IE and Standards

Article
03/09/2005

First of all, I’d like to introduce myself. My name is Chris Wilson; I’m the lead program manager for the web platform in IE. (I am NOT Chris Wilson the drummer for Good Charlotte. :^) ) I joined the IE team shortly before we shipped IE 2.0 in 1995, and worked in various releases for every major release from then until IE 6.0’s release in 2001. After IE 6.0 shipped, I worked on the Avalon project until I decided to rejoin the IE team four months ago. During my tenure on the IE team, I’ve frequently been Microsoft’s representative on various standards working groups in the W3C – CSS, HTML, Document Object Model, even the XSL and Internationalization groups for a while.

Over the course of my history in IE, I’ve witnessed Microsoft being both applauded and hated for our support for web standards, often in the same release. At times we have taken a leading role in standards support – and at times we have not. When we released Internet Explorer 3.0 for Windows back in 1996, we had the first CSS implementation out there in a mass-market web browser. (I personally wrote the code for that support.) We led that charge – our only major competitor at the time was still hacking in new HTML tags. We looked at the nascent CSS effort, said “hey that looks great,” and played a key role in getting the working group together and the spec under active development. We continue to participate in that working group effort to this day.

Additionally, with every subsequent major release of IE, we have expanded and improved our implementation of web standards, particularly CSS and HTML. When we shipped IE 6.0, we finally fully supported CSS 1, and had some pieces of CSS2 implemented as well. Since IE 6.0 shipped, we have focused on one of our other key problems – enhancing the security of the Internet Explorer platform. This has taken tremendous effort on our part, and was – IS – an important place for us to focus – but it will not be our only area of improvement in our engine. We know we have a lot more work to do in addressing our consistency issues with CSS and furthering our coverage of these standards. Expect to see more detail on our plans in IE7 in the future.

In this blog and elsewhere (including Gary Schare’s BetaNews interview), we have emphasized our commitment to compatibility. I want to address a common misinterpretation of that commitment - when we say we have a difficult challenge to change behavior (even under standards mode), we are not excusing ourselves from the need to make improvements. Given the strong usage of IE in the corporate space as well as embedded in applications, we have a strong requirement for backwards compatibility with our previous behavior, compliant or not; that requirement does not mean “don’t touch anything”, it is just a recognition that keeping our engine in sync across strict and quirks modes is challenging when quirks mode has to work nearly exactly the same as it always has. We will continue to improve our compliance under strict mode even when it breaks compatibility, and under quirks mode when it’s not damaging to our backwards compatibility.

Finally, I want you all to know that specific requests and descriptions of problems in the field help us tremendously in prioritizing what we need to do. There is some great work that has been done in harvesting the collective knowledge of the web development community, such as on quirksmode [edit: fixed link], meyerweb.com, CSSVault, glish and Position Is Everything. We pay a lot of attention to this kind of thoughtful insight into the biggest problems web developers face today. We’d like to encourage those facing real-world problems with the IE platform to participate in these kinds of efforts, so we can use this to help prioritize our development. By contrast, vague demands for open-ended “standards support”, or requests for various standards that aren’t (yet, at least) standards (there is no CSS3 standard yet, nor is XUL a standard), don’t really help us drive our development very much. Microsoft does respond to customer demand; web developers are our customers.

-Chris Wilson

Comments

Anonymous
January 01, 2003
By "fully supported CSS 1", do you mean "mostly passed the W3C's basic test suite for CSS1", or do you mean "had some sort of detectable behaviour for every feature of CSS1"?

Because I know you don't mean "correctly supported all of CSS 1"...
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I must say that the IE dev blog is improving of late. This post is actually quite a good read.

Chris, most of what you say is true. Like most of the statement "fully supported CSS 1" is true.

However, that does not explain the last three years does it? OK, the security thing. But weren't those patches to the Windows platform itself?

IE6 has stagnated since it's release, let's not forget how quickly IE6 followed IE5.5 and IE5.0. More annoying than this stagnation has been the silence from Redmond regarding future releases and the support of standards. Aging documentation, no support forum, undocumented features - IE6 has been a nightmare.

So what are you going to do? Adopt standards, or continue apologising for what are clearly economically-oriented decisions of the past?

The web is bigger than Microsoft.

Fall in or fall out.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Since you asked for requests...

It would be really nice if IE respected the Content-Type HTTP header. The default autodetection behavior is a security risk (XSS vector), pushing the burden for working around IE's problems onto the developers of web applications that accept file and image uploads.

As for CSS2 support; the lack of position: fixed in particular has forced me to do a lot of workarounds over the last couple years. Working attribute selectors and the 'content' value for :before and :after pseudo-elements would be extremely helpful as well.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Dean, the IE platform is a part of Windows (see the earlier blog post relating to Netscape 8) and the IE team is a part of the Windows team.

So an update to the IE platform can be called an "IE patch" or a "Windows patch" and it really makes no difference - both would be correct.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Bruce,

The point is moot. From a developer's point of view, IE6 has not changed one jot since it's initial release. I would imagine that is why you have not altered it's version number.

Since we are mentioning previous IE dev posts, how about his one:

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2004/11/23/268662.aspx#271108

btw, I appreciate your participation in this blog. Thanks. ;-)
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
> We haven't done a great job on that one

Well Bruce, never mind I wasn't exactly holding my breath...

What we web-developers really want to know is this:

What are you going to do about standards in the future? Particularly IE7 (by Microsoft) ;-).

We don't need details. Just a hint of the direction you are headed in. If you can't give us that, then this isn't really a dev blog is it? Although I admit this dialogue is cool and novel... :-)
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Cody,
The opportunity for a quasi-standard has not been lost. IE is and will remain that quasi-standard for the foreseeable future.
All this moaning about web standards is indicative of a simple problem - that web developers have gotten caught up in Firefox hype and chosen to develop for a minor platform. They then have the hide to complain about the changes they need to make to get things working on the major platform. It's entirely backwards thinking.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Surely you mean http://www.quirksmode.org/ not http://www.quirksmode.com/ ?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I have one specific request; Make IE work in accordance with the standards. It's as simple as that! IEs ignorant approach towards established web standards is the real-world problem web developers are facing every day.

If you're looking for more work; A more comprehensive (and as such more usable) implementation of CSS2 is very much desirable!

Although not directly related to the development of IE, you might want to visit http://validator.w3.org/check/referer for some interesting reading... ;-)

Oh, and it's http://www.quirksmode.org/
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Fixed that link; thanks.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
It's real nice you supported CSS right away -- it would have been nice if you ever finished support for HTML (what's a Q element, anyway?) !!
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Another great post. Keep it up!
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
> there is no CSS3 standard yet

No, but several of the specifications have reached candidate recommendation status, which means they are ready for implementing.

I don't care about CSS 3 (yet), so long as you fix the more immediate problems. But at least say "we don't plan on implementing it yet" instead of hiding behind excuses.

From the IE7 post:

> I think of today’s announcement as a clear statement back to our customers: “Hey, Microsoft heard you. We’re committing.”

I've been holding my tongue for the past few posts, because "IE and standards" was on your list of upcoming posts, so I was hoping it was only a matter of time.

But as I read this post, it struck me that you've said absolutely nothing about what specifications you plan on supporting. Where is all that commitment you guys have been talking about? Commit to something already! I've never read so many words that say so little. I can sum up this post in a couple of short sentences:

* Internet Explorer has not regressed in support for the W3C specifications.

* People who trigger strict mode won't be ensured backwards compatibility, people who trigger quirks mode will.

* You are aware of the problems everybody is complaining about.

However you have managed to use some seven hundred words to say this, while completely skipping the one thing that everybody wants to know - what specifications will you attempt to comply with?

Ian asked a very specific question with respect to the support for CSS 1; it has been ignored in favour of arguing whether something should be called a "Windows patch" or an "Internet Explorer patch".

I'm trying to give you the benefit of the doubt and lay off a bit, but guys, you're making it really difficult for us to do anything but criticise, and I'm sure it's even less fun for you than it is for us. How about you simply cut out the verbiage and the marketing speak, and write in short, succinct sentences instead of padding it out as if it were a school essay? Ten words are far more valuable than a hundred if they say the same thing.

Here's a really easy one: the PNG alpha channel. Fixing it won't break backwards compatibility, and the support is already sort-of there. Can you commit to implementing the PNG alpha channel? A simple yes or no, please.

> vague demands for open-ended “standards support” [...] don’t really help us

When people say that without elaborating, I assume it's because they are tired of listing the same items over and over again. for what it's worth, here's my list:

CSS 2 or CSS 2.1, at your discretion.
PNG 1.
HTML 4.01.
HTTP 1.1.

Excluding the special circumstances surrounding CSS 2.1, all of those specifications are over five years old - published before Internet Explorer 5.5 was released. If Internet Explorer 7.0 doesn't implement them, then us web developers will be working around the problems for another five years.

> All this moaning about web standards is indicative of a simple problem - that web developers have gotten caught up in Firefox hype and chosen to develop for a minor platform.

The W3C specifications are implemented across Mozilla, Firefox, Opera, Konqueror, Safari, Omniweb and a few others. Microsoft helped develop those specifications, and then did a half-hearted job of implementing them. It isn't "Firefox hype", it's Microsoft not playing nice with the rest of the industry and holding back the web.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Oh my gosh! I just thought of something! You gotta implement updates for standards via Windows Update. When CSS3 is finalized...2 days later I wanna see Windows Update push to millions of people the update for that.

Now THAT is not only awesome, but is sooo required.

I mean I'm still not going to use it...I need my Firefox extentions and tabs(and stability).
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
What Jim said two posts up. Amen.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/03/09/391362.aspx#391456

Can I hear a 'pwned'?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
It would be nice if we can see TAB based support in future IE version
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Nice semtiments, but how about some specific promises? Will you be supporting PNGs properly in IE7? position: fixed? :hover on all elements? Will the strange bug that causes text to move when hovered over be sorted? overflow: hidden?

Sorry, but saying you know about standards means nothing when you've promised support for so many things before and failed to deliver...
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I would really like to see full PNG support (with alpha) and JPEG 2000.

JPEG 2000 will never be adopted until IE implements it. It's time has come! :-)
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I would personnaly enjoy CSS 2.1 and PNG 24-bit full correct support.
Even position:fixed, etc. (I would really enjoy SVG too)

But I disagree when I heard that "CSS 1 is fully supported".
background-attachment: fixed; works only with the body tag, not for all tags.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
> When we shipped IE 6.0, we finally fully supported CSS 1,

If this is true, how come this testcase fails?
http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/complexspiral/demo.html
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
DNagel:
You can today create cross-browser applications that work fine in IE 6, Mozilla and Opera. Just look at google maps, google suggest and tons of DHTML apps out there.
You just need to spend some time learning the standards better and you will be able to write code that works in all browsers without browser sniffers.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
> You just need to spend some time learning the standards better

This is simply not true. Internet Explorer doesn't support the DOM event model. If DNagel "learned the standards better" as you suggest, it wouldn't help him in the slightest, because nothing he would write would work in Internet Explorer.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Yes, about the event model, true. But still, learning some tweaks you can make things work in all browsers.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
> learning some tweaks you can make things work in all browsers.

DNagel's whole point is that web developers shouldn't have to waste time learning and using workarounds to make things work in more than one browser.

There are some techniques to reduce the need to branch for different browsers a little, but in general, once you start doing something the least bit complicated, it's a huge mess that only the browser vendors can clean up.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Having the :hover pseudo class work for all elements would be very nice.

There are a number of issues I have come up against when using <li> and css, if these could be fixed that would be great.

Also if the above is a commitment to making strict mode better regardless of how it affects existing pages then I applaud it.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
"The W3C specifications are implemented across Mozilla, Firefox, Opera, Konqueror, Safari, Omniweb and a few others."
But not identically. And not completely.

Which is rather the point.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Please, please please, as well as all the above, could you please include an XForms 1.0 implementation: http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/REC-xforms-20031014/
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
How about a proper CSS 2 implementation, with particular attention being paid to getting layout to render fully compliant pages correctly (hint, your arithmetic doesn't seem to comply with the specs). position:fixed is essential, not an option. And how about fully compliant ECMAScript support. Get rid of all your non-standard extensions (OK, so you can follow mozilla.org's example and use an undetected document.all if you must).
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Please Please and Please : keep compatibility when running in quirks mode if you won't. I personally don't care about that mode.

But you should ! No ! You MUST improve the standard compliance mode without asking you if it'll break something. If you follow W3C specs you don't have to bother about if it would break some pages or not.

If a webpage got a DOCTYPE that means the developper knows what he's doing. If his page isn't valid, that's his problem not yours.

BTW what I would really like to see in IE7 (in no particular order):
- Real PNG support (with alpha layer)
- application/xhtml+xml MIME type support (with correct ACCEPT header sended by the browser)
- Full CSS 1 & 2 support (nevermind CSS 3 for now)
- Full HTML and XHTML (all versions) support
- Full ECMAScript support

with all of that included I think you could call MSIE a browser...
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Hi,
as for new requests.... (tried to open a request but the answer is "By design").

The behavior of "save page" and "send page by email" isn't very ortogonal.
If the page is displayed from a "POST" request doing a "save page, html only" works ok (it takes page content from the browser cache)
Others save methods and "send page by email" didn't take the content from the cache and does a GET (instead of POST) resulting in wrong infos handled.

So the feature should be corrected or the menu text corrected (something like "Save as->RELOADED Web page, complete")
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
IE Blog: IE and Standards Chris Wilson guarantees the IE team cares about and will improve standards support - on a webpage that doesn’t validate, no less (categories: webdesign standards IE)...
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
日本人！！
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
EZblog » Linkdump 10 maart
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
IE7 wishlist <Anne's Weblog about Markup & Style>
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Some stuff to clear up here:

- CSS3 most probably won't ever be a full spec. That's why they modularised it. Several modules have reached CR status. No excuses.

- Oh, and Matt:
"All this moaning about web standards is indicative of a simple problem - that web developers have gotten caught up in Firefox hype and chosen to develop for a minor platform. They then have the hide to complain about the changes they need to make to get things working on the major platform. It's entirely backwards thinking."
Backwards thinking by supporting standards? Do you care about standards? Would you care about standards if you were blind and needed a screenreader that happens to be quite strict on sensible code? I most certainly think so sir.

There's no point at all in saying that HTML support is an aside job. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I always thought HTML was the most-used web language. Oh, sorry. I guess I'm just thinking backwards.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
i just restate some point made by others above:
AT LEAST:
- css 2.1
- html 4.01
- DOM 1.0 (and the DOM Event Model, that's definitely a show-stopper for real rich web applications)
- PNG (and, not to be just following who's doing better, what about SVG?)

also, mantaini quirks mode for compatibility and make standard mode really standard seems to be the best option.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
BPWrap - Internet Marketing From A Different Point Of View
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I'd like full support for:
PNG
css2

a valiant effort for:
css3
xforms
xhtml2
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Of course, I don't understand the complications of building a browser but full support of CSS 2.1 is what we want, when do we want it? Version 7 please :-)
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Has Microsoft ever delivered what is said it would when it said it would?
Why bother talking to Microsoft?
They simply ask for comments to appease their customers and then do as they always have, what ever they please with total disregard to their customer's wishes and requests.
It is like talking to a wall, you are better off saving your breath and developing for the minor browsers. Then Microsoft will get the point. We won't stand for their bull any longer. We can speak with our wallets and force them to listen. If we develop our webpages to the standards and their competition does a better job of rendering those standards, then Microsoft will eventually be forced to comply also by virtue of ecomonics.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
i'm an enterprise web app developer. My list of stuff I'd like to see in IE7:

- PNG (transparency)
- CSS2
- the <button> tag (please, please fix !!!!)
- those many annoying positioning bugs (in CSS1?)

