Dare Obasanjo - Is Microsoft supporting XML standards? | TheChannel9Team

Since Dare runs the XML team at Microsoft, we thought it'd be interesting to get his take on standards and how Microsoft works with the standards bodies.

Now it's your turn, how are we doing when it comes to XML standards?

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Cronan Ivan the Terrible

Apr 27, 2004 at 12:27 AM

It would be really nice if the adherence to standards would extend to things like css in IE. I'm also not convinced by the argument about "different customers"; I can't see how people would actually want products that have incomplete or broken implementations of standards, given a choice. I think Dare's example about implementing support for negative regex expressions is a good one - it's nice to know that people are at least trying to support some parts of some of the standards.
The Channel 9 Team 5 guys from Redmond

Apr 27, 2004 at 10:57 AM

Cronan, remember, the IE team pushed the standards bar very hard for quite a few years. Who do you think implemented CSS first? That's right. IE.

IE is in between product cycles right now, though. So we're behind in some areas. But it's not as dire as you make it seem. The support is actually quite good.

If there were three things (be specific) that you'd like the IE team to implement, what would they be?
gweinhold

Apr 27, 2004 at 11:31 PM

If I may, I'd like to see tabbed browser support, revert to "true" error reporting on unsuccessful page requests, and syntax highlighting when choosing "View Source".

My thinking behind them would be to have tabs like MyIE2 or Firefox has. This would include the ability to save current open tabs in case of a forced reboot or something similar.

I believe it was IE5 that did away with showing a "real" error when pages were unsuccessfully loaded (i.e., a hostname not resolving, page timeout, etc). Coming from the support side of things, nothing is as useless as receiving a report that a user simply got a "Page cannot be displayed" message. Even using IE myself to troubleshoot problems forces me to be on my toes when requested a page. I think some of it was done to make it more for the general type of user like the "Show friendly HTTP error messages" box that is enabled by default. Maybe there could be a way to return both a less technical response with a javascript method for displaying a more technical reason for the error. I'm picturing it being displayed similarly to the MS security bulletins that give both the general roundup of the problem as well as the technical details for those inclined.

I realize that syntax highlighting may be more of a limitation with Notepad itself, but maybe a read-only viewer that accomplished the syntax highlighting would be helpful.

Geoff
christopher Oooh, Shiny
Apr 28, 2004 at 12:13 AM
If there were three things (be specific) that you'd like the IE team to implement, what would they be?

My (ordered) list would be:
1. Native SVG/MathML, and the requisite namespace-style extensibility mechanism—hopefully compatable with existing implementations like moz. Additional XML schema should be easy to add to the system, perhaps via a managed dll which can be auto-loaded, producing either 'render-engine commands' (ie, MathML rendered internally as css-styled text.) I don't like the idea of plugins. They do not scroll naturally, they can not interact with the content naturally (dom), and they flicker when starting up—just like java applets. They should draw right to the same canvas <em/> and <h1/>, etc. do. Such a thing would be a wet-dream for web developers. Using SVG for rounded corners, fancy borders, background watermarks, logos, and so on would save billions of dollars in bandwidth for the world when critical mass is achieved—and look good to boot.
2. A central website/blog about everything wrong with IE (bugs, security, render problems, feature requests), richly cross linked with relevant patches and KB articles. MSN alerts and/or RSS delivered whenever a new patch is available. The infrastructure is there...
3. 'Full' CSS2(.1) support, and maybe some CSS3 (not sure on its status). At least for xhtml doctypes… break the old 'IE hacks' if need be (what a wonderful problem to have, removing hacks). I know the standard is not fully sane, but anything is better than the current situation.
I have more in one of my old blog entries, but many of them are special cases of the above big three. I would add a close fourth though: the same version should be rammed down windows update to everyone with winxp/2k or above.
Wouldn't that be nice!
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