The Problem Microsoft have
So the hot topic on the web at the moment is over the latest articles on ALA:
- Beyond DOCTYPE: Web Standards, Forward Compatibility, and IE8
- From Switches to Targets: A Standardista’s Journey
The problem Microsoft have, and have had for years is obvious. Their browsers are broken, and out of blind faith, some developers developed web content for these broken browsers, rather than following standards. Not only this but Microsoft tools produce code specifically for these broken Microsoft browsers rather than following industry standards.
Finally Microsoft have realised their errors. The problem is they can't correct their wrongs without screwing over the developers who put their faith in their browsers and tools. By correcting the rendering model of their browser to be standards compliant will be kicking these loyalists in the teeth!
So this is why it angers me. In order to save face, Microsoft are making everyone else change their websites to force their future browsers to render pages correctly.
This way Microsoft loyalists will never notice any difference, as Microsoft's browser will continue to render incorrectly, until they update their tools to include their, "Render this page as it should be" meta tag. Therefore never knowing what a cock up Microsoft made, and Microsoft only have to admit their mistakes to those of use who already knew!
Quite rightly a lot of people are pissed off by this, no more so than Jeremy Keith.
Versioning in HTML
This has all lead to a proposed idea of versioning in HTML being refined. Whilst renders and interpretation should be related to the document type, differences in how versions of browsers incorrectly render these document types (and no browsers are perfect here) can now be targeted...
Essentially you could say, "render this strict HTML 4 document as IE 7 used to render it", rather than as it should be.
Microsoft (via some members of WASP) have proposed the idea to have some meta data in the head of a document which declares which version of a browser it was designed/developed for.
The potential sugar coating on this bitter pill is it allows browser manufactures to update browsers without fear of their past mistakes becoming obvious and, "breaking the web!". This is similar to browser sniffing, or using CSS hacks to target old browsers, however it effects the whole site rather than specific sections of code. What really bugs me is, this shouldn't be a problem in the first place! (no pun intended).
Andy Budd pointed out that having a box under your TV that plays every type of media every used (from 8-track to BlueRay) would be cumbersome. Robert O'Callahan also points out other potential problems Microsoft will have shipping browsers with existing browsers inside...
Whilst I am annoyed by the fact Microsoft expect me to do more work to make things render correctly in their browser, I am also pleased they are moving forward. At the end of the day anything that makes my job dealing with Microsoft's mistakes easier is welcome, but it has done nothing for my opinion of them. Im my view it's far too little too late... who do they think they are? Google?
Thoughts elsewhere
- Microsoft’s own announcement
- Jonathan Snook
- Anne van Kesteren
- A Mozilla developers
- PPK defines the semantics
- An official Web Standards Project statement on their involvement
- Jeremy Keith
- Andy Budd
- Ethan Marcotte
- Zeldman defends the idea
- John ‘jQuery’ Resig
- Gareth Rushgrove
- Roger Johansson
- Rachel Andrew