Thanks for this site, I appreciate you guys making a decent effort to listen to your customers.

Regards,
MT
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I say, forget about implementing W3C "standards" at all. They're not even standards anyway, they're just "recommendations" because, A. an actual standards body such as the ISO never published them as a standard, and B. they're not implicitly a standard since they're only in minority use. Personally, I've been unimpressed with W3C's recommendations, they're limited and unextensible, and, in some cases, in conflict with one another (specifying the encoding of an XML file over the web for example).

The IE team should be using this release to help convert web developers to Avalon/XAML which is clearly a superior platform. Fix some CSS bugs if you must but don't bother implementing some deprecated recommendation.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Eli what are you on about?

"but don't bother implementing some deprecated recommendation."

Which recommendation are you refering to? XHTML 1.1, CSS 2.1 and so on are all recommendations which are not deprecated.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Internet Exploder DOES NOT have full support of CSS1. Example? Here you are:
http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/complexspiral/glassy.html
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
My opinion: blah blah blah.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Is CSS 3 a full recommendation, no. Will it be any time soon, no. But portions of CSS 3 are ready for implementation.

I'd like to see some CSS3 selectors, pseudo-classes and pseudo-elements. That module is a Candidate Recommendation. At least to be on par with where other browsers are in their support.

At this point I'd be happy to have fixed CSS 1 and 2 in IE before even considering CSS 3. But other browsers are already implementing CSS3, and to imply that none of it is close to stable or ready to be implemented is false.

:target and the various structural psuedo-classses in particular are immensely useful.

In fact Microsoft's own MSN for OS X already has impressive support for those stable portions of CSS3.

I have no expectations for CSS3, but one can hope, right?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Well, if you've got the time, you could always check what it is that breaks my site: http://david.naylor.se

I believe it's something to do with floating divs and a fixed div which doesn't work. Also, the PNG at the top and bottom aren't displayed correctlye. Thanks.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Improved "standart" compliance are definitely important issues for the developpers but as i have no specific knowledge about it, i think the improvements have to be made also on the ease of browsing with simple things that have already been mentioned:
- tabbed browsing , it's handy for 'heavy' browsing.
- integrated msn/google search in the tool bar
- the viewer tool of the msn bar is quite cool and it would be nice to be able to do a find on the current web page with it.
- msn tool bar is good(for hotmail/spaces/msn links) it should come by default with ie 7 (but can be disabled). Also It would be nice to have a link somewhere (may be on bottom of msn search results) to new microsoft products related to browsing.
- Also as IE is integrated into windows, we shouldn't have to chose which pop up blocker to use.

Sorry to be off subject as not standart related but i haven't seen a post yet from microsoft regarding the browsing experience.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
dont lie: That was a really cool demo! At first I thought AWW - cool. Then when I read 'No PNGs' I thought HOW THE?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Why is everyone telling him to support everything that is already supported, future proof this browser, CSS3!

All of the CSS1 and CSS2 requests should already have been taken care of as well as standard W3C conformations.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Barrett: see "dont lie's" post.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
A few things I'd like to see, some of which have been mentioned before:

- Full PNG alpha transparency
- position: fixed
- width meaning width, not min-width
- min-width and max-width
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
They've been mentioned before, but I'll put my ones in:

- PNG Transparency
- :hover on all elements
- problems with the universal selector (*)
- min-width & max-width

I appreciate the time you've all taken to keep up this blog and look forward to IE7 being up to scratch with the other, more current, products out there.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I have no idea what the heck is CSS that you guys are talking about but I'm sure It'll help to improve IE and its "standards" in the near future.
I just want to say that IE is the BEST browser ever. You guys have done a really good job :-p
I've tried Opera, such a useless browser it was. It just kept crashing with no obvious reason and some web page didn't display correctly.
FireFox was even worse, it was even ridiculous. The thing had a poor user interface, poor functionality, poor usability.
In my opinion, only one good thing about firefox is that it was OVERRATED. I just couldn't see why people said negative things about IE and rushed off for Firefox.

Well, IE could have done better, here is some "standards" i want to see:
'Download Manager' - Every browser else on earth already had it
EASY Internet Security Configurations for 'the rest of us'
Possibility to manage cookies, pop ups, plug-in, etc. EASILY
Favorites Manager!!
If possible, Please do make a plugin that integrates IE with MSN Hotmail/Messenger without forcing us to install an MSN Toolbar.
I don't hope to see all these features but it would be nice if you guys could debut them within IE7.
Well, I can't think of anything else.
You guys are so cool to have made such a nice browser, Cheers!!
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
just a regular user:

Seriously, was that a joke? First you complain about the newer browsers having poor functionality, usability and interface - and then you go on asking that the IE team fix exactly those things - and in one swoop you're basically admitting they are better in Opera and Firefox.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
@Just a regular user:

Use Firefox and you'll get (almost) all of the features you request and that IE lacks about.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The world depends in many ways on IE. Technical information, personal communications and buying things...

Developers really want some tools they have heard about.

Innovative ideas they haven't thought about are even more important.

Microsoft can gain commercially from IE and do great public service by making it easier to improve the web.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Non, ce n'est pas un post
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Peter,

I'm trying to say that using Avalon/XAML for web development makes things like CSS and XHTML seem unnecessary. I don't know if Microsoft intends these technologies as replacements for XHTML/CSS or not. But, from what I've seen, they CAN be used for web site development and would give web developers much more flexibility than with the W3C recommendations.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Will there be a roadmap of future IE development. When web application become more important I'd like to see a roadmap.

What is Microsoft's statement regarding future improvements, will IE7 be supplied with some sort of "windows update" functionality resulting in new functionality, improvements of standards when such gets available?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Non, ce n'est pas un post
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I forget to mention one, imo important point. If you have time left between those 1001 CSS questions, could you take a look at the garbage collectors so they detect broken circular references between the DOM and JS garbage collectors :) Javascript enabled web application will grow, and grow hard, and so will memory leaks. :)
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Standards be deviled. I want a way to embed .NET applications into a webpage without suffering ActiveX!
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
How about planning to release 7.0, and later 7.5?

7.0 would include what is possible within the available timeframe, hopefully including full PNG, HTML 4.01, and CSS 2.1 support.

7.5 would add things which could not be ready for 7.0, but which were in great demand.

Planning for a 7.5 would ensure that further improvements to IE would not stop at 7.0, with no more improvements planned until the next version of Windows (Windows 2010?) I suspect that other designers would accept less that what they would consider ideal if they knew Microsoft was going to continue the process of improving IE, and not let IE go stagnant as happened with 6.0.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I didn't read through all the comments, so don't shoot me when it's already in here:
but tabbed browsing would be nice :) and ofcourse the security (currently the only reason's I'm using Firefox :-x)
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
CSS
===============
position: fixed
:hover on all elements
:before on all elements
:after on all elements
:first-child on all elements that can have children
!important needs to override previous element

Rendering Issues
================
PNG Alpha Transparency
application/xhtml+xml MIME type support
Whitespace issues in XHTML with style lists
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
@ Eli :

XAML/Avalon should not be used for web developpment. It cannot replace XHTML & CSS. With XAML, you are bound to the windows platform. This is not the goal of the web. XHTML , combined with CSS, was designed to run everywhere : normal computers, mobile phone, text-only devices... which is impossible with XAML.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Would you really prioritize getting this blog to validate as a work item for the IE team over working on actual IE issues like CSS support?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Colin,
Hogwash on losing Windows Update. WU only needs to be retooled with the new browser. For instance, .NET could be incorporated in the browser and provide the same functionality for WU with none of the security issues. Just one of many possible solutions to this "problem".
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
in the name of the lord! plz i pray for it every day, MAKE TABBED BROWSING!!!!!
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200503/wishlist_for_ie7/
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I've worked on two projects now that don't allow MSIE user-agents because it's much less time-consuming to develop for browsers with standards support. I always add a substantial amount to any intranet development estimates that must support Internet Explorer.

Minimum things we'd want to consider IE7 support:
- PNG Alpha Transparency
- :hover on all elements
- bottom: 0px
- min/max-width
- position: fixed

Of course if IE7 has full, reliable CSS1 and CSS2.1 support, then we'd fully support it. For a complicated intranet web application, the cost of working around unexpected CSS quirks is often more than the cost of getting people to use Firefox instead.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Chris Wilson: "Would you really prioritize getting this blog to validate as a work item for the IE team over working on actual IE issues like CSS support?"

Somehow, I think that people might actually have a clue what you're talking about had you not deleted my comment.

FURTHERMORE: Deleting my comment here, and then comming on over to my site to post your views is pretty hypocritical, don'cha think?

I'll leave your comment on my site, since I actually allow dissenting opinions there.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
And which part specifically was abusive? The part where I stated I was sick and tired of spending hours apon hours hacking IE?

The part where I stated I need to use a seperate stylesheet for each version of browser you create?

Please explain.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I'd really love to see Alpha PNG support.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I'll just repeat Mike's post as above as I've had issues with pretty much most of these items!

CSS
===============
position: fixed
:hover on all elements
:before on all elements
:after on all elements
:first-child on all elements that can have children
!important needs to override previous element

Rendering Issues
================
PNG Alpha Transparency (MUST have!)
application/xhtml+xml MIME type support
Whitespace issues in XHTML with style lists

CSS2 full support is also a must have.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
DaveP's comment clearly violated the posting policy (http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2004/07/22/191629.aspx) in several ways. The most egregious paragraph was a personal attack on Chris and the team.

People have managed to make 3987 comments that didn't get deleted. It may be hard, but it's not impossible.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
One thing I'd love to see (and a patch for IE6 would be awesome) - make XMLHttpRequest non-ActiveX. If clients have ActiveX turned off by default, then this becomes an 'almost cross-browser feature'. This one little fix would make <a href="http://www.sitepoint.com/blog-post-view.php?id=238333">AJAX</a> much easier to implement.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I would not personally have bothered removing your post, but it did violate the posting policy Bruce referred to.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Chris Wilson: "Would you really prioritize getting this blog to validate as a work item for the IE team over working on actual IE issues like CSS support?"

That "either/or" scenario perfectly highlights the disconnect between the MS IE dev team and the community. Standards are important. Period. Exclamation Point!

Get it? Then show it. You need actions, not words at this point.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
IE way of doing things IS the standard. However the USABILITY needs big improvements if you want to keep IE way of doing things The standard. If I find other browser have better User Experience, it does not take long to make the switch!

That should be your priority #1!
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
DaveP, I mailed your comment to you - I get every comment in my email, I still had it.

Feel free to post on your site and trackback here.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Appreciate that Bruce, Thank you.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
If you start with the presupposition that you can pick and choose when to adhere to standards, then you are just setting yourself up for failure.

Sloppy habits breeds sloppy code.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
What I'd like to see implemented in future versions of IE, is better (would "full" be utopian) support for CSS2, as well as future versions of the CSS standard.
In particular, :hover for all elements and position: fixed would save some time and headaches.
Also, PNG alpha transparency support would be a good thing.
Thanks for this blog and the opportunity to give our wishlist. I just hope that you'll not only read the posts but also will implement what most web developers request.
Regards,
Michaël
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Its simple guys. If IE refuses to follow the standards as stated by W3C, don't develop your sites for IE. Put a requirement on your site saying that your site requires Firefox. All the items needed are at http://www.spreadfirefox.com/?q=affiliates/homepage

Either Microsoft will fix IE, or it will die a painful death. It's that simple.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Dr. X

You obviously don't have any real clients, do you?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Please don't add features. Fix the broken stuff. Support the min/max-width/height properties. Make it so nesting "position: relative" elements inside each other doesn't fall apart after the third nesting. Fix the * selector behavior. Support every kind of CSS selector you can find a spec for.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The aforementioned deleted comment, and a follow up, are living over at my site:

http://run4yourlives.com/archives/2005/03/10/ie-blog-standards-and-a-deleted-comment/
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Gabriel Mihalache said:
>>>or use Gecko for renderding :)

Hold the phone. That's not a bad idea. Everyone, just take a breath, relax for a moment, and then tell me one reason not to build IE7 on top of gecko.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
add support in IE7 for plugins that the community can create..but also make make it so that those plugins can't just automatically be installed....make it so that the user has to type in a code or something

also..add a feature to IE7 where people can push a button and lock the browser so that nothing can be downloaded from the net. except maybe picture formats..and this option should be on by default..but make it esaily accessable for average computer users.

Instead of using a folder/cache where stuff is downloaded to..make it so that all stuff from the net that is downloaded go to a single file that windows cannot access...so that anything u might get from the net can't infect windows...only the browser.

one more request....make IE7 have a option on by default that will totally clean out the cache file every day or 2
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
@Chris : "particularly when, to my knowledge, said validation errors do not cause any problems in any UA I know of"

This is because browsers are too permissive, when dealing with text/html. Now, create a XHTML page, introduce some little errors inside, send it with the application/xhtml+xml MIME type, and open it with FireFox... You'll see a error message, showing a validation problem ;)

With the application/xhtml+xml MIME type, user agents should use a XML parser, so validating your page is important.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
In addition to some of the features mentioned above, it would be great if IE7 would support international characters in domain names, such as æ, ø, å, ü, etc.
Also, a cool thing would be if it supported the "data" URL scheme: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2397.txt
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
To be honest, when I was developing web pages that should work on both IE and Firefox, most time were spent on Firefox to find out workaround. IE does add a lot of extension to standard (especially DHTML model), one example is you can use customized property in HTML elements which saves me a lot of time. Talking about standards, I believe most Java programmers had been using XML have heard of xml4j, because the standard API of XML is evil to use, a single method of selectSingleNode in dom4j can take more than 10 lines using standard XML API defined by W3C. Not IE should listen to developer, the standard makers should listen to programmers too!
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Alpha-PNGs. Without filters.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Chris: Thanks for your article. I've put together a list at <a href="http://www.orderedlist.com/articles/ie7_list_as_reqested">http://www.orderedlist.com/articles/ie7_list_as_reqested</a>, along with a few gripes about how your commenters are handling this situation. I wanted to thank you for allowing us to contribute to your project. Best of luck to you and your team.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Will there be transparent PNGs... A SIMPLE YES OR NO WILL SUFFICE!
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
"To be honest, when I was developing web pages that should work on both IE and Firefox, most time were spent on Firefox to find out workaround."

I think you'll find that you are in the minority on this. Chances are better that you were so used to coding wrongly for IE that you assumed that Firefox was incorrectly displaying something that IE did "correctly" when the reality is that IE's "correct" display was not correct.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003

make ActiveX optional
- support SVG

Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I agree, along with the numerous others above, that this post is basically more fluff that does little to address any of our concerns about standards compliance in IE7. Information elsewhere indicates there will be a beta of IE7 sometime later this year. The time for asking for suggestions has long past, the time for telling us what you will actually deliver is here. Please, please do so.

