molly.com
Thursday 24 January 2008
Me, IE8 and Microsoft Versioning
If you work in Web design and development and haven’t read any of the articles and discussions taking place regarding IE8 and its use of meta versioning for standards compliance, it’s time to read up on it ASAP. Begin with Aaron Gustafson’s “Beyond DOCTYPE: Web Standards, Forward Compatibility, and IE8” on A List Apart. You can follow the threads from there. Russ Weakley at maxdesign is keeping a good list of the conversations too, so you can drop by and fill up on all
the mud-slinging and drama as it unfolds.
Burning truths
I began to write a response to Shelley Powers’ formidable “Bobbing Heads and the IE8 Meta Tag.” In this article, I’m cited as being in compliance with the Microsoft meta option. At first I resisted that I was being “compliant,” thinking that despite my discomfort with the option, I thought (and still do think) that it was the best solution that came up during the year-long versioning discussion we had.
The year long, very private, NDA’d versioning discussion. Which is where I have to agree with those who cite me as being “compliant.”
Because this was not a public discussion, and because I and others both internally and externally failed to convince Microsoft to make it a public discussion (although to their credit they did bring in industry advocates), I am in fact in compliance with the meta choice.
However, this doesn’t mean I agree it’s the right thing to do. I can say that I think it was the best of a list of much more problematic options that were presented. Just think about what naturally came up at first, attaching to the DOCTYPE switch or encouraging the use of conditional comments are both easily identified (but also very problematic) possibilities. And just because I did in the end agree that this was the better choice has nothing to do with silence. We all had legal and ethical responsibilities in that process.
I wish, oh how I wish, we could have all worked on this openly and together. That would have been my dream, but alas, it wasn’t to be.
Holding back the tears
When I began to talk to Microsoft and IE via the WaSP Microsoft Task Force, the conversation was far more open, or at least it appeared that way. When I left WaSP to work with Microsoft in a liaison capacity, that was still true. Over the past few years changes within the company infrastructure led to changes for the IE management hierarchy, and suddenly things got very quiet.
Silence can equal consent, indeed. Which is why I personally focused on breaking that silence. It took enormous pressure internally (and frankly, I believe that’s continuing) as well as my blatantly asking Bill Gates about it this past December to push the doors open again. Finally, this allowed Aaron, who was part of that long versioning discussion, to publicly talk about the switching work being done.
If those hands had not been forced, no one would have heard about this until IE8 landed on our doorsteps.
Out the issues
Now it’s out in the open, prior to a beta. We now know a hell of a lot about IE8 because of this. We can take a damned good guess at what’s actually in IE8 standards-wise because in IE8 standards mode, we have Acid2 compliance. Break down Acid2, and you’ll see what those implementations are or will be.
I believe we are in a much better situation knowing all of this in advance of the product. Was it wrong for Microsoft to shut up? I say yes and I call foul on those folks within the organization who allowed the very positive and productive conversations be shut down so dramatically. Clearly, they made a drastic mistake, which they were warned about by internal folks as well as advisors over and over and over again. So, the more yelling that comes from the Web community and the public press, well, that’s a message Microsoft will listen to so let’s remember that and hope some good comes of it.
Honestly, would it have been better to hide all this information until IE8 landed on our doorsteps? I don’t think so. At least now we have a window into what Microsoft is doing and the conversation, as is evidenced by the activity of the last week, is outed.
Transparency is bullshit, let’s get naked
Open standards must emerge from public, open, bare discussion. Microsoft clearly does not agree with this. It goes against its capitalist cover-up mentality, even when Bill Gates himself has quite adamantly stated that there should be no secrecy around IE8. In fact, he was the one who let the name slip. The fucking name, people! This shows you how ludicrous the lack of communication had become: Gates himself didn’t even know we weren’t allowed to say “IE8.”
This covert behavior is a profound conflict for me as I’m sure readers will at least agree that I’m pretty darned overt by default. But I knew it going in, I just kept and am still keeping my hopes high because that is also my default.
Sometimes the solution is to step back and re-evaluate. Sometimes the solution is to walk away. I haven’t firmed up my personal decisions on that just yet. Maybe it’s time to go back to Old School WaSP-style stinging of MS, but that definitely is not my default.
Can’t we all just get along? No, really. During my time at WaSP, the door was open to a kinder, gentler way. More fool me? So be it. I’m not giving up the greater goal, which is keeping the Web open, free, naked, bare-assed to the world.
Of, by and for
I think about all of us, whether we are “for” or “against” a given approach in the context of Web technologies in general, and I realize how necessary our arguments are. We are some of the world’s smartest, most innovative, committed and passionate people. How we’ll start figuring out better ways to collaborate, change old-school thinking, and encourage positive innovation and growth for the Web, well fuck if I know. Been down several roads (WaSP, for example) to try and see just how to do that.
