to Mary and ask her to fix it. Anymore, all I hear is ‘get in line’.****
Sorry, honey, but that’s the way it goes. In my defense, that’s what I ususally get from you when my computer needs to be fixed…
Amen, honey! MS historically does not achieve standards, regardless of what it is. MS intends for the standards to be set by them, it seems, at least that is historically how it appears. By the way, didn’t you purchase an extra year of service on your new PC? Call me in 2 years and I’ll rebuild your computer!
Alex, granted, what you quote from the post is accurate, but we need to see results. I appreciate the efforts and intentions, but I know the frustration level is high among web developers with lack of standards compliance.
I am so serious, I would love to see IE7 give Firefox a run for it’s money. That’s good for all of us but there’s a lot of catching up to do.