Share via

Documenting Standards in IE

  • Article

This post discusses some of the work we’re doing on the IE team to fulfill our commitment to document our support of web standards. A good starting point is Microsoft’s interoperability principles, something we’ve written about here on this blog before, and a principle that’s easy to see in action in our products, like IE8.

The essence of interoperability in this context is that the same web page markup works the same way across different browsers. There are many challenges in getting to this goal. Even with the best intentions, as an industry we are still learning and working through how to do this well. You can look at how different tests run even today in modern browsers (for example here at 19:57). You can look at how standards evolve, like how quickly CSS2 became CSS 2.1, or the process to finish CSS 2.1 and make it a final Recommendation, or what happened between XHTML and HTML5. You can look at the challenge of delivering interoperable products while specifications are under construction (as in the case of 802.11 wireless). There are many challenges, and the web standards process, primarily at the W3C and similar organizations, is an important means to get the different communities involved to a consensus agreement.

The work in developing a public CSS 2.1 test suite and contributing it to the W3C, our recent work on different aspects of HTML5, and the improvements in IE9’s interoperability we showed at PDC are all examples of our principles in action. You can try out some of the tests yourself, in different browsers and on different operating systems.

As part of our commitment to interoperability, we’re going to make more interoperability information available about IE and keep it up-to-date. Today we’re publishing the first pieces of documentation here. These documents are drafts, and are not final. We will post more here on the IE blog about interoperability documentation (e.g. how we engineered creating this documentation, the process for keeping the documentation up to date).

Thanks –
Dean Hachamovitch

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Thanks for these articles, I enjoyed them!

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Thanks for sharing. eine Seite ist entworfen worden, very nice Glückwünsche;)

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Very interesting I will wait for iexplorer 10

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    @Mark - Rebecca's logic makes perfect sense.  Just apply a little thought, she's correct. @AntiTroll - you're sound like your antithesis.  Todd was expressing his opinion, I believe something he is allowed to do in a Democracy.  You however didn't assert your opinion, you make a smart comment, hence you're an idiot.  Whether Todd's right or not about IE 9, IE is losing share generally and I believe within the next 18 months - 2 years will be below 50% as Safari, Opera and Firefox continue to improve (especially Opera, it rocks the desktop right now).

  • Anonymous
    February 24, 2010
    Will you guys have a post with on the changes made in the json update made avaible on 2-23-10 or could you use some pull and talk to whoever posts on the jscript blog to write up a post on the changes made?

  • Anonymous
    February 24, 2010
    Could you please publicly commit to supporting SVG ? This post contains a link to the SVG working group update, and Microsoft will be presenting SVG at MIX, but there has been no official statement of upcoming browser support for the standard.

  • Anonymous
    February 24, 2010
    Every web developer knows that the open source browser projects do a far better job than IE with interoperability.  I don't really like the attitude that seems to be expressed in this post that "standards are hard".  That's probably true, but why does the leading market share browser do the worst job?  Surely it is because of inadequate focus and resources applied to the problem, relative to the amount of pain that it causes for everyone developing web sites.

  • Anonymous
    February 24, 2010
    "Every web developer knows that the open source browser projects do a far better job than IE with interoperability" -- data please. Not about the 2001 browser either, unless your data is about interop with other 2001 browsers. IE8's implementation of CSS 2.1 has thousands of tests behind it. Not sure where this post says "hard" -- it is realistic about what's involved in it.

  • Anonymous
    February 24, 2010
    >>>>"standards are hard" Great lets fire the IE team and get new people in, cause they can't get the job done!

  • Anonymous
    February 24, 2010
    @mogden, IE 4/5/6 blew Netscape 4 away back in 2001 and at some point Netscape went from closed to open source. PDF? Are you guys serious? You're trying to make the web faster and then force me to wait  for Adobe's can't-load-in-under-thirty-seconds-without-an-SSD-and-thousand-dollar-CPU software? Please stick to (X)HTML.

  • Anonymous
    February 24, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    February 24, 2010
    @Tom: I've passed this feedback to the JScript team and hopefully we'll be able to publish information about this shortly.

  • Anonymous
    February 24, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    February 24, 2010
    @EricLaw[msft]- thank you for the update about your json update.

  • Anonymous
    February 24, 2010
    @Eric - are you familiar with Chrome Frame?