What I do know is that the Web is still of the people, by the people, and for the people, no matter what Microsoft or anyone else does. And we’re the people to keep it that way. It’s not the what, but the how, and the when, that we have to focus on.
Filed under: professional, policies, standards, software, web design and development, WaSP, society, w3c, browsers, microsoft, accessibility, javascript, whatwg, community
Posted by: Molly | 10:22 pm |
January 24th, 2008 at 11:26 pm
Thanks for adding insight into the process of this issue Molly.
I’d have to nod to being not in favour of this in IE8 although I tried to convince myself for half a day not to be too dogmatic and negative about change.
Knowing the structure of the organisation helps understand where the conversation is in the real world context.
January 24th, 2008 at 11:27 pm
[…] Molly’s Me, IE8 and Version Targeting (added later) […]
January 25th, 2008 at 12:04 am
Molly, thanks for adding this valuable information to the discussion. It does not change my opinion for a second about the IE7-behaviour as a standard bottom line, the famous opt-in choice for standards. It goes against the nature of innovation and that from a tech company, who needs to earn money by selling new technology to its customers!! If that ain’t a signal, I don’t know.
I cannot hold a personal grudge to anyone, but I’m glad your post is a lot more honest than some other I’ve read. It is very brave to tell Microsoft their ways of keeping mum are wrong for standards and I do hope they will continue to work with you.
I don’t think anyone will doubt your intentions, that way we can keep faith and hope that this behavior of versioning will slip quitely from IE9. I AM very curious to beta-test IE8 though, let’s not forget all the goodness it will bring!
January 25th, 2008 at 12:46 am
It comes across as short-sighted. I do not doubt for a moment the MIE’s good intentions. However, the road to hell is well known to be paved with good intentions.
So they fix this standards-compliancy legacy problem now. What happens later when the web shifts to XML anyway?
People/organisations with these non-standards compliant websites remind me of the Exxon Valdez. They can either fix them now, or wait til after they have floundered and caused all sorts of problems, due to the semantic web(XML). Microsoft taking short-term responsibility now may be nice, but is not helpful in the long-term.
Microsoft may be dominant now, but that is no guarantee that they will stay that way. What happens down the track when the most common browser is WebKit- or Gecko-based? These websites *are* broken, and the only people who can fix that are the site owners. They need to take responsibility for their own areas. Microsoft just shouldn’t, as nice as the offer is.
It’s a good intention, and helpful short-term, but we need to think bigger than that.
January 25th, 2008 at 1:30 am
I think the versioning thing comes down to whether you think HTML+CSS (+, presumably, JS and the DOM and BOM) is a *platform for applications* or, at its heart, a *way of communicating information*. MS is betting on the former, which (in the light of what half the web is doing) doesn’t seem like a bad choice. I think there could be better details around the versioning (defaulting to edge, for instance), but I can see the bind.
However I think that actually it’s the wrong view. I’ll no doubt be proven wrong over and over again in the next few years, but if HTML cannot be an information container first and foremost, then we’ll need to start using something else to package up all our data to communicate it cleanly. RDF, perhaps. Or PDF. Shudder.
January 25th, 2008 at 1:52 am
Sod the browser wars, there’s a rumour going around that it’s your birthday. So have a good one Molly
January 25th, 2008 at 2:28 am
This was somehow refreshing read after Zeldman’s crap.
And yes, web is of the people, by the poeple, and for the people. There is no need to pretend that one is trying not to “break the web”, when in fact it is “save the IE” is being done.
January 25th, 2008 at 2:29 am
I’ve read a lot of opinions over the last couple of days, but your post has to be the most satisfying one I’ve read. You’ve reminded us that we shouldn’t be hounding the IE team, but the people who so aggressively control the IE team. I mean, who’s idea was it to keep IE8’s name a secret?! What will that accomplish besides frustration?
I don’t know if you’re allowed to reveal this, but is there any chance we could hear about some of the other so-called options that were made available?
For instance, what about a switch that couldn’t be used to target specific browser versions (what I originally anticipated), or an opt-out tag to be used for pre-IE8 sites?
I find it hard to believe that MS won’t at least consider changing their minds after all this noise. We’ve made them change their minds before (see IE7+).
January 25th, 2008 at 5:27 am
Thank you Molly for sharing this with us.
Being very young on my journey into web standards, I am largely unaware of the struggles that have taken place in the past that brings us to this epoch, but what I do know makes me see this time as critical for the one open interoperable web.
I first knew of IE7 was by way of a security update, the version it was replacing was IE6 and little did I know then the bigger story. I was to come to read all about it, the browser wars of the 90’s, the rise of the phoenix, the announcement of the coming IE7, etc, etc, but the most shocking and despairing of all what I read was about Microsoft it it’s relationship with the web community.
