I completely agree with what you’ve said, and then I remember the problems I have in a Corporate environment where the SOE browser is still IE6, while at the same time trying to provide a new and truly novel web based application (for SCADA type systems) with a 5 year plus lifetime and the issues I’ll be facing with mandating a real browser (be that IE7, IE8, FF3, Safari3, Opera etc anything but IE6 really) in an environment where “developers” hobbled together IE6 specific legacy web applications and other applications we have purchased do not meet cross browser compatibility requirements (again, mandating IE6) that have left the company in an awkward situation - upgrade the existing web apps to web standards with full cross browser compatibility regardless of the fact that “but we have an SOE, that’s all we need to cater for” attitude has been prevalent for the best part of a decade plus.

Dealing with the corporates, with their legacy sites and applications, I believe, is what is truly holding back the development of IE8 into a truly standards compliant and capable browser. The blacklist for this issue (where the vast majority are intranet) present problems that won’t be overcome with the technique. Out in the real world, with the web ever evolving at a pace that intranet applications never do, I expect the professionals in the space to ensure that their sites and applications meet IE8 specs especially if they are becoming nearly the same as W3C expectations.

Andy,

I couldn’t agree more. As we designers and developers have grown to know (and love?), we will almost always certainly add a level of tender care for our users on a browser such as IE.

Giving this control to the user is a large step up from the previous X-UA-Compatible option thrown at us, however, the responsibility should CONTINUE to fall on us as creators to ensure that sites we develop remain usable, friendly, accessible and (where able) beautiful. IE8 is a huge leap forward. I just wish it didn’t put us at risk to take a step back.

Like you, I don’t envy those guys.

That automatic list of compatibility sites is a bit concerning. What if a site that’s ended up on that list redesigns or something, and no longer needs (or wants) the compatibility mode? After all, it’s not like IE7 doesn’t have its little annoyances that have to be specifically catered for.

I’m among the livid, but not because of Microsoft; they’re doing smartly what they’ve always done smartly: respond to their market in ways that will preserve or enlarge revenue growth.

The scenario goes like this:

An enterprise account representing tens of thousands of workstation seats (to say nothing of the attendant server platforms) bitches at Microsoft because of site breakage in the new browser.  Lather, rinse, repeat for the next several weeks.

This problem can be:

confronted and solved;
repudiated; or
ignored.

We all know about the “repudiate” part.  This solution, meanwhile, gives everybody a chance to “ignore” the problem.  And the erstwhile approach - defaulting to a strict rendering mode in the absence of relevant metadata - confronts the problem.

So why ignore the problem instead of confronting it?

Well, confronting it requires an investment in training on matters that most enterprise senior managers are ill-equipped to comprehend (and thus willingly allocate budgets for). Ignoring it, on the other hand, keeps power in the hands of end users.  Some of you might recall that this is one of the higher expressions of responsible tool/UA engineering (albeit one chosen fallaciously in this case).

(We’ll put aside the potential for blacklist abuse; that deserves a conversation of its own.)

If you assume that breakage is going to occur, the choice then becomes one between fixes that require expert intervention, and ones that don’t. Considered in such light, the choice is a no-brainer.

What it says for the level of training typical in enterprise-level Web shops is outright damning.

Earlier today, I made the case to a colleague that the shakeup needs to occur at senior levels…

...Because it’s those folks who set the tone for entire institutional cultures.  Until they understand what’s meant by effective training, recognize its value, and support cultural changes that encourage it, enterprise Web shops will continue to wear proverbial blinders, and/or somewhat less proverbially suck.

Andy. I completely agree, especially with your sentiments replying to Chris’ tweet: Microsoft make the product, not the websites.

Possibly an extreme example but it’s like complaining that your DVD will not work in your CD Player and the CD player manufacturers saying “oh ok, we’ll make some fancy circuit that will pull the audio from the DVD and also display the video on the LCD” !

“Chris Wilson, replied to my tweet, asking:

  Do you have a better solution that doesn’t break web sites that fixed themselves up to work in IE7 for users when we ship?”

Yes.  It’s all our fault.  And Microsoft is not to blame.

Please note, I do not represent Yahoo. Never have, never want to.

Chris Wilson asks: “Do you have a better solution that doesn’t break web sites that fixed themselves up to work in IE7 for users when we ship?”

What seems to be clear is that IE8 is not backwards or bugwards compatible with IE7, thus the necessity of blacklisting sites that are ‘not ready for IE8’.

The underlying root cause of this problem is a long Microsoft history of pushing proprietory technologies at the expense of open standards. It has gotten to the point where even the behemoth of Microsoft cannot manage to support both, often conflicting, requirements. Netscape, to their credit, realised that the hard way almost a decade ago, and Firefox is the product of that realisation through those turbulent times.  Now it stands as the forerunner of the modern web platform.

Opera have been on the open standards track probably since their inception, and continue not to break the web or force developers to do non-standard workarounds in the name of standards. They don’t seem to be struggling like Microsoft is struggling right now, which show that a closed-source browser can feasibly support web standards.

It is clear that IE6 and IE7 are the Netscape Navigator 4 of today. Netscape made the tough decision to kill off their main product, it is well past the time for Microsoft to make that same decision.

Close the Internet Explorer product line at IE7. This gives companies that are locked into Microsoft’s proprietory technology stack a permanent and well understood platform to continue to function. At which point they can migrate at their leisure to a more appropriate platform.

Admit to yourselves that the misjudgements of the last decade and the development decisions taken from them are now insurmountable. And that you need a clean slate to effectively compete against Firefox, Opera and Safari.

Start a new browser product - perhaps with the rendering engine that’s currently scheduled to replace Trident, build it around open standards and follow the path both Opera and FIrefox blazed over the last eight years. Divorce it completely from Internet Explorer, so it doesn’t have to deal with ‘IE7 specific workarounds’.

The days of Internet Explorer are over. If you want to play in the open web, you need to support open web standards unconditionally. Leave your baggage behind - we are not interested.