  • Anonymous
    February 24, 2010
    @Will I am, yes, but that's merely crutch and doesn't allow Microsoft to benefit from not having to focus on continuing development of a rendering engine.  Using Webkit would free up those resources and developers to work on something innovative.  As it is they're not even talking about CSS3 meanwhile the entire world has already started using CSS3 and is having to worry about still making it look good in Internet Explorer. Switching to Webkit would win over the hearts of tens of thousands of developers across the planet.  The entire web design / development community would praise Microsoft.  If you want to win a browser war; fulfilling a collective dream is an excellent place to start :)

  • Anonymous
    February 24, 2010
    YouTube dropping IE6 on March 13! http://mashable.com/2010/02/23/youtube-ie6/ about time!

  • Anonymous
    February 24, 2010
    @Eric I'd love for people to stop suggesting IE use WebKit. As much as I like the fact that WebKit is stuffed full of CSS3 goodness it's better in the long term that there are many, not fewer, interpretations (rendering engines/browser vendors) of standards. No single rendering engine in example is bug-free on my site which reinforces in a way one of the bits that Dean posted about. If it wasn't for Microsoft then how would the web be different from today? Consider things such as AJAX and favicons when composing your answer.

  • Anonymous
    February 24, 2010
    @ Eric -- what webkit? there are so many to choose from, with so many differences: http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2009/10/there_is_no_web.html

  • Anonymous
    February 24, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    February 24, 2010
    @John It's easy to post a hypothetical "what if" and say we wouldn't have technology A... well that's true but the need was there and a solution was inevitable. It may not have been AJAX but it would be something similar. Let's not pretend that multiple rendering engines were responsible for that.  Your argument is based on a classic logical fallacy. I'm not saying there shouldn't be additional choices here.  What I'm saying is that Microsoft's implementation is lagging behind and it's at a cost that the entire market bares... Microsoft isn't competing with their rendering engine they're sandbagging the industry.  Maybe I'm slanted because I have to deal with this mess nearly every day of my life but there's a reason people are recommending this course of action. How much money has IE6 cost this industry as a whole in development time? The cost is MASSIVE and it's arrogant to shrug that off.  This fact has left a very bad taste in the mouths of web developers everywhere, there's a lot of discontent towards Microsoft... Why do you think everyone is celebrating the death of IE6?  They'll do the same with IE8 if something doesn't change...

  • Anonymous
    February 24, 2010
    I will say it again: please IE if you will replace Trident, please choose Gecko, not Webkit.  Gecko has proven maturity and is totally supportive of web standars.

  • Anonymous
    February 24, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    February 24, 2010
    @Eric I couldn't agree more with you. I'll take a look at your blog, it also looks interesting ;)

  • Anonymous
    February 24, 2010
    You aren't "documenting standards"! This is just Microsoft's bug report! Microsoft is NOT any standards committee so how can you be documenting it? By documenting them, does this mean "won't fix"?

  • Anonymous
    February 24, 2010
    @Rob: the phrasing in the first sentence is more correct: "to document our support of web standards". The IE team only makes changes to standards support in new browser versions.

  • Anonymous
    February 24, 2010
    >Why do you think everyone is celebrating the death of IE6? Uh, because it's very nearly 10 years old? Firefox 1.0 is only half as old and web developers aren't happy to target that browser version either.

  • Anonymous
    February 24, 2010
    It's enough already. What we want is a standard conformance　implementation. Just support the DOM level 2, and 3, and XHTML, SVG, HTML5. I can write code that works perfect in any other browser.

  • Anonymous
    February 24, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    February 24, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    February 24, 2010
    @Luddite, Most of the world doesn't care about HTML either but most web developers do care about CSS3. Since when is HTML5, CSS3, SVG and XHTML an "open source standard"? They are standards we all follow despite what Microsoft tells you to believe.

