IE and CSS "Compliance"

Article
08/10/2006

I was surprised that when I got back from vacationing in Hawaii to read a Slashdot post by Jeff Reifman about an article Paul Thurrott wrote...last year. I read Slashdot regularly, and it didn’t make sense; not only is this old information, but it’s not even factually correct (which I’d like to think is a requirement for Slashdot posts).

Jeff did later figure out the article was from last year, and edited his post. And others have pointed out that Paul has made several posts since last year about IE7. I’d recommend reading them, such as this one from (THIS) June reviewing IE 7 Beta 3, which seems to indicate Paul thinks we might be heading in the right direction.

As for IE’s CSS compliance, I’d love to have a honest, straightforward, unbiased statement of exactly where we (and other browsers) are – despite the fact that I know we would be behind today. Unfortunately, I don’t think that exists; any “statistical analysis” of support is by nature biased. How do bugs count against you? For example, one of the big developer complaints in IE6 was that we didn’t support “background-position: fixed” on non-BODY elements – but we passed the W3C CSS1 test suite, because we supported it properly on the BODY element. And we support the ‘float’ property, and pass the set of tests in the CSS1 test suite – but even in IE7, we have some bugs in interacting with width and height, which is one of the contributing factors to us not passing the Acid 2 test suite. Your personal view may be that that’s as bad or worse than not supporting ‘float’ at all, but a lot of designs in use on the web today require floating.

The site that Jeff’s post referred to (developed by David Hammond) is weighted in a way that makes IE in particular look bad (not particularly surprising, given some of the other pages on the site) – for example, it dings our support of each CSS property, one at a time, simply because we support a proprietary “CSS expressions” feature; similarly, the fact that we don’t support the ‘inherit’ property value across all CSS properties is counted against us one for each property, not as a global feature as it would be implemented and used. Most unfortunately, there are no more details on many of the problems David encountered, or test cases that my team can test against. When I contacted David a year or so ago, he couldn’t give me any further details, so I’m not even sure how we make progress against that site. Solid test cases we can access and bug reporting would help – which is why we have a public bug database. I’d also like to turn comments like "IE 6 and IE 7 failed to render even basic columnar layouts in CSS" in to solid work items, but I don’t understand the problem - much of the web uses columnar layouts that work in IE. Is this a request for CSS3 multicolumn support, or a narrow bug with the way you’re trying to do columnar layouts?

The one thing that really burns my personal toast is that we’ve been working hard to improve our standards support in IE7, and I believe it is simply wrong to think that we’ve only moved the needle 2%. In fact, we prioritized IE7 around 3 things – security, end user experience, and standards improvements in the platform. When I look back at the work my team has done in the platform, we have done only these things. No proprietary features added, just standards improvements. (Look forward to an upcoming IEBlog post from Markus Mielke listing out the CSS changes we’ve done in IE7.) I feel that we’ve addressed the biggest problems and shortcomings from IE6 for web developers and designers, and we’re hard at work shipping IE7 and getting ready to doing it again in the next release. As I previously stated, our goal is to make the lives of web developers better by improving standards support in IE. I think we’ve done a lot in IE7 to do just that, and I’m looking forward to doing even more.

But now I’m feeding the trolls, so I’m just going to go play my newly-acquired ukulele and chant under my breath Some...People...Get...It" (possibly to the tune of “Tiny Bubbles.”)

-Chris

Comments

Anonymous
August 10, 2006
Standards are important and there's yet another debate going on over at http://digg.com/tech_news/IE7_is_basically_non_compliant_with_CSS_web_standards&nbsp;with...
Anonymous
August 10, 2006
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Anonymous
August 10, 2006
Oh, and in regards to the "inherit" property value, you ask why I list it for every single property when it's obviously a "global feature". Well it obviously isn't. "inherit" is supported for the "direction" property, and as far as I can tell nothing else. So no, it doesn't seem to be a global feature, it seems to be something you implemented on a property-by-property basis.

The upside to how it is listed is that if you add support for "inherit" in some version of IE, that would be an instance percentage boost in my tables, and I feel rightly so. I have listed "inherit" with every property since just about the beginning of my tables and I see no reason to single it out as something different. It is, after all, listed individually with every feature in the specifications.
Anonymous
August 10, 2006
As a web developer, I can testify that making sites work with IE easily consumes the bulk of my time, almost as much as coding the site itself (which is rather easy with tools such as Dreamweaver). Cut it out! Microsoft doesn't own the web, and it should stop arrogantly acting like it does and start playing by agreed upon standards.

IE's shoddy security, long time since the last update, and the apparent ignoring of web standards is unacceptable; all this simply goes to vindicating the anti-trust lawsuit against Microsoft: a monopoly has no incentive to strive for excellence (unless the monopoly has an inner driving passion for it, like Apple has, though it is a "monopoly" over its own little market).

Make web standards compliance a priority! I'm not going to ignore such a large segment of my target audience as Firefox + Safari, and Microsoft doesn't even make IE for Mac anymore, though that market segment is rapidly growing, and has a lot of disposable income.
Anonymous
August 10, 2006
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Anonymous
August 10, 2006
Listen Microsoft, I'm sick and tired of having to adapt all my designs to your buggy browsers. If you can't do it just integrate Mozilla in there and stop taking advantage of your position to make the rest of us waste our time to accomodate you.

There I said it.
Anonymous
August 10, 2006
Wow, this is one ugly blog. Why do you have a picture behind your menu? It makes it really hard to read. Is this the same mentality that went into the IE design?

BTW, the term Albatross really applies to what IE has been for developers over last 9 years. Was the reference intentional?