Lately I read about Microsoft transparency and after this announcement transparency take on a whole new meaning in respects to Microsoft. What I can see from Microsoft actions are the same games of deceit that have been played many times before. When is the person or people at Microsoft responsible for this game going to stop?
I would like to test IE8 in both IE8 standard mode and IE7 mode. I would like to test it with IE8 conditional comments. I would like to know how this meta versioning works and impact with other IE issues. The mere concerns that I have raised with various members of the IE team has so far fallen of deaf ears.
What bugs are still present in IE8 in standard mode? I know that it isn’t a clear past for my site and old IE CSS bugs are “still present” in IE8, but these may remain unknown (secret) until the IE team releases IE8 to the development community for testing.
Microsoft, how about getting naked for the good of the web.
January 25th, 2008 at 6:32 am
There was another option for you and Aaron and the other people who found Microsoft’s silence so disturbing: you could have quit.
You could have pulled out of the discussions in no uncertain terms and let them know they were making mistakes. You could have used the reasons for your leaving to demonstrate to Microsoft the strength of your convictions.
Bill Gates is first and foremost a poker player. This one significant aspect of his personality has influenced Microsoft from the very beginning. How does the song go? “You’ve got to know when to hold them, know when to fold them, know when to walk away, and know when to run.”
Members of WaSP should never have allowed themselves to be pulled into such a NDA’d discussion.
January 25th, 2008 at 6:34 am
PS None of this has any meaning without the answer to the following question:
Will IE8 support application/xhtml+xml?
January 25th, 2008 at 7:41 am
Molly, you’re always a breath of fresh air. Thanks for this post, as it was one of the more open and reassuring posts I’ve read on this debacle. Microsoft doesn’t have it easy, and you’re caught in the middle of this shit storm. The
metaoption, seems to be a decent compromise, but I am not alone in wishing there was a better solution. Whether or not our voices will be heard, remains to be seen, but I have hopes that those in control of the IE team will hear our cries, and do something about it.Whether folks are for or against what is planned for IE8, the reality is we all need to be prepared - one way or another - for its arrival.
January 25th, 2008 at 8:17 am
Interesting to hear your story from the inside.
I can’t help wondering if Chris Wilson himself likes the “Don’t break the web” mantra, or if it is imposed from above.
January 25th, 2008 at 9:00 am
*Thank you* Molly for recognizing the utility of — really, *need* for — some good old-fashioned wrangling over what political commentators would call a “substantive issue.” I think this debate has penetrated the egos of those who advertised the proposed meta tag to the public. (It’s easy to see how it would; yours included, having been heaped in.) Thanks for transcending.
Speaking of egos, if Microsoft is gonna get lashed (like this) when they *do* let us have a peek inside, need we wonder why they keep the door shut? Thanks to you, and all those, who make it difficult from the inside. This openness you speak of is just better business logic; if standards support is promised, and we get a deliverable that includes a quirky meta/http-header workaround, the people, well, they’ll get pissy.
Which leads me to ask: If X-UA-Compatible invocation has to exist for the elegant IE8 standards support to kick in… are we changing Acid2 to comply to IE, or is IE8 actually only going to render a modified version of Acid2 correctly?
January 25th, 2008 at 9:45 am
I don’t know. I just see too many people being too comfortable with always giving MS their way, willingly making special exceptions just for MS and IE. First it was “We’re not going to do anything to our browser for 5 years”, then it was the conditional comments (which I loathe), and now a new meta / server tag that you’re damned if you do use and damned if you don’t. Talk about having you’re cake and eating it too..
But, as Molly pointed out (sort of), that is what you get from black-box, NDA’d, Super-hush-hush, conspiratorial, capitalist, organizations who are only concerned about their bonuses and profit margins instead of being concerned about putting out a solid piece of software.
January 25th, 2008 at 9:46 am
Thank you, Molly. For the past week I’ve been hearing nothing but self-centered evangelism for this piece of crap META tag from the so called “enlightened” among us.
If you’re ever in the Chicago area, let me know. Lunch will be on me as my way of saying “Thank you.”
January 25th, 2008 at 10:00 am
Dan, you still owe me lunch. (Doc)
With all the crap I’ve given you over the past year, Molly, I’m glad to see you speak out about your feelings over this and how Microsoft has been operating. I get confused because you seemed to be a “bought” person in the past but then showed irritation with MS.
You are doing it again, perhaps even more “irritated”, but now I think you are just trying to straddle that line of being politically correct and “for the people”.
You’ve said what someone else blogged. There is only one web.
January 25th, 2008 at 10:08 am
Molly,
Thanks for a refreshingly honest post on this. It seems to confirm what we can see from other ‘players’ - that Microsoft handed down a few options (break your thumbs, blow your dog up or meta switch) and those involved (behind NDA) went for the least unpleasant option.