  • Anonymous
    February 24, 2010
    @John re: "interpretations... of standards." That's exactly the issue! If IE used WebKit we wouldn't need to worry about IE "Interpreting" the standards incorrectly. The whole point of standards is to AGREE on how something should work.  Each vendor can internally do whatever they want, but if the web page says make this with a 5px radius, then it should have a 5px radius. End of story. Where IE fell down and lost the respect of developers was when IE totally failed to implement things correctly. .getElementById(id) was a ridiculously simple spec yet IE managed to double-bork it.  It wasn't case sensitive and it matched on attributes that were not the "id" attribute. .setAttribute(name,value) was the same disaster. A total fail on the implementation level. Even when IE did get things right when they invented their own properties/methods e.g. .innerHTML they still messed it up!  It is an awesome property to get/set the inner HTML but there were 2 major flaws.  1.) It didn't work on all elements and the ones it failed on were the most desired. 2.) the 'get' part was horrible returning the absolute worst version of spaghetti HTML markup you can imagine. I seriously hope that IE9 has fixed this and returns clean, exactly as defined HTML. As for AJAX and favicons - yes they were a good idea.  The initial implementation for AJAX via ActiveX was a huge mistake (later fixed) and the favicons was good... but auto-downloading when a link is specified elsewhere is an implementation fail... and not supporting PNG favicons is also a major fail. PS the CAPTCHA is still a major fail on this blog. I guarantee the number I typed was correct.

  • Anonymous
    February 24, 2010
    @mike: If you don't understand how Webkit also interprets standards, then you don't really understand much about browser development. You should go back and read the posts by the IE team about how they're engaging with the SVG working group about ambiguities in that spec. The differences in implementation between the "standards compliant" browsers is sorta shocking. The same applies to CSS2.1; read the standard, then read the hundreds or thousands of ambiguities that exist in the standard. No standard is perfect. That's why the W3C requires both 2+ interoperable implementations AND a test suite to have a final standard.

  • Anonymous
    February 25, 2010
    @John (ps I was originally pointing to John A B the 3rd) I understand there are ambiguous parts and they need discussing - no qualms with that. However the black&white issues that leave no imagination to the implementation - they have to be rock solid.  IE8 started shaping up here (only if you run in standards mode), but previous to that IE was a mess. However since I haven't had a chance to test IE9 I'll save my comments until there is something real to test. I do want to submit a bug on the IE dev toolbar though. When you are in Script debugging mode (possibly other spots) double clicking a word in the code highlights the entire word (very basic understood and expected text highlighting implementation) however if you double click a word in single quotes (e.g. 99% of your JavaScript string values, it happily highlights and selects the closing single quote. Not only is this useless, but it breaks the established behavior. Please fix.

  • Anonymous
    February 25, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    February 25, 2010
    @John: the documentation we published is available as PDF (for people who wish to download it and read offline or print) and as browsable HTML content in the online library. Occasionally we do make this type of document available first in PDF to get it to you sooner while we do the extra work to format for the MSDN publishing system. All the documentation we published yesterday is available online in HTML as well as PDF.

  • Anonymous
    February 25, 2010
    @Don, please see http://blogs.msdn.com/ieinternals/archive/2009/06/22/HTTPS-Mixed-Content-in-IE8.aspx for discussion on that topic.

  • Anonymous
    February 25, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    February 25, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    February 25, 2010
    @Lenny: this is entirely off-topic. Why not comment on the proper post? >the question prompt is now a double negative. No, it's not. The prompt is "Do you want to view only securely-delivered content?"  There are zero negatives in that sentence. >the user should be able to "dismiss" the warning for a site they trust You've just demonstrated that you don't understand the mixed content threat. You should go re-read Eric's post.

  • Anonymous
    February 25, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    February 25, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    February 25, 2010
    Quick correction for @TheLudditeDeveloper: Microsoft did not invent CSS; that credit belongs to Hakon Wium Lie (from Opera) and Bert Bos (W3C). It is, however, true that IE3 was the first implementation of CSS1 in a major browser.

  • Anonymous
    February 25, 2010
    @ Dean Hachamovitch [MSFT] > A good starting point is Microsoft’s interoperability principles The first starting point with any Microsoft-controlled webpages, including those talking, discussing about standards, conformance, interop repeated commitments, etc is http://validator.w3.org/ This is true for the first entrance microsoft.com webpage to the last (and most recent) created microsoft.com webpage. http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.microsoft.com/interop/principles/default.mspx has 76 errors and does not even use a strict DTD. Gérard Talbot