Finally, why are you, a MS employee, (or anyone else for that matter) referring to the non-MS sites you list for "descriptions of problems in the field". It infuriates me that I can't go to a MS resource to find out about issues and bugs in IE's implementations of standards. I shouldn't have to trawl around all over the web to figure out why my valid design doesn't work on IE. Though I'd love to see expanded standards support (i.e. proper CSS1, CSS 2.1, PNG, DOM events, HTML 4.01, XHTML, HTTP, etc) by biggest request is that you please provide resources for me to find out about problems with your implementation. Since you indicate you plan to add new specs to IE 7, you will undoubtedly also introduce new bugs. I want info on those bugs and resolutions to them coming from MS not Joe Smo on the web. No insult intended to the folks who provide the wonderful resources you reference.

Also I'm quoting from way above, but didn't want to let this one pass.

"The opportunity for a quasi-standard has not been lost. IE is and will remain that quasi-standard for the foreseeable future.
All this moaning about web standards is indicative of a simple problem - that web developers have gotten caught up in Firefox hype and chosen to develop for a minor platform. They then have the hide to complain about the changes they need to make to get things working on the major platform. It's entirely backwards thinking."

No, the backwards thinking is having to think about coding to a platform. What we, the ones complaining here, would like is to be able to code to "the standard" not the "quasi-standard" (which isn’t standard at all, a standard would me implemented across platforms not defined by a single one).
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
lol whoever posted as Bruce... good for a chuckle.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Looks like its time to start moderating comments again... thanks to people posing as Bruce and Chris... Maybe having registration to post blog comments isn't a bad idea after all...
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Start simple: the CSS-Attribute "height". unlike the near but not equal "min-height" you implemented instead. just plain old boring "height". that would suffice. but well, maybe it was a typo...
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I would like to point out that repeatedly impersonating myself, Dave Massy, and Bruce will quickly force us to moderate comments or require registration.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
My name really is Chris Wilson, is it ok to use it?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Why not use the KHTML engine. Apple is improving it and submitting it back to the community for use in Konquerer. Imagine if Microsoft got involved, all three major platforms could work on improving the same rendering engine. It would be fantastic. We would have cross platform support for all the same standards. You truly could develop for just one browser and know you can reach all users.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Joseph: I'd hazard a guess that using KHTML would take too long to get working on Windows.

Gecko is already working on windows.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Transparent PNG's please.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
What about transparent PNG?

Can you guys answer us?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Ooo...another one....

Change the way scrollbars are calculated on elements. Putting an element, like a table, inside a scrolling div is a real hassle (this goes for Moz, too, and both browsers calculate differently), cuz you have to specify pixel widths for everything to get the table to fix exactly within the div, which makes extra code to change for resizing. Kills my ability to create a fluid, relative layout that can be automagically resized for different screen resolutions without duplicating many parts of my CSS.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
We never did get an answer about the transparent PNG support?

Chris? Rather than taking the time to respond to trolls, why not answer this question?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
@Chris Wilson [Yes, the REAL one]

"so that we can stay on the topic of improving the standards in the current IE implementation."

Why don't you respond then to what MSFT's (without a $) standpoint on improving standards is. So many lists have been noted here, but no response on that from you guys.

Compliments btw for exposing yourselves this way. But tell me, did you hear anything new ?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Still no answer on the PNG's? How many people have to ask?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Apparently it's difficult to do proper alpha composition natively in Trident due to the way the engine works. Although my knowledge on this is limited it looks like it farms alpha PNGs and colours out to the DirectX engine via the use of 'CSS' filters.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I'm glad to see IE7 underway and available for WinXP. I would like to say you guys are acting like saints! Even some of these comments that you didn't delete have a very angry/insulting tone. And I'm glad you guys created this Blog to keep the developer community aware of your progress, and for feedback.

Chris, you mentionned in your initial post that you want specific requests for standards and will not accept stuff like CSS3. How about working closely with the W3C to get the CSS3 spec finalized and then work to support it?
I'd also like to suggest a similar tactic for WebForms 2.0. :)

thx!
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
IE 7 sounds stupid, why not call it IE Xtreme
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I'm tired of "Gif"wrapped answers... I WANT PNG ALPHA TRANSPARENCY!
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The printing is atrocious; specifically, it cuts off text as opposed to wrapping it, resulting in the big no-no of data loss. As an example, try printing any page from MSDN documentation. I've seen this happen on different printers at different workplaces for over 4 years now. I've got several bugs sitting in my queue at work saying "Printer Friendly cuts off the page", but I've had to put a Hold on them until I can come up with some means to get around this problem.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
a) Allow <?xml declarations before doctype
Please, don't break the doctype sniffing if a page turns out to be VALID XHTML.

b) And if possible, please implement the doctype as stated by SGML. Like adding my custom entities:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC yaddayadda [
<!ENTITY nl "
">
(more entities here)
]>

This should allow us to define our own entities, have a page that DOES validate and DOES work. Unfortunately, if i try to do this in IE, it goes back to quirks mode.

c) Finally, please give the EXACT content of InnerHTML. Everytime i feed an xhtml document i end up getting an HTML 4 one (with capitalized tags - ARGH!!!)

d) Get rid of the borders around HR tags.

Thank you very much.

BTW, have you thought about releasing the HTML rendering engine as Open Source? Look at what happened with Netscape/Mozilla. They opened the source, and woo hoo!
(You could dual-license it as GPL/proprietary like the MySQL guys did - that'll make sure you lose no money ;-)
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
If you guys are actually interested in maintaining Internet Explorer:

If it's just gonna be like MsPaint and MsNotepad, it still needs to be secure.

If you're gonna keep up, properly comply with at least:
HTML 4.01
CSS 2 or 2.1 at your discretion
XHTML 1.1
XML 1.0
PNG 1.0
HTTP 1.1

If you actually care about furthering the web, then also implement:

SVG 1.2 + RCC AND XAML
XForms
XSLT
XPath
XQuery
MNG and JNG
CSS3

If you can do that, even I would switch back. Honestly though guys, I don't know why MS would invest in building such a browser. They have nothing to gain from it. In fact, they'd have a whole lot of respect to gain from just including Firefox as the default browser from Windows. Just my 2c.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
First, let me say that I applaud your efforts to focus on Standards. I hope you seriously implement them. It will make life for all web developers easier.

That said, I'll echo the "Wish List" that others have listed:

1. Full PNG support with alpha transparancy

2. Full CSS 2 support. The list that Greg Reimer provides above is excellent. An IE browser with this level of CSS support would be a great help.

3. Enhance the built in MSHTML editor so it outputs cleaner, more standards compliant HTML. Right now it removes quotes, bumps everything to UPPER CASE, deletes comments, etc. It's barely usable.

4. I'll completely echo what Vinnie said:

"Get rid of quirks mode, just render pages as they are coded, bad coders will learn to do something we all need to do.. DEBUGGING."

This change alone would make your lives much, much easier. Stop trying to figure out what the developer meant, and just render what they coded. If they built the darn thing wrong, show it wrong. They'll fix it and all is well. Otherwise we all have to work around the "quirks".

Thanks!
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
> With every subsequent major release of IE, we have expanded and improved our implementation of ... HTML.

IE/Win 4.0 added partial support for HTML 4.0, but I've seen little progress in subsquent versions.

5.0: <bdo>
5.5: dir=..., &lrm;/&rlm;
6.0: partial <optgroup> support

These small improvements are welcome, but don't break your arm patting yourself on the back.

It's curious that there is still no support for <abbr>.

It's absence is IE/Win 4.0 is understandable -- <abbr> was a late addition to HTML 4.0, and
Internet Explorer 4.0 was released on 3 October 1997, two months before the final HTML 4.0 standard was published.

Yet several years and at least three major releases later, Internet Explorer 6.0 still completely ignores <abbr>, even though it'd be a trivial change to handle <abbr> as if synonymous with <acronym>.

It leads me to doubt that full HTML 4.0 support has been a priority since the standard was released.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Chris Wilson wrote:

>>we are not investigating hosting the Gecko engine inside IE. There are also a number of considerable negatives from our perspective, particularly in compatibility with current content, security and ActiveX support.

Chris, that's a joke. Security in IE??? Security and ActiveX in the same sentence? I can't even trust using xmlhttprequest with IE anymore because it requires ActiveX which is often turned off for security reasons. In Gecko/Safari/Opera it is done safely via Javascript. (And Gecko even has an extension for ActiveX if you really wanted it.)

Obviously MS won't use gecko, but it's not because it's not vastly superior overall, because it clearly is. MS DOESN'T WANT GENERAL STANDARDS ACROSS THE BOARD BECAUSE NOT TO THEIR ADVANTAGE. They want some standards, but then variations and deviations that tie people to the behemoth.

This blog and request for info you already very well know since before IE6 is a marketing charade, not "brave" or "admirable" or anything else. IE7 is already announced and will be a couple minor additions only, wrapped up in a new paintjob as though shiny new, just like IE6 was. The motor is shot.

Chris you don't seem to get it: you can't use the same tactics as with IE6 because IE is well-known as a complete joke now compared to the competition, and sinking fast. MS always does everything it can to get developers onside for its technologies because so important, yet developers hate IE now. Think about it. And just wait until Google and AOL fully turn against IE...
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
what about DOM2, CSS3, rendering problems and lots of bugs
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
DOM2 is good, but please don't implement CSS3. CSS3 is not a recommendation. It may change in the future, making IE non-standard for another five years.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
>Finally, I want you all to know that specific requests and descriptions of problems in the field
>help us tremendously in prioritizing what we need to do.

1. Fix the bugs in current standards implementation.
2. ABBR element in HTML 4.
3. background-attachment: fixed in CSS1.
4. CSS 2.1.
5. PNG alpha transparency without DirectX filters.
6. XHTML 1.0/1.1 with application/xhtml+xml MIME type.
7. JPEG 2000, MNG (animated PNG), SVG graphics formats.
8. W3C DOM Level 2.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
>>I can't even trust using xmlhttprequest with IE anymore because it requires ActiveX which is often turned off for security reasons.

To clarify, I didn't mean xmlhttprequest is unsafe. What I meant was, as a developer, I can't rely on xmlhttprequest being available because ActiveX is increasingly turned off for security reasons - thus poor security around ActiveX is ruining what should be a normal modern browser feature.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
If you decide to include tabbed browsing please add an option to disable it. I hate tabbed browsing.

XHTML MIME content-type.
CSS2.1 including min-width/max-width/min-height/max-height, HTML 4.x ABBR tag, XHTML 1.0 and 1.1.
Full HTTP 1.1.
XForms, XSLT, XPath, XQuery.
PNG alpha.
JNG/MNG graphics formats.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Hi Chris,

One comment and one question :

(1) you did not mention what you did BEFORE IE 2.0 and where...

(2) what about Tasman on Windows ?

Best,

</Daniel>
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Another vote for JPEG2000!

Sure you can get plugins to enable compatibility, but the format will not gain critical mass without IE support. Standard JPEG's quality is simply apalling compared to JPEG2000.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I think one only needs to compare this article to one recently made on a Safari developer's blog, at http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/hyatt/archives/2005_01.html#007252 . I think we'd all be a little more lenient regarding IE's development if we found posts like Hyatt's here at IE's blog... substantive, genuine evidence of trying to achieve standards compliance, with technical explanations and real responses to community concerns (such as his post here http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/hyatt/archives/2004_07.html#005928 regarding Apple's HTML extensions).
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Just 3 simple XHTML-related things:
- application/xhtml+xml MIME type support
- recognizing *.xhtml files by default
- accepting XML declaration without switching to quirks mode

And don't forget abbr, q and object elements...
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I would very much like to see :hover working on every elements, not just anchors. I would also like the !important to really be important, not be let out.

Perhaps the min-height-property could have been arranged together with fixed positioning, png 24 alpha channel, real support for CSS 2 and a way to define layout on buttons, textareas, inputs and more with CSS.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
CSS 3 is best
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Hi Chris,

I want to see IE7 to be standards-compliant so web programmers, like myself, would find it easier to conform to as I have to deal with competing but standards-compliant browsers such as Firefox and Safari.

Secondly, I would like IE7 to have:
1. tabbed browsing
2. whatever that makes IE "the browser experience" platform that sets apart from other browsers.
3. extensible/customizable (e.g. add-ons are optional) so that the browser can be as minimal as you want or as bloated as you want! :) Firefox is a good example.
4. Bookmarks that I can synchronise it for home and work. Preferably, we have something like www.furl.net to do the synchronising for us.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I'm speaking from the context of applications development. "audience" was probably not the best term to use.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Another vote for full PNG support. Please. Pretty please.

Also would like to see the most valiant effort you can manage at supporting CSS2. Please.

And thanks for asking, btw.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
AmyC: If you're developing stuff that is intended to run in the Local Machine Zone, you really ought to use a .hta, rather than a .htm, as it won't be affected by SP2's lockdown.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Amy, read this:

http://www.projectseven.com/support/answers.asp?id=153

Perhaps that will solve your presumed problem?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003

:hover on all elements - totally #1;

fix wacky css bugs (floats, 3 pixel jog etc http://positioniseverything.net/ie-primer.html )
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I'd like full support for print media. Being able to specify page orientation in a css stylesheet, being able to remove IE added page headers and footers from a stylesheet. This will allow me to get rid of most reporting tools, and use html for reporting.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I agree with all the things mentioned. Yes, full support for CSS 1/2 and x-html 1.1 would have been great!
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
TimG and Andy:

Thanks for the replies.

AndyC - Thanks for the .hta tip. I'm new to creating things intended for the local zone, and had not learned of that yet.

TimG - Thanks for your repsonse also. I'm not too terribly concerned about seeing it on my machine, though it is incredibly annoying and I'm glad to see it can be disabled. My biggest concern is that users will get spooked seeing that warning and question whether my code can be trusted (I'm freelance, not with an established agency).
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Did you guys get we really want hover for all elements? :)
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
This story is in dire need for a slashdotting... Any takers?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
One more little thing that's really number zero. Before one that is. Remove this really annoying bug:

An XML-declaration before the doctype makes the browser go into quirks-mode. How stupid isn't that!

I know it has been mentioned, but it's worth repeating.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I said my piece here:
http://ibebloggin.com/oldstuff/2005/03/10/wishlist-for-ie7/
Some commenters did too.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Interesting, that my post pointing out that microsoft has no interest nor benefit in making a standards compliant browser was deleted.

Remember this post! It will be CENSORED soon!

Here are the link I pointed to:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html
http://www.getfirefox.com/
.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
And the next thing is:

404 error page less than 512 bytes -

Will IE 7.x display its own error page that includes a link to the MSN network search engine rather than "on-site" 404 error page?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
On Friday morning there was some maintenance being done by the blogs.msdn.com people and apparently that dropped a chunk of comments out of our blog.

So rather than the heavy weight of oppression you seem to feel, Peter, it was probably just that glitch. Your post doesn't violate the comment guidelines so it won't get deleted.

BTW we had a number of fake comments the other day that were deleted. The person posted as me, or Dave Massy, etc. I've seen a few blogs now that took those comments at face value and should not have.

Another lesson in "you can't always believe everything you read" even if you want to...
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Here's an idea...