Unfortunately, a couple of the Big Players are arguing hard that it is the right decision, and they’re defending themselves with ad hominem, obfuscation, censorship (one of my posts - thanks, Eric), emotive language and a bunch of other fallacious arguments. Zeldman, in particular, is producing some awful rhetoric and confused logic. It’s not pretty coming from previous heroes of the standards movement.
Admittedly there are some benefits of the meta switch (saving clueless web devs from questions from their employees seems to be the main ‘benefit’), but that is not the key issue. The impact of MS making IE8 render as IE7 by default will create a new defacto standard. There will be no incentive for anyone to make sites W3C compliant because the 800lb gorilla says IE7 compliant is all you need. And if you use a *real* browser to view those ‘IE7′ sites, the sites will appear broken … therefore FF3, Opera, Safari will appear broken. Bam! Microsoft just fragmented the web … it remains to be seen if this will help them or increase the rate that their browser market share is eroded.
One argument put forward by (at least) Zeldman and Meyer is that those who passionately oppose this movement by MS, are doing so because they’re blinded by their irrational hatred of Microsoft. It’s embarrassing to read such a weak counter from those two. However, those with even a passing knowledge of Microsoft history will know that time and again they use ‘divide, assimilate, conquer’ to gain competitive advantage and remove competition. And that’s what they’ve done again now.
January 25th, 2008 at 10:14 am
P.S. I wanted to say that I’m also disgusted that this ‘open’ standard ‘proposal’ was reached behind closed doors / NDA. It demonstrates MS’s commitment to real transparency and openness - and flies in the face of what they *claim* to represent. Chris Wilson may be a great, honest guy, trying to do his best for standards, but somewhere higher up within ‘The Beast’, there is a very different and contemptuous agenda (e.g. email rendering via Word in latest Outlook).
January 25th, 2008 at 11:17 am
Thank you for this post. After all the language being slung about in this debate, it’s like a breath of fresh air to get an insider’s insight into how this situation came about.
As I wrote on my blog, I can understand the bind the IE team is in right now - they want to move forwards, and yet don’t want to break compatibility. One would be at the expense of the other. So the meta tag technique seems a reasonable solution to let us have the cake and eat it too.
I do hope that this pattern will not continue into the future though - would we want to go through this debate again for IE9, or IE10? It could become a vicious cycle that would need to be broken somewhere along the line.
So I guess the planned technique is acceptable for the short term - although, like another poster mentioned, it would be interesting to find out what other options were considered - it seems to me that to be able to keep moving forwards in the future, we need to break compatibility at some point. And I’m certain many developers would prefer sooner rather than later.
January 25th, 2008 at 11:24 am
Molly, I have to disagree with your assertion that Microsoft does not agree that “Open standards must emerge from public, open, bare discussion.” Certainly I believe that standards should be developed with nothing to hide. I do think there are significant problems with making actual decisions with no structure.
At the same time, you (Molly) know that I’ve personally continually internally advocated being more open about what we’re doing, despite all the downsides of doing that (e.g. things we say, even hypothetically, become relied on even when they shouldn’t). Of course, getting screamed at every time I open my mouth for being a pragmatic realist instead of saying exactly what the audience wants to hear doesn’t make me like this job much, or make me feel like it’s even POSSIBLE for Microsoft to have productive discussion in the open in difficult situations like this. Maybe it’s just been a long, hard week.
@David Naylor: I actually believe in “Don’t Break the Web”. I write my own speeches. I played a little fast and loose with that rule in IE7, and IE got burned in the public (by self-described standards advocates as well as users) by the number of breaks my team caused.
There are a bunch of other good questions out there, and I will respond in public soon.
January 25th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
[…] Today, Molly Holzschlag wrote a post, Me, IE8, and Microsoft Versioning where she bemoans the lack of transparency forced on to the WaSP team members working with Microsoft. […]
January 25th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
(Off-Topic) Rob (Doc), stop coming in to Chicago just to pick your son up and we will.
Or do I have to buy Cubs tickets when the Cardinals come to town or weather another severe thunderstorm you happen to be driving through just to guarantee that you’ll stay more than 5 minutes?
@ Chris, as much as I’d like to agree with you, I just can’t in this case. The view that a lot of people tend to get of Microsoft is one that tries to lead by dividing and conquering. Some times the company needs to actually just shut the hell up and listen to what others have to say, then take the ideas and thoughts that others have and then determine if it can do them or not without breaking the company’s bottom line (which I see as the 800 pound gorilla I call Microsoft’s corporate clients).
I’m sure you’d love your boss to actually do that, but it makes me wonder who’s actually pulling the strings and taping your mouth shut at 1 Microsoft Way, if you konw what I mean.
But unlike a lot of the others, I do give credit where credit is due, and IE 7 is by far a huge push in the right direction (the only two complaints I have from a CSS standpoint are the lack of generated content and hasLayout, but then again, I’m pretty darn good at getting around IE 6 without having to resort to a steaming 20k of hacks). IE 7 isn’t perfect, but you and your team did make a lot of progress, for which I do thank you.