Albatross:
"sometimes used to mean an encumbrance, or a wearisome burden." --wikipedia
Anonymous
August 10, 2006
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Anonymous
August 10, 2006
I would like to thank the IE7 team for their honest efforts, and hope that Microsoft gives them more power over the project next time. It's about time you were given the chance to do something worthwhile with IE, since it has not really been worth using since IE5 in terms of scaling up with features.
As with most developers I hope you managed to get the basics working, like HTML and CSS 2, so that the world can move on like they did from Netscape 4. It is unfair that most of my audience has to download a separate stylesheet, and that I have to pollute my work with extra markup.
I know fixing all of these things is unreasonable, since you have to catch up in such a short timeframe, but please get your superiors to stop focusing on other proprietary technologies for a while, just long enough to bring yourselves up to at least status quo.
Thanks, good luck, and keep up the work.. we know what you guys are forced to work with/on, and realise that you have a finite amount of hair and time to lose.
Anonymous
August 10, 2006
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Anonymous
August 10, 2006
We're not asking for much, we're not asking for total 100% css compliance, we're after more css improvements. The CSS improvements in IE7 were only minor fixes from IE6. Do we have to wait for many more years for any decent changes? sigh
Anonymous
August 10, 2006
This page has 67 HTML validation errors. Its CSS has 7 errors and a number of warnings about things which will affect accessibility.

The left hand menu is unreadable.

If you can;t get these things right, or don;t care to, how can you hope to comply with standards elsewhere?
Anonymous
August 10, 2006
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Anonymous
August 10, 2006
I think IE team now is in the right way. IF all follow the rules and try to do exactly like they are described then would be easy to all development guys.

CSS have some issues like vertical-align, in some ways height could be a problem too and if all follow different ways then would be more difficult. who will be wronged is all web and the users, and i think this all about users.

Congratulations, Chris and team
Dont forget that nobody can please all people.
Sow go on
Anonymous
August 11, 2006
PingBack from http://aktuell.de.selfhtml.org/weblog/internet-explorer-7-standards
Anonymous
August 11, 2006
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Anonymous
August 11, 2006
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Anonymous
August 11, 2006
I treasure my right to excoriate IE on a daily basis but somehow I get the impression that much of the complaining comes from those with a very narrow perspective.

I have been using CSS exclusively for positioning since 2000. That is when I demonstrated to management, using IE5.0, how much faster development would be and how much cheaper operations and maintenance would be for our browser-based applications using CSS and W3C-recommended coding practices.

Much to my surprise, management agreed and our product dev teams since have certainly benefited by pushing CSS to the max.

Let's keep the pressure on software companies to improve Web software but let's focus on actually using the technology as we find it at any stage. It is all very usable and valuable right now in IE -- and has been for years.

Brett Merkey
http://web.tampabay.rr.com/bmerkey/
Anonymous
August 11, 2006
While I don't mean to discount the imporovements the IE7 team has made to imporved standards support, it really strikes me as lazy.

Microsoft used to stand for innovation, but lately it's been playing catch-up in almost every regard. Instead of taking this LONG overdue update to 'do it right', IE7 simply fixes the largest and most dire standards bugs then finds excuses for not making other improvements.

Microsoft has the power and money to not only meet a FireFox-level compliance, but surpass it. It's pretty disappointing when the most powerful company in the IT business can't even keep up with an open source project.
Anonymous
August 11, 2006
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Anonymous
August 11, 2006
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Anonymous
August 11, 2006
The question really should be whether if you had worked on standards since IE6 came out, would you be where Gecko, WebKit, KHTML and Presto are today. The fact that you didn't has been you've had to play catch-up, which, in the world of standards, isn't easy. You've made a fair amount of progress between IE6 and IE7 for the time it's taken.

The real question is why do you continue to improve and use Trident, if Tasman 1.0, which came out over 2 years ago, has better standards support anyway? If IE7 isn't integrated with the OS, what's stopping you?

Earlier today I was having an issue with a website I was working on in a single browser. Firefox. Safari, Opera, Konquerer and IE all rendered it as per the CSS spec. Firefox did not.

All browsers have bugs, not just some.

I have huge amounts of respect for anyone able to make a browser do anything anywhere near the CSS specs, as I can barely imagine how hard it must be to implement.

@Tim: I doubt that. The Mozilla Foundation is where it is because it's had huge numbers of developers contributing (far more than IE has had working on it, certainly) and it never fell behind the standards.
Anonymous
August 11, 2006
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Anonymous
August 11, 2006
PingBack from http://www.webdevout.net/tidings/2006/08/11/web-devout-was-dugg/
Anonymous
August 11, 2006
OK, try my site and tell me why the left column is sometimes pushed under the content ?

IE6, FF, Safari, Opera 9 handle this site ok, but not IE7 beta 3.
shame !
Anonymous
August 11, 2006
IE's support for CSS has indeed improved, but there was no work done on DOM and XHTML (as application(xhtml+xml) support.
I recently worked a lot with DOM Events and its just a pain that IE does not support addEventListener... Ok, there are plenty of addEvent functions around but IMHO these are only workarounds. And I prefer the most standards compliant way, which would be addEventListener...
And why doesn't IE support application/xhtml+xml? It doesn't even have to treat it specialy. I don't care for embedded SVG in IE as long as the site displays at all instead of opening a download dialog.
Anonymous
August 11, 2006
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Anonymous
August 11, 2006
Chris ... what are the plans for updating IE7 when it's released?

I know that the focus has been on creating the new product, but will there be updates that address the standardization issues? I remember back in the day IE4.x, etc. would receive updates on a regular basis.

