Why you should dump IE.

[philip.j.fry]

Originally Posted by greencreeper

So if the majority use IE, then what are we arguing about?? You can't ignore the post popular browser when developing, and like I said, it seems daft to design for browsers that hardly anyone uses. The market dominance of a company sets the standards, regardless of any standards body.

I think that the point we are trying to get across is that HTML (and the standards that have grown out of that, CSS etc) was designed as a platform-independant markup language, the aim being that information could be shared across all platforms. The point of having standards is that it shouldn't matter what software, browser in this case, is used the end result is the same, pages should display the same whether used in firefox or in IE. The idea of platform independance is fundamental to the way in which the internet operates, imagine if all of those other standards, jpg, tcp/ip, smtp/pop/imap, http and so on, were modified to be incompatible across platforms. Where would be then? MS are part of the group that defines the standard, so why do they have so much trouble adhering to it? It's not even as though they have a strict published alternative standard, it's just that their browser cannot actually meet the standards required but because they hold a massive dominance and peoples 'I'm alright' attitude they don't have the impetus they need to fix their product. The fact that they state w3c compatibility but don't actually have it does show that IE is in fact broken.

[Richard M]

Originally Posted by greencreeper

So if the majority use IE, then what are we arguing about??

But the minority is still millions of internet connected people.

[Stuart]

This is to all those in the "IE is the most used browser, so IE is the standard" camp. What happens when IE stops being the most popular browser?

Now, this may or may not happen, but remember that a few years ago, Netscape Navigator/Communicator was in the same position IE is now. It's entirely possible a new browser will come along and knock IE off the top.

IF that should happen, a lot of web sites will need to be altered to work with alternate browsers. If IE were based on standards, that would not be a problem.

[Bifta]

Originally Posted by scastle

If IE were based on standards, that would not be a problem.

Does anyone know exactly what bit of the W3C standards IE is unable to deal with?

[basa]

Unfortunately for us if MS ever started to comply fully with the W3C standard and consequently web designers had also to follow the standard, we could all install whatever W3C compliant browser we wished and it would work 100%.

MS would then surely lose thier browser monopoly with IE.

No, MS will continue to keep IE non compliant forcing web designers to write specifically for it (being the most used out there) and making other browsers appear broken.

IE is inexorably packaged with Windows, few Windows users will even know about or look for let alone install an alternative browser. Web designers won't design sites that won't work with the browser the majority use.

Catch 22 for us. Monopoly for MS

[Xaccers]

MS don't write IE to be non W3C compliant, it is W3C compliant.
This is why IE works with all W3C compliant web sites.

It can also handle things beyond the W3C standards. If a web site requires those extra functions which are not part of the W3C standards, then it's not Microsofts fault is it?

Remember, Netscape went further than the W3C standards, but because it wasn't MS people didn't bitch about it.

[basa]

Originally Posted by Xaccers

MS don't write IE to be non W3C compliant, it is W3C compliant.
This is why IE works with all W3C compliant web sites.

It can also handle things beyond the W3C standards. If a web site requires those extra functions which are not part of the W3C standards, then it's not Microsofts fault is it?

Remember, Netscape went further than the W3C standards, but because it wasn't MS people didn't bitch about it.

OK maybe I should say, as you rightly point out IE is compliant, but there is code around that works only with IE, but yes it is MS's fault since they actively promote such (Active X & Active scripting) so that many sites will only work with IE based browsers. Such code is outside the standards and as only MS know the code only they can engineer their browser to use it.

[Xaccers]

Originally Posted by basa

OK maybe I should say, as you rightly point out IE is compliant, but there is code around that works only with IE, but yes it is MS's fault since they actively promote such (Active X & Active scripting) so that many sites will only work with IE based browsers. Such code is outside the standards and as only MS know the code only they can engineer their browser to use it.

Is it microsofts fault that developers use this code when there are alternatives? No.

[Richard M]

Originally Posted by Bifta

Does anyone know exactly what bit of the W3C standards IE is unable to deal with?

It screws up CSS, so a designer has to resort to stupid hacks.

[Xaccers]

Originally Posted by Richard M

It screws up CSS, so a designer has to resort to stupid hacks.

Which bits of CSS? I've never had a problem with them

[Richard M]

Load both Mozilla and IE then try these:
http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/

[Tezcatlipoca]

Originally Posted by Richard M

Load both Mozilla and IE then try these:
http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/

Interesting.


I've just tried the Complex Spiral Demo in IE6 & Firefox 0.9 - works perfectly in Firefox, & not in IE.


And, the other way round....Just tried a friend's site which uses CSS - perfect in IE6, but looks completely wrong in Firefox. I guess it's IE specific in some way.

[greencreeper]

Originally Posted by scastle

It's entirely possible a new browser will come along and knock IE off the top.

Yup. Also entirely possible we'll be hit with a big rock and wiped out (won't that be a tragedy) This is where Firefox missed a trick - if they could get all web pages to display correctly and offer speed and security improvements over IE et al, then their browser would be in a strong position to upsurp IE - providing users make the switch (that's down to marketing). If that happened, designers could then start developing compliant sites rather than IE sites, and over time IE would go the same way as Netscape (truly awful browser).


I know with my homepage (not brilliant I know) I had to remove some bits of CSS before Firefox displayed it correctly - the site had passed the CSS validator, though I know that means little. I had a width=100% somewhere in the CSS and Firefox sized the screen all wrong whereas IE displayed it fine. I think the fault was with Firefox but I'm not a web designer.

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by greencreeper

Yup. Also entirely possible we'll be hit with a big rock and wiped out (won't that be a tragedy) This is where Firefox missed a trick - if they could get all web pages to display correctly and offer speed and security improvements over IE et al, then their browser would be in a strong position to upsurp IE - providing users make the switch (that's down to marketing). If that happened, designers could then start developing compliant sites rather than IE sites, and over time IE would go the same way as Netscape (truly awful browser).


I know with my homepage (not brilliant I know) I had to remove some bits of CSS before Firefox displayed it correctly - the site had passed the CSS validator, though I know that means little. I had a width=100% somewhere in the CSS and Firefox sized the screen all wrong whereas IE displayed it fine. I think the fault was with Firefox but I'm not a web designer.

My point was that it happened before (IE knocked Nutscrape off the top), at some point it will happen again. A lot of IE specific websites will fall over if this happens.

[greencreeper]

Originally Posted by scastle

My point was that it happened before (IE knocked Nutscrape off the top), at some point it will happen again. A lot of IE specific websites will fall over if this happens.

And my point was it won't happen because of this very reason - people are going to take one look at how Firefox displays pages and dump it. Don't forget that most users don't have a clue what CSS is and probably have never heard of W3C. Like I said, if a browser wants to topple IE it needs to be better than IE but still display sites, regardless of what browser they were designed for, correctly.