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IE8 Will Be Standards-Compliant By Default
Posted by
kdawson
on Mon Mar 03, 2008 09:51 PM
from the browsers-on-acid dept.
from the browsers-on-acid dept.
A number of readers wrote in to make sure we know about Microsoft's change of heart regarding IE8. The new version of the dominant browser will render in full standards mode by default. Developers wishing to use quirks mode for IE6- and IE7-compatible rendering will have to opt in explicitly. We've previously discussed IE8's render mode a few times. Perhaps Opera's complaint to the EU or the EU's record antitrust fine had something to do with Redmond's about-face.
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[+]
Your Rights Online: Opera Files EU Complaint Against Microsoft 455 comments
A number of readers have sent word about Opera Software ASA's antitrust complaint against Microsoft filed with the EU. Here is Opera's press release on the filing. The company wants the EU to "obligate Microsoft to unbundle Internet Explorer from Windows and/or carry alternative browsers pre-installed on the desktop" and to "require Microsoft to follow fundamental and open Web standards accepted by the Web-authoring communities." The latter request makes this a case to watch. Will the Commissioner take the Acid2 test using IE7?
[+]
Microsoft Confirms IE8 Has 3 Render Modes 525 comments
Dak RIT writes "In a blog post this week, Microsoft's IE Platform Architect, Chris Wilson, confirmed that IE8 will use three distinct modes to render web pages. The first two modes will render pages the same as IE7, depending on whether or not a DOCTYPE is provided ('Quirks Mode' and 'Standards Mode'). However, in order to take advantage of the improved standards compliance in IE8, Web developers will have to opt-in by adding an additional meta tag to their web pages. This improved standards mode is the same that was recently reported to pass the Acid 2 test, as was discussed here."
[+]
Developers: IE8 May Not Pass the Acid2 Test After All 434 comments
dotne writes "CNET has published an article called Acid2, Acid3 and the power of default. The article predicts that IE8 will not pass the Acid2 test after all: '[Another] scenario could be that Microsoft requires Web pages to change the default settings by flagging that they really, really want to be rendered correctly. Web pages already have a way to say this (called doctype switching, which is supported by all browsers), but Microsoft has all but announced that IE8 will support yet another scheme. If the company decides to implement the new scheme, the Acid2 test — and all the other pages that use doctype switching — will not be rendered correctly.' Microsoft's IE8 render modes have been discussed here previously, and they've caused an uproar in the web development community. According to the scheme, authors must put Microsoft-specific <meta> tags into their pages in order for them to be rendered correctly. I doubt Acid2, nor Acid3 will have Microsoft extensions in them."
[+]
Your Rights Online: EU Fines Microsoft $1.3 Billion 699 comments
jd writes "The EU has slammed Microsoft with a fine of €899 million ($1.337 billion at current exchange rates) for perpetuating violations of the 2004 antitrust ruling.The fine is the sum of daily fines running from June 21, 2006 to October 21, 2007. It is the first company ever to be fined for non-compliance. The amazing thing is that the EU now expects Microsoft to comply and 'close a dark chapter' in their history. The EU has opened new investigations into Microsoft's practices and gave a lukewarm response to the company's turning over yet another new leaf last week."
[+]
Developers: Microsoft Pushes Devs With Wider IE8 Beta 314 comments
An anonymous reader recommends a story about the upcoming beta 2 release of Internet Explorer 8. InternetNews expects that the standards-compliant default mode will push many developers to update their sites. We've previously discussed IE8's standards compliance and other features. Quoting:
"Over the years of IE's dominance as the leading browser, designers regularly tweaked their sites to get the best possible accuracy in rendering pages in IE -- most recently, the current commercial release, IE7. Now those pages will need to be changed. Microsoft originally planned for IE8 to default to rendering similarly to IE7, while super standards mode would have been an option. The outcry from critics helped convince Microsoft officials to instead default to super standards. That, unfortunately, will mean work for site administrators."
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News: IE8 Breaking Microsoft's Web Standards Promise? 329 comments
An anonymous reader points out a story in The Register by Opera Software CTO Hakon Lie which tells the story of how Microsoft's interoperability promise for IE8 seems to have been broken in less than six months. Quoting:
"In March, Microsoft announced that their upcoming Internet Explorer 8 would: use its most standards compliant mode, IE8 Standards, as the default. Note the last word: default. Microsoft argued that, in light of their newly published interoperability principles, it was the right thing to do. This declaration heralded an about-face and was widely praised by the web standards community; people were stunned and delighted by Microsoft's promise. This week, the promise was broken."
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Huge assumption in the title (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Huge assumption in the title (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Huge assumption in the title (Score:5, Insightful)
No, this statement is incorrect.