Thanks!
Anonymous
August 11, 2006
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Anonymous
August 11, 2006
Dear Mr Wilson,

You claim that IE 7 team worked hard and fixed many CSS bugs and compliance bugs. I'd say that we all agree on these 2 opinions. But there were already many CSS bugs and compliance bugs affecting MSIE 6 to begin with and MSIE 7 is still quite far from web-designers minimum floor of acceptability considering

a) the amount of time since CSS 1 has been released and CSS 2 has been officially released

b) the huge incredible time Microsoft had to take necessary measures to make its browser meet Microsoft's web-standards pretentions and claims during years. Everyone knows that Microsoft did not work on improving the browser (spec compliance, spec support and spec implementation correctness) between September 2001 and June 2004

c) the huge cooperation and constructive/positive collaboration Microsoft got from web designers and web-standards advocates/supporters regarding reporting reproducible bugs (along with clear testcases):
Peter-Paul Koch, Bruno Fassino, Holly Bergevin and John Gallant, Aleksandar Vacić (z-index), incutio.com, www.jehiah.com, etc,etc.et

Microsoft is a major corporation which has been claiming to support W3C web standards and to look at improving W3C web standards compliance in its browsers for many years. Nevertheless, you will NOT find a single webpage or a single webpage interactive demo at MSDN which will pass an HTML validation test, which will be using a strict HTML 4.01 DTD ensuring to trigger MSIE 6 or MSIE 7 into standards compliant rendering mode. So, since 1997 and still today, MSDN (and all of its articles, interactive webpage-examples) has been ignoring W3C web standards, de facto not promoting web standards conformance. Microsoft has had and still has a double-talk, a double-face and is following a double-standard.

More than 9 years ago, webstandards.org created this page

http://archive.webstandards.org/css/winie/inline.html

solely to notify Microsoft that it was not complying and conforming to web standards. Still today, in MSIE 7 beta 3, Microsoft has failed to comply. 9 years! Chances are it will take Microsoft 10 years to be able to render the page correctly!

Microsoft has only itself to blame for its bad (laziness, complacent, non-attentive/non-listening to web designers and webstandards supporters) reputation.

Where is the following document/when will the following document be brought back on microsoft.com website?

"Microsoft is committed to working with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to implement W3C-approved HTML standards, and has confirmed its pledge to work through W3C and other standards bodies on enhancements to HTML and other key Web technologies."
http://www.microsoft.com/standards/intro.asp

Gérard Talbot
Anonymous
August 11, 2006
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August 11, 2006
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August 11, 2006
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August 11, 2006
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Anonymous
August 11, 2006
@pd

For your information, this blog is powered by CommunityServer which, although written in ASP.NET, has nothing to do with Microsoft.

Most CommunityServer sites i've just had a quick look at all seem to validate okay, so maybe this is just an old version, or a simple mistake.

Chill your beans :)
Anonymous
August 11, 2006
PingBack from http://technews.feedsreactor.com/?p=2017
Anonymous
August 12, 2006
@Chris Wilson

I forgot to mention: although there is a possibility that I wll begin constructing test pages for many of the bugs in my database, I have already submitted a number of bug reports to the Internet Explorer feedback system with simple and straight-forward test cases. I have been disappointed with the way the feedback system has been run, specifically how so many reports are marked as "By design" or "Won't fix" when, according to the explanations in the comments, they should have been filed as "Postponed" or simply switched from a "Bug" to "Suggestion". I'm trying to be as helpful as I can.
Anonymous
August 12, 2006
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Anonymous
August 12, 2006
I'm not the biggest fan of IE, but when my designs work in every common browser except IE, I think I shouldn't even bother with it.
Anonymous
August 12, 2006
I would like to see IE (and all other browsers) have the ability to update their rendering engine & rules easily (like how you check for updates in Firefox). This way, even after you release IE7, as you build in new fixes to the engine, those tested fixes could be updated in the browser as minor version updates without people having to wait who knows how long until IE version 8. Please don't make us wait even a whole year after the release of IE7 for rendering improvements (which I consider just behind security patches as far as importance would go). I wouldn't be concerned about having X number of IE7 versions to code a site for...just code for the very latest - those people are online already...just have IE check for the latest update and let them know there's a new update to install (like Firefox does). I really like the direction of IE7 development so far!
Anonymous
August 12, 2006
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Anonymous
August 12, 2006
> I recently worked a lot with DOM Events and its just
> a pain that IE does not support addEventListener...
> Ok, there are plenty of addEvent functions around
> but IMHO these are only workarounds. And I prefer
> the most standards compliant way, which would be
> addEventListener...

You may want to try this one:
http://en.design-noir.de/webdev/JS/addEvent/

Sure, it doesn't implement addEventListener. But at least you can use events in a somewhat standards compliant way.
Anonymous
August 13, 2006
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Anonymous
August 14, 2006
PingBack from http://getanewbrowser.com/2006/08/ie7-standards-compliance-again/
Anonymous
August 14, 2006
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Anonymous
August 14, 2006
have you looked at THIS VERY SITE in IE7 compared to FF, Opera?

the CSS for this site, with a page defending IE7's amazingly improved CSS functionality?

I'm typing this in IE7 right now, the calender at the top left encroaches into the main central column and the albatros image has an odd looking grey border to the right.

still, at least you pro-IE7 blog hosted on MSDN looks nice in OTHER browsers eh!
Anonymous
August 14, 2006
had to post in firefox in the end, IE7 just sat there when i hit submit
Anonymous
August 14, 2006
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Anonymous
August 14, 2006
Microsoft is simply putting most CSS improvements into the "too hard basket". MS priorities aren't to web developers. Even when they push IE7 to all XP users as they've planned through windows update, and gain a larger market share than Firefox, doesn't make it a better browser. Pretending IE hasn't got CSS/DOM/XHTML/JavaScript issues, reminds me of the 'see/speak/hear no evil monkeys'.

Microsoft has 4 options

* Re-write IE (unlikely)

* License gecko/other browser maybe?

* Do nothing, stay with the current code and see no great improvements.

* Open source trident (ha)

Accept you have rendering problems, and start addressing them, now.
Anonymous
August 14, 2006
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Anonymous
August 15, 2006
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Anonymous
August 15, 2006
cj: the most easy and logical way to have a container-element enclose your floats is to give the containing element an overflow: auto or overflow: hidden ;) (also works in IE6 and IE7 after having been fixed since it was broken in beta 1)
Anonymous
August 15, 2006
I think most of us is scared that after IE7 the next version will come after another 5 years. It's good that you fixed some bugs, but that's not enough. Don't stop improving IE!
Anonymous
August 15, 2006
@tino

that only works well if you are ok with scrollbars appearing in your pages or content being hidden, neither of which my bosses would be ok with. ;) the only scrollbar we want is the one the browser provides, and they for sure do not want content disappearing, i can guarantee that!
Anonymous
August 15, 2006
Mr Wilson,

Jim Pallett is absolutely right. If you carefully examine this very blog page of yours, you'll see several differences in the way IE7 renders this page... and this meets exactly your quest about basic columnar layout which break in IE7.

