News.com staff writer Paul Festa draws more public attention to Internet Explorer’s lack of full CSS support in Developers gripe about IE standards inaction. Paul uses Jeffrey Zeldman, Eric Meyer, and Jakob Nielsen as sources for quotes about Adobe’s move to partner with Opera to improve CSS support in GoLive. In doing so, he nails the issues, shedding a brighter light on the lingering problems with Microsoft’s overly-popular browsing application. IE is a decent browser, but its shortcomings make it a dead-weight which is holding back forward-thinking web design and development.
Adobe’s decision to partner with Opera is an important one. It’s one more step in proving that IE is not — and does not need to be — the browser to which everyone defaults. In addition to clamoring from the development community, it will take major tool and application vendors to help step up the call for Microsoft to pay attention to these demands. The article featured a disappointing quote from Windows product manager, Greg Sullivan:
“While it is true that our implementation is not fully, 100 percent W3C-compliant, our development investments are driven by our customer requirements and not necessarily by standards, […] We balance feedback from all our customers and make our development decisions based on meeting the requirements of all of our customers, not just a few of them.”
By using this explanation, Microsoft could try to slant what they call “customer requirements”, or even project their own requirements based on features the company wants — or doesn’t want — to build into the browser. But growing pressure applied by larger organizations and demanding groups of customers may eventually become a voice Microsoft can no longer ignore. The more fires lit under Microsoft, the less likely they’ll be able to shield themselves from the firestorm developing around them.
Posted in CSS, Technology, Web
21 comments (Comments closed)
Thats interesting, the new Macromedia MX suite uses Opera too. This is fine for PCs, but the mac version (6) is way behind in standards support. Shame it isn’t something like Mozilla!
The majority of ‘IE customers’ don’t know or care about web standards, so why should Microsoft? Is this really the same company that created IE 5 mac and then ignored all its innovations? Of course!…
Is there anything we can do? A petition to be signed someplace?
I’d like to join the fray, but I’m not aware of any avenues available to use developers, short of calling MS myself — I think we all know what a valuable hour that would be ;)
Sorry, meant to say “us developers”
Anyhow, I have something to add redgarding Sullivan’s comments.
“We balance feedback from all our customers and make our development decisions based on meeting the requirements of all of our customers, not just a few of them,”
He says this like adding better CSS support would take away from something else. Don’t get me wrong, I think IE has lots of great stuff that they have obviously spent time on. For example, as far as I’m concerned, IE is the definitive choice for an intranet front-end, with ActiveX (FSO) and HTAs, it’s hard to beat.
But, just the same, this is obviusly front-man double-talk. It’s BS. Their own agenda is what is most important. There’s no chance in heck that a windows developer could look me straight in the face and convince me that bettering IE’s standards support would take away from something else.
Sure, it takes time and money, but MS has has both in spades.
“By using this explanation, Microsoft could try to slant what they call ‘customer requirements’, or even project their own requirements based on features the company wants — or doesn’t want — to build into the browser.”
In other words, the browser is just one of many other products in the product line of a very large, profit-driven company. Honestly, there’s nothing unreasonable about MS’s attitude here: why in the world *should* they bother with expensive changes to a product that a minority of users ask for?
Ideally, the corporate IT managers of the world—who hold the purse strings—would make web standards an important “feature.” That would get MS to listen. Failing that, I wonder if a contingent of Software Developers (.NET users, etc.) put forth as much effort in promoting web standards as the Web Developer community has, would MS listen more? MS clearly values “software developers” more than “web designers” (they buy more expensive software, for one thing).
My question is, what customers is Microsoft listening to? It has to be the large corporate customers. No one else would have enough clout.
To have the most impact, someone should make a list of the major corporate sites which have gone through CSS redesigns. ESPN comes to mind. Contact those webmasters and come up with a letter or petition with the right signatures, and you might have some impact. If you only had ten signatures, but those ten represented some major league traffic on the web, MS might sit up and take notice. Wishful thinking, perhaps, but I can’t think of any other way to get their attention. Other ideas?
according to my site stats, in terms of browser breakdown, IE has gone from 92% to the low 80% range in the last 6 months (my site has been up for over 2 years).
i put supportive links to mozilla in the footer of all my pages and donated some money. i’m aware that we all have to deal with the mess that IE left us, but a more pro-active solution is to get on with leaving IE in the dust. donate a few bucks to mozilla, support it (links, word of mouth), and enjoy the smile on your face when 95% of the users who you recommend mozilla to, tell you that they’ve dropped IE and are in love with mozilla.