January 25th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Holzschlag–
I don’t always agree with your basis for “openness” but I damn sure respect and admire your passion. Regardless, that passion is worth defense.
Wilson–
If in your shoes, I would be the largest customer of ‘Louisville Sluggers’.
To everyone else: Have a few cold beers and don’t sweat the small stuff.
Finally, to myself: Self, self I say, no gives a rat’s ass what you think. So shut the hell up and pour a scotch.
——
@Self–
That is the best god damned advise that I have read all week.
January 25th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
@Dan Schulz: I’m not sure where we’re disagreeing, exactly. I agree it’s a good idea to shut up and listen to customers and community, and then take those ideas and see if they’re feasible. That’s exactly the way I’ve (directly and indirectly) led the IE platform team for the last three years. That’s why IE7 was about fixing the worst problems that web developers run in to.
The problem with this particular issue is that doing the simple, obvious thing that a lot of people would want (myself included, by the way) - that is, following the strict letter of the standards by default - would cause a lot of problems on the web, and the people who would pay the first round of costs would be our IE users (when “their web” doesn’t work). The people who would pay the second round of costs would be the tool makers, because all the content their tools generated to work in IE may or may not work anymore; and the companies (tiny to huge) that offer content on the web, and suddenly their site isn’t accessible to a number of users anymore, due to something we did. We don’t get the same content that other browsers do; we get IE-specific content.
Despite what a large number of people obviously think, I do want an interoperable platform, and I do want these problems to go away in the long term. I can’t justify hosing our own users to make that happen, nor directly causing millions if not billions of dollars in costs to repair broken web sites.
@thacker - what, to protect myself in the parking lot?
January 25th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
Wilson–
For defensive purposes, not at all. I had in mind Teddy Roosevelt and more of a tactical offensive response to a few.
To anyone: I was not serious about the baseball bat thing. Maybe.
January 25th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
Thanks for sharing this, Molly.
It strikes me that this is effectively a done deal (despite the massive amounts of backlash the posts on the subject have received), which is the complete and total antithesis of the way things are done on the web nowadays.
My personal opinion of the element is that it’s unnecessary lunacy that will at the very _least_ cause Microsoft and the IE team a serious PR disaster. Everybody who was actually getting paid to build sites during the IE 6 - IE 7 transition (as opposed to watching other people doing it) is perfectly well aware that the next one will be far easier because we already replaced the IE 6-specific hacks with conditional comments targetting IE 6 or IE 7 specifically. IF IE 8 is actually standards-compliant, we shouldn’t have to lift a finger (and neither should the sysadmins running the servers) for it to render in whatever the most standards-compliant mode it has is.
The risky sites—the ones most likely to break as the result of an update from IE 6 to IE 7, or from IE 7 to IE 8, are the intranet sites, the ones which aren’t built to any degree of web standards _in the first place_, and are written as though IE 5.5 is the undisputed king of the web. *These* sites couldn’t care less about super-standards-mode, or even plain old standards-mode, because they won’t ever go anywhere near it. _These_ are the sites that Microsoft’s paying customers, and hence senior management, are most afraid of breaking, and if there’s a serious risk of that, you upstage Tredosoft and release an officially-sanctioned standalone IE 6 installer and be done with it.
Beyond all of that, the whole thing may not be intended as much, but will be _effectively_ anti-competitive, whether Microsoft likes it or not, and will be a technical minefield which really only serves to make things more complicated than they already are.
There’s a reason why both authors and UAs work to standards published semi-independently of both: trying to do it any other way is both ridiculously complex, and wholly irresponsible. Microsoft is in a position of responsibility so long as it continues to develop Internet Explorer. Closed-door decisions regarding web standards are an abuse of that responsibility which should never have been allowed to happen. Individuals (such as yourself) apologising for it doesn’t actually make any difference to the net result: Microsoft’s only option if it wants to walk out of this mess with a shred of credibility as far as many people are concerned is to backtrack, apologise, and start all over again. Present the problem and solicit solutions, instead of presenting the solution that’s already been decided upon without actually explaining why the solutions that have been used time and time again in the past don’t fit the problem (which, incidentally, is so vague as to be meaningless).
Or, let me put it another way: I get paid to build web-sites. My clients, and their customers, sometimes use Internet Explorer. Sometimes it’s an older version, and sometimes it’s the latest public release of IE 7 on Vista. I don’t care, because part of my job is to make it work—despite the fact that I [and many others like me] spend a ridiculous amount of time making our standards-compliant sites work simply in Internet Explorer. All you have to do is release a version of IE that follows the standards as they have existed for most of the past decade. Apple, Opera, Mozilla, and others all manage to do it, and the biggest software company can’t do it without demanding the specifications be the same? What the hell? I am sick and tired of cleaning up Microsoft’s poorly-documented mistakes for it (yeah, where are the Knowledgebase articles on all of Trident’s known rendering and scripting flaws, exactly?), and when your brief was “make IE 8 compliant with the standards”, the inability of it to process an HTML 4.01 Strict document with CSS and ECMAscript as other compliant browsers do without modifying the document itself means it fails to match that brief.
