Does Microsoft care about Webmasters?

Manip

Seriously how many posts about the same topic are you gunna open?! This is like the third one that I've seen complaining about IE's standardization.

Shining Arcanine

Manip wrote:
Seriously how many posts about the same topic are you gunna open?! This is like the third one that I've seen complaining about IE's standardization.

This is the last one I plan to post, I'm trying to get Microsoft's attention.

vanlandw

i guess this is a better place then any...good luck

Knute
Behave, or else...

[quote user="Shining Arcanine"]Judging by:

and IE's non-existant support for CSS3, buggy support for XSLT, lack of proper Alpha PNG support, nonexistant SVG support, improper P3P support, etc it appears that Microsoft doesn't care about Webmasters.
quote]

Please point me to the Browswer that supports ALL of the above. I would be interested in seeing it...

~ Knute

Shining Arcanine

Knute wrote:
[quote user="Shining Arcanine"]Judging by:

and IE's non-existant support for CSS3, buggy support for XSLT, lack of proper Alpha PNG support, nonexistant SVG support, improper P3P support, etc it appears that Microsoft doesn't care about Webmasters.
quote]

Please point me to the Browswer that supports ALL of the above. I would be interested in seeing it...

~ Knute

With the exception of SVG which is avaliable via a plugin, Mozilla supports all of the above. I expected Microsoft to support all of the above before Mozilla.

vazz
Vazz

Knute wrote:
[quote user="Shining Arcanine"]Judging by:

and IE's non-existant support for CSS3, buggy support for XSLT, lack of proper Alpha PNG support, nonexistant SVG support, improper P3P support, etc it appears that Microsoft doesn't care about Webmasters.
quote]

Please point me to the Browswer that supports ALL of the above. I would be interested in seeing it...

~ Knute

Considering IE has a 98% market share Microsoft has the obligation to keep the browser updated, secure and support the latest standards. This is exactly what people were worried about during the browser wars. Microsoft would beat the opposition. After the war is over they will just abandon the development of the product. I, like many, have given up hope that Microsoft will ever make IE standards compliant. I just hope the same thing does not happen to other products like Windows Media Player...

Knute
Behave, or else...

vazz wrote:

Considering IE has a 98% market share Microsoft has the obligation to keep the browser updated, secure and support the latest standards. After the war is over they will just abandon the development of the product. I, like many, have given up hope that Microsoft will ever make IE standards compliant.

Do you really think they have just stopped developing IE? Come on, IE is a key piece of their strategy. I imagine you will see a newer version in the near future as we have not seen an update in awhile.

Knute
Behave, or else...

vazz wrote:

Considering IE has a 98% market share Microsoft has the obligation to keep the browser updated, secure and support the latest standards. After the war is over they will just abandon the development of the product. I, like many, have given up hope that Microsoft will ever make IE standards compliant.

Do you really think they have just stopped developing IE? Come on, IE is a key piece of their strategy. I imagine you will see a newer version in the near future as we have not seen an update in awhile.

Perhaps IE should go the way of the dodo bird, I mean Mozilla. It still is in beta, sure it may support more things but is a true release ever in site???

timothyblek
bah!

"Do you really think they have just stopped developing IE? Come on, IE is a key piece of their strategy."

When one is done building a house, do they keep the scraps?

As I understand it, IE was never really supposed to be a stand alone application, but a piece of technology that would be integrated into the windows operating system.

I don't think MS is going to continue to update what amounts to a rather large "Proof-of-Concept", but instead I think we're going to see the technologies fleshed out in IE integrated into the OS and IE as a stand alone will go away.

vazz
Vazz

Knute wrote:

Do you really think they have just stopped developing IE?

Well they have stopped adding features. They have stopped trying to make it standards compliant. "The team's top priority is fixing security." That’s what I understood from the discussion over at Scoble's blog. Read it here and here. But I would be very happy if someone from IE team told me I am wrong. Smiley

mykoleary

vazz wrote:

Knute wrote:
Do you really think they have just stopped developing IE?

