Opera, Mozilla and Safari react to IE’s solution for browser compatibility issues
Published January 23rd, 2008 12:00 PM EST By Daniel GoldmanThere has been lots commentary and discussions regarding Microsoft’s solution to fix compatibility issues between various versions of Internet Explorer (IE). For a good background on this, read Aaron Gustafson’s post on the A List Apart blog.
So what do Opera, Mozilla and Safari think about IE’s brilliant solution?
I’ve gathered some quotes and snippets from various blogs of people from Opera, Safari WebKit, Mozilla, and the WaSP.
Håkon Wium Lie, Chief Technology Officer at Opera (Read more)
“Finally, it seems, Microsoft has decided to take Web standards seriously. Designers will no longer have to spend countless hours trying to get their pages to look right in Internet Explorer while adhering to standards. Unfortunately, I think that the celebration is premature. I predict that IE 8 will not pass Acid2, after all.”
Maciej Stachowiak, Safari Webkit (Read more)
“Finally, while we sympathize with the tough road that the IE team has to travel to achieve a high degree of standards compliance, we haven’t really experienced the same problem. The IE team has mentioned severe negative feedback on the IE7 release, due to sites expecting standards behavior from most browsers, but IE6 bugs from IE.
But WebKit already has a high degree of standards compliance. And we are not in the enviable but tough position of being the most widely used browser. The fixes we do for standards compliance rarely cause widespread destruction, and when they do, it’s often a sign that the standards themselves may need revision. We do not get complaints from web content authors about their sites breaking, on the contrary we get a lot of praise for each version of the engine handling web sites better.”
Doron Rosenberg, Mozilla (Read more)
“And since IE8 still does IE6 mode, most web applications will probably not bother updating their code to work with IE8’s changes and continue to use the IE6 mode even when no one actually runs IE6. Why should someone spend money to update the app to use the new IE changes when they can run the old code just fine. And use Silverlight for more advanced things, of course.
The question is, how long will this cycle continue? Web standards are supposed to avoid this exact issue”
Anne van Kesteren, R&D, Core-Specs, Core QA at Opera (Read more)
“This only leads to IE9 getting a different mechanism for the opt-in switch, because, obviously, if a lot of pages uses “IE=edge” without the author’s consent, IE9 would break all those pages, and that wouldn’t be acceptable to MS. So we end up with yet another switch.”
Ian Hixie, Google and editor of the HTML 5 spec (Read more)
“It will also increase the complexity of authoring by an order of magnitude. Big sites will become locked in to particular IE version numbers, unable to upgrade their content for fear of it breaking. Imagine in 18 years — only twice the current lifetime of the Web! — designers will not have to learn just HTML, they’ll have to learn 4, 5, maybe 10 different versions of HTML, DOM, CSS, and JS, just to be able to maintain the various different pages that people have written, as they move from job to job.”
Chris Mills, Developer relations manager at Opera (Read more)
“Microsoft have decided to try to save themselves the shame of breaking the web any more by introducing version targeting to web pages, that is, you can now add a <META> element to your document’s <head>, to specify which IE rendering engine your markup/code should be rendered by.”
Mike Shaver, Director of Ecosystem Development at Mozilla (Read more)
“So we’re going to see X-UA-Compatible in IE8, with very high likelihood. It’s positioned as something that other browsers could use — if they wanted to ship multiple rendering engines to make download size a further impediment to competing with Microsoft, say, or totally lock themselves out of the mobile market”
Robert O’Callahan, Mozilla (Read more)
“The truth is that you can’t ever actually freeze those old versions completely. If a security bug or crasher bug is found in any one of those engines, it must be fixed in each engine it occurs in. Those fixes can create compatibility problems, so your “compatibility guarantee” turns out to be a mirage. But you have successfully multiplied the cost of security fixes and testing those fixes by the number of engines you’re supporting.”