January 25th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Er, by “demanding specifications be the same”, I obviously meant “demanding specifications be changed”.
January 25th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
Thanks for the frank, straight-forward, and candid post Molly.
If it really is all about the “intranet” applications that will break… then why not make the compatibility mode an Active Directory configuration, a domain policy that will cause the misfit intranet applications to always load up in “compatibility” mode. These Intranet applications are already dependent on IE, so naturally one would also assume they live in a completely Microsoft-centric environment where such a thing is possible.
Point being, if Microsoft really wanted to appease both camps, it could find a way to do that. There are so many ways they could protect legacy content while keeping standards in the front seat.
I want standards put first and backward compatibility put second, and I just don’t buy the argument that this is all about Microsoft’s big business partners that don’t want their sites to break.
If Microsoft can build an enormous database for detecting phishing sites, why couldn’t it do the same for legacy content? It wouldn’t be the first time that a browser included hacks for specific websites to keep the web from “breaking”.
I don’t want vendor lock-in! I don’t want to encourage this crude to stick around or its lazy developers to make more crude.
January 25th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
Happy Birthday, Molly!
January 26th, 2008 at 1:47 am
[…] Another issue which is a problem for many people is the way this has been made public. If it weren’t for the efforts of people like Molly , we probably would not have heard about this until IE8 shipped. The web should be based on open standards, emerging from public, open discussion. Not on what’s been decided behind closed doors of a single company. […]
January 26th, 2008 at 5:15 am
Thanks Molly for sharing.
@Chris Wilson:
Perhaps on the IE blog there’s just too much noise for a conversation.
It seems that this is the place to contact you at the moment
Anyway, I have some questions which I hope you would like to answer:
If I understand correctly the proposed implementation of this version switch means that all future versions will have to be able to render pages like all previous versions starting with IE7. Doesn’t that mean that IE risks becoming bloatware?
If MS would ever decide to drop the support for IE7 rendering in future IE versions wouldn’t that mean that the web will still break as the broken pages will still be there? Would it therefore not be better to fix the broken, static part of the web for once and for all instead of ‘fixing’ the still growing not broken part?
I understand that MS can not just break the web (or “reveal the broken web”) and that you have to come up with a solution that is not too much of a burder to your customers and other users. The problem with the currently proposed switch though is that it’s not a long term solution to the problem as it only covers up the problem instead of fixing it.
If “edge” would be the default rendering, then the switch would have to be inserted into the broken pages. There are a lot of these pages, but at least it’s a pretty static part of the web and inserting the switch is not rocket science. Future IE versions would only have to support an IE7 rendering along with their own but not of all those in between. And for broken pages that will not be updated a manual engine switch could be made accessible to the user.
Wouldn’t you agree that the only long term solution to the problem is to fix the broken parts?
I hope you can find some time to reply. Thanks.
January 26th, 2008 at 7:20 am
Speaking about transparency - and being too late to congratulate on your birthday(?) - can you get anyone from Microsoft to confirm the factual accuracy of my chart at this address: http://keryx.se/dev/svg/geckobug-08-01/ie8-metatag.html
(Doing it I discovered a bug in FFox, hence the slightly odd URL. The bug is described at http://keryx.se/dev/svg/geckobug-08-01/ but right now my main concern is getting an answer to my question above.)
There is one more disturbing aspect of the suggestion as it has been explained so far, and that is letting an HTML-element *override* an HTTP-header. It is always the other way around otherwise, e.g. character encoding (charset). Can you relay any information about that aspect, which I believe is really dumb!
January 26th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
@Lars: I can’t speak for Microsoft but I will say that’s a mighty good visualization insofar as my understanding goes as well.
@Rob: I think you get confused perhaps because you are unaware of how long I’ve been involved in the Web, and the prior work I did. I could see where it would look as I were fence-sitting. That’s actually what I am doing, because a liaison’s job is just that - work to connect different groups. I also think you see my personal feelings about capitalism, hegemony and the white man’s hierarchy that exists as the current core. I’m vehemently against that model, and Microsoft is built on that model despite many people within the company realizing that different business models must emerge in order to compete in a rapidly changing, very truly global environment. So on the one side, you see my personal feelings come out. On the other, you see me working toward the core belief I have about the Web: That it remain open. Maybe that will help clarify a little bit about my position for you.
-=-
@Chris: You know my feelings about your integrity. I would willingly go into the fray for you with those Louisville sluggers any time you asked. What I like most about you, Chris, is your unwavering dedication despite being in one very public, very awful position. I have no doubts, and I will challenge anyone who does, that you personally want the best web for everyone. That said, I’ll never forget the look on Hakon’s face when in the HTML5 WG meeting at TPAC he looked at me and said “wait, am I to understand you and Chris are NOT in agreement?”