Well they have stopped adding features. They have stopped trying to make it standards compliant. "The team's top priority is fixing security." That’s what I understood from the discussion over at Scoble's blog. Read it here and here. But I would be very happy if someone from IE team told me I am wrong.

Cranky web devs are only a VERY small piece of the market. For every one, there's thousands of Aunt Joan's and Uncle Bob's. Do you think THEY really give a rat about standards compliance??

NO!

They care about the Internet being secure so they can use their credit card to buy little Jimmy a baseball glove without fear of having their card number or identity stolen.

They don't want to go to a site with malicious Javascript that plops in tracking cookies.

They want to feel safe, and if they don't then eCommerce will never survive.

eCommerce brings everyone money.

Snappy designs, Flash thingamodoos, and CSS based layout just bring a bunch of nice looking sites and whiny devs complaining about how much work it took to build their site.

Shining Arcanine

mykoleary wrote:

vazz wrote:

Knute wrote:
Do you really think they have just stopped developing IE?

Well they have stopped adding features. They have stopped trying to make it standards compliant. "The team's top priority is fixing security." That’s what I understood from the discussion over at Scoble's blog. Read it here and here. But I would be very happy if someone from IE team told me I am wrong.

Cranky web devs are only a VERY small piece of the market. For every one, there's thousands of Aunt Joan's and Uncle Bob's. Do you think THEY really give a rat about standards compliance??

NO!

They care about the Internet being secure so they can use their credit card to buy little Jimmy a baseball glove without fear of having their card number or identity stolen.

They don't want to go to a site with malicious Javascript that plops in tracking cookies.

They want to feel safe, and if they don't then eCommerce will never survive.

eCommerce brings everyone money.

Snappy designs, Flash thingamodoos, and CSS based layout just bring a bunch of nice looking sites and whiny devs complaining about how much work it took to build their site.

You obviously have no clue what you are talking about, do you?

CSS based layouts are the only proper way to position text, images, etc and make it easy to change the look of an entire website by modifying a single file. They speed up development by making webpages less complex and use uniform code while saving bandwidth that can be put to better use on video, audio and other downloads. They also compress extremely well giving even more bandwidth savings while allowing web developers to deliever superior websites. What does this mean? People on dial up will be able to view higher quality web pages faster. How fast? From my personal experience with dial up and viewers of my website, my website flies loading almost at the instant a link is clicked. Open connections increase server load, CSS based layouts load quickly so connections can be closed quickly, reducing server load allowing a server to serve more pages with the same hardware.

Unfortunately, the lack of standards support makes it impossible for me to innovate in my website's three column design so I am forced to use a simple interface. It also makes me want to pull my hair out.

Jeremy W
that blogging guy

Actually, you're just looking at it from different perspectives. Mom & Pop don't care about you innovating, your interface, etc. They want to come to a website, get what they need and leave. Unless your interface and your innovation are what they need then they don't care.

On the same page, though, you're totally right about CSS, the need for developers to get adoption (Developer! Developer! Developers! Developers!) because that is what will drive great web-based products.

At the same time, though, if you are a CSS junkie, you're well aware that that means you don't have to have a 'simple' layout just because of IE. There are dozens of fantastic sites out there which showcase thousands of examples of what can be done with cross-browser CSS. Yeah, lots of hacks, and it takes time to debug and get everything right. No denying it. But it's far from "tables or a simple CSS design", and I'm fairly sure you know it because you sound like a really smart guy Smiley

Shining Arcanine

Jeremy W. wrote:
Actually, you're just looking at it from different perspectives. Mom & Pop don't care about you innovating, your interface, etc. They want to come to a website, get what they need and leave. Unless your interface and your innovation are what they need then they don't care.

On the same page, though, you're totally right about CSS, the need for developers to get adoption (Developer! Developer! Developers! Developers!) because that is what will drive great web-based products.

