Microsoft Drops The Ball on Internet Explorer 7 Standards Compliance

Microsoft often says it's pro-standards - but typically, they'd rather own a proprietary interface or protocol than build a compatible system.

As I relaunched the new design of my site, NewsCloud, with very straightforward/simple CSS, I expected it would work in all browsers. Instead we discovered, it worked terribly in Internet Explorer. IE 6 and IE 7 failed to render even basic columnar layouts in CSS. What was going on?

At first, we put up a No Internet Explorer page. IE users would come to our site and be redirected to a page telling them why we recommend Firefox. This pissed a lot of people off (according to this study IE still represents 60% of Web market share).

This post made me reconsider:

"So the first thing that 98% of the people who might visit your site see is a message telling them they are WRONG in the browser they use?  You aren't even showing them any reason why they should upgrade their browser in order to see YOUR site.  You aren't boycotting Microsoft here - you are boycotting your own audience. Why not let people using IE see what your site can do, albeit not perfectly, and let them know that they would have a better experience if they used Firefox?  After all, your site depends on audience/editors, and if you immediately drive most of them away..."

So, now IE users see a small banner at the top of NewsCloud. We've been able to get the columns to layout with a short additional IE-only CSS file, but a number of features look weird (our primary navigation for one) ... and many buttons don't respond still.

What is going on? This Firefox user shared a statistical analysis with me:

CSS 2.1 standard support:
IE 6: 52%
IE 7: 54%
Firefox 1.5: 93%
Opera 8.5: 93%
Opera 9: 96%

Source

Now I know why IE renders simple CSS so terribly. Microsoft isn't even trying to implement the standard. This article by Paul Thurrott - noted Windows columnist - calls IE 7 a cancer:

The most critical point in Wilson's post, in my mind, is Microsoft's admission that it will fail the crucial Acid2 browser-compliance test , which the Web Standards Project (WaSP) designed to help browser vendors ensure that their products properly support Web standards. Microsoft apparently disagrees. "Acid2 ... is pointedly not a compliance check," Wilson noted, contradicting the description on the Acid2 Web site. "As a wish list, [Acid2] is really important and useful to my team, but it isn't even intended, in my understanding, as our priority list for IE 7.0." Meanwhile, other browser teams have made significant efforts to comply with Acid2.

Microsoft blames backward-compatibility problems for the stalemate over true Web standards compatibility. Put succinctly, the company has gone its own way for so long and now has to support so many developers who use nonstandard Web technologies that it will be impossible to make IE Web-standards-compliant without breaking half the commercial Web sites on the planet. Furthermore, by halting all IE development for several years before reconstituting the IE team to create IE 7.0, Microsoft has set back Web development by an immeasurable amount of time.

My advice is simple: Boycott IE. It's a cancer on the Web that must be stopped. IE isn't secure and isn't standards-compliant, which makes it unworkable both for end users and Web content creators.

Pretty strong words from Microsoft-advocate Thurrott.

Microsoft shareholders really need to ask Steve Ballmer - just what the hell have you guys been building into Vista the last five years since you released Windows XP? Did no one in the company hear from customers that CSS standards compliance was important? Thurrott seems to think it was an important customer priority.

Technorati Tags: css, firefox, IE7, internet explorer, mac, microsoft, thurrott, vista, windows

Reworking Internet Explorer x.x for CSS standards compliance is going to be a long project for Microsoft - one which they apparently don't plan to start soon.  When Bill Gates speaks of delaying Vista until they get it right, I don't think he's thinking about CSS standards compliance.

This is sort of what I meant in this post when I mocked Microsoft VP Joe Belfiore for his "Innovate don't replicate!" t-shirt. Sometimes Microsoft would do well to replicate the standards implementations - such as how Firefox has done such a great job on CSS compatibility.

Meanwhile, AppleInsider reports that Apple plans to preview Leopard tomorrow as Vista 2.0:

A banner on the second floor of the Moscone West -- the host venue for this week's World Wide Developers Conference -- reads, "Mac OS X Leopard -- Introducing Vista 2.0." Similarly, one on the opposite end of the floor says, "Mac OS X Leopard -- Hasta la Vista, Vista."

Coincidentally, I spoke to my dad tonight. His Windows computer had stopped supporting his UBet horse racing video player (my dad's owned race horse's since I was a kid). Apparently, a Windows update or McAfee update caused this. He asked me what to do. "Dad, it's time for you to buy a Mac, isn't it?" I replied. "Maybe you should pay more attention to those Microsoft articles I wrote."

Updates:

If you are interested in setting up a conditional (appears to IE visitors only) promotional banner for Firefox on your Web site, try this post on PHP Browser Detection and the Spread Firefox Affiliate program.