  • Anonymous
    February 25, 2010
    @ Dean Hachamovitch [MSFT] > You can look at how different tests > run even today in modern browsers > (...) > The work in developing a public CSS > 2.1 test suite and contributing it > to the W3C [MS-CSS21]: Internet Explorer Cascading Stylesheets (CSS) 2.1 Conformance Document 3 Appendix A: Test Suite Failures en-us/library/ff405746%28VS.85%29.aspx lists 18 tests which fail in IE8 but those were regarding the 2009 pre-alpha test suite. Some of the tests I created and then filed as bugs at connect IE beta feedback (even in some cases, 9 months before IE8 RTW eg bug 354316) which were valid bugs, confirmed bugs are not even mentioned in that document ... and they are still unfixed in IE8. Today, we know IE8 fails at least 150 testcases from the CSS 2.1 test suite (build 20100127; alpha 1) and I approximate that about 100 (or more?) Microsoft submitted testcases need to be updated, modified, corrected and/or clarified. The whole [MS-CSS21].pdf document has not a single issue to report regarding IE8 or IE8's most/best standards compliant rendering mode. So, was it really required/useful/helpful/relevant to release such (even if preliminary) document now in an IE blog post titled "Documenting Standards in IE"? I personally filed a bunch of valid, confirmed HTML 4 bugs at connect IE beta feedback (and a few of them are still unfixed and postponed) and none of them are mentioned in that [MS-HTML401].pdf document. Documenting Standards at microsoft.com starts with publishing error free webpages using valid markup code and valid CSS code, especially all those MSDN webpages supposedly explaining/lecturing/tutorializing/examplifying how to author webpages. A convincing starting point with regards to Microsoft’s interoperability principles starts with publishing error free webpages using valid markup code and valid CSS code at all times and as a Microsoft policy. alttags.org/web-standards/does-microsoft-care-about-web-standards/ gtalbot.org/BrowserBugsSection/MSIE7Bugs/CWilsonMSIE7AndCSSCompliance.html#microsoftcommitment Gérard Talbot

  • Anonymous
    February 25, 2010
    IE should use Webkit. Even with hundreds of comments similar to this, it is not repeated enough times.

  • Anonymous
    February 25, 2010
    @ John > The same applies to CSS2.1; read > the standard, then read the > hundreds or thousands of > ambiguities that exist > in the standard. > No standard is perfect. Your statement is over-excessively exaggerated. There is a list of ambiguities or issues requiring to be untangled, clarified and fixed. Most of those issues have been already fixed and closed. There is not thousands of ambiguities in CSS 2.1. There is not hundreds of ambiguities in CSS 2.1. And they are being discussed, addressed. See for yourself: wiki.csswg.org/spec/css2.1#current-issues regards, Gérard Talbot

  • Anonymous
    February 25, 2010
    @Gérard: How many web browsers have you implemented exactly? For someone so keen to point out bugs, it's a shame you don't devote the same level of attention to standards as you do to implementations. <<The whole [MS-CSS21].pdf document has not a single issue to report regarding IE8 or IE8's most/best standards compliant rendering mode.>> You clearly did not read the document. Look for the string "IE8 Mode" in the text. You're welcome.

  • Anonymous
    February 25, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    February 25, 2010
    @Rob Parsons, IE did not innovate Developer AddOns as these were in Firefox and Opera long ago.

  • Anonymous
    February 25, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    February 25, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    February 25, 2010
    Ignoring all the other commenters who see this as anothere excuse to hit on old, current or even future versions of IE, I for one welcome the decision to map interoperability between IE and other browsers. Will the information be a comparison between IE and other browsers, or IE and W3 standards (and those "standards" still going through the process)?

  • Anonymous
    February 25, 2010
    @Gary: we are documenting where IE has variations from certain web standards including some from W3C. The reference point is the standard specification. We document final approved standards now and when relevant standards going through the process become final we will document those too.

  • Anonymous
    February 25, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    February 25, 2010
    I meant to sum up: The dialog should present a yes/no question that is either: load the scary stuff - yes/no or load everything - yes/no attempting to rephrase it as: load only stuff that meets a condition - yes/no just confuses the user and forces them to pause. I'd recommend that everyone on the IE staff get a copy of Steve Krug's book: "Don't make me think" http://is.gd/9cOaf Its well worth the read and will point out why the new dialog is bad and how it fails to clarify a simple question for the user to answer.

  • Anonymous
    February 25, 2010
    Rebecca, your "logic" makes no sense to me. I think the problem here is that change is always confusing for some. But none of this has anything to do with the topic of this post. Let's stay on topic, shall we?