“… IE has gone from 92% to the low 80% range in the last 6 months …”
I’m seeing more like 95% IE on the majority of the sites where I have access to the logs. Sure, on my blog, there’s a lot higher percentage of Moz, but IE still seems much more prevalent elsewhere.
The browser breakdown on most blogger’s sites is widely out of whack with the greater internet, but there are small inroads being made.
I have access to the logs of a medium-sized australian website that runs b2b sales operations which is hit almost exclusively by government and big corporation customers. I thought I’d give some data on the conservative side of the fence.
Over the last 3 months (I don’t have older data near me):
IE: up from 94.2% to 94.6% (there’s been about an 8% increase in ie 6 and 5.5 at the expense of older versions. ie6 has 58% total share)
NS4: down from 2% to 1.5%
Moz/NS7/Opera: up from about 1% to 1.5%
Thanks for sharing Daniel. I think the numbers you give may be much closer to real world statistics. Weblogs, in general, have heavily skewed stats. Throw into the mix a weblog that talks about design, and then web standards on top of that, and it really starts to push the numbers away from MSIE. Stats for Stopdesign show around 42% MSIE (Win and Mac), 20% Mozilla, and at least 15% Safari.
Whatever the statistics are for browsers, it seems to me that the time has come to create some kind of initiative to push Mozilla, Opera, or some other standards-compliant browser — one with an honest-to-God developer community behind it, interested in innovation. This, much the same as standards were pushed by the W.A.S.P. and others.
There used to be a time where folks could care less for standards. Now, with the advocacy provided by a number of groups, we have conversations about standards, there are programs that utilize them and developers that care about them. Certainly, there’s further east to go, but leaps and bounds from where we were just a few years ago.
Pounding on Microsoft will do only so much good. They don’t necessarily have an interest in doing what we want them to do at this point. They don’t have to.
Getting up underneath browsers like Mozilla, Mozilla Firebird (which is happily now my browser of choice), Opera and Safari is the trick. Why not encourage folks to make the switch? Work with companies to also encourage people.
Years ago, the hurdle was having people download and install new software. It was a pain in the ass and took an awful long time at low-band connections. With the rise in wi-fi, DSL, and cable access, I would like to think that this is — and will ideally be — less of an issue in the future.
Bottom line: Get behind the guys who are actually playing this game, not the guys who have no interest in doing so.
Damn. I wish I’d read your entry before I posted this almost identical one ;-)
Sigh …
If you follow the “requirements” of the majority, you’ll at best end up with an average product. It is clear that Microsoft does not intend to take the risks that come with innovation, but is content to ride on the prevalent use of its operating system to reap the profits of being the “common” browser.
It seems “business-wise” to do what Microsoft is doing, but it is hardly the trademark of a visionary corporation. Microsoft has moved away from the business of making software. It now has enough clout to be in the business of making money.
Picking up from Doug’s second paragraph, and comments from Andrew and Anthony, I’d like to note that —
About six months ago, my organization started to offer and support Mozilla (stable; 1.2 then 1.3 then 1.4) alongside IE on our Wintel environment. And this point, about half of our staff use it “primarily.” Of course, almost all of them were sold on it by improved UI and new features — not web standards support.
I’m sure that, barring the cost, we could have run with Opera and experienced similar results.
As we fight for standards and browser support, we also have to fight for browser share. The more we do (and it’s not all that hard, as Adobe, my office, and countless others are proving), the easier these other struggles will become.
Tim Bray had at least one idea. I’m wearing my arm band in solidarity, are you?
Who gives a rat’s crack?!
If my site works on IE 5.x, 6.x and Netscape 6.x and 7.x…I’m a happy camper. If it breaks in mozilla and opera, I’ve only pissed of 5 people. After all I am utilizing web standards and all my information is accessable if the page renders properly or not.
The only real problems I deal with is the box model issue and some floating, but it usually works as I expect in IE…it’s the OTHER browsers that seem to foo-bar things up.
And yes, my sites validate…
I think if the standards group could come up with a universal standardized browser engine, we’d all be better off. After that, the the browser developers expound on it.
Wow. You really convinced me (and I’m sure a lot of other regulars) that you are a serious web developer.
I get a lot of flack at my office for being ‘young and idealistic’ when it comes to standards compliance. I realize that a business has to keep money coming in the door if it wants to surivive in this world, and time being money, one of the best ways to go about this is by developing sites in short time. This often done by WYSIWYG construction, which can often be passed off to the guy who knows the least about the web, but plenty about graphic design.