This post got Slashdotted earlier today. Since then I noticed unfortunately, that the Paul Thurrott article was actually written last August - in 2005. But the browser CSS compliance data for IE 7 is more current. Apparently, Microsoft decided not to actually do anything about their CSS compatibility. If you want to do something about it, set up a banner at the top of your Web site for Internet Explorer visitors too.

Comments

[MrTeacup]

Mac users have been part of the problem for quite some time, with so many IE5/Mac browsers out there. Mac users love to redirect criticism of Microsoft into a superficial "Ford vs. Chevy" OS war of who steals what from whom, but as far as significant issues that really affect people, Apple and Microsoft are nearly identical. For example, the recent Mail.app upgrade that converts users away from the open mbox format to the proprietary emlx format. This is typical of Mac advocacy -- a near total blindness to Apple's lack of standards compliance, vendor lock-in, restrictive EULAs, DRM, copyright and patent abuse.

They dishonestly trumpet Microsoft's failures in these areas while avoiding applying the same standards to Apple because Mac advocacy is fundamentally unserious. Witness the deafening silence from the Mac community on real issues, such as net neutrality or the DMCA. Open standards has never been an authentic issue for Mac advocates, its just a convenient excuse to bash Microsoft and convince people to switch.

[wesman]

MrTeacup,

Please try to stay on topic. We are talking about MS's unwillingness to adapt to standards. This is not Apple vs. Microsoft (though, I understand how you may have been confused considering that the article switches gears in the middle and mentions apple's windows bashing and this guy's dad - seriously, the real meat of this article is about standards). This topic was relevant in 1995 when it was IE vs. Netscape. Again, this has nothing to do with the Mac other than this the author is obviously a fan.

Mac users aren't special in that they think their thing is the best and bash other things. Windows users, linux users, fender players all do it. Hell, I prefer my Brother sewing machine to a comparably priced Singer and I'm rather vocal about it. The difference here is that both machines are standards compliant - I can use the same needles/thread in either one. Same goes for the guitars: any set of nickel/steel strings works on the Les Paul and on the Strat.

On to my point- the last line of our first paragraph is asinine. Apple has plenty of standards compliant products - check your sources and/or stop making things up, whichever is more convenient for you.

Second paragraph, first sentence: Justify how 'mac advocacy' is 'fundamentally unserious'. This is clearly just another of your ludicrous statements. It takes more than poly-syllabic words to convey a sense of understanding in a subject. You do actually have to know what you're talking about and clearly you don't.

Same paragraph, second sentence: Stay on topic. We're not talking about politics (again, we're talking standards compliance, not net-neutrality or the 10 year old DMCA).

Your final sentence (and mine): You are most likely spot up to the comma. Open standards have never really been an authentic issue for Mac advocates. Mac advocates like their Macs for a variety of reasons, including the ease of use. Not everyone is a power-user and/or a web developer. My grandmother doesn't care about standards compliance, but she knows that when she turns on her Mac it works.

[Eric Coleman]

I use Firefox, but the MS guy was right about the Acid2 test. The first Acid test will CSS compliance, but the Acid2 test is more of a wishlist. The acid2 test contains broken and non-standard css. There really are no w3c guidelines for how to handle broken markup or css, especially for some of the more esoteric rules. For a browser to pass the test, it must fail it's rendering in a specific way determined by the WaSP people, not by the W3C.

Here is a direct quote from the 'webstandards' page: "Note: Some 827 people (rough estimate, contents may have settled during shipping) have written to point out that the CSS used in the test is invalid. This is deliberate, as a means of exposing the ability of user agents to handle invalid CSS properly."

Again, there are no standards for rendering malformed content. The whole idea of a standard is that if your code is standard then it renders and if not then you should correct it to adhere to the standard.

Sorry for rant, but it bugs me that people use acid2 as some sort of panacea. I do agree that IE is crappy. The only reason I can see for them to not update their CSS support is to maintain their dominance by being incompatible with everyone else.

[Kelson]

If my own traffic stats are anything to judge by, IE5/Mac is rapidly disappearing. It managed to pull about 10% of Mac hits as recently as January, but it's dropped to barely 2% of Mac hits in the first week of August... and less than 0.1% overall. Yeah, it's pulling more hits than, say, K-Meleon... but not for long.

Presumably Microsoft discontinuing it finally prompted the hold-outs to trade up to something a little more current.

[Kelson]

Eric: Actually, there are very specific guidelines for how to handle broken CSS: ignore it. That's what the invalid code in Acid2 is there for: to make sure it's properly ignored. A lot of CSS hacks are based on invalid code that some browsers try to "fix" instead of ignoring.

You are, however, correct that there are no guidelines on how to handle broken markup.