  • Anonymous
    February 25, 2010
    @Mark - yes we are all going off topic here but Dan brought up a good point. The dialog changed, the behavior changed, and the new dialog is confusing and illogical. We've all found the dialog to be annoying and awkward to read it is just that now that Dan has pointed it out we're bringing up the reasons why the new dialog has made things worse than the original dialog that was simple and to the point. I think this post would have had more comments on topic if it had been posted 4 years ago.  We all care deeply about standards but we all gave up on IE supporting them when IE7 was released without including any JavaScript improvements.

  • Anonymous
    February 25, 2010
    Hi IE team, I have an experience want to share. Some days ago I uninstall a svg plug-in and IE begins to crash when visiting acid3 test website(it crash when it reaches 12/100, at this point usually there is a top yellow bar ask for running MSXML, but it doesn't before it crash) I tried no-addon/in-private mode, reset setting in Option page, but still problem exists. XML DOM Document in "Manage Add-ons" showed "Enabled". Finally I have a trial to do install msxml3.msi, this fix the crash on acid3 page. It would be nice if IE can report source of crash in next browser start-up, or a tool to do self-test on its dependencies?

  • Anonymous
    February 25, 2010
    Wow. The IE team never ceases to amaze. Basically, this post says "keeping up with standards is tough". You have the market share... please develop a PROPER browser, or do what you do in Europe worldwide: give the people a CHOICE. http://opentochoice.org/en/

  • Anonymous
    February 25, 2010
    [sarcasm] I for one welcome our new "Do you want to view only the webpage content that was delivered securely" overlord! [/sarcasm] I think we can all agree that the new warning dialog is a disaster. If you are asking the user an "important" question and the answer they need to provide isn't clear there is a problem. With the old dialog, pressing the [X] or Escape would dismiss the dialog and Decline the prompt (e.g. no mixed content) which made sense. With the new dialog, pressing the [X] or Escape does the same thing EXCEPT it dismisses by ACCEPTING the default buttons' action (e.g. Yes) - this goes TOTALLY AGAINST all UI behavior concepts in Windows. I hope this prompt gets fixed in IE9.  Users deserve better, readable, simple interfaces.

  • Anonymous
    February 25, 2010
    The only thing we need is:  * addEventListener and event capture  * standard Stylesheet  * native application/xhtml+xml support  * <canvas>  * no VBScript and no COM, (maybe DLR and Managed assemblies, explicitly enable COM by user)  * SVG  * XML namespaces

  • Anonymous
    February 25, 2010
    the only thing we need is (also): CSS vertical-align CSS rounded corners CSS opacity (that doesn't use/rely on filters) CSS rgba() DOM NodeTypes declared e.g. TEXT_NODE=3 DOM Mutation events JavaScript .cloneNode() (full support) JavaScript .getElementsByTagName() (full support) JavaScript ability to change "type" attribute JavaScript .getElementsByName() (full support) JavaScript .innerHTML support on ALL elements that can contain HTML! HTTP Referrer - needs to be sent on ALL requests regardless of origin HTTP requests for favicons should respect link tags that specify a desired favicon and not make a request for a root/favicon.ico (this would also include support for all valid web image types (GIF,PNG,JPG)) Items inside res://ieframe.dll or res://C:{Winpath}system32IEFRAME.dll or res://wdsShell.dll should NOT be copied into the IE cache folder (no HTML, CSS or JS from the DLL) and a whole bunch more things so that IE is almost kind of sort of caught up to other browsers.

  • Anonymous
    February 25, 2010
    >I think we can all agree ROFL! You must be new here.

  • Anonymous
    February 25, 2010
    guesses:  Managed, not Native  DirectX, not GDI  WPF, not WinForm  Future, or DIE.

  • Anonymous
    February 26, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    February 26, 2010
    Does it really matter what is in IE9? It's not like anyone will use it. Heck, I don't think I've even touched IE7 or IE8 since they were released. I don't even develop for IE unless it's I'm forced too - why bother. The whole thing is laughable. I love how you try and play it up as "embracing standards" when the only reason you started developing Internet Explorer again is because you were losing market share to better browsers.

  • Anonymous
    February 26, 2010
    >It's not like anyone will use it. Yeah, it's not like IE is the browser used by far more users than any other browser. Oh, wait. It is exactly like that. Troll elsewhere.