Hallvord Steen, Core QA at Opera (Read more)
“The web and the spec would benefit enourmously if your team sat down to do the detailed analysis work - hunting through the sites that break, figuring out the main problems, suggesting ways the still-in-progress HTML5 standard could change to make real compatibility possible. It’s slow but you can make a public comittment and draw huge grassroot support from web developers. I bet you would get help doing evangelism and outreach for sites that serve you “error correcting” CSS you can’t possibly work with in standars mode. You can release IE8 beta versions but delay the final until site compatibility problems are resolved.”
Dean Edwards, The Web Standards Project (WaSP) (Read More)
“I won’t support any more cruft added to HTML without hearing the reasons. “Don’t break the Web” is a way to befuddle us. Tell us what your real concerns are and we will try to help. We are not hear to rubber-stamp the first crazy idea that you come up with.”
Al Billings, Mozilla QA Engineer (Read more)
“This new mode, and the change to standards mode within IE, just enables IE to continue to hold back the improvement of the web.”
John Resig, JavaScript Evangelist, Mozilla (Read more)
“Wanna know how I can tell that no other browser vendor participated in the creation of the new meta X-UA-Compatible tag? Because it’s completely worthless - and in fact harmful - for any browser to implement!”
Robert Accettura, Mozilla contributor (Read more)
If you enjoyed this post, then make sure you subscribe to my RSS Feed.“Why not do like WebKit, Mozilla, and Opera do and start providing nightlies so developers can actively track issues? Why are web developers left in the dark through most of the process? It doesn’t seem like anything is really a closely guarded secret. You can keep the UI stuff private and just release updates to the rendering engine. That’s essentially what WebKit does. CSS3 isn’t exactly a business secret.”
using
Thanks for linking to so many of these in one spot. My feed subscriptions are filling up with commentary on this.
using
I also wrote something about this. Not so interesting but I end my piece with
using
I hate to see that Håkon Wium Lie is incorrect about the CSS test. I would have completely agreed with him, but looking at the news they have apparently passed the test. Who really knows for sure though, as their testing is all internal. I like what Robert O’Callahan had to say about it. Hallvord Steen also had a very good point near the end. Dean Edwards…comical, but true. John Resig, very true statement.
Probably the most important in my eyes is Robert Accettura’s comment. This would allow the web to slowly evolve to the real standards that are in place on the web and not just IE flaws. It could be released when it’s ready, but highly encouraged to web developers and mainly current banking websites to test with and correct any problems.
Thanks Daniel for the great post! This was a very informative post! Also, thanks for adding the sources (I hate it when people don’t add those). The sources are very good reads as well!
using
kyleabaker, based on what IE is suggesting, Hakon’s scenario makes perfect sense. The Acid-2 test page won’t contain any of the META tags, meaning it won’t pass the test with its default settings.
using
@kyleabaker: No, Håkon is correct. Acid2 does not provide any meta tags for IE8 to use its “standards compliant” mode, so IE8 will probably fail the test.
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@Daniel, wupperbayer
I think if no X-UA-Compatible meta tag is present, IE8 will probably fall back to DOCTYPE switching, so it should still render the Acid2 page in standards mode.
using
“This site best viewed with IE 8 or better”
Now in code instead of text or an image.
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Daiwai:
No, IE8 will have three modes. Quirks mode (no/old doctype), IE7-standardsmode (doctype, but no X-ua-compatible), and IE8-standardsmode (doctype and x-ua-compatible).
Acid2 doesn’t have X-ua-compatible, so it will fall back to IE7 mode and there will be no difference at all between IE7 and IE8 on the real test.
using
great post, love the references, thanks for share this info.
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Lars, thanks for clearing that up for me.
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My last name is “Billings” since I see to be without a family name.
using
If Microsoft is up to its old tricks again, standards compliant mode will break with other important features such as Silverlight or more complex Ajax. If they wanted to be even more subtle, standards compliant mode will have funny bugs with incomprehensible error messages / not be debuggable and/or leak memory compared to IE proprietary mode.
using
Al, I couldn’t find your last name mentioned on either your blog or the about page. Sorry about that; I’ve updated the post.
using
Not your fault. I realized it wasn’t on my “About Me” page (which I just fixed). http://planet.mozilla.org lists me and quite a few browser people know me from my old IE days, so no one had pointed it out before.