It struck me as especially interesting because it seemed as though he thought that just because people can have strong personal and professional ties that they have the same opinions on things. But you and I are not sheep (despite our respective shaggy heads), we simply aren’t built that way. So even when we disagree, it sure doesn’t influence my continued awe of you, and my desire that people take it easier on you because they really don’t know the complexities you’ve dealt with for so very long.
Right now, I’m in Cairns, Australia and was up in Port Douglas on the Great Barrier Reef and I thought of you, looking over that vast expanse of sea and sky, diving in the reef and doing something you truly enjoy. I’m declaring a “Chris deserves a frickin’ break” day and the first moment you have available to go spend some extra special time with your family, doing things you love, away from this shouting, well, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you to grab it. I just want to offer back some of the support you’ve so generously offered me over the years.
(added a bit later) Here’s a photo just for you.
-=-
@everyone: Thanks for your comments, and for the constructive presentation of those comments, in what has been one of the more peaceful conversations on this subject. It reminds me, as with what I was just saying to Chris, that we can care for each other as people and have the dignity and ability to disagree with grace. A little arguing is a good thing, hatred and vitriol, not so much.
Ever yours, M
January 26th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
Welcome to Queensland Molly! Be sure to look out for the irukandji.
January 26th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
[…] This news seems to have come as quite a surprise, with heated discussion (mostly negative as far as I can tell, and at times sadly mean-spirited) breaking out in the usual forums. Molly Holzschlag provides the most level-headed analysis I’ve read so far, and alludes to the secretive, NDA-protected discussions that led up to this decision. Even Ars Technica and El Reg have weighed in on the issue. […]
January 26th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
[…] X-UA-Compatible is apparently a done deal: the decision has been taken, code written. The IE team didn’t ask web developers what they thought, if they had any better ideas (as smart as the IE team are, the collective experience of the web development community specifically and Internet community in general when it comes to issues like this significantly outweighs that held internally), they just said “this is what’s happening, leave comments below [no guarantee we’ll do anything except defend our position]”. […]
January 27th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
[…] There have been some more posts on the subject, from some notable members of the community. Molly Holzschlag posted on her site some news that she was involved in this process, but fought to open it up and to be communicative about what was happening. Apparently, she and others involved were under an NDA agreement, and could not say anything until the fact was finally made public. As she puts it, it is not the ideal solution, but they looked at several ideas and the current one was preferable to the others. And she believes that it is much better that we know about this now, rather than closer to the release of IE8. And I agree. Molly, do keep up the good work! […]
January 28th, 2008 at 3:46 am
Asymptotically Converging on Standards
Shelley Powers: If Microsoft were to declare that the following were to be treated as equivalent, then a lot of the concerns expressed by the web community were to go away: <!DOCTYPE html> and <meta http-equiv=”X-UA-Compatible” content
January 28th, 2008 at 6:17 am
For those NDA-ed conversations, there is always Wikileaks …
January 28th, 2008 at 9:51 am
Thank you for your honest and open opinion on this matter. Concerning this I think Microsoft still can learn a lot from its competitors.
However I’d also wish to express my respect for Chris Wilson. It must seem like the least rewarding job in the world at this moment, but he holds his opinion politely and well-argumented.
I just wish all this backward-compatibility patch-on-patch wasn’t needed to begin with.
January 28th, 2008 at 10:11 am
@Lars:
Thanks for sharing your chart.
In IE8 setting “IE=8″ will mean the same as “IE=edge”, but for future versions this will not be the case. If IE10 encouters a switch set to IE8 or IE9 it will have to be able to render as if it were the defined IE version.
Maybe it’s out of scope of the chart, but I was wondering if you could visualize that fact in your chart as well as I think it will become an issue in the future if the switch will be implemented as proposed.
January 28th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
An interesting peek at the process, thanks.
I’m curious to see how to get Acid2 compliance without the meta but what, really, really annoys me it’s that with version targeting IE7 bugs and shortcomings (it was outdated from day 1) will not fade with time.
BTW, I’m still not clear if the meta tag will allow a “IE=6″ value…
January 28th, 2008 at 10:43 pm
Ah, the penny just dropped.
Chris wilson stated in a reply post over on the IE8 blog… “In the end, we believe our highest priority is the user… If they install a new browser and their sites are broken, they uninstall the new browser.”
Think about it, what hasn’t been discussed here is which Operating System IE8 will support. I’ll hazard a guess and say it will be Vista only and maybe Windows Seven (or whatever the next version of Windows is named).
