The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 4 (of 5) - Making IE W3C Standards Compliant

Making IE W3C Standards Compliant

This is interesting. A guy called Dean Edwards has created a stylesheet that uses DHTML in an attempt to fix IE's CSS problems.

See http://dean.edwards.name/IE7/

John Topley (www.johntopley.com)
Saturday, March 13, 2004

Interesting, but ........ "W3C Compliant" is essentially meaningless because even the W3C isn't "W3C Compliant".

I can't find the link right now, but about a year ago somebody did a study of over 400 web sites run by W3C members. 95% were not fully "W3C compliant" -- mainly due to using IE-specific features.

IE, not W3C, is the true standard.

Joe on Software (Joe)
Saturday, March 13, 2004

That's very short sighted, given the variety of devices that are becoming popular that can browse the web (like cell phones). These devices do very well when using semantic style markup, and do very poorly when using old-style table-layout markup.

Also, web site accessibility is law in some parts of the world. Table-layout markup is generally considered to be accessibility hostile.

Brad Wilson (dotnetguy.techieswithcats.com)
Saturday, March 13, 2004

For example, my sidekick/hiptop.

It is funny though -- how MSNBC is MUCH better at handling this (they redirect me to a Mobile Channel instead of trying to forcefeed me the regular page) than CNN.

-T.J.

T.J.
Sunday, March 14, 2004

IE is a standard, but not any standard that anyone would be proud of or wish to adhere to.

Simon Lucy
Sunday, March 14, 2004

For web developers trying to build extensible/accessible/conformant/easily-maintainable sites, the need to write special code for IE can really take a lot of time out of the development process.

This DHTML code claims to remove that need. On my last project I coded to standards (that is, I coded the way my brain works and didn't purposefully account for any area where IE (in any version) handled the code in unexpected ways (such as the broken box model in 5/5.5/6quirks). I then wrote all the IE specific code. 6 hours were sucked out of my development cycle for IE on a set of pages that took 30 hours to develop.

IE is no standard to develop for, it is a standard tool with non-standard support for the standards which most of the other tools do support.

AC
Sunday, March 14, 2004

IE now holds Netscapes role as the browser holdding web apps back. MS would rather leave the browser to whither and die by leverqging their Monopoly (the court's finding) to move applications to rich internet apps that are tied to Windows APIs.

Fortunately Mozilla and Opera (and Safari coming on strong) both kick IEs ass in every way and offer developers a way forward NOW.

IE is the defacto monopoly-acquired standard. We dont' have to accept such a LOW standard.

fool for python
Sunday, March 14, 2004

I really think the web standards should be divided into two separate trees. One for web apps and one for plain vanilla web pages.
I want a browser with scripting in python and nice big widget set. And no markup languages, I want objects with proper properties and meaningful methods. A browser that borders on a runtime environment.

Eric Debois
Sunday, March 14, 2004

..and they say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one... ;-)

Eric Debois
Sunday, March 14, 2004

I want it split like that too. But I want the web apps to just become desktop apps like they should be in the first place, and leave the web stuff for actual presentation of content. ;)

Sum Dum Gai
Sunday, March 14, 2004

Mozilla/Firefox is the closest we have. Python coming soon.

http://www.mozilla.org/events/dev-day-feb-2004/mozilla-futures/qanda.html

(down arrow for the next slide)

fool for python
Sunday, March 14, 2004

I think you want http://www.mozilla.org/events/dev-day-feb-2004/mozilla-futures/summary.html (you've linked to the last slide).

Chris Hoess
Monday, March 15, 2004

"Fortunately Mozilla and Opera (and Safari coming on strong) both kick IEs ass in every way and offer developers a way forward NOW."

Every way apart from market share, that is!

John Topley (www.johntopley.com)
Monday, March 15, 2004

Yes. There's the catch.

IE toppled Netscape because mainly because Netscape stumbled but also because IE had a gauranteed distribution channel to seed the market.

As it is now, using Mozilla does not increase your security one bit (if you're using Windows). All the apps here and there have IE embedded, so an unpatched vulnerability in IE will get you even if you use Mozilla.

So Mozilla is a better browser, but that's it. IE has more dominant marketshare than Netscape ever had, and Mozilla has no good way to leap into the market with their better product the way IE did. Furthermore, while IE may suck in some ways and be non-standard, it is at least capable of doing anything you need to do, whereas NN4 was just incapable of making a web page look good.

I think the only way Mozilla can seriously threaten IE is if it gets a champion to push it out into the market in a big way. The only company I see with enough mindshare among your average internet user to pull it off is Google.

Richard P
Monday, March 15, 2004

"Every way apart from market share, that is!"

Yes, most people do use an inferior browser. Something for Bill to be proud of.

fool for python
Tuesday, March 16, 2004