Hire Dean Edwards (http://dean.edwards.name/IE7/), he seems to have a better grasp of what needs done, and that guy is a genius.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
>Hire Dean Edwards, he seems to have a better grasp of what needs done

There we go! Put Dean in charge! :-)
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
bit of a departure this one, but what i'd like to see would be text overlapping (wrapping) an image up to a boundary as you can do with any DTP program, possibly using something similar to coords in an image map, this would stop text layout on the web from being blocked and make things more fluid and versatile for designers remember Copyright 2005 Mark Rushworth :)

and before you all start moaning, i know its not in the w3 specs - just be interesting to do thats all...
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Bruce, mind commenting on what has been requested 100+ times in this blog entry...

WHAT ABOUT PNG ALPHA TRANSPARENCY!
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I'm having some specific problems with a project i'm working on at the moment. I'm using tables for layout however (and i know many developers want this deprecated) - but so far it has been working great for me, especially in IE...

But, of course, i've stumbled across a serious bug/limitation. I don't really know how to name/describe the problem, but it's related to align and % specified heights - and more :p.

So, opinions about table layout aside, i've set up an example page to demonstrate the issue:

http://www.omnijoy.com/tables.php?dtd=1

There's also a link to change quirks mode on and off, which actually demonstrates 2 different problems.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Michael,

Your first stop should be the specifications. Instead of assuming that some other browser is getting it right and Internet Explorer is getting it wrong, read the specifications to find out what should happen. CSS 2.1 says this:

"CSS 2.1 does not specify rendering when the specified table height differs from the content height, in particular whether content height should override specified height; if it doesn't, how extra space should be distributed among rows that add up to less than the specified table height"

Basically, there's no "correct" rendering for the code you are using.

When debugging problems like this, it's usually best to reduce the testcase to the smallest amount of valid code that is necessary to demonstrate the problem. This makes the browser developers' jobs easier, and you'll often find the source of the problem as you are doing so.

In this particular case, it seems you could completely remove the width and horizontal alignment code and still demonstrate the problem. That's immediately eliminated some possible sources of the problem already.

For what it's worth, that code seems unnecessarily complex for what it is you seem to be trying to do, and if you'd just ditch the tables that apparently don't "work great" as you claim, you'd find things a lot easier to implement.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Max, I don't think that's the real Bruce, just somebody who thinks it's funny to post under his name.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Lack of support for Vector Graphics is our single biggest issue (ability to draw dynamically created simple shapes on screen).
SVG seems to be the way to go as it's now a standard.
- will IE7 support SVG ??
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
bah, switch the two bottom lines :P Quirks shows problem 2 correctly. The confusion...
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I can't edit :( how about a forum instead of a blog?

The weird height calculations that i mentioned after issue #2 only appears when setting the height of the containing TD to 100% (or the height of the table)
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
you better let IE die becous it's nthe worst produck and nothing will bring it higher then its now. It could ony hapedn when other explorers will gon.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Opera has all vulnerabilities patched, while IE has just 52% of it patched!
I'll never again use Windows and IE. I'm a fully satisfied user of Fedora Core 3 and Opera 8 beta2.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I'll give M$ one more chance - when Longhorn will be released (obviously I will not install it on my computer - it would be too dangerous) but I'm sure I'll just try and forget about it.
Bye!
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
To Chris Wilson: and are you really proud of this full of vulnerabilities, slow, non-customizable, etc etc browser?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Masz racje ale nieraz ma duże problemy z twoim programem zacina się czy coś akiego :/
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Heh. Thanks, Daniel, for the shill. [Aside to crowd - Daniel and I know each other through long history on the CSS Working Group.]

Prior to joining Microsoft, I worked for a company named SPRY, Inc. on their web browser; prior to that, I was the co-author of the Windows version of NCSA Mosaic, the first successful mass-market web browser.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
To Michael (and Jim): yes, we're aware of the oddities in table formatting, and this is one area I've personally requested that the CSS Working Group come up with a definitive answer for how formatting should occur, rather than the leniency in the current 2.1 spec.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
One more general statement - I am reading all these comments (yes, even all the way down here) and collecting this feedback. I appreciate all the commentary, even the negative ones.

I would love to be able to give more detail about what we're doing, but I'm simply not allowed to do so right now. I am pushing to do so as soon as possible.

Finally, I'm personally actually on parental leave starting today, so my appearance on the blog may be spotty for the next 4 weeks; don't be surprised if I drop off from time to time.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
If you really want to make things difficult why not just drop GIF support?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
<b>Design/rendering</b>: Of course, I'll throw my copycat hat and say, CSS, PNG's w/Alpha support, Plugin security prompts & tabbed browsing (ala Firefox/Avant). A mode to switch to "old" IE mode, ala Netscape 8.

As for <b>security enhancements</b>: I love how Firefox changes the address bar to a secure yellow w/a lock icon, and at the bottom is the secure lock again with it's originator.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Did you post this prior to coffee? I think you mean 'repeatedly'?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Does anyone have a copy of the post where gecko was mentioned as the new rendering engine? I read a blog today saying that it appeared and was deleted along with all associated posts?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Oh, and why not include PNG transparency. You asked for our input and now you're going to turn your back to us.

We want transparency support for PNG's(among other things listed above).
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Add native support for EXSLT functionality.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Bruce Morgan [MSFT] wrote:
"People are repeatingly asking about Alpha Transparencies in PNG's. Let me put this to rest by saying that at this stage we have no plans to implement alpha transparency in PNG's."

Fair enough to get a yes/no answer. I look forward to many more of those in this blog. If the answer was a "Yes" then no explanation would have been needed. However, since it was a "No" I am sure the follow-up question by everyone asking for that feature is:

WHY?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
>People are repeatingly asking about Alpha Transparencies in PNG's. Let me put this to rest by saying that at this stage we have no plans to implement alpha transparency in PNG's.

Perhaps you need to blog this : everyone who isn't reading this far down is sure to keep on repeatedly asking about it. Sure, it's pity that you're not supporting PNG transparency, but it's positive that you're committing either way and coming out with a clear & definite position.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Given the amount of faked postings in this blog so far, I'm not at all convinced about Bruce's supposed comment. I'll wait till it's confirmed elsewhere. Most previous discussion on the topic indicated the reason it wasn't in IE6 was supporting legacy platforms, if IE7 is XP only that wouldn't seem to be an issue any more.

I'm surprised someone hasn't enabled registration by now, it'd make thing a whole lot easier.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
How about seperating IE from Windows. Wouldn't you have far less security issues do deal with?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Who do I believe?

Bruce or Chris?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Good grief!

Chris, Bruce, Dave, whomever; shut down this thread until you can a registration system in... I'm all for conversing, but we can't even tell when one of you is actually replying here!
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
No HTML/WYSIWYG and no registration = failed blog
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Those were faked comments. I'll delete them, associated posts, clean things up, and turn on comment moderation. Joy.

Let me make a post for you regular readers:

We will NEVER make feature announcements in the blog comments, nor will we make stunning announcements, etc.

If you ever read a blog comment that says it from me, Dave, Chris, Dean, etc. that makes you say "wow, they're finally admitting / announcing / denying" whatever you're amazed by, it's a fake post.

Don't fall for it.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I just wanted to say thanks for asking the question. It gives me some hope that IE7 will see some improved standards compliance.

My top concerns have been mentioned many times before (but just in case you're counting):
CSS 2.1
xhtml 1.0
ignore/allow the xml prolog on xhtml pages

I'm really hoping you manage to do a great job correctly supporting the W3C standards. Of course I also hope that no one browser keeps more than 60% of the market, because I think that having a monopoly browser has been really bad for the user, and I'm really happy to see Firefox gaining, as it is forcing you (MS) to finally improve IE.

Good Luck, and I look forward to hearing what is actually planned to make it into IE7 as soon as you can let us know.

I would like to see a follow-up blog entry that summarizes what you think the developer community most wants, based the variouse comments here and elsewhere posted as a response.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I'm a web developer for a large fortune 500 corporation, and am glad that decided that Microsoft has finally decided to update IE. So here are my requirements.

1. Comparible web standards support on par with Safari and Firefox. Today I spent 30 minutes developing a site that rendered exactly as intended on Safari and Firefox. I then had to spend I further 3 hours working around around various IE bugs and lack of support for CSS properties. We have to support both these browsers, and we use open web standards to do so. Open standards save my company time and money when building web sites. Please ensure that IE 7 supports these.

2. Support for PNG images with alpha transparency. Without having to use a proprietry extension.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Bruce, how do we know that you are the real deal?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Bruce, why don't you guys make a blog article about PNG alpha transparency.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Why not make Mozilla Firefox the Windows default browser?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
just support the W3 standards....
Anonymous
January 01, 2003

Support all CSS2 selectors (<, >, +, etc).

- Support CSS2 lang selector.

- Support all CSS2 pseudo elements (:after, :before, etc).

- Support the text-shadow property so you'll be ahead of Firefox.

- Support the content property.

- Briefly: Support CSS1 and CSS2 completely.

I think I shouldn't say this, but: Keep Firefox as your example.

I'm waiting for this browser. I really am! Being a web designer, I've been using any alternative browser possible as long as I can remember. I admit IE has been my arch enemy all these years. It's the only reason I haven't been able to switch to Linux 100%, because that would have broken my websites.

But I'm really waiting for this. Sounds very good. If you keep your promises, this will increase your credibility a lot, Microsoft.

The next thing, of course, is to port this software to UNIX. Internet is an open and universal medium, accessible for everyone, so all the major internet software should be open source.

No, I mean it.

Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Here are some quotes from AFTER I explained why Microsoft will NOT make IE significantly more standards compliant:

" How about seperating IE from Windows."

"I just wanted to say thanks for asking the question. It gives me some hope that IE7 will see some improved standards compliance."

"I'm really hoping you manage to do a great job correctly supporting the W3C standards."

"am glad that [...] Microsoft has finally decided to update IE. So here are my requirements. [standards, PNG transparency]"

"Why not make Mozilla Firefox the Windows default browser?"

"just support the W3 standards...."

"I'm waiting for this browser. I really am!"

"If you keep your promises..."

"port this software to UNIX"

Developers: One of us is living in an alternate universe, and I don't think it's me. ;-)

Have you even read/understood:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html

Particularly the section: "Enter the Web".

An excerpt:
"Which means, suddenly, Microsoft's API doesn't matter so much. Web applications don't require Windows."

If browsers became powerful, there would be little need for Windows and MS Office etc anymore. See!

http://www.GetFirefox.com
.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Hi, I was the person complaining about erroneous use of Alt-tags in IE. Alt-attributes are meant for accessibility, not to display a tooltip with clarifying text. The title-attribute is for that.

So a well-meaning person advised me to use both alt and title tag and I did. I'd rather have seen the issue dealt with adequately, but I thought... well I already did so money small efforts to account for IE's bugs, why not 1 more.

Then I saw that the tooltip displayed in IE6 (6.0) STILL displayed the ALT-tag instead of the title tag!

Sometimes I think someone over at Microsoft has to be peeking behind the developers shoulders, mocking their feeble efforts to try and get (or do) something right.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
"If browsers became powerful, there would be little need for Windows and MS Office etc anymore"

You think the rich functionality of say Access is ever going to be implemented in a client-server browser model?

"One of us is living in an alternate universe"

Yep, that'll be you then.

Rich clients will always be important and they will always be OS dependent. They aren't just going to go away because you'd quite like them too. In the future that might well mean rich clients on Linux, though I doubt it for a vast number of other reasons.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
My biggest request has to be support for alpha PNG and even MNG.

MathML and SVG support would be cool, but I don't think they are likely to happen. Other than that, just keep working through the standards that you have already started implementing and fixing implementation bugs.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
JC's Blog » Helping the IE Team
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
It's interesting that users of Visual Basic 6.0 are upset because Microsoft broke backward compatibility in Visual Basic .NET, while web developers are upset because Microsoft won't break backwards compatibility in Internet Explorer.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Fix floats - 3px bugs in particular, also taking them out of the flow as per the spec. Make http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/complexspiral/demo.html work. Implement partial transparency in png's. Make it so div's aren't stretched to their content text height when there is no text inside.

P.S. Stuff fixing floats for IE7, patch IE6 for the float bugs tomorrow, and I might consider using it again, as you have at least done a decent job on the security front.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Have we come to resolution on the gecko issue?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I think you've done an admirable job given Microsoft's scope. My suggestion would be to strive for full CSS2 support for IE7. And please, do not consider removing features like conditional comments or any existing extensions such as zoom or text-justify. They are invaluable in several different ways.

Good luck.
Al Sparber
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Don't release IE7 if you're gonna fix some bugs but not others!

It's enough we have three buggy browsers (5.0, 5.5, 6.0) we DONT need another one.

On the other hand, go ahead! Release another bad browser. It'll help Firefox gain more users faster, which is the best thing that can happen.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
AndyC: "You think the rich functionality of say Access is ever going to be implemented in a client-server browser model?"

Yes, in the near future (1-3 years). Not all, but many. Consider what most users use: text, calendar, maybe even a spreadsheet. That's enough to significantly erode Microsoft's dominance. I have no doubt that a significant portion of users and uses could be covered by web-based applications.

As an example, just take a look at MAB (1) using Firefox, and you'll see the future of the web, the end of Microsoft's dominance, and the reason why Microsoft will continue to ignore most of your pleas for better standards support.

(1) http://www.faser.net/mab/remote.cfm

If developers were to mobilize on these issues (put even slighly more emphasis on standards when talking to their clients/employers), this process would be accelerated dramatically. ;-)
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I'd do suggest the people who post to the IE blog read this ... http://blogs.msdn.com/jledgard/archive/2005/03/15/396368.aspx and then get permission or guidence from somebody, anybody, that they can in fact give us some sort of specifics on what you guys are actually doing in web standards support. If they say no, tell them that people are getting angrier and angrier at the IE team, and MS in general over not having any idea where MS is going to go today, and that support for IE is collapsing, not unlike US Federal pension reform -- http://www.tnr.com/etc.mhtml?pid=2592
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The leaked info on slashdot and microsoft-watch states that you are not sure about implementing CSS2. As a webdev who wants nothing more than to be able to create nice, accessible, cross-browser websites I am begging you on my bare knees - PLEASE don't skip CSS2!
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Mark's blog » IE7 wishlist
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I'd like to point out that being able to run IE 7 alongside previous versions of IE is very important for developers who wish to test backward compatibility. It's possible to do this with IE 6, but only due to help from within the web dev community itself. A Microsoft-supported way of making this work would be a big plus.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
As someone developing mostly web applications, not websites, I'd like to see:

* overflow on tbody elements, print thead on every page
* :hover on all tags
* transparent PNG support
* peekaboo/float bug fixes
* full <button> tag support
* javascript constructor to new XMLHttpRequest object
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I am a simple web developer working for a small university division as a student worker. I'm currently implementing a new template for our website. The site looks fine in Firefox, but not in IE. Making it work in IE is taking a lot of extra time, and that means my company is spending more money for no extra functionality. Your mention of standards support has revealed a light at the end of the tunnel. I would like for this train to go forwards and not backwards.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 Details Begin to Leak

By Mary Jo Foley

The first beta of IE 7.0 isn't expected for a few more months. But information on Microsoft's security, standards and interface plans are trickling out now.

Since it first revealed a month ago that it was pulling a U-turn by releasing a new version of Internet Explorer independent of Longhorn, Microsoft has been unwilling to share many particulars about its forthcoming browser.

Will Internet Explorer (IE) 7.0 have tabs? Will it comply with the Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) 2.0 standard? Exactly how will it make browsing more secure? Will it ship in 2005?

Microsoft's answers? No comment.

