DISQUS

pd · 1 year ago

I don't understand. All we have to do is add one extra tag to get the best standards support for all browsers don't we? It may not be ideal but it's a shipload better than living with an IE version that is not ACID2 compliant.

Sure it would be nice for MS to conform to the norms that everyone else uses, but at least they have done the hard bit - fixing their code.

Are we making a mountain out of a molehill?

Jesse Ruderman · 1 year ago

"Forget it. If there is a quirks mode and a standards mode, fine, but there should only be these two, existing, modes, not an endless plethora of them..."

Did you know that Firefox has 3 modes? Quirks, almost-standards, and full standards.

Al Billings · 1 year ago

Jesse,

I learned of it this morning and I was avoiding talking about it. :-)

To my knowledge, we're not really continuing development down that route and not encouraging people to go out and use almost-quirks. IE's situation with defaults makes it a different proposition, as well as the fact that they are going to do this for every version, it looks like.

Al Billings · 1 year ago

PD, so, when IE10 is out, someday, we'll have pages marked for IE8, IE9, and IE10, explicitly, and then standards mode (which will be IE7 for IE but current for everyone else) and then quirks mode for IE6 behavior?

Bleh.

James · 1 year ago

Sam Ruby quotes Chris Wilson saying the HTML5 doctype will trigger standards mode: http://intertwingly.net/blog/2008/01/23/Sunsett... which seems like a good thing, although it flies in the face of their "doctypes are dead" propoganda.

Al Billings · 1 year ago

James, it isn't really clear. I suppose when the IE team finally gets around to letting people play with a build, we can all find out.

pd · 1 year ago

Hi Al

I see your point about creating a multi-mode, infinite level scenario. It took me a while to take this in.

I suppose my answer to that concern is that there is an issue of sites written for non-standards. They were written in an environment where there was no need to conform to standards other than the proprietary ones imposed by, but supported market-wide via a near-universal market share, IE6.

Now that remained the case for a long time in web years. Microsoft essentially said to developers: here's the web as a frozen APi, with ActiveX as a bonus! (haha) and developers said, you beauty. We have to remember that Microsoft's monopoly is not the only reason that IE6 dominated the market. There was no alternative until a viable Firefox turned up on the back of Google's dollars. Genuine developers had every right to code for IE6 in all it's evil glory. Should Microsoft abandon those people after what, two years (in their terms) of heading down a standards compliance route? I don't think that's all that reasonable.

Therefore the key is that this 'version targeting' has to be a one-version-wonder. The idea of the browser vendor market agreeing to a triple+ standards support environment is madness.

MS should come out and say that whenever IE9 comes about, they will revert to a twin-render-mode model. That way those who have refused to update their IE6 code within approximately a 5 year time frame (from first new of IE7 until delivery of IE9) can reasonably be told to get nodded.

There's a balance issue. Don't kill IE6-developed sites just yet, but kill IE6 and add great standards support. That's what they are doing.

The more developers actually see IE6 disappearing from desktops (something that STILL isn't happening despute IE7's significant public lifetime), they will start looking forward and the only option these antiquated developers will see is heading down the standards road.

As much as I hate the idea, allowing Microsoft to maintain some 'face' to all those developers they conned into loving IE6, whilst gently, slowly moving towards standards, is better than Microsoft sticking their heads in the sand, which they did for many years.

Al Billings · 1 year ago

Microsoft isn't going to come out and say anything like what you are suggesting. From their point of view, even if they were going to do it, they have no incentive to say so at this time, years before it is necessary. Micrsoft (and IE specifically) never pre-announces anything it isn't required to in order to avoid being boxed in by earlier statements and promises.

I say rip the band-aid off right now and get it over with. This is only delaying the day that it happens, not solving the problem.

I will point out that a successful Firefox created those Google dollars (for the Mozilla Corporation), not the other way around. It is a misperception to think that Google had anything to do with the initial creation of Firefox or with the earlier Mozilla Foundation. The Foundation, which owns MoCo, existed without any of those dollars being present and worked on Firefox, with the larger Mozilla community supporting and contributing much of the work because they believed in it, for a long time without Google. Google is hardly the only source of revenue for MoCo as well. It is simply the largest source.

An important point, at least to me.

Chris · 1 year ago

I'd like to see Firefox (and others) implement something like this, if only to override the doctype switch, so that I wouldn't have to include it anymore, giving me a singular quirks mode for IE 7 and below, and a singular standards mode for IE 8, Mozilla, Webkit, Opera, and what not.

I can currently see a problem where I add a quirks mode doctype for oldIE, that then in turn triggers Firefox's quirks mode. Or, adding a strict doctype, and having IE 6 and 7 to deal with, though maybe there is a doctype that triggers quirks in IE 7 that doesn't affect standards compliant browsers?

Chris Wilson · 1 year ago

Al,
as I've said publicly, new unknown DOCTYPEs (such as HTML5) will trigger IE8 standards mode, so future standards will have the best behavior available.

Al Billings · 1 year ago

I had seen people assume that from comments that you've made, Chris, but it is good to have it explicitly confirmed. That will make life easier once we all start marking things as HTML5... :-)