"the calender at the top left encroaches into the main central column and the albatros image has an odd looking grey border to the right."

Jim Pallet is entirely correct here. Opera 9.01, Firefox 1.5.0.6, Amaya 9.5 and NS 7.0 all
- do not have a grey looking border to the right, between the left column and the main (content) central column
- do not have the calendar (right column) encroaches into the main central column

Yesterday, I spent 2 hours searching for CSS 1 and CSS 2.1 testcases which fails in IE 7. In 2 hours, I was able to find 25! (I will upload this into a webpage at my site at

http://www.gtalbot.org/BrowserBugsSection/MSIE7Bugs/CWilsonMSIE7AndCSSCompliance.html#SolidTestcasesWouldHelp

). I want to insist that these 25 testcases come from Ian "Hixie" Hickson CSS evil tests and that I take no credit, 0 credit for the testcases.

IMO, Microsoft needs to

- put a development team entirely on an entirely new rendering engine and entirely new browser (interface) (IE 8). With everything on the table:
o sufficient technical, financial, human resources, etc.
o drop support for backward-compatibility (legacy)
o drop doctype switching (there should be only 1 rendering mode, always standards-compliant rendering mode)
o develop a 4 year roadmap, schedule with goals to achieve: and make it public!
o develop your own testcases based on the actual, real webpage designs existing on the web
o improve your Expression Web Design software to go hand-to-hand with your long-term IE 8 browser
o develop a web-standards evangelism team during that 4 years period. Even try to join with W3C, webstandards.org, Opera, Mozilla.org on creating that team. So that, eventually, the transition will be gradual, progressive and won't hurt everyone
o create a 4 year plan where IE 8 would be HTML 4.01 compliant, CSS 2.1 compliant, DOM 3 compliant, UAAG 1.0 compliant, etc. Aiming at/striving for 100% compliancy.

- release minor/major upgrades to IE 7 for the next 4 years. Just forget about satisfying all of the web authors during those 4 years. Eg IE 7.1 should fix remaining/more CSS bugs (which does not require underlying os improvements) and have as many minor improvements as possible.

- IE 7.1 (and IE 8) should have the same feature that M. Gueury developed for Firefox 1.x: a true SGML parser (based on OpenSP), just like the W3C validator uses, and HTML Tidy.

http://users.skynet.be/mgueury/mozilla/index.html

http://users.skynet.be/mgueury/mozilla/preview_080.html

Thanks to a single right-click, users and developers would know where are the errors in their webpage. With a right-click, they could fix some errors, or go to the W3C validation online.

- Explain publicly what are your plans. A lot of us knew well in 2001-2002 that Opera had 2 projects, one being to develop Opera 7 (DOM 2 Events compliant) while also fixing, improving Opera 6.x. Same thing with Netscape/Mozilla and its NS 6. At one point, they knew they had to rewrite entirely the rendering engine. They went through a lot of criticisms when NS 6.0 beta 1, beta 2, beta 3 and NS 6.01 were released but eventually NS 7.x browser releases were excellent ones.

Gérard Talbot
Anonymous
August 15, 2006
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August 15, 2006
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August 15, 2006
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August 15, 2006
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Anonymous
August 15, 2006
I think Microsoft should acquire Opera and merge the code with its IE base.
Anonymous
August 15, 2006
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August 15, 2006
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Anonymous
August 16, 2006
We've been subjugated to IE's mediocrity for so long we don't care about your problems in development Wilson, we already have our own to deal with. So excuse us for not sympathizing that IE7 will still keep IE in the worst modern browser a person can use category.

If IE had been kept on the up and up for the last 10 years you wouldn't be having a rough time, so don't cry to us. Cry to those who came before you that left you such a mess for you to clean up.
Anonymous
August 16, 2006
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Anonymous
August 16, 2006
I think that many of the developers above may be a little too close to the problem to have a good perspective on the situation. The point is not that IE is the only browser with bugs. Nor that these won't be improved upon in the next versions.

The point is the vast majority of internet users do not even know how to change their browser. My mother used to think that Internet Explorer was the internet (until I got her an iMac). Therefore, you really need to get your act together. Why not use a different engine, as has been suggested? I will leave out technical suggestions, as you have enough here already.

But you really must realise, and convey to the upper echelons at Microsoft, that developers do not appreciate this kind of behaviour from a monopolist such as yourselves. If you want to improve the company image, IE is the first place you should start.
Anonymous
August 16, 2006
If security is the key driver for IE improvements (over and above standards compliance), how about rolling a few examples of potential security threats (phishing seems easiest) that can be created by exploiting CSS bugs? That way we could campaign for the fixing of CSS bugs on the grounds of security, not just compliance.

BTW, only 11 days to go until the 5th anniversary of IE6's last update.
Anonymous
August 16, 2006
Chris,

I think we all appreciate that effort you've put in to putting MS on the road to standards compliance. Its a long time coming, and although it appears it won't be complete for some time, its nice to know you're on the right track.

That being said it is extremely frustrating developing products to work in IE, when stupid stuff that really ought to work just won't. This seems to happen every time I try doing any advanced CSS layout.

I do hope these problems are addressed, and further improvements are made.
Anonymous
August 16, 2006
Microsoft's management is not stupid. They recognize that the end user is more important then the web developer.

It's simple really: web developers must and will bend backwards to make sure their sites work for their audience.