[Nobody Real]

As you point out, the Paul Thurrot's comment was from a year ago, and dealt with beta 1. A great deal of CSS compliance has occurred since then. While they have only implemented a few newer features, the features they do implement are largely correct now. Also, it's pretty bogus to count CSS3 compliance against any browser, since CSS3 has not been ratified and could change before ratification (this is one reason why it's so important to implement these features using -moz and similar tags, otherwise you're creating more incompatibility possibilities).

Also, you might want to practice what you preach. Validating www.newscloud.com generates 408 XHTML errors. THAT could very well be your problem. Invalid XHTML can cause all kinds of issues.

[MrTeacup]

If you want to see fundamentally unserious Mac advocacy, go to WWDC. Mac users are obsessed with the superiority of the OSX interface, with which features Microsoft has ripped off, and up until very recently, with the alleged superiority of the PowerPC chip architecture. This is juvenile, akin to the school nerds making up clever witticisms about the popular, but stupid jocks. Mac advocates are now hijacking the criticisms that have been made against *all* computer companies, using them for mac cheerleading and refusing to apply the same standards to Apple. Mac advocates have one primary commitment -- improve Apple's market share. The DMCA is relevant because Mac advocates were silent on this issue, and they were silent because they are only interested in standards compliance insofar as it serves their primary commitment. That makes them fundamentally unserious.

You said it well yourself. Mac users think their thing is the best and bash other things. They aren't concerned that Apple and Microsoft (and others) behave dishonestly, mislead their customers, abuse their trust and extort money out of them. Serious advocates for openness care about the fact that, 30 years from now, users might not be able to access their creations because some software publisher decided they weren't making enough money from them, so they can screw their users. Mac advocates debase this serious concern by mixing it up with childish mockery. And if you try to apply the same standard to Apple, Mac advocates shrug their shoulders and say, "Oh well, Apple's products aren't for everyone." For them, advocacy is simply boosterism of their favorite brand -- openness as a principle is meaningless to them.

[quux]

I thought it would be informative to link the original 'wish list' statement by Chris Wilson at Microsoft:

https://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/07/29/445242.aspx

In context, it sounds quite a bit different than Mr. Thurrot's selective quote.

[bruce21]

Would not newscloud.com render somewhat better even in internet explorer if you fixed the 226 errors the W3C Validator reports on it?
http://validator.w3.org/

While as a developer I wish ie would impove, I still use it, even being a member of the web standards group, and if you told me I couldn't see your site unless I used firefox (which I often use, I would definitely go elsewhere.

[whereistom]

NewsCloud.com is a simple three column fixed width layout. There's no reason that IE cannot be supported to the same extent as Firefox, and I can only assume that it's ignorance or simple pigheadedness causing you to ignore the requirements of the majority of your users.

IE is far from perfect, and is a pain in the arse for all of us involved in creating websites. But it's a reality - and expecting your users to upgrade is naive, arrogant and unrealistic.

It's slightly disingenuous to complain about IE's standards support when your own site is so poor at following those standards. Bruce21 is right - fix the literally *hundreds* of validation errors and you'll undoubtably go some way to fixing the site in all browsers. Beyond that, a couple of hour's work and you'll have a fully cross-browser website, and fully happy users.

[Joshua Allen]

Disclosure -- I work at MSFT. First, the people who created the Acid2 test have publicly said "three cheers for standards in IE7". Most of the leading luminaries in CSS space have remarked that the improvements in CSS support are SUBSTANTIAL. Readers of this post would do well to think about the sources before reacting to "information" on the Internet. A guy with hundreds of CSS errors on his page who is getting paid $1 per Firefox download and a year-old articly by a guy who has never written any CSS and makes money with controversial articles -- or the statements by the people at webstandards.org who have been fighting so hard for standards support in IE and elsewhere for half a decade?

[Jeff]

Joshua - don't spread lies. No one at Firefox gets paid $1 per download. I am an affiliate member - but there is no fee structure there. You lose all credibility when you make false statements. Then, I was paid $1500 each as a free lance write for each of my two articles I wrote for the Seattle Weekly. It works out to less than minimum wage when you average in the time I spend on research and writing. I do it because I think these are important stories.

[Jeff]

As for validation errors on NewsCloud, it's on our list of to do items. As I've written, we're just finishing a redesign - so cleaning up the code is a follow up item we'll be getting to soon. We're a 1 person dev shop - we don't have the resources that other organizations have. Furthermore, the points about IE's failure to follow standards - still cause widespread problems from software developers around the world - tens of thousands of productivity hours are wasted hacking html/css to work for IE...and it's unnecessary.

[Jeff]

NewsCloud.com cover page now validates to zero errors. It may fluctuate as our code base and design evolves - but we'll try to focus on keeping it in check. I still need to review some other site pages. If anyone wants to give the site a whirl in IE and see if there are any functional improvements, let me know.

[w3cvalidation]

Nice information, I really appreciate the way you presented.Thanks for sharing..