> No browser exists today that is completely compliant.
That is true. But it has no connection with the last statement.
I understand your point, and it's well taken, but you are introducing a tautology. Standards compliance is absolute, by _definition_.
Some attempts to comply with written standards may fail, and as such are not compliant. It may well be true that no browsers exist that are standards compliant, as the standards are written. However, please don't go waving around poisonous ideas like "standards compliance is a relative term".
Americans seem to have adopted a very lax relativism of late, a kind of fuzzy belief that everything is subjective. Some things are not. Some things are just facts that must be heeded. The definition is not up for negotiation, that's what _makes_ it a standard.
Parent
Re:Huge assumption in the title (Score:5, Insightful)
From the standard:
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [34].
When the people writing the standards write standards with the words "SHOULD" or "SHOULD NOT" or "RECOMMENDED" or "MAY" or "OPTIONAL" you now have a standard which can have many different faces, or compliance levels. IMHO, this is poor standards writing. They MUST make the specs using the terms "MUST" and "MUST NOT" and bump the version number. Then you can easily have automated unit tests which show absolute compliance. But we don't, and must rely on what developers "THINK" or "MAY NOT THINK" is correct about the spec.
--jeffk++
Parent
Re:Huge assumption in the title (Score:5, Informative)
When you get to the should / should not stuff, it comes down to in most cases you really want to listen to it, but there tend to be specific cases (say, embedded devices) where it really doesn't make sense to follow the normal behavior. Generally, if you run into one of those cases, it tends to be obvious that deviating from the spec is the right thing to do.
The optional and recommended stuff tends to be things that really depend on the specific product and shouldn't be forced.
Making things more strict would be a bad thing and make people break the standards more. The current setup acknowledges that different implementations have different needs and does a good job of accommodating.
Parent
Re:Huge assumption in the title (Score:5, Funny)
For those too busy to consult RFC 2119 in detail, it basically states the following:
Parent
Re:Huge assumption in the title (Score:5, Interesting)
In the case of HTML/XHTML and CSS, there's been quite a bit more effort invested into making sure the standards are properly documented and are internally consistent, but these standards are constantly evolving. Is it enough to support HTML 4.01 and CSS 2, or must you support HTML 5 and CSS 3? Do de-facto standards count? Remember that XMLHttpRequest (the basis of AJAX) is mostly a de-facto standard; the W3C has published a working draft [w3.org] of a specification for it.
Standards compliance isn't always as cut-and-dry as you make it sound.
Parent
Re:Huge assumption in the title (Score:5, Insightful)
No, I don't agree with that stipulation.
Reality is in its essence unknowable. Theories are models of reality that are simpler, and are based on a multitude of assumptions. And many of those assumptions go unstated. For instance, I am aware of no theory of gravity that takes into account the color of the objects being described, yet there is no scientific basis on which we can exclude color (or smell, or taste) from gravitational considerations. We do so because at this moment in history it seems silly to include it, but that is a literary arts judgment, not a scientific judgment. If you want to get your pet theory on Electric Pulse Gravity published, you'd do well to heed the literary aspects, but don't mistake them for the science.
A standard, however, is the formal statement of a group's conceptualization about a process, such as how a distance shall be measured, or how a web page shall be rendered. A standard has nothing to do with reality. It is all in your head (and the heads of everyone else who familiarizes themself with the standard). Because a standard is a human production that has no physical reality, it is possible to fully comply with its every detail (assuming that it is a well-written standard). Perhaps more to the point, it is possible for someone to completely learn a standard, including any of its weaknesses like internal contradictions or ambiguities. However it is impossible for anyone to completely learn reality, or learn all there is to know about any theory of reality.
In this sense, Euclidean geometry is a standard. You can do a lot of neat things with it, and you can spend lots of time exploring places where it is still ambiguous (things not yet proven). But you can't violate its established rules and still claim it is Euclidean geometry. You can replace those rules with other rules, but then you have a non-Euclidean geometry, like spherical geometry as one instance.
It is possible for a web browser to be standards compliant in the absolute sense. It is also reasonable to describe the relative compliance of non-compliant browsers. And since in nearly every case the context will make it clear as to whether the meaning is absolute or relative, there is no rarely any need to specify that. Unless, of course, one is pushing a hidden agenda, where the intent of talking about the subject is to create as much heat and smoke as possible while putting out no light.
There's probably a really succinct way of saying all the above, but I left my Zen Pocket Companion at work.
Parent
Re:Huge assumption in the title (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure there are. For instance, parsimony. Repeated experimentation holds that these properties are pretty much unrelated to gravity*. Besides, other models that appear consistent seem to adequately explain colour and smell and taste in ways that are incompatible by virtue scale with consistent gravitational theory.
