IE8 Will Be Standards-Compliant By Default 383
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.
Huge assumption in the title (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
fsvo (Score:1, Insightful)
And we'll still have retarded webmonkeys designing for IE instead of standards, especially if MS gets it really wrong again.
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.
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:Hmmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Either way everyone gets a better browser. Win-win.
Re:Huge assumption in the title (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hmmmm (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:I don't care about IE at all (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
Wouldn't it be funny... (Score:0, Insightful)
Oh, I can just see it now. Irony at its best.
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.
missing the point (Score:2, Insightful)
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
Re:Huge assumption in the title (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:2008 - the end of Slashdot??? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Booga booga (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:EPIC WIN (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Put it all on Silverlight!?! (Score:3, Insightful)
No, here is no browser that supports all of those completely. Some of the specifications are still in draft form for some of those technologies. So far, however, Firefox, Safari, Konquerer, and Opera all have at least some support for every one of the specifications I mentioned. Explorer has some support for some of them, but is behind on all of them compared to every other browser.
The difference is which browser teams are committed to implementing standards going forward and advancing the Web technologies as a real goal and which are interested in doing as little to make the Web a more powerful platform as possible while not incurring serious legal problems. I submit that if Microsoft is really serious about implementing the standards they will have at least some support for all of these Web technologies in IE 8, enough so that it shows they are committed to keeping current with Web technologies instead of freezing the Web at a technological level it was at 8 years ago and making sure it is never useful enough so that people can use Windows or some other platform.
Re:I don't care about IE at all (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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.
Re:Huge assumption in the title (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Huge assumption in the title (Score:1, Insightful)
We have Aristotelian conceptions of Gravity.
We have Newtonian conceptions of Gravity.
We have Relativistic conceptions of Gravity.
Would you agree that a physical theory being "correct" is equivalent to a physical theory being "standards compliant" where the standard is reality?
If so, then I think if we followed your your view, none of these models are correct, and that's that. In my view, all of them are unequally correct, or in other words, unequally incorrect. Every one of them is more correct than "things fly away from massive objects due to gravity". I would tend to go so far to say as Newtonian and Relativistic interpretations are both, in fact, correct; but decline to say either is 100% correct.
http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm [tufts.edu]
Of course, you have an easy out if you claim that correct is not like compliance with the reality standard. But in that case I'd like to know why you disagree with that.
But if you accept that correct & compliance with reality are the same, and still disagree with me, then we've devolved into an argument of semantics. "I believe this word means this". "No, this word means THAT". Ultimately not entirely useful.
And definitions are always, ALWAYS up for negotiation, because that's how natural language works
Re:Hmmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I don't care about IE at all (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Huge assumption in the title (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:I don't care about IE at all (Score:3, Insightful)
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++
Re:Huge assumption in the title (Score:5, Insightful)
It is much higher than "more standard than IE6".
What's taking soo long? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Huge assumption in the title (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh, come on.
The web "standards" specify what exactly is required for an "agent" to comply (for example, in the CSS 2.1, the section 3 defines the conformance requirements).
So, I might agree that right and wrong may not be absolute for theories explaining reality (and I do!). But being compliant to a standard that specifically tells you that is needed to comply *is* absolute.
BTW, thanks for the link. I'm an Asimov fan, and I hadn't seen that yet.
Re:It's a trap! (Score:3, Insightful)
IE becomes the browser that can best view all the old broken IE-only HTML, all the compliant HTML, and all of the Silverlight pages that "enhance" the web. All of the other browsers will only render standard HTML well.
Sure Mozilla renders XUL, but Silverlight probably has more adoption than XUL already. Too bad someone didn't come up with a really friendly IDE to XUL early on in Mozilla's lifetime, since that is one thing MS tends to do well that drives adoption of their languages and tools. Developers, developers, developers!
Re:They also said Windows NT was POSIX compliant. (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not that I don't believe you, it's just that I'm curious.
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
Re:Huge assumption in the title (Score:3, Insightful)
You're welcome for the link.
Re:Huge assumption in the title (Score:3, Insightful)
If you define a standard as a particular chunk of language, it is possible to create something which is technically compatible with the language, but not with any existing implementation of it. It is possible that this is because the existing implementations followed the spirit of that language, and you followed the letter of it. See any DJB program for examples of this.
If you define a standard as a particular reference implementation or validator (hopefully accompanied with a chunk of language), it is also possible for there to be bugs in that implementation, which must therefore be reflected in all competing implementations, but were absolutely not the intent. See the Windows APIs -- particularly their backwards-compatibility hacks -- for an example of this.
In other words, it is possible that either the language or the implementation will not adequately describe what was intended. In such cases, it is possible to have degrees of compliance -- all of which are technically compliant.
I would argue that to minimize this, it would be helpful to have all three -- a spec (or at least a design document), a reference implementation, and a validator (which could also be used as functional tests while developing the actual implementation). Even so, it's not going to be perfect.
That said, it is usually very clear when something is not compliant to standards, and there should not be degrees of that. Many people seem to think there are, but that only leads to the mess of hacks that is the Quirks Mode of most browsers today.
Re:Huge assumption in the title (Score:2, Insightful)
When he says "standards compliance is [not] a relative term", he's not saying that a browser must _either_ be compliant or not. (He's _not_ saying that compliance is a binary state, which is what you're arguing against.) Rather, he's arguing that there exists a standard to which everyone should comply: an _absolute_ standard. Of course, all of the browsers have some imperfection, but some browsers take these imperfections as "bugs", recognizing that they are not fully conforming to the standard, while other browsers take these imperfections as a choice (i.e. taking it as their own _relative_ standard).
There are people here who argue that standards are "relative"--that everyone is allowed to have their own standards because no one can speak for the masses about what is right and what is wrong. However, the _point_ of making standards is so that we have an absolute goal that everyone may work toward, in uniform. You can't let everyone have their own standards, and say that some standard exists.
I don't mean to troll. I just don't think we're all on the same page about what "relative" means.
Re:Huge assumption in the title (Score:-1, Insightful)
Standards compliance is absolute, by _definition
Such an all-or-nothing formulation is very unhelpful, and it's not about fuzzyness, subjectivity or relativism. You don't get absolute standards compliance all at once, you increase it over time. That can be measured in decreasing numbers of test failures. That's what's happening for several browsers with these ACID tests, and you saying "Not 100%. Fail." to every improvement adds no feedback at all.
Re:They also said Windows NT was POSIX compliant. (Score:3, Insightful)
1) better security
2) better UI
3) plugins
That's it. Anyone who tells you people don't use IE because it's not standards compliant are idiots. Every web developer makes sure their pages work with IE, no matter how much extra work it takes.
Re:Huge assumption in the title (Score:5, Insightful)
strike
Re:Huge assumption in the title (Score:-1, Insightful)