At the same time, though, if you are a CSS junkie, you're well aware that that means you don't have to have a 'simple' layout just because of IE. There are dozens of fantastic sites out there which showcase thousands of examples of what can be done with cross-browser CSS. Yeah, lots of hacks, and it takes time to debug and get everything right. No denying it. But it's far from "tables or a simple CSS design", and I'm fairly sure you know it because you sound like a really smart guy

I would think Mom & Pop would care about great web-based products but then again, not every Mom & Pop looks at the internet in the same way.

I want my website to look absolutely the same in all browsers so I am restricted to a more simplistic design. I'm starting to move away from caring whether or not IE will view my website correctly (thanks to a style switcher) so I am starting to utilize more advanced features of CSS to innovate more in my layouts.

By the way, thanks for the complement, I appreciate it. Smiley

Jeremy W
that blogging guy

No problem Wink

A lot of the people here are smart. I might not agree with them (I'm a blogger, of course I don't agree with everyone!), but that's fine with me.

As far as Mom & Pop, I'm sure they do care about certain web-based products. But I'm also sure that the caring has little to do with standards, design or design innovation Smiley

I grew up as a designer. I feel your pain (honestly). I also think MS does need to address this in order to really empower developers. But, I just don't agree that the reason that developers want this is for Mom & Pop. There are hundreds of really great reasons, but few of them have to do with users (at least directly).

Ah well, I actually think we agree, just from different perspectives, so I'm not too worried.

Maybe I'm just overly chilled out today Wink

dalangalma

All I can say about the matter is this: whether you think anyone cares about what the code that goes into a site looks like, or whether Mom & Pop appreciate a nice CSS-based design (they don't), there remains one simple fact: IE is broken. The features it claims to support don't work right. Whether you think having full CSS3 support is a must or not, having proper support of what a product claims to support IS a must. I just want them to fix what's broken, THEN I'll start asking for more.

mykoleary

Shining Arcanine wrote:
You obviously have no clue what you are talking about, do you?

CSS based layouts are the only proper way to position text, images, etc and make it easy to change the look of an entire website by modifying a single file. They speed up development by making webpages less complex and use uniform code while saving bandwidth that can be put to better use on video, audio and other downloads. They also compress extremely well giving even more bandwidth savings while allowing web developers to deliever superior websites. What does this mean? People on dial up will be able to view higher quality web pages faster. How fast? From my personal experience with dial up and viewers of my website, my website flies loading almost at the instant a link is clicked. Open connections increase server load, CSS based layouts load quickly so connections can be closed quickly, reducing server load allowing a server to serve more pages with the same hardware.

Unfortunately, the lack of standards support makes it impossible for me to innovate in my website's three column design so I am forced to use a simple interface. It also makes me want to pull my hair out.

Easy editing of sites using one to few files can also be accomplished with scripting and include files. If you don't want to add server execution of code as a hit to you application's performance, you cna invest in a good CMS system and template the site. Doing either achieves the same base result in that regard.

There are also things that can be done to reduce the size of sites (you may do these, but the average person does not): don't use spacer graphics; only alt tag important elements if you do have hidden spacers; compress your .js files; optimize your graphics with a professional image manipulation prgram; compress your .html files; don't use graphical text, or do so very sparingly, etc, etc, etc...

Innovation is great and is needed to push the envelope to create new products and marketplaces, but security is much more important. It allows people the comfort level to actually USE these innovative products.

Yes, full CSS support would be great, but NO, there are other more important things. Whereas it may be better at some things as you mention, there are acceptable counter-measures as I mention.

Remember, innovation isn't supposed to be easy...

dalangalma

Blah blah blah, you can work around it, you can be super-skilled. That sounds like the arguments my friends make against object-oriented programming: "If you're a good enough programmer, you can write everything in C and assembly, and you'll never get anything wrong, even on a big team." CSS is a tool, and it's a good tool. Yes, you can use other tools to get the same effect. Often you NEED other tools to do certain things. But sometimes you NEED CSS. And it makes a lot of things nicer. Use the right tool for the job.