Anyway, I recognize and respect your distinction here, although I do think it's hypothetically possible to come up with a model for reality accurate in every respect, we can just never truly comprehensively know that we have found the answer. That's neither provable nor disprovable, and thus, neither here nor there.
But I agree that context makes things clear pretty much always. If you look at the original context of my statement, he first used compliance as an absolute term, then declared that Microsoft viewed it as relative. I argue that the relative interpretation is quite valid. As for the hidden agenda, I don't think any of us (you, me, the guy I originally responded to, the Anonymous Coward in between) was pushing any hidden agenda, so I don't know where that came from.
I apologize if I looked like I was pedantically claiming that the absolute interpretation was invalid and retract any implication thereof. From my perspective, the person I responded to was saying that the relative interpretation was invalid, and the guy who responded to me agreed with absolutism-only.
* pigments for colours are slightly different composition, smells are different aromatic molecules, taste from that and other factors; all of which can reflect subtle molecular differences that lead to different mass per molecule which can in turn lead to different gravitational forces. Let's not analyse that one too deeply
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Re:Huge assumption in the title (Score:5, Insightful)
It is much higher than "more standard than IE6".
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Re:Huge assumption in the title (Score:5, Funny)
Microsoft has the be the only organisation on earth *slower* that the W3C. I mean, it's not exactly a moving target.
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Re:Huge assumption in the title (Score:4, Funny)
If by "standards compliant" you mean "compliant to the standards up to year 2004", then yes, that sounds about right.
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Re:Huge assumption in the title (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Huge assumption in the title (Score:4, Informative)
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Acid3 (Score:5, Informative)
Firefox3 nightly from March 3rd: 66/100. (Second closest to the reference rendering.)
Safari 3.0.4: 39/100.
Opera 9.26: 46/100. (Looked the least like the reference rendering though.)
Webkit nightly from March 4th: 87/100. (It also looked the closest to the reference rendering.)
Parent
They also said Windows NT was POSIX compliant. (Score:4, Insightful)
However, this is Microsoft. Their behavior in the past has shown they're not above:
(1) hard-coding stuff to make test cases work
(2) bending definitions to claim compliance.
(3) announcing out-and-out vapor to intimidate competition
It's also good to remember they've never before delivered anything like what they're claiming to have.
If I were laying money on an outcome, it would be that IE 8 will continue to lag annoyingly behind the alternatives.
Parent
Re:Huge assumption in the title (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because a browser passes Acid2 doesn't mean it's "standards-compliant". It means it complies with the specific parts of the standards that Acid2 tests for, which is only a few things that most browsers (at the time Acid2 was created) got wrong.
Parent
Re:Huge assumption in the title (Score:5, Insightful)
strike
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Re:Huge assumption in the title (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Huge assumption in the title (Score:5, Insightful)
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Correct link (Score:5, Informative)
Or perhaps... (Score:3, Insightful)
But that doesn't get the juices flowing as effectively as the "they did it because I think they're scared of the EU" editorial byline. Must have those ad impressions.
Re:Or perhaps... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Windows Versions? (Score:4, Interesting)
Will this be installable on XP and later or will it only be available for the Vista follow on: Vista ME?
Hmmmm (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Hmmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Either way everyone gets a better browser. Win-win.
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Re:Hmmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, I would say that most people who use Firefox are experienced users. Firefox cannot grow beyond this market simply because my inexperienced father is happy with what comes bundled with the computer. I hope you understand that analogy. Most people simply don't see the difference, nor do they care.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hmmmm (Score:5, Funny)
OMG WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO YOUR BROWSER!?!? And how? Whatever it is, I don't think Firefox actually wants your memory that badly.
On the other hand, perhaps you meant, "memory hog."
Parent
Put it all on Silverlight!?! (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder if they're serious. Will they really be standards compliant enough so that I don't have to hack around IE8's deficiencies? Will this still be true for IE9? It's possible. Will this include SVG and XHTML and CSS3? What about XUL and HTML 5?
If all of the above work in the next couple of version of IE, do you know what that would indicate to me? That would indicate that Microsoft is betting on Silverlight to lock in users in the next 5 years... because they've pretty much convinced me they will never compete based upon features and the merits of their software, rather than trying to make it as hard as possible for users to switch to anything else.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
This Will Cost MS Dearly (Score:4, Interesting)
While this is good news for those of us in the geek crowd, I'm extremely surprised MS went this route. When IE8 is pushed out and it breaks a bunch of non-conforming non-tagged pages built for IE7 and IE6, there will be much hell raising to be had. MS will of course be blamed since they're the ones that changed things and I wouldn't be surprised if the backlash was well in excess of IE7's, if not close to the kind of backlash Vista initially got.