This is why Microsoft is putting most of their effort on the frontend and could care less about standards.
Anonymous
August 16, 2006
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Anonymous
August 16, 2006
Hi, as a developer I am alos always faced with users that say I didn't do anything, because the things they though were important aren't done. Similarily this is to IE7, lots of things are done, but since there are so many things you can do, there are so many people that thing you didn't do the right things.

So the thin I usually do is to ignore the tone people tell it in, and extract the things that they say, and make up a todo list with my prioritites. So for IE7, we all know that there are bugs, and that it would be good if they are fixed.

If I would develop IE7 a goal for me would be to be able to create pages that render in IE7 nearly the same way as in other browsers. If you detect a bug in their rendering, make it better than they do. So in the end it should be possible to have standard compliant documents, and no need for having to write for different browsers. When what feature is added, changed or fixed isn't important here, as long is its somewhere on the todo list, and people agree that its a problem.
Anonymous
August 16, 2006
Alas, the fact remains that it's to MS's advantage to not be standard conformant, because nonconformance, combined with its monopoly position, encourages web sites that don't work well with other browsers.
Anonymous
August 16, 2006
I have absolutely zero sympathy for Microsoft. The acquisitions about Internet Explorer failing to comply with web standards are ultimately true. Other browser have done it; there's no reason that Internet Explorer can't do the same. The problem is that IE was left to collect dust for the past few years. Now, with the push to get Vista out the door, the IE developers are forced to make difficult decisions to meet product deadlines. Web developers have asked for years to make IE more standards compliant, and from a consumers view point, it appears that only recently has MS given the idea any thought.

I urge Microsoft to take its time with releasing both Vista and IE. As Vista is already delayed until the mid-part of 2007, I would strongly recommend using this time to deliver a product that is a lot more standards compliant than what it currently is.
Anonymous
August 16, 2006
PingBack from http://john.se/blog/2006/08/16/manager-defends-his-team-and-ie7-and-explains-why-he-got-frustrated-by-some-of-the-criticism/
Anonymous
August 16, 2006
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Anonymous
August 16, 2006
The short and sweet version of my response:

First, look at: http://www.webdevout.net/browser_support_summary.php

The measure of compliance is not (and never well be!) improvement over IE6; it's how well you match the existing standards. The above site's breakdown shows how far behind IE7 is still, regardless of improvements over a previous release.

Also indicated is that no browser is fully compliant. IE's compliance is markedly less than Firefox and Opera.
Anonymous
August 16, 2006
So if IE does follow standards, I assume that means I can code to the standards and Microsoft WILL SUPPORT OUR LARGE GOVERNMENT CUSTOMERS BY FIXING THE BUGS that cause our app to display incorrectly.

Next time they come to me with one of these issues, I'm extremely tempted to change my former answer of

"Yes sir, we do support both Standard Compliant browsers and MSIE's defacto standard, so I'll open a bug here"

to

"Sorry, sir, we support the internet standards and your MSIE browser vendor claims to as well, please call them."
Anonymous
August 16, 2006
PingBack from http://thekiesch.com/articles/2006/08/16/whats-to-come-of-ie7
Anonymous
August 16, 2006
An old post at Slashdot resurfaced, for whatever reason, and caused quite a stir about how non-compliant (with CSS standards) Microsoft's...
Anonymous
August 16, 2006
PingBack from http://makeourlifebetter.com/2977/ie7-to-be-fully-standards-compliant/
Anonymous
August 16, 2006
That is one brutal comment thread. Chris, unfortunately, I think you're going to have to live with this type of commentary for a long time. Any personal attacks on you or your team are certainly unwarranted, but the underlying angst is real and valid. You'll have ship multiple releases each with better standards compliance before this goes away. Three beta releases is just not enough. Web developers are still dealing every day with trying to make things work in IE. Until that changes, the angst isn't going to go away.

I personally think you're doing the right things. You're on the right track now. You just need to keep executing on IE7 and subsequent releases and this will go away. But you're going to have to live with the fact that lots of web devs are going to be cranky, inpatient and unfair until you do.
Anonymous
August 16, 2006
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Anonymous
August 16, 2006
PingBack from http://ccgi.s1mps.plus.com/wordpress/?p=204
Anonymous
August 16, 2006
Stop kidding yourself and support :before and :after pseudo-tags.

When are you going to support these sort of things, 3 or 4 years?
Anonymous
August 16, 2006
I really appreciate that you actually took the time to respond (without cursing) to these idiots that keep criticizing your team. If you say that you're the one that got CSS implemented in IE, then that's amazing. I just hope that you aren't affected by people calling you lazy or a liar. All I can say is, congratulations on IE7 (I like it, though the interface is kind of sparse -- is a skinning mod an option?) and keep up the good work.
Anonymous
August 16, 2006
I think IE would get a lot more CSS respect, if:

1.) The button element worked correctly
2.) The input[type=button] worked correctly

Buttons are fundamental to GUI design. The simple fact, that the 2 elements available for creating buttons in IE is flawed, has held the Web back, and since not fixed in IE7, continues to hold the Web back.

Development of slick, mass producable web forms, for all browsers, is not possible, because supporting legacy IE software is required, and IE can't even meet the design specs.
Anonymous
August 16, 2006
I understand that IE is currently behind in standards support, I understand that more work needs to be done on it, and I understand that there is a big pile of history (the "albatross") that has lead to this point.

The only thing I don't understand is these kind of statements, "My customers all use IE, so I developed for Firefox, and it looks rubbish in IE" of which there are quite a few above.

It probably is Microsoft's fault that it looks rubbish in IE, but to deliver something to customers that doesn't work on their platform is irresponsible. Regardless of how you shift the blame.

Good to see progress with IE, and yes, more needs to be done to make developers lives easier, but keep at it.
Anonymous
August 16, 2006
Buy Opera Software (MS can afford it I suppose), integrate it's browser (withot much bugs in the process) and end this pain.