No foul on your part!
using
Yep, thanks for the nice collection of quotes… Really shows the different mindset between MS and Mozilla et al.
This is driving me nuts. I wish MS would just finally get with the times and for once stop being so backwards. The best thing we can do now is to just keep pushing Firefox and Opera to more and more users so that IE one day becomes irrelevant.
using
I agree. I didn’t read the article Daniel took the guy’s comments from, but I completely agree with the paragraph that was quoted.
using
I think the best way (for users, for MS, and for the industry) is to have a new option in the help menu… “Page not loading correctly?” or something similar
Clicking this would bring up a short wizard that, along with suggestions for 404 errors, 5xx errors, etc, one option cause IE to refresh the page and render in IE6 quirks mode.
This would add a nice touch to the user having more help with any general website issues, along with fixing websites that just won’t work in IE8.
IE8 will then tag the URL as something to always load in quirksmode as well as possibly (opt-in only) send the URL of the site to MS for them to notify the author of their crappy site.
MS could then potentially piggyback sites flagged as IE6 only along with the phishing protector feature.
Thoughts?
using
Wasn’t Microsoft the one who’d complained about HTML5 specs? Well, I personally assume this draft of MS-style standard compliance to be a counter attack towards a wide adoption of web standards. Let’s talk about browser-war 2.0. MS just hasn’t gotten a lesson, web dominance is the only MS’s goal.
using
1. This switch will further the evolution of web standards because it will allow those big corporate companies to upgrade to IE8 without breaking their internal apps, that no one is supporting. Otherwise they will just not upgrade to IE8 and we will have to continue to use hacks for IE7.
2. Most of the people commenting on this thing is making their sites to comply standards, not look well on all browsers. There are so many of us that are doing the opposite. And we have no idea how the IE8 will work so we really need the ability to tell the browser “this looks good on IE7″.
3. Some are comparing this switch to the image “looks best on ***”. The difference is, this is not information to the user that he should switch browsers. In that case the user has no choice. This switch tells the browser to try to render it differently, if it can. The info is meant for the browser, not the user.
4. Enough about the mobile browser size limitations. Already the mobile browsers display a look different from desktop. On mobile devices the most of layout is ripped away and just the content is displayed. The meaning a single “float” or “display” CSS rule has a LOT less impact on mobile devices.
5. And I think the most likely scenario is that when the page is written in HTML5, not HTML4, IE8 will default to standards mode.
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@Knaģis
1. If those big corporate companies can afford to upgrade all their computers, they can certainly afford to upgrade their internal apps as well. I don’t think intranet apps should be allowed to hold back the entire web.
2. That is a flat out lie. Making up stories about people who disagree with you is not going to score you any points.
4. It might be convenient for you to ignore the argument about mobile browsers, but the validity of the argument doesn’t change just because you are uncomfortable with the fact that you cannot argue against it (without declaring it unimportant). Have you ever tried Nokia’s browser? Safari for iPhone? The Wii Internet Channel? The DS browser? Yep. Mobile/device browsers can actually show the page as it was meant to look on a desktop computer. Heck, even Opera Mini gets close to that.
Mobile devices are limited. Having to ship multiple browser engines/engine versions, for example, would not be acceptable.
using
This just shows how the mindset is completely different. As usual, the two sides are talking past each other.
It’s easy to say that companies can “afford” something. In the real world, hardware upgrades are usually charged to a different cost center than application development. There simply is no money to change the intranet applications.
using
The problem is that those intranet applications are years old and costed millions. That IS the problem of the web that these applications are holding it back. Even if I like the IE boxing model better than standard, I would love to see IE6 sent to deepest corner of hell, because it does not allow me to express myself professionaly. But hey - the client needs the app to be compatible with IE5.5… Do not think I don’t hate that.
using
If those intranet applications are years old then they can use years old computers to access them. Intranet applications should not dictate what the web is supposed to look like.
using
No matter what computers they will use, they will require (or at least the corporate policy will) that the user uses browser version X. And this version X is also the one that the employees use to access all other web. This is the issue that Microsoft tries to overcome - to allow peaceful co-existance between these antique monstrous intranet webs and the real web that evolves exponentially.
using
If peaceful co-existence means a continued destroyed web, then the peace ful co-existence must stop.
