
IE’s big leap forward; CSS3 selectors fully supported - mbrubeck
http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2010/06/ies_big_leap_fo.html
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kenjackson
I tried to tell people this was coming. It was clear to me listening to Dean
talk about IE9. He was, for the first time, strongly hinting at the fact that
users would want to use IE not because of features, but because it ran the web
the best.

I think MS made a smart call. They saw that the standards web was taking over.
They couldn't stop it. So how do you sell Windows licenses in this new world?
Be the best platform for the standards web. So now they're throwing all their
eggs in this basket. It's the right move and I look forward to a new world
when people actually say, "Use IE... no, seriously, use IE".

~~~
pavs
While I applaud IE team for doing an amazing job in recent time, I can't help
but point out the fact that their motivation for making IE more compliant has
to do with selling more of their products and perhaps had little to do with
making the best product. And they did it only after they realized that they
are loosing browser market share by large number in a very short period of
time.

I am not suggesting that mozilla/Opera/Chrome developers don't care about
money; but making the best browser for them was not a reactionary motivation
to their low browser market share. At least for Opera, they have been right up
there, or as long as I can remember, as the most standard compatible browser.
Yet their browser market share never went above 1% (statcounter). And they are
still making it better, recently developed the fastest JS engine.

My point being. I can't trust a company/developer who is reactionary to the
market share and their profit line as opposed to doing their job good in the
first place. AFAI am concerned, as long as I have the choice, I will never use
IE.

~~~
kenjackson
The motivation for all of these companies is money, except maybe Mozilla
Foundation, being non-profit. It's just that many times your interests are
aligned with different things.

For example, Opera makes its money from the browser. Plain and simple they
need to sell their browser. And really they have no other product.

Google is a very different story. Let me give you an example, do you think
Google would ever release a version of Chrome that allowed you to block all
advertising? Even if that was the best user experience possible, they want to
sell you ads. There plan to do it is to make the rest of the experience so
good that you stay on the web and click ads. But they won't do anything,
regardless of how beneficial to the user, where there's a reasonable
possibility that they'd drastically reduce their profit.

I personally don't buy the whole "good company" "bad company" thing. But I do
look for companies whose profit is aligned with my interest. That changes over
time (both my interests and the company's), but I simple don't have this
belief that some companies are "gooder". That died with my belief in Santa
Claus.

~~~
josefresco
Footnote

*The Mozilla Foundation is essentially funded by Google. Yes it could be any other tech company but for now it's Google.

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pilif
_sigh_ \- why oh why can't they support Windows XP? 80% of the customers using
our web application are still on Windows XP (some even on NT4...) and seing
how conservative these companies are, I have my doubts that they'll _ever_
upgrade.

Now if we could have a working IE without hardware acceleration that runs
under XP, that would be wonderful.

I do have some hopes for Google Chrome Frame's MSI installer though - to
support a barcode scanner, we already have to force our users to install Java,
so there's at least some hope with GCF.

As it stands now, 20% of our development time is wasted on making stuff work
on IE 5.5 (!) and 6

~~~
fname
_why oh why can't they support Windows XP?_

Why should they? New features and updates only available to newer operating
systems, drive upgrades! Makes perfect sense to me, especially considering XP
support won't be around forever.

 _As it stands now, 20% of our development time is wasted on making stuff work
on IE 5.5 (!) and 6_

I'm not following... If it's a waste of time, why are you doing it? Drop
support for those browsers in that case. Unless, of course, customers using
those browsers make up a significant percentage of use, it doesn't sound like
much of a waste to me.

~~~
eli
_XP support won't be around forever._

You're not kidding.

Windows 7 SP1 is currently in beta. Once it ships, you will no longer be able
to downgrade Win 7 to XP, which is going to make it extremely difficult to
legally buy a new XP license.

~~~
xpaulbettsx
Why won't you be able to downgrade? Afaik, there's no technical reason (and my
day job is working on said SP)

~~~
pilif
He was talking about converting a 7 or Vista license into an XP one which is
AFAIK the only way how you can still acquire an xp license if you are not a
hardware manufacturer needing it for a netbook

~~~
josefresco
I can't imagine the legacy hardware/software hell that would require a
downgrade from Windows 7 (soon to be SP1) to XP.

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mahmud
Good job Microsoft!

MS needs all the moral support and encouragement it can get. Really, we should
treat MS like a recovering addict who declines a free hit and goes to bed
early. They're doing their best and they're improving.

Well done!

~~~
ary
Except that in this instance the "substance" craved is money. Microsoft
actively neglected to support standards until it started to affect the bottom
line. Pretending that they were clueless to how difficult they've made web
design and development is foolish. If there were any epiphanies they were had
while staring at a balance sheet.

~~~
vijaydev
better late than never.. It came too late, but it definitely does not look
like too little.

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powrtoch
As an Opera fan boy, this article hurts my soul a little.

But good job for Microsoft (finally), perhaps it will motivate my boys in
Norway to step it up.

Now if they would just couple it with an aggressive upgrade program, we'd
really be in business. Lack of XP support certainly doesn't help.

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cmgarcia
Working as a web developer in the education sector, this gives me a great deal
cautious hope for the future. About 90% of our visitors use IE because they
are students in the classroom.

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alttab
First Canvas and now CSS3. In the world created by my dreams, all of this is
done to standards, with good performance.

In reality, experience has taught me that they could easily destroy these
standards by doing it their own way. Only if there is finally a reconciliation
to full standards (or little deviance like other browsers), would these press
releases even be worth it.

If they "implement" canvas and CSS3, and basically the new web, and we still
have to go "that's a great idea, but does it work in IE?" they have still
failed.

 _Crosses fingers_ Here's to hope!

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StuffMaster
"Another golden oldie that got dropped is cursor: hand, the MS proprietary
alternative to cursor: pointer"

I hate that no matter what it's called. For God's sake, don't use the
hyperlink cursor for buttons!

~~~
troygoode
Why? From a UI perspective I find it more natural to use "cursor: pointer" on
anything that is clickable.

~~~
ary
The difference is that "cursor: pointer" means (by default) that the target
will initiate navigation away from the current page. All other elements follow
OS conventions as a matter of presenting a common UI grammar to the user.

~~~
StuffMaster
In my (unresearched) opinion, cursor:pointer was created to indicate that a
hyperlink can be clicked on. Buttons were obvious, but underlined words in the
middle of a paragraph, not so much.

It irritates me when people learn a concept and then illogically apply it to
other domains. That's why I'm making a fuss, it seems like everybody is not
using their brains and saying "EVERYTHING you click must use the hand because
links do!".

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patrickaljord
Anyone knows if it supports flexible-box model?