Microsoft has shared publicly that IE 7.0 will be focused primarily on improving security. Company officials said recently that Microsoft plans to make IE 7.0 available to Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 and Windows XP Professional x64 users. A first beta of IE 7.0 is due out this summer.

But Microsoft is sharing quite a bit more IE 7.0 specifics privately with key partners, sources who requested anonymity claim.

Sources say that IE 7.0 – which is code-named "Rincon," they hear – will be a tabbed browser.

IE 7.0 will feature international domain name (IDN) support; transparent Portable Network Graphics (PNG) support, which will allow for the display of overlayed images in the browser; and new functionality that will simplify printing from inside IE 7.0, partner sources said. The new browser also will likely include a built-in news aggregator.

(Coincidentally, or perhaps not, MSN just began testing a new Microsoft-developed RSS aggregator.)

Among the myriad security enhancements Microsoft is expecting to include in IE 7.0, according to partner sources:

# reduced privilege mode becomes the default;
# no cross-domain scripting and/or scripting access;
# improved Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) user interface;
# possible integration between IE 7.0 and Microsoft's Windows anti-spyware service, which currently is in beta.

Partner sources say Microsoft is wavering on the extent to which it plans to support CSS2 with IE 7.0. Developers have been clamoring for Microsoft to update its CSS support to support the latest W3C standards for years. But Microsoft is leaning toward adding some additional CSS2 support to IE 7.0, but not embracing the standard in its entirety, partners say.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Almost everybody including me is begging for proper png suppport.. Even if we have it in IE7 people won't be able to use it because of all the IE6's out there.. So Chris, please hear my words:
Please do a IE6 patch that people will download from windows update, to force IE use the direct X filter for ALL pngs.. It is the EASIEST solution of all, just make it use the directX filter whenever it sees a PNG. Couple this update with a mandatory security update so everybody should download it!!! We'll have proper PNG support in IE6's within montsh if you do this, so I hope you take my words into account...
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Bruce, do you trust Mary Jo Foley as a reliable source?

Also, are you going to make blog post that will confirm/deny her article?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
MSN Testing Personalized 'Start' Page

By Nate Mook, BetaNews
March 15, 2005, 1:25 PM

Microsoft's MSN unit is testing what it calls an "incubation experiment" of a new "start" page for Web browsers. The site, located at Start.com, serves as an aggregator for RSS feeds and allows users to custom tailor its content.

The project comes as MSN properties struggle to change a lackluster brand image brought on by fast-moving rivals such as Google. MSN employees recently called on users to give their opinions on what the company can do to improve its perception among early adopters and the media.

In fact, the new Start.com takes a number of pages from Google's playbook. Along with being simple and advertising free, the site draws on RSS technology that is popular among seasoned Web users. It also utilizes advanced HTML for customization and stores preferences as a unique URL, much like Google News.

"This isn't a final product but instead is intended to show people some of the ideas we at MSN are exploring around providing a rich experience around Web-based RSS/Atom aggregation," said MSN Program Manager Dare Obasanjo.

MSN Portal Team member Venkat Narayanan stressed that his team is simply "playing around with a number of different ideas" and pointed out two versions of Start.com currently in consideration.

"We definitely would love to get feedback from folks about the site. I'm personally interested in where people would like to see this sort of functionality integrated into the existing MSN family of sites and products, if at all," said Obasanjo.

http://start.com/1/ (Firefox version)
http://start.com/2/ (IE version)

These are official Microsoft pages... MICROSOFT WANTS TO CATER TO FIREFOX USERS? PURE GENIUS! Kudos to the MSN team.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
As other said, no need to build a complete list of what you must implement. Everything can be said in one sentence :
Support W3C Standards

;)
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I would suggest you tell your bosses that QA is essential, and that you WILL NOT ship with all the obvious, known to Microsoft, problems, first. Tell them that working 80 hours a week to get it out at their chosen time doesn't work. Exhausted employees cannot see the problems or think clearly enough to correct them.

Either way, Full compliance means FULL COMPLIANCE, not "good enough for Bill, so ship it".
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Please add full PNG support in future versions.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
My wife called me today, saying she has written this really long email when she accidentally hit "Esc". The whole long text was gone and the right-click Undo was grayed out. I had no option but saying that I'll introduce her to FireFox when I get home.

So in IE7, don't make Esc clearing the field and double Esc behaving like a reset button. If you don't trust me, trust Jacob Nielsen, who says that all Reset buttons should be banned and this would make the Internet a much better place.

Also it's a good idea to not disable the Undo option. Oh, and the standards, right, don't forget the standards :)
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
FWIW, Bruce's [MSDN] comment above, at http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/03/09/391362.asp#395567 is the real deal.

If they tell us ANYTHING, they will be out of work. That's the MS, or is it the BGMS way.

And to add to the perpetual list, PULLEEZE get this browser to render to the W3 Specs. Forget Bill and company. I've already stopped testing in IE. If it's broke it IE, Oh well..

The "I'm MS. I'm bigger than the world. Therefore I" is beginning to loose to other vendors whose products are more compliant and they understand the CLIENT is the developer. The CUSTOMER is because of the Developer. MS is a business because of those customers. Like any other business, without those customers, MS will not have a business.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
William: when you say 'getting your site to work' do you mean 'getting it to look good' or actually getting it to function? If the former, which is what I suspect you may mean, then might I suggest that you don't bother? If the site simply doesn't look as good in IE6 but is still accessible then why not do what I did with my personal site a year or so ago and just give up on the appearance in IE? My site looks a bit of a dog's breakfast in IE, because it uses bits of CSS2 which aren't supported, but it works just fine. That's what CSS is supposed to do - degrade gracefully.

[Yes, I know some may consider it looks a dog's breakfast in other browsers too but that's purely down to my lack of design skills]
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I would like to see more support for embedded tables and media. In every browser I use (Firefox, Mozilla, Netscape, Opera, IE2) to test IE is the only one that misinturprets tables and their layout. I normally wrap my pages in one table and embed additional tables to align content. When I define an embedded table as width="100%" it gets scrunched into 20%, while no other browser does this.

Perhaps Apple is to blame for this one, as it works in no other browsers either, but an embedded Quicktime file does not play through Apache on port 80. Regardless, no usable error messages appear, nothing, just a broken plugin image. It took quite a bit of troubleshooting to figure out it was a port issue. The errors should be much more informative, especially for developers.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
My biggest problem is that there is no unique identifier passed for each instance of a web browser.

Without this, it makes it extremely difficult to use a server session to help track the user's path through the website as they may have two web browser instances (that have one cookie that identifies one server session).
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
There are a lot of good comments here, especially from people insightful enough to see that you've written a lot, without saying much. Obviously the entire web development community are crossing our fingers and hoping you will actually commit to making ie a standards compliant browser rather than the bane of our existence. Here is my quick list:

complete CSS 2.1 support
:hover on all elements
position: fixed
ie whitespace bug
floats
selectors: dynamic pseudo class, before/after, child/adjacent
min/max width/height
counters

CSS 3
border-radius

PNG with alpha channel
SVG support
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
A very simple but desireable standard; when IE first opens, its Address field should have the focus. (Presently, no field has focus)

The reason for opening the browser is to access a web site, either by typing into the Address field or clicking on a Favorites icon. Please make it easy to begin typing immediately without mousing around.

Thanks for your renewed IE polishing efforts!
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
CSS2 is important, but I would like to see IE properly support XHTML. In particular, I would like to see:

-support for "id=" bookmark references; i can't make pages XHTML 1.1 compliant because of this

-proper support for the xhtml indicator tag <?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?> at the start of the page; IE reverts to a specialized mode when this is on page and this can change how the page is displayed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Other needs:
* A Date, for when ActiveX will be fully dropped from IE. (This is an Absolute requirement, so we know how long we have to get rid of this swiss cheese security issue)
* Support for font-family, font-size, font-style, in <option> tags...
* Support for 508+ character Bookmarks
* Support for 1 (one) bookmark file... not the chaos IE has now
* Support for view-source, with ANYTHING OTHER THAN NOTEPAD... the worlds WORST TEXT EDITOR.
* Support for all the stuff that every other browser has had over the last 3 years, that you guys were too lazy to implement.

PS, push the alpha ship date from this summer, to next. You won't be ready, don't tease us... the last thing we want to have to suport is 5 different versions of IE7 Alpha/Beta.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Respect the "Content-Type" header please.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
In more, less exciting, Microsoft news... CSS Support Could Be Internet Explorer's Weakest Link: "The company will continue to drag its feet by refusing to provide full support for the CSS2 (Cascading Style Sheets Level 2) W3C (Worldwide Web Consortium)...
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Here's an idea: use the gecko rendering engine if a page has a doctype. Everything else stays in quirks mode. I know it's not that simple, but it would be nice...
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Full CSS 2 support would truly be a major help. Other feature requests that would be of benefit is a cleaner API for IE. Using interop for IE is a nightmare right now in .NET applications. It would also be nice to have more control over and interaction with the Web Extender Client.

Thanks!
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
guys why do you even care about (officially monitored and cleared ?) blogs on MSDN.com????
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Web standards are just a suggestion, they do not need to followed to the "t"... Not even Firefox or Opera are 100% web standards compliant, but they are certainly making great strides to become 100%. With Firefox (and Opera to an extent), you can see the daily progress and bugs being fixed. Such browsers are popular because they are endless "betas" if you would, constantly improving functionality and web standards support.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Most have been covered, but
Please properly support, at the very least...
png (alpha) & fix that pesky 3px discrepancy, so I can get rid of those IE conditionals in my page heads!

For IE7 & the Handheld/MobileIE...
max-width:, min-width:

media=screen, media=handheld etc. for multiple stylesheets!
Simple tags for different stylesheets/devices, is the coolest thing since html!
The IE in Mobile2003 is sad.

You better fix that MobileIE before Opera releases one too. Their small screen rendering rocks!

If you guys were to actually do, what you know needs done? I can honestly say, I will never speak another bad word about M$, or type MS as M$ as long as I live! lol
My eternal reply will be.... "Yeah, but they fixed their CSS support!" =)
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
As I read through all the articles spawned by the IE7 announcement (press release), I finally realized something: IE6 is the new Netscape 4.7x. We all woke up one day, and IE6 had suddenly become the browser that is...
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The team responsible for the development of Internet Explorer 7 (and previous versions) is talking quite openly about Internet Explorer and standards on the Web. Apparently this is quite an open discussion from them. I haven't been tracking this blog and I have now added it to my subscriptions.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Kyle: what you say about Microsoft not needing to support standards may well be true. But it doesn't have to be. They can fully support CCS2, CSS3 etc. and still grab themselves a monopoly. What they do is support the standards but add extensions which will only work on IE running on Windows. I'm thinking of their Avalon and stuff here. If developers start using those features then users will once again be locked into Microsoft Windows/IE but Microsoft will still be able to say 'We are completely standards compliant'. My guess is that that's exactly what they're planning on doing, perhaps not with IE7 but certainly with whatever comes after it with Longhorn.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
As I read this post I get this:
- You have to fix som security flaws
- You have to make som UI changes to look like an modern browser
- You have limeted resources and time (as a devloper I sure know this one.....)
- You might try to make IE a bit more web standards compliant if you have som time left after fixing #1 and #2

And reading all the comments here - the list that devlopers wants in on #4 is long - way to long...

As I see it - the only hope the webdevlopers have to see this list fixed in the next 10-15 years is if you do as some here have suggest: Use an open source renderer - Geco or (like Appel) KHTML - and put a few fulltime MS-devlopers on that project to "pay back" and help to make it get even better.

> There are also a number of considerable
> negatives from our perspective, particularly
> in compatibility with current content,

I don't want compatibility with older IE renderers. I want IE to be standard compliant. Period.

> security

I think both Geco and KTHML hase a better security then IE. After all - this IE7 prosject is to play catchup with Firefox on UI and security (but obviously not on web standards?)... But if this is what stops you: put a few fulltime MS-devlopers on that project (just to repeat myself) to fix security.

> and ActiveX support.

We don't want ActiveX.
We don't want ActiveX.
We don't want ActiveX.

> security and ActiveX support

You can't have both.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Somehow, I lost my faith now after reading some of the arguments in the comments, this is my second post. Microsoft doesn't care about standards one bit, as it is they who are trying to be the standard. Folks, forget about fixed background images for inline html elements, forget about buttons that will be antialiased with any type of background anywhere on the page (png alpha), forget about min-height and max-width that will enable you to prepare pages that will scale up and down without breaking, forget about cascading menus without javascript. Some on this page event went far as to say that he doesn't care about PNG alpha as this would create "dreadful interfaces and harsh user experiences". I find it amusing to see such opinions lacking common sense.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Considering that
1) A great amount of functionality was lost because of bad Javascript.
2) MS did nothing to block this (until Firefox came with a 1 version).
3) Javascript is not a MS product.

Is there a relation? Was there an intention to destroy Javascript in favor of the .net alternatives?

At least at this moment we can recomend a client to download an alternative browser that works fine.

I do not believe any more in MS visions, plans, etc. (and I invite you). Just the facts.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
PNG support should be a priority. This would GREATLY increase the flexibility and ease of designing websites today, greatly empowering designers to create better designs and better websites. The end result would be a huge success for internet users everywhere.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Hire Mr. Jeffery Zeldman & Eric Meyer for all standard based, CSS and Rendering issues. Believe me, they can change IE-7 and Microsoft's image.
....and yes, don't forget Text Zooming option.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
While re-reading through the latest comments, I saw one by Bill Hall and one that is definitely important though not mentioned often.

While developing anything on the Web, we have to test it in everything under the sun. This means testing on older browsers. A trend for most software is to completely obliterate existing versions with new ones and not allowing the older ones to be installed side-by-side with them. This is why it is incredibly important that you allow us to either keep IE6 on our system and install IE7 side-by-side OR overwrite it and allow us to reinstall IE6 if we want.

I can understand how the average user would get confused if they were offered a choice of having two of the same thing on their system so it would probably be better to implement the latter solution.

We shouldn't have to have to keep an entire other computer next to us just to test something on an older browser. Currently, there are ways to run IE 5/5.5/6 simultaneously thanks to the good folks at Evolt (http://browsers.evolt.org/). If you don't allow us the option of reinstalling IE6, they will probably figure something out eventually. Why not save everyone the trouble and allow us from the start? Developers world wide will be greatful.

If it isn't too much trouble, I wouldn't mind hearing MS's reaction to this request. I know MS has been pretty much silent on virtually everything dealing with IE7 but a few specific reactions would be nice.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
When you say that web developers are your customers then you should focus only on CSS support and forget the security issues. Because no developer uses IE for surfing and therefore has no security problems
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Woudn't it be nice if windows came with firefox ?
IE would fade out rapidly and there wont be any more issues about it...
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I occasionally drop in to the weblog of Safari developer Dave Hyatt, just to see what is being implemented for the next version of said browser.

I suggest this as a good read for the IE development team.

http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/hyatt/archives/2005_01.html

Thankyou, and good day.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Oh, and try this as well.

http://dbaron.org/log/
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
IE very stupid browser.
WHY?

