Mace to Your Face. MySpace, Facebook – Not Ready for IE8
Ironically, the long awaited IE8 which is supposed to support web standards won‘t display correctly pages like MySpace, Facebook, CNN, BBC and more as they were designed for older IE versions. And as you know, older IE versions simply ignored web standards.
Dear Microsoft, congratulations. Once again, you broke the web.
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About (Author Profile)
Vygantas is a former web designer whose projects are used by companies such as AMD, NVIDIA and departed Westood Studios. Being passionate about software, Vygantas began his journalism career back in 2007 when he founded FavBrowser.com. Having said that, he is also an adrenaline junkie who enjoys good books, fitness activities and Forex trading.
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Why Internet Explorer is so popular? Its the most widely used browser by far…
In my opinion, IE’s success is based almost entirely on ignorance. Many people that buy computers are going to use what’s preinstalled, not knowing there are other, superior alternatives. Also, I’ve talked to people that think the big, blue E IS the internet.
There are also people that continue to use IE, even though they know the security flaws, lack of adherence to web standards, etc. One of my best friends knows of other browsers, but refuses to use anything else. My uncle uses IE because Microsoft made it, and he’s convinced that if Microsoft made something, then it is of exceptionally high quality and superior to all other products on the market (>_<).
I lead a site of my own and designed it from scratch, and I’m currently redesigning it. It works on Firefox, IE7 and Safari. It works on Opera with some very minor glitches. IE8 breaks it completely, and I will not hack my design just to patch Microsoft’s mistakes, no way. Besides, the redesign will come out before IE8, so it’s their fault.
tht’s not fair! you want more standards and then you get them, you say they broke the web!
ms know this and they implement a trident version from ie7! that eans: put on your page the single codeline and then everythink is fine.
they need additional 5 years to get ahead to the other vendors…
mabdul, it is, indeed.
But that’s what many years of ignorance gives.
Also, it will take 5-8 years (as vista comes with IE7, so…) to fix this mess. There are still many old IE users .
It’s only a problem if you use IE, but if you use Opera, Safari or Firefox the web will work as normal.
I know, I didn’t say that ms is good at this point. for example: why give ms not the opportunity users of older windows version to upgrade to ie7/ie8? there is no technical reason (there is the difference to support a browser for mac9)…
I’m not sure if you understand me: I am not happy what ms does/did. But it is not fair to say that they should support this and that and when they do to say they broke the web and say that they are “bad”.
[and they want to support something like “browser.js” that will change many thinks, i guess]
@Vygantas Lipskas can you make a feed for comments please? *g*
mabdul,
Comments RSS feed added ;-)
This is how I see the problem with IE “breaking the web”.
First, once IE became the most popular, MS stopped developing it until relatively recently. In the meantime, the other browsers moved ahead, supporting existing standards (many of which IE6 didn’t support). So those browsers supported standards and IE didn’t.
Second, standards supporting developers wanted to support the new browsers via standars. Unfortunately, IE didn’t support those standards so web applications often need two lines of deveopment. One for IE, one for standards-based browsers. This was often done by explicitly sniffing for IE, rather than implicility using capability testing. It’s a no-no, but often seems easier.
Finally, MS started updating IE, bringing it in-line with the standards, a bit at a time. The problem is those applications sniffing for IE don’t provide a standards-based solution to IE. They provide an IE-proprietary-based solution, which, as IE gradually supports more standards, stops working as it’s often incompatible with the standards-based solution.
So, we have the current mess. There are two possible fixes, that I can see. The first is the route that MS is currently taking by providing the backwards-compatibility switch. Unfortunately, this is not a long term solution because all those sites that are currently broken will remain broken. They just run in on an old, eventually unsupported, codebase.
The other possible route is for MS to release a new browser that *is not* IE. I don’t care if it’s based on the same code base, but it needs to be renamed, rebranded, and not identify as IE at all. If they did this, they could release a standards-based browser that would *just work* with most sites. No breakages. But MS doesn’t want to do this because it would un-tie the browser from the OS. They would perceive a loss in market share, mainly because they would be changing things so the browsers compete on merit rather than ubiquity.
There is one bonus in a new browser for MS. They could continue to support their enterprise customers (and South Korea) who are deeply tied to the proprietary extensions of IE while still providing a fully standards-compliant (or as close as anyone else) browser, since they won’t be the same browser.
Sorry for the long comment, but the idea hit me and I had to get it out :)
Michael
there is nothing to add ;)
good comment; i think you hit all possibilities o.O
The other possible route is for MS to release a new browser that *is not* IE. I don’t care if it’s based on the same code base, but it needs to be renamed, rebranded, and not identify as IE at all. If they did this, they could release a standards-based browser that would *just work* with most sites. No breakages.
This would be quite interesting to see, but do you think that a new MS browser would be better than IE? Besides being standards-based, I mean. Do you think it would be more secure, more stable, and altogether a better browsing experience? Or would it be the same-old trashy Internet Explorer with a new logo, a new name, the same security flaws, the constant crashes, but with new web standards?
@DeclinedDoomed
From my standpoint, it doesn’t matter how bad of a user experience a new MS browser might be. If Microsoft wants to keep torturing their users, that’s ok by me, because it makes it easier for Opera, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and others to pickup those customers by saying, “Hey, we can do everything MS NewBrowser does, but it’s fun/easy/safe to use.”
However, I’d hope that if they are doing some rebranding they’ll clean up the user experience some. I wouldn’t expect it, but I would hope it happens. I mean, I am dreaming here, after all ;-)