You've shortened my life enough already...
Anonymous
August 17, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
August 17, 2006
This week I interviewed Microsoft's Chris Wilson, the Group Program Manager for IE, to address the issue of Web standards compliance and IE7. There has been controversy about this lately, sparked by a Slashdot thread last week that claimed IE7...
Anonymous
August 17, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
August 17, 2006
It it so hard not to curse the IE team. You had all the time and resources, why can't you j-u-s-t do it right? What is so hard about supporting :after and :before? IE team do you even listen?
Anonymous
August 18, 2006
Mr Wilson,

I have created 2 clear, simplified testcases (11 lines and 9 lines long now) regarding the way left: auto and margin collapsing are rendered in IE 7 beta 3.

1st testcase:
http://www.gtalbot.org/BrowserBugsSection/MSIE7Bugs/LeftAutoMarginCollapsingBugInIE7.html

2nd testcase:
http://www.gtalbot.org/BrowserBugsSection/MSIE7Bugs/LeftAutoMarginCollapsingBugInIE7_2.html
This 2nd testcase does not even need a formal "left: auto" declaration.

Both testcases are rendered as expected, accordingly in Firefox 1.5.0.6, Opera 9.01 and in a fair number of other browsers.

I sincerly think this left: auto margin collapsing bug is serious enough to fix it before releasing IE 7 final.

Gérard Talbot
Anonymous
August 18, 2006
Despite IE7 being in beta, it is 'code complete' and what you see is what you are going to get. Although Chris complains about the web site slanted against IE7, ALL the browsers are rated the same way. So if the other were as bad as IE7 then they, too, would get the same rating.

Face it Chris. IE7 is lousy and you know it. To quote YOU:
"I wanted to make it clear that we know Beta 1 makes little progress for web developers in improving our standards support, particularly in our CSS implementation. I feel badly about this, but we have been focused on how to get the most done overall for IE7, so due to our lead time for locking down beta releases and ramping up our team, we could not get a whole lot done in the platform..." And you didn't.
Anonymous
August 18, 2006
Rob, you apparently wanted to skip right over that bit where I say BETA_1. BETA_1. Because the platform team mostly opted out of Beta 1, to put most of their changes in Beta 2.

No, I do not think IE7 is lousy. Grr.
Anonymous
August 18, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
August 19, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
August 19, 2006
Hello again,

3 testcases:

1- Default border-color when not explicitly defined:

http://www.gtalbot.org/BrowserBugsSection/MSIE7Bugs/BorderColorBugIE7.html

This is a failure to implement correctly CSS 1 border-color property. NS 6.2 passes this testcase.

2- Default border-color

http://www.gtalbot.org/BrowserBugsSection/MSIE7Bugs/BorderColorBugIE7_2.html

This testcase comes from an example taken as is and as given in the last 3 Working Draft of CSS 2.1. NS 6.2 passes this testcase.

3- "background-attachment: scroll" should scroll within the containing block, not within the viewport

http://www.gtalbot.org/BrowserBugsSection/MSIE7Bugs/BackgroundCenterOfBodyBugInIE7.html

This bug is a failure to implement correctly CSS 1 background-attachment property. It must be said that only recent releases of Opera and Firefox pass this testcase.

Fair enough?

Gérard Talbot
Anonymous
August 19, 2006
PingBack from http://www.webdevout.net/tidings/2006/08/20/an-ie7-css-test-suite/
Anonymous
August 19, 2006
Hello again,

1 of the 5 malformed declarations come directly from the CSS 2.1 spec (Section 4.2, malformed declarations) which was already in the last 3 Working Draft, as it is. In other words, it was simple, very simple to spot it and fix it before.

http://www.gtalbot.org/BrowserBugsSection/MSIE7Bugs/ParsingErrorsMalformedDeclarations.html

Firefox 1.5.0.6, Opera 9.01 and NS 6.2 passes all 3; Amaya 9.5 passes 2 out of 3. MSIE 7 beta 3 fails on all 3.

http://www.gtalbot.org/BrowserBugsSection/MSIE7Bugs/MalformedBorderShorthandDeclarations.html

Firefox 1.5.0.6, Opera 9.01 and NS 6.2 passes both; MSIE 7 beta 3 fails on both.

Gérard
Anonymous
August 20, 2006
PingBack from http://www.i-jeriko.de/2006/08/21/internet-explorer-7-und-css-21-untersttzung/
Anonymous
August 21, 2006
PingBack from http://cholt.net/blog/2006/around-the-net/ie-not-a-monster-anymore-i-think-not
Anonymous
August 21, 2006
Just buy Firefox and call it a day.
Anonymous
August 21, 2006
PingBack from http://www.thijzo.nl/wordpress/?p=36
Anonymous
August 21, 2006
Way to go Gérard ;)

I've got two more to add with respect to IE's broken float-model:

reflow and wrapping: http://therealcrisp.xs4all.nl/ie7beta/css_float_1.html
clearing: http://therealcrisp.xs4all.nl/ie7beta/css_float_2.html

I have looked around a bit in connect but I'm quite disappointed because it is slow, messy and not enough proper feedback from Microsoft itself so I don't feel very encouraged to report bugs there. Thereby I still feel that because there are still so many bugs on a fundamental level that Microsoft should be well aware of that situation - these are issues that should not be in a public beta-version but should have been recognized and dealt with by Microsofts own QA-team.

My feeling is that Trident has just been hacked to deal with the issues mentioned on PIE, but that is just the tip of the iceberg and Microsoft should admit that the real problems are on a much more fundamental level and they just cannot solve those without rewriting Trident completely.

I still see a lot of CSS-issues from IE6 present in IE7 and a lot still have to do with the 'hasLayout'-property. I think 'hasLayout' is some way to allow for speedy rendering and in the time it was implemented it probably was a very nifty optimization and worked fine for the CSS1 visual formatting model. I don't however see how it fits in in the visual formatting model of CSS2.1 which is quite a lot more complex.

Again: please don't ship a browser with a broken CSS-implementation - that will do more harm than good.
Anonymous
August 21, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
August 21, 2006
I'm just going to murmur E4X (ECMA-357) under my breath in the hope someone notices :)
Anonymous
August 21, 2006
Check out my page with IE6.

