IE7 Standards Compliance, Again

14 Aug

Posted by Andy Brudtkuhl under Development

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I know, I just wrote a post about this. But this is an issue that affects my daily work as a web developer and probably the first time I have agreed with Richard MacManus in a post. Additionally, I never received a response from Chris Wilson’s comment.

But Wilson, Group Program Manager of the Internet Explorer Platform, has a rebuttal on his site from a recently slashdotted post. He does have a response for the community that mentions the hard work the IE7 team has been doing in their goals of security, user experience, and standads compliancy. He points out they have passed CSS 1 Test Suites, although the current CSS standard is version 2.1. He does mention the following,

“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.”

I’ll agree with that. I for one want a reply to the comment he left. He asks for unbiased tests but I have seen none emerge from Microsoft.

From MacManus:

“Perhaps Microsoft is relying on their huge lead in the browser market, and the fact that IE7 will come pre-installed on Vista, to continue their non-compliant browser dominance. Oy, I really thought Microsoft was over that tactic…”

» IE7 not CSS compliant - argh, here we go again! | Web 2.0 Explorer | ZDNet.com

I thought they were too… The web development community is not going to let them easily get away with this, again.

So, you should probably just get a new browser (hint: click the image below) …

technorati tags:IE7, web standards, browser, css, design

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3 Responses

Chris Wilson [MS]

August 14th, 2006 at 2:29 pm
1

Andy - my apology for not replying to your reply to my previous comment. To that comment - you cannot possibly have years of web development expertise with IE7, and my point was (and is) that IE7 is attempting to address the biggest problems you (and other web developers) have been having.

Do you really think a test suite from Microsoft would be unbiased? My post clearly stated that I think ANY analysis of CSS support will end up biased. At any rate, we certainly have our own internal testing suites, and we do look at external suites like Ian Hickson’s tests, et al.
Andy Brudtkuhl

August 14th, 2006 at 3:33 pm
2

Chris - thank you very much for the follow up and I think it\’s great you and your team are engaging in conversation with the community.

I understand that you are doing all you can to address these issues and you are fighting an uphill battle both because of the negative outlook on your product by the development community and you are trying to upgrade from a less than compliant product.

And no, I know for certain a test suite released by MS would be biased, but it is an effort. Back to stat 101 though, the best way to get the most accurate average is to use multiple samples of data. It would be nice to have an aggregate set of compliancy information.

To be honest I care nothing for these test results. I care about the web developer\’s experience while working with your platform — of which I have seen no improvement.

Although not explicitly stated my test of experience are on IE6 but the experience I have had as a beta user for IE7 have shown very little improvements in day to day work.

The web dev community is not bashing you, your team, or your product. But, we know that you (your team and IE as a product) have the power to make changes in standards adoption for a mass audience. You will be for the forseeable future the platform for which the world access the internet. It\’s a huge responsibility.

But our job carries responsibilities too, and we just want the best platform for everyone.

(sorry for the long comment)
Chris Wilson [MS]

August 15th, 2006 at 11:40 am
3

I agree with everything you said in that comment other than that there has been no improvements in the web developer’s experience with our platform. I believe that IE7 makes so very sizable and good moves to make web developers’ lives better, and I think many people (such as the Web Standards Project) have been recognizing that.

That doesn’t mean we are done, or that we don’t take the responsibility to continue focusing on improving seriously.