- 70 mb. very big.
- not support W3.org standarts.
- half support PNG (transparency? )
- not OPEN SOURCE. I want which code inside?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Just a question: who is need IE? ;) The time of this browser will going down and the period is run off with users, who has understood what standards are.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Forgot to say, I think it should be good a better involvment of Microsoft developers on the W3C works, collaborating in doing standard and implement them on the software would be very useful for all web developers :-)
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Great read.
Can't wait for more CSS2 standards compliance. One note: For the sake of testing... can you NOT force IE6 off the machine in order to set up IE7? We designers still need to test on older browsers. I'd love to be able to have side by side versions of all the IE releases.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Just my 2 cents:

A robust set of standard support should include:

CSS 1.0, 2.0, 2.1 and CSS3
XHTML 1.0, 1.1 and preliminary 2.0
MathML 2.0
SMIL 2.1
PNG, PNG Second Edition, JPEG2000, SVG 1.1
JavaScript 2.0
P3P 1.1
HTTP 1.1
XForms

Thanks to IE developers for reading my post.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Robert, I accidentally failed to unmoderate your post along with about 10 others yesterday. They show up now just fine.

"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Oddly enough, my comments posted from Safari show up fine. When I tried posting a couple comments to this blog from FireFox yesterday, my comments got filtered.

Can you say corporate censorship?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Oh, yeah, I almost forgot: Native SVG support and JPEG2000 support would be nice, too. Since SVG can be mixed with HTML elements in an XHTML document, this is a natural feature to implement natively. (Gotta love XML namespaces!) As for JPEG2000 -- well, everyone else who's asked for it has explained the benefits, so I shouldn't have to. Microsoft probably has a license for any proprietary bits in JPEG2000, so it's not as though they can't use this technology.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I suppose the main things I would like to see are proper PNG support, and better support for the interactive script standards.

In response to http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/03/09/391362.aspx#391730
I dont really go for theming individual apps - although I suppose it can be nice to (and IE can be themed - a few notable ISPs and workplaces do it), I prefer to specify look and feel themes over a whole GUI.

Tabbed browsing is a must, it is probably one of the features of FireFox I use most.
Anyway - a more secure, standards compliant browser with tabs on Windows really could do MS some favours - it would mean that I probably wouldnt install FireFox(or previously Mozilla) on every machine I have to use.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
"What they do is support the standards but add extensions which will only work on IE running on Windows. I'm thinking of their Avalon and stuff here. If developers start using those features then users will once again be locked into Microsoft Windows/IE but Microsoft will still be able to say 'We are completely standards compliant'."

That may well turn out to be the case, but there are a few things which could make the aftermath of such a decision slightly less long-lived than the current technology grid-lock has been:

1) As Peter Reaper says, you can do some pretty cool things just using CSS2 and PNG. Heck, you can do some pretty cool things using only CSS 1, if correctly implemented: http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/complexspiral/glassy.html
(Use FF/Opera to check that one out...)

2) Many, many Internet users would not be able to use a webpage specifically coded with Avalonities: Linux users, Mac users and many Windows users (at least those on 2K, 95 & 98, Me & NT).
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I'm glad I finally caught your attention... I knew I had to do something drastic. I guess I overstepped some boundaries there and I apologize. I just wanted to see if you guys were still listening to us... A follow up to this article would be nice... We are just so frustrated by having us tell you guys the same things over and over again without any response.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
You know, sometimes, the standards are wrong, and it is ok to break them.
For example, according to the W3C 4.01 HTML standard, nothing comes before the doc type stuff, not even comments.
That is the point of comments! To go anywhere and document stuff! Comments should be invisible anyways.
Just because its a standard doesn't make it right.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Fiery, I consider that a personal insult.

Comments like that are why I turned on moderation. I thought I could turn it back off, but no, apparently not.

Please knock it off.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Thanks, Kyle.

You did what IE-Devs don´t dare or are not allowed to.

To the Devs: What you are working on is more than just technology or business. And always remember: With great Power comes great Responsibility.

Thanks in advance for CSS Selectors; please keep the * html Bug.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Well, Kyle pretty much sums it up, he states everything needed, and why most of it won't be supported, and I completely agree with him.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
If you could the bugs with css floats (as mentioned above) and add 'max-width' support that would be groovy.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Backwards compatibility should not be taken lightly. If a breaking change makes a mission critical application nonfunctional, who is going to pay for the rewrite. How many dollars will the "web standards" folks contribute towards the salaries of the required programmers?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
There is a petition right here:

http://www.petitiononline.com/IE7STAN/petition.html

to get the IE team to include full standards support. (Although I think it should have been more clearly worded myself.)
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
A couple more items, relatively minor compared to my previous suggestions: How about JPEG2000 and SVG support?

With XHTML looming, people are going to develop (and indeed, already have developed) pages with HTML and SVG content freely mixed together -- that's the beauty of XML (and XML namespaces keep everything tidy).

I think JPEG2000 would be a nice feature to have, and since Microsoft probably already has a license for any proprietary bits in JPEG2000, you guys can probably fully support the standard.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
After I submitted my first blog post... all the sudden there were 50 new posts. Anyway, I read those too. Asking us for our "wish list" doesn't make sense. I have neither the time nor the inclination to jump through the "quirk" hoops so that my site designs display correctly in IE as they do in Firefox or any other WC3 compliant browsers. Get the list from the WC3 site and implement them like everybody else. That's all I want.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The label tag (http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/interact/forms.html#h-17.9), is not currently supported by IE.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Ok, I've had enough already... you people convinced me... I just downloaded Firefox.

http://www.GetFirefox.com
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
child selector (>)
:first-child
:before
:after
min-width, min-height
max-width, max-height
:hover on elements other than links
attribute selectors img[alt="new photo"]

display: block on links should make the entire link clickable, not just the text...this is currently buggy.

transparent pngs (in a non-proprietary way)
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Please implement a feature, where I can click a button and IE 7 always remembers to open maximized. I resized a window and ever since, IE 6 has been opening every window the same way.

I tried fixing it through the quick launch IE link, but it still does not work.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I think the BEST thing MS could do at this point is push their huge market share or users towards a browser that will actually DO something about supporting standards, like Firefox/Mozilla, etc.
If you are truely concerned for the end-user, you would tell them to stop using your broken, vunerable, buggy, browsers and upgrade to something built ON standards. I have lost all faith in Microsoft's ability to create any piece of software that actually DOES what it says it can. Remember MS, IE is an INTERNET EXPLORER, therefore, why don't you focus on how it works (by itself) viewing webpages and not on how you can make the OS better becuase of it. If you had had this foucs in the begining, maybe IE Mac wouldn't have been the biggest letdown for web developers worldwide.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I've read through several of these blog entries from people on the IE team and there is one common theme when it comes to the discussion of standards. Lots of whining about vague feedback regarding requests for standards implementation in the next version of IE from the MS employee....followed by dozens of very specific requests regarding CSS2, pseudo classes, XHTML, DOCTYPE, PNG, etc.

Stop pretending that you have only received vague requests.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
If IE7 doesn't support CSS2 I think its safe to say that will be the straw that broke the camels back in terms of supporting Microsoft's browser while developing. This is totally pathetic an unexcusable behavior and as a designer I'll be outraged if I have to wait YEARS longer for something some browsers have been doing right for half a decade. Just for Microsoft? Nope.. I don't think so. Myself and many others will start a campaign to refuse to support IE because it will be the new Netscape 4. If you don't cut it, you don't cut it. No excuse gets you included. Thats right.. time vote IE off the island. IE is the weakest link, goodbye. IE, you're fired.

Now if they can get their act together and support the standard I'll be MORE than happy to develope for it. Why? Because "developing for IE" will be a meaningless statement due to the fact that I'm simply adhering to the standard.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Getting full css2 support isn't that hard, any decent programmer could do it. Why not quit arguing and just do it.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Shouldn't
"X is compliant with Microsoft's Standard Y"
have the same definition as
"Microsoft's X is compliant with Standard Y" ?

I would like to see Microsoft's IE use the same testing process for W3C 'compliance' as they use to declare a product 'XP compliant'.

If you can't pass the test be truthful and declare your product as 'tested with' just like some old 16 bit apps have been 'tested with' XP.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
By now, I would be happy with:
- Full CSS2 support (and correctly)
- XHTML 1.1 support

Please!
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I heard the same cry for years, but MS didn't care. Why did they start caring now? Not because of you, people! It's because there is a new kid on the block -- Firefox.

The best way to make MS come up with a better IE is to use Firefox, and tell you friends to use Firefox, and tell your mom and dad and neighbors and uncles and anties to use Firefox.

MS doesn't really care about you if you think about it. They only care when you don't use IE, so don't use IE. Then they will care.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
As I see it from here, for Microsoft to once again ask us what they need to do to improve IE in the next version is a thinly veiled attempt to avoid responsibility for the outcome. If they haven't heard the hue and cry for CSS 2 and full PNG by now, they aren't interested in hearing it. If they were listening, this blog post would have started with what they already planned on doing based on what they had heard, and a request for clarification of what they heard, and if they missed anything.

Instead we have this pretense of involvement. It is not a dialouge, it is two simultaneous monologues with Microsoft rattling on saying things, and the rest of us rattling on at the same time. From the outside it might look like a conversation, but it is not. Microsoft already has whatever passes for a plan in their world for the future of IE, and they are fishing now for memorable quotes to use later when they tell us that they were listening.

Whatever they don't include, they will say that they asked us, and we weren't clear enough in our responses, so it's our fault, not theirs.

Typical bureaucratic CYA behavior. I'm sure that's how you have to behave to survive for any length of time at MS, just like at any other major corporation.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Microsoft please implement full CSS2 support.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
It would definately be good to see JPEG2000 support in IE 7. I have developed numerous web sites that could have looked better and loaded faster had I been able to use JPEG2000 instead of the outdated JPEG format. Most of the world is still using dialup and images play a large part in making web pages look good, but they are also the main cause of slow load times.

Here is a list of resources on JPEG2000 for those that aren't familiar with it:
http://datacompression.info/JPEG2000.shtml

If IE 7 were to support JPEG2000 by default it could much more easily spread across the web.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Well, there's another reason to keep people in my department on Firefox.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Some things I haven't seen mentioned:

* Support for data URL images (http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2397.html). When using XML/XSL, the use of this can save lots of additional requests for small images.

* Repair the image cache bug. IE6 will get 1000 identical images from the server when they are needed, in stead of loading just one and using it 1000 times.

* Repair the XML cache. XML is not cached properly.

* Repair the multipart/formdata boundary bug (file-upload) bug with "charset=iso-8859-1". (It is little known, but I have spent nonetheless a lot of time figuring out why some uploads went wrong, unpredictable but regular).
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
From http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,1995,1776935,00.asp

"One partner said that Microsoft considers CSS2 to be a "flawed" standard and that the company is waiting for a later point release, such as CSS2.1 or CSS3, before throwing its complete support behind it."

Why? WHY? CSS2.1 and/or CSS 3 support implies (and necessitates) support for CSS2. Why, then, wait even LONGER to support the proper standards when a proper foundation in CSS2 support would make it easier, in the long run, to support these newer standards? Furthermore, CSS2.1 is in Candidate Reccomendation status as are parts of CSS3. In my experience, few changes are made between "CR" and full-blown "R." Not to mention that CR-level support of any CSS standard would be the best CSS support IE will have ever had.

Please understand that Internet Explorer is generally abhorred by the web development community. Abhorred! Sure, you can rest on your laurels because you know at the end of the day people will MAKE it work in IE, because it's their job to make it work in IE. Or, you can make the lives of millions of people easier while improving the Internet experience for your customers. You pick.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
W3C standards

If different browsers would focus upon reading code in ONE way that would be great.

And for the experimental coding; perhaps have a reboot program option so the browser can comprehend code differently.

Presently there are too many hoops for developers to jump through which also decreases the positive experience for the user.

Thanks for listening.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
If the richest software company in the world can't keep up with a bunch of opensource programmers on something as well-defined as standards support, then the commercial software industry is doomed, and we all should migrate to Linux as quickly as possible before history leaves us in the dust.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I would really like to see in IE7 all of the features which I can find in Avant Browser (http://www.avantbrowser.com/).

The most needed think is : TABBED BROWSING !!!!
Another VERY useful are Groups (which means Group of Bookmark).

Thanx and good work.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
By the way Chris, you're one of those people we have to count on if we want to see IE7 to be a better browser. People like you in important positions should really raise their voices for standards compliance, as you have done.

If no such thing happens, we'll just see another buggy non-standard browser that'll postpone the realization of standards compliant and semantic web another 5 or 7 years. This is likely to happen since Microsoft doesn't really gain anything if they just make a bunch of web developers happy. Their target are the lay users who can easily be fooled to switch back to IE from Firefox with an effective marketing strategy.

Previous bad business strategy has made people at Microsoft think that breaking as many standards as possible (embracing proprietary techniques) would gain them a bigger market share. This must be avoided for the sake of the future of the web. It's time to grow up.

That's by far the only thing I'm interested in here. Otherwise this will become another tough decade for web design, but when we really should be moving on.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
You need IE6's problems laid out as a clear list, with a precise demonstration of each problem "in action"? Dean the Dude has done that...

<a href="http://dean.edwards.name/IE7/compatibility/">http://dean.edwards.name/IE7/compatibility/</a>

You could pick through the pages of all those other sites you mention, disect all the emotional rants on this blog, eventually come up with a semi-coherent list of the problems and EVENTUALLY agree amongst yourselves on which ones to fix... or you could <a href="http://dean.edwards.name/donate/">buy in</a> a cool-headed, unemotional EXPERT and get a better result in a shorter time. If I had your dev budget I know which option I'd choose. Make the man an offer he can't refuse! Pay Dean Edwards <a href="http://dean.edwards.name/donate/">lots of money</a>, fly him over the pond to Seattle and make him an "IE Bug Guru" or an "IE Standards Compliance Evangelist".

What are you waiting for?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
First of all, congratulations Chris on becoming a parent. I trust mother and Chris 2.x are doing well?

Let's all hope that you can be as proud of seeing IE7 into the world as you undoubtedly are about your own personal addition to the population.

<aside>Do Microsoft developers have codenames for unreleased offspring?</aside>

Anyhoo. I have only recently jumped on board the web standards bandwagon and have to admit that IE6 does make learning difficult. I like to think I produce valid markup (it correctly validates at any rate). And my stylesheets seem to be written properly, but when I view the results in IE6 the distance between A and B suddenly seems a lot further.

I'd be very surprised if you did not already know what you should be including, standards-wise, in IE7 - I just trust you can deliver.

Good luck.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Thanks for taking comments from the outside world. Whether you act on them or not is another matter, but we appreciate the means to say what we feel officially and not get an autoresponder email!

My only request is that you make IE7 compatible, please don't try and out-do the other browsers by saying "but our method works better and is a closer representation of wc3 blah blah blah ..." just make it so I only have to build ONE version of my website that will work in ALL browsers, including IE.

Thanks!

Mike
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Most all of the good suggestions have already been made here. I just have a couple small things to add: 1) It sure would be nice if CSS-ers could control the border property of select menus. 2) the file upload field is pretty difficult to style in a pleasing manner without some CSS/JavaScript fudgery. Not sure if the standards committee addresses this issue, but it would be nice to be able to control the width, background color, and borders of the input and button parts of the field seperately.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
In the times of IE5.x I was really happy it existed. But now there are good browsers out there and they are getting better. Instead of developing one yourself -- with your own rendering engine -- you could ship one of a (now) competitor with your OS. As far as I get it, you give it away for free anyways. I´d like an honest answer to an honest question: What´s the point of IE? Regards from Germany.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I make a drop down menu in Fireworks --- it works flawlessly in everything except Explorer. Many web designers have the attitude - just go for Explorer and forget the rest since MSE is 90% of the market. Not any more. The large drop in market share on release of Firefox 1 means, to me, that a lot of people are fed up with the proprietory code and the compabibility difficulties.