Try to change the font size -- see what happens.
Try to click on imprint -- see what happens.

so you call this a standard compliant browser?
Especially when reloading on imprint, you will see flickering effects. This browser is insecure patchwork, nothing more.
Anonymous
August 21, 2006
OMG! Theres someone working on IE again! Someone take a picture before the team gets disbanded again!
Anonymous
August 22, 2006
PingBack from http://blog.bcse.info/369
Anonymous
August 23, 2006
The code for Firefox is all over the web. They've done a pretty good job at adhering to standards. It's like you guys are taking a test with the book right there and yet still can't do well.
Anonymous
August 26, 2006
PingBack from http://www.geekspeak.myfxh.com/wpdev/?p=16
Anonymous
August 28, 2006
Hello Mr Wilson,

I hope you still read this long thread.

1- Float bug in IE 7 (CSS 1 Test Suite: 4.1.4)
http://www.gtalbot.org/BrowserBugsSection/MSIE7Bugs/FloatBugIE7.html

2- Another float bug in IE 7 (CSS 1 Test Suite: 5.5.25b)
http://www.gtalbot.org/BrowserBugsSection/MSIE7Bugs/AnotherFloatBugIE7.html

3- Background-color inherit (CSS 1 Test Suite: 7.1)
http://www.gtalbot.org/BrowserBugsSection/MSIE7Bugs/BackgroundColorInherit.html
(To be absolutely fair here, MSIE 7 passes that test but, as mentionned in the testpage, it fails from a CSS 2 perspective within that CSS1 testsuite)

If you visit this page

http://www.richinstyle.com/bugs/ie5demo.html

with MSIE 7 RC1 build 5700.6 and carefully examine/study each test, you'll see/witness at least 50 CSS bugs afflicting rendering/layout.

Gérard Talbot
Anonymous
September 01, 2006
HTML4.01 : http://therealcrisp.xs4all.nl/ie7beta/html_nesting.html

this can't be in a 2006 browser in strict mode...
Anonymous
September 17, 2006
i've just installed IE7...
well, you've guys have solved a big problem: the PNG support.

but i was really looking forward to see :focus, :before and :after support...

i couldn't test everything yet, but my first impression is, that there is a new interface with some minor changes...

i can't tell a lot about the security, but i can see, that you're doing a lot to prevent maloperations caused by unexpierenced users...
( i.e. phishing filters, ... )

i hope, that future versions will support more CSS features...
Anonymous
September 18, 2006
Did you know that the universal selector is a little too universal in IE7 RC1 and selects even HTML comments, which can in turn be some styling applied.

Test here:
http://stilbuero.de/demo/ie7_universal_selector_bug/
Anonymous
September 18, 2006
Try validating THIS page to see how important standards are to Microsoft...
<a href="http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=referer"><img
src="http://www.w3.org/Icons/valid-xhtml10" height="31" width="88"
alt="Valid XHTML 1.0!" /></a>
Anonymous
September 18, 2006
Click on the "W3C Validator" link (or DRead in my last post). It should take you to the W3C validator to validate THIS page. Ouch!
Anonymous
October 08, 2006
PingBack from http://www.scriptorama.nl/software-updates/internet-explorer-7-final-nog-deze-maand-via-windows-update
Anonymous
October 18, 2006
Hi everybody I have a problem with the onclick event in the input type=checkbox when the visibility:hidden Is this a bug? What is your opinion? I have an example: It works in ie6 and ff1.5, but it doesn't work in ie7.0 Thanks <html> <head> <style type="text/css"> input.test{ visibility: hidden; } </style> </head> <body> <label>1 <input id="test" type="checkbox" id="test" name="nameTest" value="1" onclick="alert('checked: ' + document.getElementById('test').checked);"/> </label> </body> </html>

The tricky option has been move the onclick in the div <html> <head> <style type="text/css"> input#test{ visibility: hidden; } </style> </head> <script type="text/javascript"> function simulation(cb) { if (cb.checked == false) cb.checked = true; else cb.checked = false; alert("checked: " + cb.checked); } </script> <body> <label onclick="simulation(document.getElementById('test'));")">1 <input type="checkbox" id="test" name="nameTest" value="1" /> </label> </body> </html>

Anonymous
December 08, 2006
I do not want to read the whole thing that's written above, so forgive me if I repeat some arguements. I like the new features of IE7, I think it has great improvements. But guess what, if I write a program that processes a data (ie. html document) in a standard format (CSS), I won't put any shiny and twinkling features (tabbed browsing, no menu, autocomplete, not even search field) in it before implementing the FULL support of the standard (eg. 'inherit'). Even if I think the standard is maybe a heap of sh*t. You have three choices:

to say you do not implement CSS, we should forget it, you'll create an own standard
do not make IE publicly available as it is only supporting a limited, only MS used subset of the standard.
implement the FULL standard. I know that IT guys do not think as we, proper electronics engineers, but still, some minimal respect of standards would be welcome.