Microsoft painted themselves into this corner with their anti-competitive practices, remember.
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Knaģis
1. This switch will stop the evolution of web standards, because ALL websites - excepting those from the minority of standardistas - will be shown with the IE7 engine. In the future when Microsoft releases the IE10 oder whatsoever, MS will say that they can’t dismiss the IE7 engine because that would “break the web”. When IE15 will be released MS will say the same thing till html5 is widely implemented and adopted (in the very far future). But than “quirks html4″ and silverlight will - may be - the worldwide standard because “it has worked good the last x years”.
2. The best solution would be: IE8 standard mode is the standard engine of IE8 and people who want to go back to IE7 should insert the meta tag (with “IE=7″) into the source code. No problem with IE8 and future developments for you.
3. The meta tag is not an information for the user but for the developer. But there shouldn’t be any special switch for a browser. That’s the sense of web standards (till IE8).
5. The day when html5 will be the standard html for the most web pages of the WWW is far far away. That hasn’t any relevance for us the next 10 years or more.
Intranet applications: What’s the problem to say those companies “please add the new meta tag with “IE=7″ to your source code and you will be ever locked to IE7″?
using
@Thomas:
Why not get rid of the whole IE7-rendering-as-the-default idea and just tell corporations to have their web servers implant X-UA-Compatible with “IE=7″ into their HTTP headers for all intranet web pages? That would allow a company to use their web apps in IE7 rendering mode while leaving IE8 free to default to standards mode.
@Knaģis:
1) The switch will actually spell the demise of IE as a dominant browser. Think about it. If IE8 has any trouble whatsoever rendering standards-compliant web pages, then what are developers going to do? The have to use standards-compliant markup to target the ~20% of the market that’s using alternative browsers. They have to write pages that also target IE7 because people will be using that browser for years to come.
However, with this new switch, web developers do NOT have to target IE8 at all. IE8 will render their pages just like IE7. So you develop for standards, tweak your page for IE7 with conditional comments and IE-specific CSS, add the <Meta> element and you’re done. IE8 becomes irrelevant, especially with MS pushing Silverlight as the next big thing for the Internet.
2) Considering how mindshatteringly awful IE’s support for CSS is, I don’t see how you can make arguments about web site attractiveness. There’s nothing, graphically speaking, that you can do in IE that you can’t do in a standards-compliant browsers. In fact, when you consider the fact that all of Microsoft’s major competitors are integrating native SVG support into their browsers, and all of them support <canvas> natively, I’d say IE is tremendously limited in it’s graphics capabilities. (If you need anything beyond that, then you’re probably already using Flash or Silverlight.)
3) If I visit a site that doesn’t render properly in my browser, and I talk to the author of the page, and he tells me to download IE version x.xx, I don’t see how that’s appreciably better than “Works best in IE x.xx”. In fact, the latter is better, because at least then I can open the darn page using the IE Tab extension or something. Pages that render like **** without you knowing why aren’t better than pages that render like **** and tell you why.
4) Mobile devices are improving in their web capabilities, so it makes less and less sense to develop separate content for these devices, especially when CSS3 has more than enough support for targeting a different presentation to handhelds and other mobile devices. Most of Microsoft’s competition isn’t developing separate rendering engines for mobile devices either. Mobile devices are going to be as powerful as any PC running IE6 or IE7 in short order, so feeding them special content makes less sense everyday.
5) Can’t complain about IE8 defaulting to standards mode for <!DOCTYPE HTML>, but even so, I’ll probably use <meta http-equiv=”X-UA-Compatible” content=”IE=7″> and “IE7 or greater” conditional comments on those pages until I know that IE8 will support my standards-compliant content.
using
It’s amazing how out of touch with reality you dweebs are… If SW enginners knew what made a good UI, there would not be so many utterly disastrous smart phones/PDAs out there.