Some of what people are asking for (here and elsewhere) is pretty subtle. I'd ask that you stop trying the monopoly tactics of forcing people to dance to your code. If you don't, you're going to lose more and more ground to Firefox and the like.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
oops, link to myself fixed :$
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Jeez, why is this such a big deal? Why is so difficult to fork on content type to a completely CSS2 compliant renderer?

You're Microsoft. Just shut everyone up and do it.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
"They will not deprecate Active X."

They already have done. .NET applets are designed to replace ActiveX, the security features introduced in SP2 are designed to sway developers away from using ActiveX in favour of more secure technologies.

"They will not pull the browser out of the
OS."

sigh not this old one. IE is not part of the OS. The Trident engine is part of the OS, it's used by the help system and the shell (in 2K at least) and provides a service for third party applications. IE is a simple wrapper around Trident.

Providing the ability to remove IE is pointless, because Trident will still remain and any security vulnerabilites in that will still potentially expose the OS.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
on eWeek its said that there will not be full CSS2 support. So i've made up my mind. I will not check if my page works in IE anymore.

The funniest part is that web developers are microsofts customers as stated above, but why the **** don't thet put CSS2 support in IE7. It doesn't make sense...
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
From your text at the top of this page:
By contrast, vague demands for open-ended “standards support” [...] don’t really help us drive our development very much.

Well, they should! Ask any politician: the important thing is to be aware of, and respond to, the "mood" of the people. 99.99% of the posts here are asking for standards support (though the level of detail supplied varies). That indicates the mood of the people. You'll have an uphill task "selling" any IE-next release that is not in tune with that mood.

My two-penny contribution to the twilight of this discussion:

1) There is no need for anyone to be pedantic about "absolute" adherence to CSS standards. Define the task in terms of the end-result: one set of HTML/CSS code should look "more or less" the same in any browser. That's almost the DEFINITION of a web-browser - an application that displays marked-up text and images in a consistent, predicatble fashion. Period.

2) Nobody will begrudge or critisise Microsoft for supporting proprietary features OVER AND ABOVE A BASIC ADHERENCE TO STANDARDS. So your rich-client profitability can be assured.

3) As I stated a few days ago, here's your work list for CSS rendering in IE-next:
http://dean.edwards.name/IE7/compatibility/

Good luck!
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I'm coming into this a bit late in the game, but I'd like to see support for CSS tables. They put all (well, most) of the flexibility of table-based layouts into CSS, where it should be, and save us from messing around with float-based layouts that fall apart in the face of unexpected content.

Other than that, I have no specific wishes other than that what is implemented is implemented correctly. There is a bunch of things which are implemented wrong, and these cause me much more trouble than the stuff that isn't implemented at all.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
"We will continue to improve our compliance under strict mode even when it breaks compatibility, and under quirks mode when it’s not damaging to our backwards compatibility."

the above quote is quite concerning... all you people using DOCTYPE's to force strict mode in IE should be scared :
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
in order of (personal) importancy

* CSS1 correct implemented - really would like to spend time developing new stuff then creating workarounds for allot of IE bugs! Time is money and the amount of time I must spent on these workarounds... .
* a correct implementation of CCS2 - do it right this time!
* better PNG transparancy support
* SVG - would really be nice!!!
* better DOM support!
* XHTML 1.1
* XForms,XSLT,...
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Ok. First off, anyone who knows my history will know that I have more reason to be on the anti-Microsoft side than any of you.

Having said that, I think most of the negative comments show a REAL lack of comprehension about the real world.

Point #1: Development is HARD. Development takes time. The larger your install base, the less flexibile you can be. Statements like "any decent programmer can do it" which implies that they aren't decent programmers are insulting to the team working on it.

Point #2: While MSFT is huge and has tons of cash and developers, that doesn't mean the team reading this blog is infinite and can accomplish everything. They need to prioritize. You can critisize MSFT all you want for de-prioritizing IE but complaining to the people who are working on it isn't the way to go. Don't you think they realize this already and would like 100s more programmers to help them? (We'll maybe not 100s but you can always use more). Why is it de-prioritzied? Hmm. Let's see. It makes no money. Has a 95% market share. No real competition. Don't argue Mozilla to me. 5% isn't competition. 5% is Apple. It is a way to avoid anti-trust. So what would you do? Remeber that you need to answer to your stock holders...Now some of the means employed to get to a 95% share is another issue...but I will resist the digression. :)

Point #3: Standards are a well and good but I laugh at the people who think that they are dogma. The web would never have existed in anything outside a lab had the people in charge of the standards (e.g. Tim B-L, etc) been the only developers. They would still be debating the correct SGML to place inline images. Note that they would be having this debate before ever trying to give any thought to implementation. Netscape (and later Microsoft) provided the innovation and drive. As much as possible they worked with the standards groups. I have almost always been on the non-standards side of the argument with Chris so hearing him being slammed by you guys is deliciously ironic but not at all fair to him...

-Jon
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Could "border-style: 1px dotted #CCCCCC;" actually be a grey dotted border instead of grey dashed border? Thanks.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
From a user of different Internet browsers (not by choice)

Now I have not read any of the above, but I'm sure if I scan the page for IE, Netscape, Opera or Firefox etc there will only be a lot b******g.
Of course I think its great you want to improve IE and I realise you want to have a better browser than the competition and have better ratings too, etc. Still it is better late then never that you have asked, but I still think it should be you who should help the programmers and designers; and not them helping you.

The way I see it is you (all browser makers) should be helping the programmers to do their job and make Internet development easier and the Internet a friendly and easier place to explore. There should not be a problem building a website that works on all Browsers after an agreed date, but it is absurd when programmer / designers have to use [FOR EXAMPLE] IE 4, 5, 5.5, 6, 7 + and Netscape 4. *, 5, 6, 7 + and FireFox .9, 1 + and Opera 5, 6, etc merely to test something, and all because all you boys want to be better than anyone else.
Have you forgotten that is the user who keeps you in business? Remember the story about the Goose who laid the Gold egg. If you try to take it all you will loose (it all).

What would be a better idea is for you to discuss and agree with all the other browser makers what standards you are going to use and that all of you use exactly the same standards, and update at agreed times with agreed updated standards. Even children can do this, so what is the problem.

What you are doing now is asking people to promote IE and criticise other browsers or vice versa in a subtle way. This will always be a no win situation.
The Internet is never going to grow up if stand behind the idea of multiple browsers – multiple Internet. If is clear to me that it should be one Internet and choose a Browser; much like one road and drive what you want.

Of course, this is not a new idea and I hear many of you sighing. You boys do not have so much to lose but users do.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
"Don't argue Mozilla to me. 5% isn't competition."

Well, judging from the latest developments, Microsoft doesn't agree with you on that one.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
"I have almost always been on the non-standards side of the argument with Chris so hearing him being slammed by you guys is deliciously ironic but not at all fair to him... "

Am I the only one not to understand the logic in that sentence?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Michael: "but I still think it should be you who should help the programmers and designers; and not them helping you."

That's a very cynical way of seeing the situation. I would agree though that the IE team should have a fairly good picture of what in the way of rendering bugs needs fixing, seeing the number of 'IE rendering bugs' sites there are out there. Since they have asked us what we want though, we might as well point it out - it can't do any harm.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
> The web would never have existed in anything outside a lab had the people in charge of the standards (e.g. Tim B-L, etc) been the only developers. They would still be debating the correct SGML to place inline images. Note that they would be having this debate before ever trying to give any thought to implementation.

You haven't got a clue what you are talking about. Tim Berners Lee wrote the first implementation of a web browser and HTML was only specified afterwards.

In other words, he did exactly the opposite of what you accuse him of. But don't let little things like facts stand in the way of a good troll, eh?

> I have almost always been on the non-standards side of the argument with Chris

Given what Chris posted above, I don't think he'd agree with your claim that he's on the "non-standards side of the argument" with you.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
You know, anybody who thinks that it's easy or simple to fully implement CSS2 probably hasn't tried to read the entire CSS2 specification, recently. :-)

And then think -- not only does it all have to work the way the spec says, but it has to do so performantly, for a possible thousands of such elements on a page. To most home users (the consumers of IE), "performantly" means "within a second," as far as I know. :-)

I will be very happy, though, when IE does have improved standards support. Even the standards support that is in IE6 is really pretty great, compared to IE 5.5. I develop my code in Gecko first (because it has great built-in tools for web developers), and it almost always also looks OK in IE when I go to check it.

-Max
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Just stick to w3c standards. If something (xhtml,css) is supposed to work, ok. If it isn't, great. Do no let ie (or whatever browser for that matter) fix it for us. That only encourages click-n-goers and wysiwyg so called designers. If I work in programming, I should write my code right instead of relying on 3rd. parties to make my work work.
And regarding features... stick to those useful for the user. Tabbed browsing and things like that. Propietary css and things like that just contribute to make our job harder.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
A very nice feature would be the preloading of images that are referenced in the css - preloading for pseudo-classes like :hover.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
IE 7.0 MUST fully supports the CSS specs and PNG transparency at the VERY least. After that is done it would be nice if Microsoft began developing the browser as a browser and not an extension of the Windows platform (I know, I know, I've read the comments over and over that it won't happen). The ActiveX experiment failed, get rid of it now, and begin thinking about how you can turn IE into the browser leader by embracing all of the web and the platforms that use it instead of how you can shut the competition out.

Internet browsers should just browse, not act as a frontend for the OS.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
css 2.1, css3, xhtml2 are not YET recommendations. Lets be practical instead of bit**in'. PNG transparency should be achievable. Collate what people want (I like the list at http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200503/wishlist_for_ie7/ ) and see what you can implement well. I'd rather see 4 well implemented improvements than 10 buggy ones. Go for the suggestions with oemph.

Do I love IE - it's ok.
Do I swear at IE when coding - of course I do.

BUT just do your best guys. It can't be perfect. Break a leg and thanks for the effort.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
> You haven't got a clue what you are talking >about. Tim Berners Lee wrote the first >implementation of a web browser and HTML was >only specified afterwards.

>In other words, he did exactly the opposite >of what you accuse him of. But don't let >little things like facts stand in the way of >a good troll, eh?

I am hardly a troll. I provided my name and will stand by all my statements.

As for not having a clue about that timeframe, try googling "jon mittelhauser ncsa" and then get back to me.

The HTML 1.0 spec was formalized after TBL's first browser but he wrote the HTML spec first. What the heck do you think we based the first Mosaic version on?

However, his browser was a demonstration of the spec and never designed as a product. It was used by less than a thousand people.

In particular, my example was inline images which were added by myself and the rest of the Mosaic team (including the Chris Wilson in question) much to the chagrin of the "standards" people who wanted to spend weeks/months discussing every idea. We prioritized adding cool features.

I realize now that my statement: "I have almost always been on the non-standards side of the argument with Chris so hearing him being slammed by you guys is deliciously ironic but not at all fair to him... " is difficult to parse. I should have said "I have almost always been on the non-standards side of the argument AGAINST Chris". I was saying that I argued with Chris and he was on the standards side and I was on the other. So to hear him be attacked is ironic but unfair since he is a strong standards believer.

-Jon
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Talk is cheap.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
> However, his browser was a demonstration of the spec and never designed as a product. It was used by less than a thousand people.

Was it or was it not an implementation? Criticising him for shying away from implementing is more than a little unfair and misleading, wouldn't you say, given that he wrote the first implementation?

> As for not having a clue about that timeframe, try googling "jon mittelhauser ncsa" and then get back to me.

A number of people have posted under various misleading names here. Since you criticise TBL for not doing exactly what he did in fact do, I see no reason to assume that you are who you say you are.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Huh? I never said he didn't write a browser. In fact in my statement, I called him a developer. Here is my quote: "The web would never have existed in anything outside a lab had the people in charge of the standards (e.g. Tim B-L, etc) been the only developers. "

My statement is simply that he had a different mentality than we did. We were much more pragmatic.

My only other relevant statement was that TBL and others would often spend endless time debating a spec before ever trying to implement it. As a result, some of what was specified was basically impossible and other things were left very unanswered. Part of the problem with some of the early specs is that they were so ambiguous about the right way to handle stuff. I remember endless debates as to TABLE handling for example.

As for my identity, there is no real way to prove it... but when Chris returns from paternity leave, I am sure he will verify it if you really think somebody is trying to masquerade as an obscure early web guy...

-Jon
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Jrme Morlon dans le Journal du Net discute d'IE 7 et de ce qu'on peut en esprer en terme de support des standards du Web. Il prsente la pression exerce par le grignotage des parts de march d'IE par...
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Pour l'histoire de cette traduction du billet de Chris Wilson, voir mon billet prcdent.

IE et les Standards
Tout d'abord, je voudrais me prsenter. Mon nom est Chris Wilson ; Je suis le directeur de programme pour la...
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Asking my question again since I think it is tremendously important and I got no answer : what about Tasman on Windows ?

</Daniel>
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Jon,

You said:

> Note that they would be having this debate before ever trying to give any thought to implementation.

The fact of the matter is that they already got past the debate and implemented something. You seemed to be characterising them as uninterested in implementation. This is wrong.

I agree that there is a tradeoff between debate and implementation, but IMHO the web has suffered from too many developers implementing the first thing that came into their heads without thinking it through. The timeframe you are talking about is particularly plagued with things like this.

Examples:

http://www.nyct.net/~aray/htmlwg/frameprop.html

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.infosystems.www.authoring.site-design/msg/ca6986ec602b34b9

The web has a lot of cruft in it in the name of "pragmatism" that is actually "went ahead and implemented something before asking for outside opinions, and then decided it's easier to ignore the problems than reimplement it".

I wouldn't characterise that attitude as "As much as possible they worked with the standards groups."

As far as things go today, the W3C requires implementations before something becomes a recommendation now. That's a step in the right direction, but your argument seems to be built on the very shaky premise that you can either go off and implement something on your own, or be stuck in an ivory tower, with no happy medium where implementing and specifying can happen at a complementary pace. That's the attitude that got us in this mess to begin with.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
They deleted my post...

Ok.. let me ellaborate.

The secret: MSFT is paying W3C to delay both XHTML 2.0 and CSS 3.0 Recommendations so that they can implement them in IE7 when they are done tweaking with 'security' issues, they will launch, yet again, the best browser on the planet; thus, regain their 100% market share.

I am persistent, Bill. You know that I know that my designer buddies know that I want to keep designing with IE, but right now, what looks good in IE doesn't look so good in FF.

In essence, why even bother asking the public about what they want when you already know what you want?

---------------------------

Jon, I'm sorry but I gotta say this: dude, chill. This is turning more into a war between you and your pal. Shake hands and admit that we all lose when it comes to Microsoft. "We're not worthy."

-----------------------------

Mr. Wilson, the solution is simple. Listen to your customers. We pay. You, on the other hand, get paid.

-------------------------------

If I had 43 billion dollars for every time Microsoft buys their way to the top, my car would be in Bill Gates' garage. That's IF I didn't have to work overtime(for free) to fix bugs that shouldn't exist in the first place.