Ultimately everything will be worked out as developers fix their pages, but in the short-term period following IE8's release it's going to cost MS dearly. I can't for the life of me figure out why MS would want to put their neck on the line like this, it's not doing them any favors and "benevolent" usually isn't a term we use to describe Microsoft.
Re:This Will Cost MS Dearly (Score:5, Informative)
You must not have read the press release [microsoft.com]!
They aren't putting their neck on the line... it's already there. :)
Parent
It's a trap! (Score:5, Funny)
Developers & the half-life of accumulated cont (Score:5, Insightful)
I think Microsoft has finally genuinely started to realize a very simple fact:
Client-side web developers hate them.
And it's probably the one thing MS has thoroughly earned with all the IE bullsh*t over the last 10 years.
This is a really great gesture, it's a good start if they want to allay any of that and gain back trust. But honestly, nobody gets over 10 years of being treated like crap overnight, and the half-life of contempt isn't short.
Personally, I'd like to offer my congratulations to the IE Product management team, and let them know that in time, I'll probably only wish debilitating terminal illness on them, rather than painful and extended death by torture.
Improved standards isn't the story here (Score:5, Informative)
The real story here is that "Developers wishing to use quirks mode for IE6- and IE7-compatible rendering will have to opt in explicitly."
If you've been following any of the design / developer blogs and community response about this, you'll know that in a previous plan [alistapart.com], all web pages would render in IE7 standards mode unless the developer inserted a specific meta tag
into each web page of a site. (For the truly avant garde, one could set the content to "edge", which would tell IE to render in the most current standards compliant version available). The outcry was that while it was clear that IE was making progress in standards, in order to take advantage of those improvements, developers were being asked to touch each page of their sites and tell IE to use its more standards compliant mode. That discussion is what was at play here.Re:I don't care about IE at all (Score:4, Insightful)
The day that web developers all reach a "standard" where they refuse to implement these things will be a joyful day for humanity. They all have the power to do that now, but it seems that some developers are not at the same standard as the rest.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What you should be doing is refusing to use them. Switch bank, don't use the service, or whatever - but make sure you write them an email or letter explaining why.
/mike
Re:I don't care about IE at all (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:I don't care about IE at all (Score:5, Funny)
Comfortable and quite a nice looking number, too.
/Mike
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Re:I don't care about IE at all (Score:4, Informative)
That aside, I think supporting an open web is worth it.
/Mike
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Re:I don't care about IE at all (Score:4, Informative)
Hence the fact that Wine runs it is moot.
/mike
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Re:I don't care about IE at all (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:I don't care about IE at all (Score:5, Informative)
Well, since the link you provide is largely question marks for the Webkit based browsers, that's hard to say. Also, the comparison you link to is missing a lot of standards where Firefox is a bit behind. These include:
That is not to say Firefox is necessarily behind other browser for standards compliance in general. No one with a clue would cite the Acid tests as proof of anything in that regard, but it does indicate that the link you provide is not particularly strong evidence one way or another. The whole question is probably too vague to be answered. There are a lot of Web standards and what really matters is which ones are most universally supported and what functionality cannot be used because of lacking support in one browser or another.
In summary, I reject your assertion, not because I'm convinced you're wrong, but because you haven't provided enough evidence to support it and there is significant contradictory evidence (cited above).
Parent
Re:I don't care about IE at all (Score:4, Insightful)
I think some people may be doing tremendously over-complicated things with CSS and page elements though. There are only two things that I generally need to implement a (rather trivial) workaround for when implementing designs - transparent
Parent
Re:I don't care about IE at all (Score:5, Informative)
I disagree. At my last employer I used OmniWeb for a while (a very niche browser). Most of the Web UI developers used Firefox, but a couple used Konquerer. A few used Safari. A few used Camino. A few used Opera. Regardless of what you used, when you found a bug, you tested it with a couple of other browsers and if the remote Windows box was available (or you had an emulator running), you tested it on multiple browsers and multiple platforms.
The upshot of all of this was, when a bug was listed, it was pretty easy to see which bugs were specific to a given browser. Bugs that appeared in some version of IE, but in no other browser at all, were by far the most common occurrence. Realistically our approach boiled down to, "write to standards; then hack for IE. " Make no mistake, we did not code for some other browser then try to make it work on every one, because that was not needed for the most part. We were programmatically generating Web pages and interfaces from XML data and a couple of databases. For the vast majority of the time, all browsers but IE were close enough to the standards we used (HTML3, CSS2, XHTML) so that there were no discrepancies when tested.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:2008 - the end of Slashdot??? (Score:4, Insightful)
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