The problem with this model is that instead of cementing lasting relationships with companies; helping them to drive their business forward and in new directions by delivering a site that can be easily updated, easily altered, and works across most if not all devices, it causes them to have to return to you for a costly redesign every time something new comes around the corner. (runner-up for longest sentance EVER)
From a purely economic business perspective this is fine, it keeps cashflow up. But this treats the companies you deal with like customers at a McDonald’s. I don’t believe that the industry works this way. New media companies are not like restaurants for business. We do not provide a simple product for them to consume. I would liken the relationship more that of a toolsmith. A specialized one to be sure; we develop their communication systems to stay in touch with their clients.
The Internet is different from magazines and TV, we provide a two-way avenue for business to reach a more personal level with these people. By developing sites that work over a wide range of devices, they can better reach that audience. By developing sites that are easier to maintain and quicker to update we free up their time and money for more business which in turn drives our business. When a business does well so too do we.
I could continue on along this vein for pages and pages, but I’d sum it up with this. As I get flack for being ‘young and idealistic’ I realize that tho I may get older, I don’t have to abandon my ideals. I needn’t get jaded or stop caring about the betterment of my craft and the community that drives it. And should I ever fall off the path and believe that profit is the most important of all things, there will always be young and idealistic people behind me to keep driving the revolution in my stead.
Reasoning that from a business/economic perspective there is no incentive for Microsoft to modify its succesful product can also be used to think that IE should be the most standards compliant browser around.
Let me share a little experience from last week. For our mortgage we have an insurrance running with the sister insurance company of the bank we have our mortgage with. More than a year after we moved to our new house the insurance company still sends snail mail to our previous address. Luckily they have a website where I can fill in a form to inform them of my new address. It only works in IE on a Windows machine.
I have e-mailed the webmaster with a complaint about some javascript error, and I did get a very prompt and helpful response of customer service telling me they were sorry and I could e-mail them back with my address change details.
To my surprise I also did get an e-mail from the communications department telling me that they had chosen to standardize on IE because 95% of their cutomers use it.
That is stupid. They cut of 5% of their clients for which they need an alternative solution which increases their costs. If there will ever be another version of IE out that behaves differently they need to maintain two versions of their website: one to support legacy IE users and one to support the new IE browser.
If I were the insurance company I would get very annoyed with Microsoft for forcing me to spend so much money on a website because they can’t get their act straight. And of course I will never use another Microsoft product out of the front-office environment.
If Microsoft would adhere to standards they would give businesses an economic profit with ‘a code once, run everywhere now and in the future’ solution for their internet channel instead of this ‘code with a lot of hacks to support Microsoft and the rest of the world’ practice we see now.
If I were an insurrance company I would pressure Microsoft to get their act straight.
Uhm, wasn’t it “customer requirements” that led to Outlook running scripts in e-mail messages? Running the Windows (not MSN) Messenger service by default? Integration of IE with the OS? An MS-ified Java VM? Leaving the firewall in XP Home off by default?
Yes, right, sure, the customer requires these things, and many more such things; go ahead, ‘innovate.’ Since MS measures success by whether or not they sell their products, anything, boneheaded or not, can be spun as what the customer wanted; people buy it, after all, so it must be what they want.
For once, the customer is not always right. Most people can identify a good toaster, but even ignoring issues of monopoly, it’s a lot harder to identify a good browser or OS.
MS has a whole business built around tying people into it products. Reading the specs for upcoming standards like CSS 3, SVG, SOAP or XForms (and others) paints a picture that a webpage will truly be like any data entry program you can think of. It will have all the bells and whistles that people would expect any normal application to have.
If MS supports all of these standards completely then all you would ever need is XP home and IE and you would have access to any other program you could imagine. You would slowly be able to transition away from that platform, as developers start to create web pages that are applications instead of classical .Net or Win32 apps.
But keeping IE broken MS can push the only fix that there is for IE: creating an ActiveX control to change the browser to anything you want. Doing this will always keep their users locked into windows and prevent everyone else from creating truly cross platform web applications.
Just my crazy paranoid opinion of course.:-)
Look what Microsoft’s Michael Wallent (product unit manager for Internet Explorer) has to say in this revealing blog entry on XMLHack:
Microsoft DHTML Dude disses standards
To supercrisis
You don’t have to be young an idealistic, I’m getting old and becoming more and more idealistic. I’m seeing more how a standard compliant website will be cheaper than a Explorer bug filled propriety one. tell your co-worker, it’s all about the availability everywhere, it’s better to have one standard compliant code that can go everywhere than having to rewrite everything twice.
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