CSS Support IE 7.0's Weakest Link 339
dilbertspace writes "Anyone who has ever developed a website knows that cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility is a nightmare, mainly due to Microsoft's willful non-compliance with the CSS2 standard. As this eWeek article points out, it seems Microsoft will continue their poor support for CSS2 even in the IE 7.0 release. This may have worked when IE was the only game in town, but now that Firefox is a serious player, it won't help them keep market share as they think it will."
Don't count on it (Score:5, Insightful)
This may have worked when IE was the only game in town, but now that Firefox is a serious player, it won't help them keep market share as they think it will.
Don't count on it, sunshine. The reason IE is losing market share to Firefox is two fold.
These are things that matter to the end user. If I'm joe-sixpack I don't give a damn about CSS 2.0 compliance. Hell, I probably don't even know what CSS 2.0 is. The only person who actually cares are the people making the web-sites, and those people are us and in terms of market share we typically sit at the one-percent noise level. To Microsoft, IE not being compatible with other browsers is a good thing. It means people have to design to their feature set and not to the offical standards it simply means we can't ignore their platform.
So what can Firefox do to take out IE once and for all? It's actually rather simple. Do the thing that IE would never do. Implement something as powerful as Windows Forms (or it's Linux equivelent). It's the thing Microsoft fears the most - that Javascript will evolve into something powerful enough to be able to right a Microsoft Office clone in. As soon as this happens, then we suddenly have a platform independant version of office and that means we don't have to run Windows anymore. In short, they can kiss Goodbye to their market share.
I'm not saying anything new here. Joel Spolsky has talked about this at great length in a very interesting article that i'm having trouble finding. We all know this day will come it's just a question as to how long Microsoft can stall the process. This CSS 2.0 issue is a single battle in the war Microsoft is waging to prevent their demise.
Simon.
The Average User (Score:5, Insightful)
Sad but true....
With all due respect to Firefox and standards (Score:5, Insightful)
Though we might wish it were so, it's time for a reality check.
If you're MS, why support standards? (Score:4, Insightful)
Supporting standards only makes other browsers a viable alternative. How many people use Firefox but have to continue to use IE at work because of sites that only work in IE?
Actually... (Score:5, Insightful)
Freedom to innovate? Not! (Score:4, Insightful)
Is there any standard that Microsoft has adhered to and not broken? It seems they're always ignoring or redefining standards.
I hope we're finally getting to the point where they'll keep losing market share by not supporting this stuff; because they've got the worst case of instututional Not Invented Here syndrome I've ever seen.
Re:firefox is a pretty serious player (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Don't count on it (Score:3, Insightful)
The amazon browser is a good example. Too bad there arent very many other examples out there...
http://www.faser.net/mab/remote.cfm
Re:M$ cares ... (Score:2, Insightful)
MS doesn't care (Score:5, Insightful)
Bet let's get real: MS still controls over 90% of the browser market. Web developers will develop sites that function more or less identically in IE, FF, NS, etc. CSS will not break MS' monopoly on web browsers.
it is to laugh (Score:1, Insightful)
Sorry, me and millions upon millions of other people still arent going to switch.
Firefox a major player? (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh, so don't get me wrong, I loathe IE like the next guy, but how does - at best - 6% of the browser market already make Firefox a major player?? Apple's got around, what, 2%-3% of the desktop market, yet no one's calling them a major player.
Frankly, we should be blaming all those web 'developers' for their lazy and frankly, filthy, coding. I've worked in quite a few places and only those on the outside or real passionate web programmers care much about anything non-IE.
This will become more and more of an issue in the coming months and years as people start catching on to more of the Google halo effect: the DHTML/xmlrpc sorta 'fat' web client app. Customers and company higher-uppers are going to start saying more and more "why can't we do that like Google Suggest or Google Maps?". Be prepared.
I just have to also say it really pisses me off, as a enterprise developer, that I have to deal with a market like this. I mean, we have standards for a reason. And the fact that you IE only guys out there take quiet joy in your coding lazyness is beyond me.
Take a little more pride in your work and look at the bigger picture! Regardless of what Micro$oft may think, the world should not revolve around IE! Hopefully some day, for real, Firefox will change this.
Re:Am I the only one sick of "DUPE" comments (Score:1, Insightful)
No.
The Slashdot motto is "if you don't like it fuck off."
... CmdrTaco
Re:Don't count on it (Score:3, Insightful)
OpenOffice does have a support option. It's just that when you buy it with support included it is called StarOffice instead.