And here is the rub, Micro$oft only make their money from selling Operating Systems and not web browsers. This means that Micro$oft don’t want users to purchase a new OS (e.g. Vista or Windows Seven) only for them to find some old, crappy web-sites don’t work and then return the OS or decide not to upgrade on a recommendation from one of their friends or a tech review. So by releasing IE8 only on Vista, Micro$oft will try and force users to upgrade to their latest OS, thereby increasing revenue and profits along the way. “It’s safe to upgrade to Vista and IE8 because all your old, crappy web-sites work too”.
The way to think of this decision is that it is a Product Marketing decision (i.e. make money) rather than a Software Development (i.e. provide standards compliance) or User-centric decision (i.e. build a better web).
At the end of the day, the fact that web browsers are “free” (in the not having to pay money sense) means that Micro$oft will try and recoup their costs in other areas. This time, through the Operating system.
It’s a sad decision for the Web but one motivated by money and, as usual, corporate greed.
January 29th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
thnaks..;)
January 30th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
[…] Me, IE8 and Microsoft Versioning by Molly Holzschlag. […]
February 4th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
hey
hi my name is Molly too and i just found your website so i just wanted to check it out and give you a shout-out from another person that has the same name as you….im 15teen years old and i live in north spring…part of Houston Tx. Well thanks for listenin to what i had to say well buh-bye.
sincerly,
Molly
February 4th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
hey it’s me molly wilson well you probably don’t know me but im knew to your web site my full name is Molly Louann Wilson and i know it’s to late but Happy birthday molly holzschlag i your birthday was on January 25th,2008 but to me its now….Happy birthday!!! well Got to go see you later bye
sincerly molly wilson
February 9th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
[…] I respect Chris Wilson’s rule Don’t break the web, it’s an admirable and important goal, not just for the IE team, but all browser vendors, web designers and developers. However, I get the feeling this isn’t about the web you and I think about, it’s “Microsoft’s web” that has forced this rendering decision: The people who would pay the second round of costs would be the tool makers, because all the content their tools generated to work in IE may or may not work anymore; Chris Wilson’s comment at Molly’s blog […]
February 17th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
[…] Molly Holzschlag spoke about “Why Web Standards Aren’t”, and how the original vision of the Web Standards Project (”anyone, anywhere, any platform, any user agent”) has run aground. She argues that what we should be aiming for isn’t this kind of universal standard, but interoperability, and that what we are really talking about are Best Practices, not Standards. I spoke with her (how sweet is her URL: molly.com!) about IE and Microsoft’s relationship to the web dev community. Molly has already discussed the politics of these issues on her blog. I asked her whether she thought that we as an industry have an opportunity to educate users why they are better off using a standards-based browser in order to reduce the volume of Internet Explorer users (see stats above), rather than pleading with Microsoft (in vain) to get their products up to date with their competitors. The most tedious aspect of web development is browser compatibility, and my experience is that catering to IE6 takes up hours and hours on every project. Not to mention that it bloats your CSS and markup. She didn’t have a clear answer (nobody does), but after chatting for a while she suggested that a set of real tests to demonstrate the loss of time (and consequently, profit) caused by Internet Explorer’s lack of standards support would go a long way toward convincing institutions and companies to make the switch. After all, I’d be willing to bet that the greater proportion of those those 1/2 billion IE installs are on corporate or institutional intranets. […]
March 4th, 2008 at 11:32 am
[…] Microsoft is still reeling in the web browser market from its own five-year failure to update Internet Explorer before version 7 last year. After being poised to continue their arrogant imperial approach to said market with a new proposal called “version targeting“, I’m thrilled to see they’ve changed course and will now heed the wishes of the greater web development community. […]
March 6th, 2008 at 7:16 am
[…] I’m no fan of Microsoft, however I have to doff my cap to them. They’ve decided after all the flak and commentary they got, not just from me, from around the world, from big names in the game, to do a complete u-turn and do things right! No more IE-specific hacks. They’ve even released a beta version for us to test. Hurrah! […]
April 7th, 2008 at 4:31 am
it is easy to find it, i think u just search on google or yahoo
April 8th, 2008 at 8:38 am
but, i think it is another thing which you have
April 8th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
i like it
April 8th, 2008 at 11:57 pm
interesting, thanks
April 9th, 2008 at 8:49 am
do you know everything about css?
April 9th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
how can i find everything about css?
April 10th, 2008 at 7:42 am
what do you want to learn about css? we can help easily
April 11th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
i want learn too, i want start at the beginning of css
April 21st, 2008 at 4:22 pm
[…] Molly’s view on IE8 controversy […]
April 21st, 2008 at 4:35 pm
it is good t see u
April 21st, 2008 at 8:43 pm
thats the matter i want to learn
April 22nd, 2008 at 7:53 pm
Nice job.
April 22nd, 2008 at 7:53 pm
Thanks,very nice blog.
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:13 pm
ok,thanks
April 24th, 2008 at 8:43 am
hi, umit. how is going on