IE9 Preview Touts Cross Browser Compatibility 181
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 development team has announced the availability of the third IE9 platform preview release on the IE blog. Dean Hachamovitch writes, 'The third Platform Preview of Internet Explorer 9, available now, continues the deep work around hardware acceleration to enable the same standards-based markup to run faster. This is the latest installment of the rhythm we started in March, delivering platform preview releases approximately every eight weeks and listening to developers. You'll see more performance, same markup, and hardware-accelerated HTML5.' The announcement focuses on cross-browser compatibility, noting that when 'developers spend less time rewriting their sites to work across browsers they have more time to create amazing experiences on the Web.' Curiously, however, the video embedded in the page works only in some browsers. Dear Microsoft, IE9 supports many royalty-free, web-compatible formats out of the box (HTML, CSS, WOFF, PNG, and the like) so why not at least one more?"
Re:Cross Browser Compatibility? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cross Browser Compatibility? (Score:2, Insightful)
Nope, they don't want to be tied down to such non-marketable terms such as "standard" or such constricting terms like "compliant".
"Cross Browser" sounds WAY sexier and "compatible" sounds much less like they HAVE to do something.
Re:Doesn't matter (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cross Browser Compatibility? (Score:3, Insightful)
A few browsers which more or less by accident behave similarly, now that's a vision that Microsoft can get behind! That situation can be manipulated. Objective standards, on the other hand, are the enemy of relativism.
Re:Doesn't matter (Score:4, Insightful)
What you suggest is like asking: Why can't we make programmes also run on Windows 95, just without all the fancy effects of Aero?
Like it or not websites will become more interactive, even
See also Google Docs, or http://www.jsdesk.com/ [jsdesk.com]
Re:Doesn't matter (Score:1, Insightful)
"Someone" is usually the person paying you to work. "Your website" may also be some critical piece of software that they need to operate their business. "Reasons unknown" is most likely some third party piece of shit web app that can't be upgraded without some major pain, ie obscene licensing costs, no upgrade path, whatever. Not everything is for public consumption.
Re:Doesn't matter (Score:3, Insightful)
Because it could double your development time and therefore development cost.
I agree with you...most of the time. Most people should design their sites for standards compliance and leave as is for IE=6. You can use a "IF IE 6" tag to show a banner at the top of the site saying something to the effect of "This site doesn't look right. That's because your browser is a piece of crap. You can, however, continue to use this site. It just won't look very nice or work very well. Here's a link to list of reasons why IE6 should die in a ditch." This, I think, is the best way to deal with the problem.
This is all well and good if your site is relatively simple (as most are) but the problems come when you're making a site that relies heavily on something that has to be done differently for IE6, such as JavaScript. For example, I don't know if Google Maps works on IE6 but I wouldn't be surprised that, for something of that complexity, most of the client-side code would need to be written twice - once for the standards and once for IE.
When providing even a basic equivalent of your site for a tiny percentage of the sites users almost doubles development time it just might not be worth it.
(note: for most sites "double" is an exaggeration...but I think my point still stands)
Re:Cross Browser Compatibility? (Score:3, Insightful)
No, "cross browser" accurately describes what people want. Nearly always, when some internet nerd starts whining about "standards-compliance", they no clue what the standards actually are, and what they really mean is "Make it work like Firefox".
Realistically, there are hundreds of "standards" which no browser supports, and there are numerous de facto unofficial standards which people expect to work. (Prime example of the latter is transparent PNGs.) "Cross-browser" accurately describes this set of common pratices.
Without Firefox... (Score:5, Insightful)
Did anyone else think that we really have to thank the Mozilla team for this? Without Firefox, none of this would have happened. Wed’d still use IE6.
Firefox tends do go a bit downwards in quality, lately. But I don’t care. Thank you, Mozilla team! Every single one of you. Everyone who installed and promoted it. And the team who made the great logo and CI, that’s so fashionable that non-geek women put in on their t-shirts.
*grabs web-Oscar, steps down from the podium and runs away with it!*
Re:Cross Browser Compatibility? (Score:4, Insightful)
(Apologies for replying to myself.)
The biggest problem when discussing web standards is that the vendors themselves propose the standards. So Apple is the most compliant with Apple's proposed standards, while Microsoft is the most compliant with Microsoft's proposed standards, etc. From the W3C's POV they are all the same, while the marketplace sorts these things out into common "cross-browser" features versus things which are considered "proprietary".
In other words, nobody cares that CSS3 rounded borders aren't an official "standards compliant" feature, it is a "cross browser" feature and they want rounded fucking corners on their website.
Re:Doesn't matter (Score:4, Insightful)
I am, I suppose, well behind the times. Some years ago, websites were able to publish information and update the databases they sat in front of (to do things like take orders for merchandise or carry on a conversation), all over secure connections. Thus, in the beginning the web established usefulness as a publishing medium. Then it was a tool to get things done.
Since then, pretty much everything I've seen in various "WebX.0" applications has done the same stuff in different ways.
So...beyond what we had years ago, what sorts of "interactivity" actually serve a useful purpose?
I'm not trying to be an obtuse old man. Seriously, I'd like to know. Maybe there's some really useful thing that I should be doing via the web that I'm not doing now. But I can't really think of what that might be and I'd like some help to figure it out. What new interactivity justifies the visual pollution and system crud that are (apparently) required to make use of it?
Note - "Mobile" apps don't count. I can understand why I might need some specialized program when I'm trying to get something done while moving around. I haven't bought into the "I live through my smartphone" lifestyle, though. I'm asking about things that are useful to me when I sit down at my desktop computer.
Re:Doesn't matter (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd like to invite you to check out the lynx [isc.org] and links [sourceforge.net] web browsers.
The problem with MSIE6 is that it adds nonstandard extensions to HTML and CSS, does not (natively) support the full PNG spec, it is pathetically insecure, it adds padding to certain HTML elements in a lot of situations where everybody else assumes padding=0 so by making a web page in standard HTML/XHTML that looks gorgeous in every single other web browser will be horribly broken in MSIE6.
MSIE7 and MSIE8 have progressively gotten a TON better but they still don't handle broken pages gracefully (see the acid3 test) and will still degrade to MSIE6 compatibility mode, encouraging corporate web developers to be lazy and keep things as-is.
Now, as far as "fancy effects" go - those "fancy effects" led to the possibility of google docs, web-based photoshop elements replacements, online banking that doesn't take weeks to navigate (do you have an AmEx account? Log into your account on AmEx and you will see online commerce done right), and even legal free and low-cost on-demand video programming, and online classes. It also allowed for the building of "community" web sites that made the whole world a lot smaller, connecting people from nearly every nation.
It also allows us to research products better before we buy, so when companies post their products online they can post a LOT more detail than they ever did in printed brochures, and you can educate yourself so that salespeople who nothing about the product beyond what their commission is won't steer you wrong.
You can stick to the web as it was circa 1997. I'll take today's "web 2.0" (wait, did I just say web 2.0?), thankyouverymuch. And, I'll be very happy using non-Microsoft browsers.