  • Anonymous
    February 26, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    February 26, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    February 27, 2010
    AAT: I know math is hard, but when IE8's numbers are bigger than anyone elses (and they are, worldwide) that means that IE8 is the "dominant" browser version. When all IE browser versions combined have nearly twice the marketshare of all competitors combined, that's means IE is the "dominant" browser. Marian: Video game web browsers necessarily have dramatically different use cases than desktop browsers. Steam's move is basically meaningless.

  • Anonymous
    February 27, 2010
    While I believe Microsoft is making great efforts in getting back in the "league" with Internet Explorer 9, I also think they're still being way too vague. There's blog items on documenting standards now, there's news about joining the SVGWG and even proposals to help editing the 2D Canvas documents. Next to this, however, there's nothing confirmed. It's unclear whether SVG will be available in IE9, how far CSS and HTML/DOM support will go, also in terms of new tags (including CANVAS, and, more importantly, VIDEO due to the Theora/H264 debate), or which version of the ECMAScript Standards will be implemented. Mitch 74's statement basically said the same thing; all other browser vendors have open development processed, frequent snapshots, beta versions and sometimes even alpha- or nightly versions of their software. There's public bug trackers, mailing lists and roadmaps sharing their visions. Their support of web standard is visible through active participation in the WhatWG and W3C mailinglists. Microsoft, however, still barely communicates. Open up already, invite a bunch of people to your internal mailing lists and get feedback on your plans and ideas. Be concrete instead of spreading hints and rumours like you're doing now, with these posts. Listening to your users does not mean exclusively listening to people within Microsoft who happen to use your browser, it also includes listening to web developers, other browser vendors and basically everyone who might get in touch with the software at one point or another. Getting back in the league on the technical side of things really isn't everything, you have to get back in the league in terms of participating in standards, openness and communication as well, and right now I'm truly worried about those aspects.

  • Anonymous
    February 27, 2010
    Maybe Microsoft's trump card will be to release WMV and WMA as open specifications for web implementation, meaning no more worries about patents creeping up, as Microsoft will be giving up theirs for use within HTML5 <video> and <audio> elements. If Microsoft do this, I'll forgive every bug IE has ever brought on us :)

  • Anonymous
    February 28, 2010
    @Chris - Uhm... I don't think I'll ever be able to forgive every bug IE has brought on us... likely not even one. Just finished watching the Olymics where the world comes together to celebrate sport - it was awesome! I just wish the world could come together and drop IE6 and IE7. The world would truly be a better place and the Internet would thank everyone for a better web. Please everyone... make 2010 the year that IE6 dies and IE7 gets its eviction notice. The web wants to move on - only IE is holding it back.

  • Anonymous
    February 28, 2010
    @evan the feeling is mutual.  To see all the hate for IE6 in realtime just follow this link on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#search?q=IE6 Only a few days until the funeral: http://ie6funeral.com/ Unbelievable that the most exciting moment in Web Development is not a new feature, a new technology, or a new browser...... but the death of an old one. Fare well IE6! You won't be missed!

  • Anonymous
    February 28, 2010
    Can anybody help me with this question: Internet Explorer remembers my username and passwords (e.g. for gmail.com). Only one username and password is associated with this website. Can IE fill this info automatically so I only have to click 'sign in' (like Firefox). Currenty I have to click the username field and select the stored username. Thanks.

  • Anonymous
    March 01, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    March 01, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    March 01, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    March 01, 2010
    @EricLaw - this "link scanner" type plugin... might it be made by a company with 3 out of the following 26 letters? "AbcdefGhijklmnopqrstuVwxyz" Since I might have said application installed but have said link scanner disabled could it still be causing interference? Note I have Fiddler installed to redirect all wininet.dll traffic for monitoring and when IE is working, I see all my localhost traffic just fine. I also do not have a certain S&D anti-malware app installed so it isn't that.

  • Anonymous
    March 01, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    March 01, 2010
    @Harold Yo might conisder uninstalling that anti-malware product and use Micrsoft Security Essentials in stead. That has also a lot less CPU footprint

  • Anonymous
    March 01, 2010
    @EricLaw: Thanks, can you make this a feature for the next version of Internet Explorer?

