If you're doing any webdev, you'll start to dislike IE at some point. You'll abhor every single line of its code and all of its 47 million gotos. If you take a standards compliant browser, you would need at least 20k lines of very weird extra code to simulate IE's colorful bug-fest. For each version there are dozens of different well known bugs, and an infinite number of super rare special case glitches. Somewhere in its code must be a big fat easter egg switch block, which uses some kind of checksum to trigger some "funny" subroutines if you've set a background-image.
It's really that bad.
Actually it's even worse than that. Most people don't realize that it took Microsoft over 10 (ten!) years to implement fundamental specs completely. It took 'em over 10 years to support PNG correctly, and it also took em over 10 years to support CSS 1.0 completely. IE7 was the first version, which happens to support that kind of, well, dated technology.
I wonder how long it will take 'em to support things like :target or :nth-child. With their current release cycle it's only a matter of another 10 years. IE9 might actually support this. If we're lucky that is.
But why is it like that? Don't they realize that they have a lot of responsibility? Each year billions of dollars are flushed down the toilet, because making a site work in IE is akin to building a house out of vegan friendly pudding. This takes of course some extra time, which means things get more expensive. At the end of the day it's the customer (not the client) who has to pay.
The average IE-using Joe isn't aware of that, however. He also thinks that patents are something great, which makes a product magically better instead of more expensive. He even watches advertisement on TV, which brags about the two dozen patents they filed, and is amazed by all that "innovation". 5 razor blades instead of 4! Pwoar!
It's a sad world, really.
Right. Back to IE. It's crap, it's lagging behind (slowing everything down), and it costs everyone money (Microsoft included). Isn't Microsoft afraid that it could somehow damage their reputation? Why don't they put more money into it? I can't imagine they can't spend at least as much as Opera does. Maybe there is some cocaine/crack monkey jumping through the office screaming "Developers! Developers! Developers!" all the time... I don't know. Well, it would explain something.
The biggest question is of course: Why don't they fix it? Or why don't they just license Opera? Should be cheaper, right?
They are apparently fully aware that it's broken. E.g. before the IE7 release they talked about the "interpretation of the standards" (shudder), which makes it sound like it's deliberately broken. But Microsoft doesn't do anything without a reason. Everything is carefully calculated by coldblooded managers, wearing silk underwear.
A frighteningly plausible motif is the artificial Windows dependency for web designers. IE is so super quirky that you have to check everything in at least two IE versions... all the time! As a professional or semi-professional web developer it's something you cannot avoid. With approximately 20 billion web pages in the web that bogus tactic is certainly worth it.
Comments
Check multiple IE versions
The thing I barely concealed an ironic smirk about is that with IE7 out, Windows Users are unable to downgrade and check their sites with IE6 - so they have to use virtualization to have both (with all the slowness that occurs).
With Wine and ies4linux, I can run IE5, 5.5, 6 and even the IE7 rendering engine (though with IE6 Interface) on the same desktop - much faster than through VirtualPC or VMware - and aside Firefox, Konqueror, Opera and lynx (for the visual impaired).
The main problem with MSIE is that it is not only a browser, but a renderer used for a lot more than only the Internet Explorer itself. Ask the wine guys how many programs just started to work when the Gecko ActiveX module was in place... so while trying to do everything at once, it loses the ability to do what it should be intended for: rendering Web Pages correctly.
Greetings, LX
Certainly an issue
It's certainly an issue. Fortunately there are some hacks for Windows, too (like Multiple IE and IE7 standalone). But it's of course pretty annoying that you have to go that route in first place. I guess Microsoft wants you to get several Windows licenses. ;)
IE is one huge problem
Hi.
I took up webdesign and was astonished how little Ms has achieved in 20 years.
Most designs work in FF, Mozilla, Opera etc but IE makes trouble.
I alway advise people to leave IE and use FF or Opera because these simply work better.
Lately I came to see a logfile of a webshop where unfortunately IE 5.5 and 6 were the
majority of entries. It seems FOSS needs a much stronger lobby from all of us.
Jan
Thank god IE4 wasn't standards compliant
Thank god IE4 wasn't standards compliant.
Otherwise, we'd have missed several key innovations.
IE4 introduced non-standard ActiveX controls without which Flash would not exist.
(Java Applets, after decrying the trusted ActiveX model, adopted it).
IE 4 introduced embedded fonts, which have yet to be addressed by the current standard.
IE 4 introduced the non-standard XMLRequest, without which Ajax would not exist.
IE 4 allowed you to turn ANY tag into an scriptable object via the ID attribute, something that other browsers finally caught up to. Why would I want that? It's not part of the standard.
IE 4 had a suite of non-standard ActiveX controls for integrating 2D and 3D graphics - something yet to be addressed by the current standard.
IE 4 introduced a suite of Form controls, better than the crippled HTML controls - something yet to be addressed by the current standard. I had full interactive grids back in VB3.0, why isn't this part of the standard in 2008?
IE4 introduced EXTRA CSS attributes that will eventually be adopted, and Microsoft will be given no credit. Anyone here like the cursor, a:hover, dropshadow attributes? I certainly did. Whoops! Not a standard, let's get rid of them!
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I hope IE8 leapfrogs the current CRAP standards. I'd like to see what a web browser could really be i.e. Give me a 3D hardware accelerated browser with a lean & fast markup & scripting language. The current "standard" mess of html, ajax, javascript, stylesheets is not something anyone wants. It's a horrible comprimise of ideas held together by toothpicks and gum, and geared for people that like to print things.
Example of current malaise: : target or :nth-child.
Even if Microsoft implements that, we're kings of an ant hill.
Everyone keeps wanting to to standardize on a car with a faulty engine, when we could be building BMWs.
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On a related note, has anyone actually tried reading the HTML standards provided by http://www.w3.org. The information provided is so sparse and so vague that the people who make the browsers are forced to decide how things should work. Where are the examples of how things should render? I'm personally surprised things have turned out as well as they have.
No
You are what's wrong with the internet.
Right
Says the anonymous guy without any arguments who insults me and my work, because he doesn't agree with one of my rants.
Microsoft easily could do a better job. They do have the resources. They actually have far more resources than any other browser vendor. Why is their browser so bad then? Well, as I said they have a very good reason to keep it quirky and I don't think their developers are incompetent.
This leaves us with 2 possibilities: a) they are doing it on purpose b) a chain reaction of unfortunate events led to IE's current (and future) state. The latter is somewhat unlikely though.
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