Anonymous
January 11, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 11, 2007
P.S. The above post was made with Firefox, on Linux. I've avoided the Kool-aid.
Anonymous
February 09, 2007
. Fino a qui le imperfezioni di Internet Explorer 7 sono davvero minime... ma ben si sa che i problemi del browser Microsoft che hanno portato molti (fra cui il sottoscritto, ma anche grandi nomi come il CERT) a sconsigliarne apertamente l'uso non r
Anonymous
April 18, 2007
You said you worked hard to make IE7 CSS compliant - I can believe that - the improvements are visible. You don't take into account though how far you were behind with IE6 and there is still a lot of work to be done. Until IE will really be superb in keeping standards to make for IE6 that kept them randomly, you will always be criticized by many frustrated web developers (like me now) who have to work hard to make their sites look all right under this toy-browser IE6, because unfortunately many people are still using it.
Anonymous
April 25, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
April 25, 2007
We've been subjugated to IE's mediocrity for so long we don't care about your problems in development Wilson, we already have our own to deal with. So excuse us for not sympathizing that IE7 will still keep IE in the worst modern browser a person can use category. If IE had been kept on the up and up for the last 10 years you wouldn't be having a rough time, so don't cry to us. Cry to those who came before you that left you such a mess for you to clean up.
Anonymous
May 17, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
July 04, 2007
PingBack from http://www.webmastermalaysia.com/website-programming/10277-how-design-css-web-site-both-firefox-internet-explorer.html#post59327
Anonymous
July 07, 2007
A few posts above: "Microsoft is like communism, it only works if everyone is communist." Why don't you call it "microsoftism", -and you are the founder of this religion? The bible ist written with frontpage! ;P Greetz, J.
Anonymous
July 08, 2007
had to post in firefox in the end, IE7 just sat there when i hit submit..
Anonymous
July 28, 2007
A really interesting discussion!
Anonymous
November 10, 2007
PingBack from http://ciri.be/blog/?p=19
Anonymous
November 21, 2007
PingBack from http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2007/11/22/in-all-fairness-%e2%80%a6-internet-explorer-still-stinks/
Anonymous
November 21, 2007
You can find an interesting article about IE here. The title is "In All Fairness … Internet Explorer Still Stinks" http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2007/11/22/in-all-fairness-%e2%80%a6-internet-explorer-still-stinks/
Anonymous
November 22, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
November 22, 2007
Why does MS <em>need</em> to do anything? When you have 500,000,000 users with 95% of them not even knowing how to change their browser and 99% of users not concerned with compatibility(not even knowing what it is)you don't need to put any time, effort or dollars into changing something that works well for everyone who uses it. IE does work well,'cos Web developers make it work well, 'cos we have clients breathing down our necks and 99.999% of our clients use IE and 95% of their customers use IE. If it doesn't work in ALL versions of IE we are soon told about it. No one breathes down MS's neck, they are their own boss and beyond listening to a few cries of "foul" from Web developers. I think that we, as Web developers, are kidding ourselves if we think that MS considers our mental welfare when they are building browsers. It's not like there's anyone telling them that their browsers <em>must</em> conform to standards. They have never bothered about browser compatibility and standards, so why are they going to start now? Lots of people here seem surprised about all of the incompatibility issues(and bugs) in IE7. We weren't <em>really</em> surprised, were we? Of course not! We will carry on like we have since browsers were first built, designing for the standards-compatible browsers first and then tweaking to allow for all of the IE quirks. Guys, learn to live with it!(IE that is)
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 14, 2007
PingBack from http://www.onenaught.com/posts/44/microsofts-internet-explorer-slows-down-web-development
Anonymous
January 04, 2008
PingBack from http://actors.247blogging.info/?p=4348
Anonymous
January 10, 2008
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 20, 2008
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 20, 2008
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 21, 2008
"getting ready to doing it again in the next release" Is that just really bad grammar, or are you referring to the sound a spring makes when you try to bend it and it snaps back? I know you'll be able to doing it. They've been doinging it at Microsoft for so long that I bet you can check the software archives and you'll find an 'auto-doinger' that will doing it for you XD
Anonymous
February 22, 2008
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
March 05, 2008
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
March 05, 2008
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
July 04, 2008
PingBack from http://forum.codecall.net/computer-software-os/8767-ff3-ff-general-big-dissappointment.html#post51760
Anonymous
July 29, 2008
PingBack from http://thetoptenme.wordpress.com/2008/07/29/10-reasons-why-not-to-use-msie-internet-explorer/
Anonymous
August 25, 2008
PingBack from http://csshack.wordpress.com/2008/08/26/165-bugs-in-ie7-browser/
Anonymous
August 27, 2008
You know, if IE 7 truly complied with ALL of CSS 1 and ALL of HTML 4.01, it wouldn't be so bad. But, it does not. Go look h<a href="http://www.gtalbot.org/BrowserBugsSection/MSIE7Bugs/CWilsonMSIE7AndCSSCompliance.html">here</a> for more information. There are more bugs than that, though; go look <a href="http://csshack.wordpress.com/2008/08/26/165-bugs-in-ie7-browser/">here</a>. Does it pass Acid2? Acid2 isn't all that intense a test, honestly. Of course, the rest of the world is moving already towards CSS 3. I can write a basic website in a couple of hours, or less. To fix the CSS and HTML code so it works with all flavors of IE doubles the amount of time I spend on a website. I don't have to add ANYTHING to the typical website to make it work with Opera. The point is, I shouldn't have to code anything special so that my websites will work. Every browser should display them the same way. Now, if IE had extensions that would let it do other things - well, okay; if it can display Word docs without opening new windows, great. I don't judge a browser's usability based on its extensions; I judge a browser's usability based on its standards compliance. In the same way, I judge a car's usability based on its compliance with standards (all four wheels firmly attached, engine functions, et cetera), not on its extensions (T-top, turbo, et cetera). The extensions make it nicer, but if the wheels are broken, what good is the turbo? Same thing with IE. The wheels are broken. What good are the extensions?
Anonymous
September 28, 2008
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
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PingBack from http://blog.idesign.in.th/archives/577
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Anonymous
January 29, 2009
Stop development of IE. Destroy all known versions of IE from your company. Make it so people can not view the internet via IE. Destroy Trident. Install Firefox onto new OS. Make it so people can not use IE at all, no matter what version. You will find everyone loves your company a lot more. You guys got your wish. Netscape died when you monopolized your OS into using IE. Now give back by letting IE die. Please and thank you.
Anonymous
March 31, 2009
This page: Errors found while checking this document as XHTML 1.0 Frameset!Result: 1749 Errors, 10 warning(s) http://validator.w3.org This is the worst one I have ever seen
Anonymous
April 17, 2009
PingBack from http://web-3.es/2009/04/%c2%bfasi-que-querias-saber-de-css/
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had to post in firefox in the end, IE7 just sat there when i hit submit..
Anonymous
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