  • Anonymous
    March 01, 2010
    @hAL: why not both? In S&D's case, it's not that difficult to have it installed but non-resident (you need to -gasp uncheck a couple checkboxes on install), so as to run it once in a while to ensure your system's clean... As for installing newer IE versions with service packs... No. For a few reasons.

  • SPs are supposed to be a collection of system fixes, and at best update a few libraries that retain backward compatibility; as it stands, IE 8 is not backward compatible with IE 6. It is also worth noting that if you install your SP through Windows update, then you probably got IE 8 already anyway. Those that don't, don't use WU anyway.
  • that wouldn't help in XP's case: since it went to 'extended support' phase, it won't get a SP4. And anyway other OSes will either stop being supported in a few months (Win2k) or already have a more modern browser (Vista, 7). However, if it were possible to slipstream IE 8 in a XP install CD, now THAT would be great! Or slipstream Vista SPs and IE 8 in Vista install DVDs, or with Seven... I must admit that while installing Vista is fast, updating it is doggone SLOW. But this is not the place.

  • Anonymous
    March 01, 2010
    @Mitch74 Harold was not referring to Spybot S&D. But on S&D as you mention it. Even when not a resident scanner it was shown to interfere with IE8 workings when this browserversion was released by means of overpopulating the restrited sites list.

  • Anonymous
    March 02, 2010
    I don't think there was a conclusion stated about the broken mixed-content dialog. Since the Feedback site is now down I can't track the bug there :-( Can we get a status update on whether it will be fixed in IE9 or not? Additionally when it is fixed will it be back-ported to IE8 installations too? It seems quite strange that this bug made it past QA before shipping.  Is this because MSFT is still using the Waterfall programming method?

  • Anonymous
    March 02, 2010
    @hal: What part of http://blogs.msdn.com/ieinternals/archive/2009/06/22/HTTPS-Mixed-Content-in-IE8.aspx do you fail to read as "By design"?

  • Anonymous
    March 02, 2010
    @Literacy Trouble reading names ?

  • Anonymous
    March 03, 2010
    @Literacy - I think we all read the other article no problem. What we're pointing out is that the new dialog is still a failure - and in most peoples opinion is now actually worse than the original since the dialog is essentially backwards. If Microsoft would like to address the comments and confirm/deny that they are going to address the usability/readability of the dialog in IE.next that would be great.  Being silent on the issue indicates 1 of 2 things. Either; A.) they are naive to believe that there is no issue and haven't stepped back to look at this with fresh eyes. or B.) they do intend to fix this - however until they have a solution in place that they are ready to push to developers (eg. IE9 beta 1) they would rather not talk about it until there is something to show that is better. Unfortunately silence is perceived as (A) not (B)

  • Anonymous
    March 03, 2010
    The old dialog was negative with the normally-correct response being no, while the new dialog is positive with the normally-correct response being yes. The text itself is debatably clunky, and I don't really have an opinion on it one way or the other, but the current dialog is clearly not backwards.

  • Anonymous
    March 03, 2010
    I think it's funny that everyone is so excited about the mixed content screen. You only see this screen when the website has a bug and doesn't know how to use SSL properly. And yes, there are some sites that don't use SSL right, and IE warns the user. It is funny to me that there's so much whining at Microsoft, and not more people complaining that the other browsers are not as safe, and not more people complaining to the websites that aren't using SSL correctly. But I guess nobody ever got fired for blaming Microsoft. And it's easy for the lazy!

  • Anonymous
    March 03, 2010
    @Eric - I agree. There's no good reason why Microsoft should continue developing their own rendering engine, when they're never going to catch up with the competition in terms of standards compliance. Adopt Gecko or Webkit (or Opera's Presto for that sake) - I don't care. If you're worried about backward compatibility with legacy intranet applications - include Trident as well, and provide a compatibility mode, which will let the user set up a list of websites to be rendered with Trident.

  • Anonymous
    March 04, 2010
    @Sylvain Galineau [MSFT] - thanks for the correction. @whydontmicrosoftusewebkitpeople  When IE was the only game in town it fully satisfied nearly all users.  Today we all have a choice.  The price we pay for this choice and daily innovation is a few inconsistancies. If eveyone still used IE then there would be no inconsistancies. @MicrosoftDevs Keep up the good work. Versions of IE continue to get better and IE9 is eagerly awaited by many.

  • Anonymous
    March 05, 2010
    The comment has been removed