For example, say I want to make an image gallery, with thumbnails. Like the users thing on the left there. Only, I want them to arrange themselves in a grid, with as many items as possible in a row for the screen width. If the browser is thin, 3 pics per line. If it's wide, 5 pics. Whatever. This is easy in CSS - just float some divs together. It's nearly impossible without CSS - you could assemble tables dynamically using javascript, but that's about it. However, to make those thumbnails look nice, you should have padding between them. And if you float a div, IE doubles the padding values you set, arbitrarily. Oh no, a bug in IE has made your site look different in IE from every other browser. Now, are you really arguing that:

1. I shouldn't be trying to use CSS here. I don't really need a fluid layout. Fix the columns, damn the users, full speed ahead!

2. Who cares if the padding is doubled? Design with the doubled padding in mind, and have the page look like ass when anyone else views it. After all, we don't care about other browsers.

3. Sniff the browser, and serve up a different style sheet based on each browser. Make sure to keep all your different browser specific CSS files in synch, and oops, if IE does fix that problem, then you have to have a new CSS file for nice IE, and one for bad IE.

4. Give up on the web.

mykoleary

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying, nor have I ever, that using CSS is bad development. It is an amazing and oft underused tool.

What I AM saying is that in the grand scheme of things, I'd rather have 3 images per line every time regardless of browser width and be able to maintain my privacy while surfing in a secure non-hackable environment.

Grandma and Grandpa just don't care how much work it takes to have fluid designs, they just want to see pictures of their grandkid. I guarantee that they could care less about how cool it is that the thumbnails change based on how big or small their browser is. That is, if they've even changed away from a 256 color 640x480 monitor resolution...

Innovation drives development, but "feeling right about a product" drives adoption. Without adoption, the product fails.

dalangalma

I'm sorry, I thought this thread was "Does Microsoft care about Webmasters?" There's another thread about features in IE. And frankly, I'm not that worried about security in IE - SP2 looks like it's fixing a lot there, and I have no doubt that, as part of the overall security push at MS, IE's security will be constantly updated.

What pisses me off to no end is the fact that the web page rendering bugs, the poor support for standards, etc, that make displaying (and therefore creating) a web page difficult, has been abandoned. Since IE has such a huge marketshare, this means that 90% of the web is stuck with that. That's why I want it to be improved. Yes, you're perfectly right, security is more important than anything else. But they're working on that. They're not working on CSS. And I know for a fact that Microsoft can afford enough developers to do both.

mykoleary

Shining Arcanine wrote:

By the way, innovation is easy. Upon my request, a friend of mine gave my site a different look, which looked rather nice, in 5 minutes. He was using Mozilla Firebird (now Firefox) and an extension that allowed him to insert his own stylesheet into the CSS parser.

Awesome! Now, depending on your site's customers that rocks!! But, if like the rest of the world you have customer who use IE, it probably doesn't look so slick.

I know, it lacks the full compliance. I wish it did, BUT I wish more that it was fully secure.

I agree with you in what is needed, I just differ in my opnion as to what is more important: security and privacy, or full compliance to tweak out on CSS.

Shining Arcanine

mykoleary wrote:

Shining Arcanine wrote: You obviously have no clue what you are talking about, do you?

CSS based layouts are the only proper way to position text, images, etc and make it easy to change the look of an entire website by modifying a single file. They speed up development by making webpages less complex and use uniform code while saving bandwidth that can be put to better use on video, audio and other downloads. They also compress extremely well giving even more bandwidth savings while allowing web developers to deliever superior websites. What does this mean? People on dial up will be able to view higher quality web pages faster. How fast? From my personal experience with dial up and viewers of my website, my website flies loading almost at the instant a link is clicked. Open connections increase server load, CSS based layouts load quickly so connections can be closed quickly, reducing server load allowing a server to serve more pages with the same hardware.

Unfortunately, the lack of standards support makes it impossible for me to innovate in my website's three column design so I am forced to use a simple interface. It also makes me want to pull my hair out.