----------------------------------

It's like they love to get us all worked up, just so they can take away our pride.

At least the Mozilla team listens... for free.

At least the secret is out. Again.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003

> That's the attitude that got us in this mess to begin with.

And there is our fundamental disagreement. Unlike most of the people on this blog, I don't consider the Web a mess. I consider it an amazing success. I think the majority of the world would agree with me.

I will certainly agree that there is a lot of ugliness that needs to be improved. But I would assert that the biggest problem is that the rate of change has drastically slowed down. I would rather have 100 new features every 6 months even if 5 of them aren't 100% thought out. Code darwinism. :)

I realize that opinion will set me against everyone on this blog (due to who is reading this blog)...hmmm. maybe that does make me a troll. :)

I won't try to defend frames since I didn't think they were a good idea at the time either. However, never attribute to malice what is easier attributed to stupidity. Also, you make it sound like Netscape had months or years to flush out every idea. There was a lot of time in the real early days that Netscape was weeks/days from running out of cash. If we had waited months/years for "standards", the company wouldn't have existed and I don't believe the web would exist in anything resembling it's current shape (which rememeber I think is 99.9% good).

What was the biggest thing we got slammed for in the early days? Adding inline images via the IMG tag. What HTML addition caused the biggest (percentage) growth in usage? You know it. Text-only systems like Gopher had been around for years. Hypertext systems existed all over the place...

Enough of this. I just started posting because I thought it funny that Chris Wilson was getting slammed by the standards when he is 95% on your side. Just think if I was making the decisions? :)

-Jon
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
> Unlike most of the people on this blog, I don't consider the Web a mess. I consider it an amazing success.

I think it's both. Socially, it's a success. Technically, it's a mess. The two aren't mutually exclusive (and, conversely, they don't depend upon each other).

> But I would assert that the biggest problem is that the rate of change has drastically slowed down.

I agree here.

> I would rather have 100 new features every 6 months even if 5 of them aren't 100% thought out. Code darwinism. :)

The trouble is that the bad solutions just don't die. It only take as handful of popular sites to use something that's badly designed, and user-agents have to support it for a decade or more.

Again, I'd like to stress the point that it's not all or nothing. Not everything needs to be 100% thought out or standardised, but it would make a big difference if there was at least a little consideration of outside opinions and consensus before implementation. That doesn't require waiting around for months or overengineering.

Take nofollow as an example. The biggest problems anybody had with nofollow is that it was named stupidly, and underspecified (does the bot actually not follow, or does it just not award page rank?). One week on the W3C mailing list and that would have been ironed out. But since implementations were just dropped on us without warning or input, there was no chance to correct this, and now it will be "nofollow that might follow" for eternity.

Granted, it's not a big problem, just a small example of how a little discussion could solve obvious problems and make things simpler.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Support the...W3C DOM standard event model, the CSS :hover pseudo-classes on all elements and position:fixed in CSS. I'm also dying for all the float bugs to be fixed. FULL and CORRECT CSS2!!

PLEASE!! - I'm starting to get a lot of clients that explicitly want there sites to be optimized in FireFox
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Please make IE 7 and IE 6 run side by side, so you don't make people waste money on additional machines for testing.

Or, provide a developer mode of some sort to switch to IE 6 rendering engine.

It is very likely that when IE 7 comes out, IE 6 will still be most popular, for a VERY long time.

No matter what you do (and I ditto all those standards advocates!) please also make IE 7 run with IE 6 on the same machine somehow...
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
All your base are belong to us.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
keep up the good work Chris.

if IE is good for you, use it.
if not FF.

great to have different selections of browsers.
one has this flaw, one has that flaw..

for me, i like the orange better than the apple.
probably someone likes the apple more, so i give my apple to that person.=D
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The IE wiki has has a very well-written list of specifics, with "WHY" rationales for most of the requests. It appears to be more comprehensive than even the sum total of all comments on this thread.

http://channel9.msdn.com/wiki/default.aspx/Channel9.InternetExplorerSupportforCSS

http://channel9.msdn.com/wiki/default.aspx/Channel9.InternetExplorerStandardsSupport
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Chris, You say "Microsoft does respond to customer demand; web developers are our customers." and so far, everyone has asked for a standards compliant browser and transparient PNG support, and better security, so instead of partially supporting the W3C standards, Listen to your customers and web developers, we have spoken. Anything less is not acceptable.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
One simple request. Not sure if it has just been overlooked or it is a bug that has never been fixed bc your documentation states that you support it...

Please implement support for scrolling tables. It would be nice if I could present a data table and have the <th> elements fixed while the <tbody> scrolls.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Jim, for the record, I agree with basically everything in your last post.

Whenever it is possible, I think the more input received from smart people, the better. In most cases, these days, that is practical to do in parallel with specification and development.

I'm sure that Chris agrees since that was the point of all of this in the first place.

-Jon
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
what about margin-bottom: -..px This in combination with a <ol><li> item </li><li> item2 </li></ol> creates some "IE" fun on the website..

Good luck!
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Just rehashing what everyone else has said - comply with the standards. Completely. Nothing else is important.

I contract to the largest telecommunications company in australia who have recently decided to phase support of ie5 out by the end of 2005 and to phase ie6 out by the end of 2006 in favour of Firefox. Not because of any great benefits to the users but because of the massive benefits to the web devs - we don't want to develop for ie in its current state and either that needs to change or ie will die.

Oh, and something that frustrates me no end is ie's inability to correctly garbage collect circular references involving COM objects (DOM or ActiveX). Please fix that - it can't be that hard as many other browsers don't have this problem.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Chris,

You ask us what we want? OK!!...
Here it goes..........EVERYTHING!!
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Here are some additional things I would like to see; Most are not msdn material.

- capability to turn of tab browsing

- a simple one click feature that deletes all cookies, cached files, offline content, history, search history from google msn yahoo etc toolbars, auto complete, passwords, downloaded certificates, etceteras.

-logoff or ability to erase all stored passwords from RAM, so IE7 asks you to login in again if you refresh page. Sites should not have to ask you to close browser for security.

- icon cache - Support for better safari like favicon.ico support, no need to bookmark to show and use icons in URI bar

- a multi-setting control in toolbar that based on one of many settings: opens all subsequent clicks in a) new window, b) in new tab, c) same window, d) new window but minimized, d) new maximized window

- color coded and formatted view source

- search edit area with selectable provider: google, msn, ask jeeves

- better support for <OPTGROUP> consider heirarchical menu instead? better css support for <OPTGROUP>

- ability to drag buttons in the menu toolbar

- display "phis.br" prominently on statusbar in bold to avoid security issues with urls like: http://www.phis.br/i.aspx?site=http://www.paypal.com

- fix alignment bugs

- extend url length from 2083 characters

- do not implement tip of the day status bar

- Save as mhtml from a dropdown toolbar? The save icon should support a dropdown (similar to back button's dropdown) and show save as options directly

- html4.01, css2.1, etc for sure, but maintain backward compatibility
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The button tag has been mentioned already. However I think I should emphasize that it's not just a layout problem...

IE sends back the content of the <button> tag instead of its value. To make matters worse: if there is more than one button in the form, it behaves as if every button had been pressed, i.e. it sends back the name/content pair for all buttons in the form. So it's impossible to find out which button actually was clicked.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Support HTML 4.01 fully and CSS fully. Is that so hard?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Hey, how about support for transparent png. ;)
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I modified my personal weblog and I find another problem with IE: It doesn't support dotted borders, but only dashed borders, the weblog looks absolutely different (and very ugly) with dashed borders. So, as someone already had, I ask You to include dotted borders support.

Thanks!
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
MS would seem to have a good reason for not supporting all these standards - they bring us closer to a non-desktop based applications. Technologies such as XForms and SVG are designed to allow easy implementation of application-like functionality via the web browser and MS would be silly to allow that to flourish, when they make most of their income from the desktop and associated apps.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Siggy... Nice one. LOL

AS IF Microsoft would admit such things without blaming the USER first.

I say forget em.

Let's just all move on to FF. It works better anyway. And they listen.

SUN Microsystems should team up with FF to make all Java Script work in FF. Then they would own the market in no time. Or even take away Java Scripting from Microsoft all together for a dramatic end to IE, the problem maker.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Some of the problems...
float
float
float
float
float
100%
overflow

anyway you look at it, ms may say whatever I know the standards game is just a game(and annoyingly, firefox wins almost every round) and their biggest problem is having the current and the old versions behave the way they should behave. that is an impossible task considering the amount of projects tweaked to work how they are supposed to be working. those projects won't "behave" as "intended" should ie behave itself.
behold the behavior...
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Luc> [SUN Microsystems should team up with FF to make all Java Script work in FF. ]

FYI SUN Microsystem is in no way affiliated with Javascript, their turf is Java, Javascript is completely 100% independant from Java and standardized by the ECMA as ECMA-262 "ECMAScript" (http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-262.htm).

This is a common misconception caused by the somewhat close names, but Javascript has no relation with Java and doesn't "inherit" from it.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
What about IE and its HTTP headers being sent more effectively?

Currently, IE 6 (XP Home SP 2) sends out the ‘Accept’ header with a value of just ‘/’ which seems to indicate that IE is saying ‘I support everything and anything’, which isn’t the case. The ‘Accept-Charset’ header doesn’t seem to exist either.

While playing about with content negotiation with the ‘application/xhtml+xml’ string with Firefox and PHP, it made me realise that this could be used on a larger scale if IE played ball. Being able to see which content types the browser can support could allow web developers to be more specific with the content types they send.

Having any plug-ins also report themselves when installed would also be a bonus. For example, if someone installs the adobe PDF reader plug-in, then the ‘accept’ header should have its MIME type added to the header (application/pdf I believe?), or if an SVG plug-in becomes available, IE should send that MIME type as well (application/svg+xml I think?).

The ‘User-Agent’ string could be looked at as well. If what I hear is accurate, the IE team altered this to read ‘Mozilla/4.0’ to prevent IE from being locked out of Netscape only pages (is this story correct?). Seeing as this probably isn’t a problem any more, could IE start reporting itself in a simpler manor? For example, just ‘MSIE 7; XP Home SP2’.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
There are quite a few skeletons in the CSS closet. Most are caused by browser specific implementations. To that regard, it is easy (and trendy) to blame IE for being the largest deviator from accepted implementation standard.

I'm not a CSS guru and am still learning, but why am I forced to use tables to be able to vertically align block level elements? Sure I can use postition: relative and specify the height and width of the element, but I have to go through countless hoops just to get the thing to center vertically. They can't all be implementation problems. CSS2 has no easy way to center things vertically.

It is not easy to deal with and non-intuitive.

Most everything else about CSS I like. I like the seperation of presentation and content.

If IE does decide to implement some standards, add to those standards and expand the vertical align property to apply to ALL block level elements.

Thanks for reading.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
1st law of business

LISTEN TO YOUR CUSTOMERS

2nd law of business

DO WHAT YOU WANT TO FURTHER INCREASE THE MONOPOLY

3rd law of business

DISCOUNT 1st LAW IF YOU ARE MICROSOFT
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
How can anyone especialy Jon Mittelhauser be on the side of non-standards support. I utterly refuse to design non-standard webpages and accept that some pages on my site are not fully complient but most are and the main page proudly displays the W3C buttons to that effect. Chris is obviously going to impliament standards complience into IE and I pity anyone given the burdon of improving IE for it will be no easy task. You can easily add .net/ActiveX support to other browsers like FF so why dosn't MS just brand FF or licence the Opera browser code and add the relevent code support for Propriatary MS stuff like .NET. If .NET was released for use on alternative platforms that didn't use IE then more people would use it. I can see the (dis)advantages of websites being able to access your computer e.g. WGA.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Just posted my Microsoft Internet Explorer Suggestions at
http://www.ssw.com.au/SSW/Standards/BetterSoftwareSuggestions/InternetExplorer.aspx

Adam
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I'm in awe of Dean Edwards' IE7, considered by many to be the CSS rosetta stone for Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE), which also still happens to be the most widely used web browser on the planet. For the long-frustrated...
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Very hope to fix the iframe memory leaks ,it's an seriously bug in browser applications!
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
check out the following:
.left{
width: 150px;
float: left;
background-color: red;
}
.right{
width: 100%-200px;
min-width: 500px;
background-color: yellow;
}

<div class="left">xyz</div>
<div class="right">xyz</div>
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Everyone seems to said everything already, but just to emphasize the ones that should be easy for you guys to implement (there is no excuse to not have it by the version 7):

() PNG Alpha Transparency
() JPEG2000
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
<link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/x-icon" href="/favicon.ico">

or

<link rel="icon "type="image/png" href="/favicon.png">

what should I use?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Chris, please don't bother improving IE. It's just fine the way it is. No complaints. All anybody really wants is a few more cool proprietary features and a new look.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Ben, maybe you should look up the word "proprietary" before you post idiotic things. Proprietary and standards are two different things.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
That's not Ben as in Ben Goodger posting is it? ;-)

If you didn't know, the Acid2 test has silently gone live over at http://webstandards.org/act/acid2/ .

It seems to be a pretty advanced test ;-)

I've made some screenshots of how different browsers cope with it over at http://naylog.blogspot.com/2005/04/web-standards-acid2-test.html
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I'm in awe of Dean Edwards' IE7, considered by many to be the CSS rosetta stone for Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE), which also still happens to be the most widely used web browser on the planet. For the long-frustrated...
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
We’ve heard some great feedback on what web developers would like to see in IE7, both from the responses...
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Today the Web Standards Project and Microsoft have announced the formation of a collaborative Task Force that will provide technical help in moving Microsoft products like Visual Studio and ASP.NET closer to web standards....
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
IEBlog のエントリー IE and Standardsで、Chris Wilson氏がIE 7のWeb標準サポート強化を表明した。 Wilson氏は 1995年のIE 2.0のリリース直前にIE開発チームに参加し、2001年にIE 6.0をリリースした後はAvalonプロジェクトに関わっていたが、4ヶ月前にチームに戻ってきたとのこと。またIE開発チームに所属していた際、IEやHTML、DOM、XSL、i18nに関するW3CのワーキンググループにMicrosoft社の代表として参加してきたそうだ。Microsoft社のなかでも Web標準に最も関わりの深い人物のひとりと言ってよいだろう。以下、上記エントリーからの抜粋。 Additionally, with every subsequent major release of IE, we have expanded and improved our implementation of web standards, particularly CSS and HTML. When we shipped IE 6.0,...
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
January 01, 2003
At IEBlog Chris Wilson the lead program manager for the web platform in IE writes on how Intenet Explorer 7 would follow CSS2 standards. "In IE7, we will fix as many of the worst bugs that web developers hit as...
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January 01, 2003
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Anonymous
July 13, 2006
As all web designers know, Internet Explorer is the thorn in our collective flesh. Even with the dramatic improvements in IE7, it still finds ways to annoy. However, the nice chaps at Microsoft have gone some way to soothing our fevered brows.
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August 30, 2006
In an interesting post in the IE Blog, lead program manager Chris Wilson explains the current state of affairs in the touchy realm of "IE and standards support". It's an interesting read, and he makes a few cogent points. He...
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November 21, 2006
After a long wait, the newest Internet Explorer version is out, IE 7 release ( Team blog entry with download link). Without a doubt the most interesting 'feature' -- as far as us application developers are concerned -- is...
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