The ONLY people to claim OO will overtake MS Office are those that can do their own support and those that don't use many of MS Office's features.
Managing to have perfect MS Office document compatibility is something that may never happen as they're aiming at a moving target that MS can deliberately break if they so choose. The feature race, however, is probably in OpenOffice's favour in the long run. MS is ahead for now, but OpenOffice has been improving and adding features much faster than MS Office has been. Unless MS manages to kick themselves into gear OpenOffice being moe feature complete than MS Office is an inevitability - it's only a matter of time.
Jedidiah.
Why does M$ care? (Score:2, Insightful)
Besides firefox default for searching on google, how much actual revenue is lost for M$ with alternative browsers? I'm not looking for a figure I just don't quite understand why it would be worth it to have a full-team of developers and testers working on this over the next year/two?
Are they afraid of it just being that much easy to switch to Mac or Linux? MSN search revenues? What outweighs the cost of development and embarrassment of more security problems?
Re:Don't count on it (Score:5, Insightful)
Firefox growth is declining
Well, I would say that is natural. If the market share continued to grow like it did the first month after 1.0 (33% per month), it would cross the 100% barrier in a year (actually, it would wind up at 124% market share). So I guess the growth has to decline. In absolute numbers, and in terms of market share, Firefox continues to grow. The delta of that growth is smaller, though.
Re:With all due respect to Firefox and standards (Score:1, Insightful)
If I didn't then next year I might be wondering where another 10% of my market went, and three years from now you could be wondering how incompetent I would have had to be in order to make my product as irrelevant as Netscape.
Obviously I'm not sitting on top of a multi-billion dollar software empire, but it's not too unreasonable to think Microsoft is paying careful attention to Firefox: it's the only serious competition Internet Explorer has had in nearly half a decade.
Right... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why extend something that 99% of the time is bl (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Firefox a major player? (Score:3, Insightful)
Regardless of what Micro$oft may think, the world should not revolve around IE! Hopefully some day, for real, Firefox will change this.
And we could/should take some responsibility also.... If we encounter an IE-exclusive web site, we should write, ALWAYS!, at least, and take customer "action" if possible. When my bank switched to an on-line banking system that would work only with IE (it HAD worked with Netscape previously), I wrote my letter, and withdrew $20,000.... probably not a lot or a big scare for a bank, but if more people would demand more open web sites or refuse to do business with these sites maybe we'd see more results too.
I DO agree with parent though, there is some hope with the Google effect, and managers taking the "Why can't we do that" approach.
Re:Don't count on it (Score:3, Insightful)
If the linear growth rate holds for 7 months after the last data point, that would mean Firefox usage share will reach 10% in September 2005. If Firefox's growth continues to slow, that goal will be reached later. Firefox's growth would have to slow dramatically for Firefox never to reach the 10% goal. I doubt Firefox's usage will drop or level off soon, as your post implies.
Re:Someone should call them on this (Score:1, Insightful)
"The first big site to do it would lose some amount of visitors "
Would lose 80% + visitors overnight my friend, and would soon be unable to pay the bills.
Let slashdot throw the first stone in this battle
Re:The Average User (Score:3, Insightful)
This is why Mozilla and other browser manufacturers matter. This is why Microsoft is developing IE again. Do you think they'd have changed their plans about this if they weren't losing sleep?
Re:IE is dead (Score:1, Insightful)
So do what I do... (Score:2, Insightful)
I have lots of friends that are computer illiterate. Their computers usually get bogged down with viruses and spyware and I'm often obliged to help them fix their problems.
Every time I do this I install Firefox, set it up with my favourite extensions, then show them how to use it (basically how the tabs work and where their download go). I haven't had a single person complain about it, in fact they all rave about how much better it is and often suggest it to their friends.
Just telling people about Firefox is no way to get them to convert, demonstrating its power is.
Re:Why does M$ care? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's pretty much the only reason for the existence of IE. MS only started on IE when people started to notice that with things like HTML the OS would become irrelevent and that non internet based 'Information Services' (like the original MSN) were doomed.
If it wasn't for that fear of the OS becomming irrelevent then there would be no point in MS spending so much money on something that they can never make any money (at least directly) from. It's why IE development stopped dead untill they had competition again - with nothing to fear then why spend money developing it? IE is nothing more than a necessary evil for MS.
Re:Duplicate, you moron editors (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:well duh (Score:3, Insightful)
That's the true beauty of standards - there are so many to choose from
Re:Don't count on it (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:With all due respect to Firefox and standards (Score:1, Insightful)