Easy editing of sites using one to few files can also be accomplished with scripting and include files. If you don't want to add server execution of code as a hit to you application's performance, you cna invest in a good CMS system and template the site. Doing either achieves the same base result in that regard.

There are also things that can be done to reduce the size of sites (you may do these, but the average person does not): don't use spacer graphics; only alt tag important elements if you do have hidden spacers; compress your .js files; optimize your graphics with a professional image manipulation prgram; compress your .html files; don't use graphical text, or do so very sparingly, etc, etc, etc...

Innovation is great and is needed to push the envelope to create new products and marketplaces, but security is much more important. It allows people the comfort level to actually USE these innovative products.

Yes, full CSS support would be great, but NO, there are other more important things. Whereas it may be better at some things as you mention, there are acceptable counter-measures as I mention.

Remember, innovation isn't supposed to be easy...

As dalangalma said, blah, blah, blah.

Your alternative is to 168*324/32-(40*40+1) as CSS is to 10*10. If you bother doing the math, both are equal to 100. Another way of putting it is traveling the width and length of a square to get to the opposite corner when I just take the hypotenuse. Feel free to use your alternative for websites you develop but I rather go the CSS route which easily provides a perfectly uniform look to my website.

By the way, innovation is easy. Upon my request, a friend of mine gave my site a different look, which looked rather nice, in 5 minutes. He was using Mozilla Firebird (now Firefox) and an extension that allowed him to insert his own stylesheet into the CSS parser.

Edit: It seems I spent so much time thinking up this post I missed your new reply when I posted this.

mykoleary wrote:
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying, nor have I ever, that using CSS is bad development. It is an amazing and oft underused tool.

What I AM saying is that in the grand scheme of things, I'd rather have 3 images per line every time regardless of browser width and be able to maintain my privacy while surfing in a secure non-hackable environment.

You can have 3 images per a line every time regardless of browser width and use a browser that is able to maintain your privacy while surfing in a secure non-hackable environment. No one ever said that CSS has anything to do with privacy or security, they said it has to do with presentation.

mykoleary wrote:
Grandma and Grandpa just don't care how much work it takes to have fluid designs, they just want to see pictures of their grandkid. I guarantee that they could care less about how cool it is that the thumbnails change based on how big or small their browser is. That is, if they've even changed away from a 256 color 640x480 monitor resolution...

Innovation drives development, but "feeling right about a product" drives adoption. Without adoption, the product fails.

If the tool that they are using to make a website uses divs, valid markup and css, they can use the technology and not care or know that they are using it to begin with.

A website is not a product and my website is visited by at least fifteen hundred people a day, I'd say those fifteen hundred people feel right about my website.

dalangalma

Again, why one or the other? We should have security, privacy, AND standards compliance. If the Mozilla guys can do it, why can't Microsoft? After all, isn't Microsoft trying to be a leader on the web? This should be very important to them.

mykoleary

dalangalma wrote:
I'm sorry, I thought this thread was "Does Microsoft care about Webmasters?"

True enough. I guess I sietracked teh conversation into does MS care about web development, and took it to encompass a lot more than was the original intent of the thread.

To get back on track a bit... I've neve spent time writing add-ons for IE or Mozilla breeds (e.g. Firefox)

Is it just a lot easier to do so for let's say Firefox than for IE, or is it a critical mass kind of thing?

I've started using Firefox for development because of the amazing extensions it offers (inegrated HTTP headers display, outlining of elements, individual disabling of images, cookies, javascript with great ease, and on and on...) Add to this tabs and the ability to bookmark a set of tabs and bring them back all at once later, and I am hooked!

Why do we not see the proliferation of add-ons/extensions for IE? THe ones I talk about all make my job as a web developer MUCH more easy.

Shining Arcanine

dalangalma wrote:
Again, why one or the other? We should have security, privacy, AND standards compliance. If the Mozilla guys can do it, why can't Microsoft? After all, isn't Microsoft trying to be a leader on the web? This should be very important to them.

Microsoft says that it is the leader of innovation. I want to see some innovation in making IE support internet standards.

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