IE7 List, As Requested
This morning I read this article about IE7 and Standards. When I got to the end of the article, I was very excited. It seems as if the IE7 team is really getting a handle on what they need to work on. They’re even asking for advice. That takes a lot of guts. But as encouraging as the article was by itself, the comments that have been posted are doubly depressing. The very first comment is not only argumentative; it doesn’t even suggest anything at all. It’s just a complaint. And it’s petty one at that. How disappointing.
Chris has taken this opportunity to open the field, to take suggestions. Kindergarten-style insults aren’t going to help in the slightest. Even though IE has been a headache for many of us in the standards community (and the web development community at large), you have to be honored and impressed by a team in charge of a product with so much market share asking for our advice.
So to swallow my own pill, here’s my non-exhaustive list of suggestions for Chris and the IE7 team. I feel that this list is the bare-minimum of updates that I feel it would take to jump a version number.
- Support for the :hover psudo-class on all elements
- Proper PNG support
- Fixing major known CSS bugs:
- Double margin bug
- Rounding errors on text-align:center
- Italics breaking floats
- Whitespace bugs on li elements
- Proper definitions of height, width, min-height, min-width, max-width, max-height
- Increasing/decreasing text size even if sizes are declared in pixels
- Tabbed Browsing
A small list, I know, but one that would save me hours. While this list is really just a catch-up list for more modern browsers, I would love to see IE7 kick it up a notch and surpass the current technology of Mozilla, Firefox, Safari, Omniweb, etc. Browser vendors must maintain a level of competition for the benefit of every web user and developer.
Post and Author Info.
Published March 11, 2005 by:
Commenting is currently off for this post.
So far there are 9 comments.
I hate M$ haters. i mean seriously people. MOVE ON. get a life or somethin. buy some clearasil, get out of your basement, tell mom you’re goin to the store or somethin, and go play outside or somethin. Big freakin deal that M$ is more popular than Linux. maybe there’s a reason. Could it be that you need a frickin’ physics degree to do anythign with it? There is no perfect OS out there, but M$ is what most of us have to deal with so at least be constructive.
oh, and I like mac.
March 11th, 2005
I guess that some of the petty/snarky comments on that post are from people who don’t really believe that Microsoft is actually going to listen to anything that the outside developers ask them to do with IE. Microsoft’s purpose is to maximize shareholder value; not to make web developers happy. At the end of the day, if 95%+ of users are still using IE, then we’ll have to develop for IE when we create mass-market sites.
However, Microsoft is a little bit scared of anti-IE developers right now, since these developers were the ones who pushed Firefox to the forefront. The “IE and Standards” post (or maybe even the entire IE blog) might just be a smokecreen to appease some of us and stop us from installing Firefox on every machine we work on.
March 11th, 2005
Perhaps I’m one of the few, but I still believe that in addition to making a profit, Microsoft still wants to make a quality product. If M$ really just wanted to shut us up, they would tell us they’re going to fix everything we’re complaining about and go on with their own plans.
However this intruduction to dialogue lends itself to the idea that Microsoft really does care about its product, and the people who use it and develop for it. Perhaps I’m just too hopeful, but I’d like to give them the benefit of the doubt. For now at least.
March 11th, 2005
It would be nice if they at least followed the same standards the rest of the community followed instead of coming up with their own way of doing things.
I would love to see IE render things properly. I would love to see a version of IE released for *nix (linux/bsd) but I won’t hold my breath. In the mean time, until IE steps up and matches firefox, I think FF will still be my browser of choice… (I mean, tabbed browsing!!)
March 11th, 2005
Steve, you can get a good idea of why people (including myself) get so snarky with MS from reviewing my latest post.
It’s not like this is the first time they’ve received feedback. For Chris to come out now and ask for specific areas of CSS intrest; while encouraging, is at the same time rather frustrating. The first post on the IE blog gave them all of these answers.
Secondly, it seems that MS was simply not listening to developers until we became a bunch of comment trolls. In fact, this whole IE7 business started not from recognizing the need to listen to devs, but to counter losing market share to Firefox.
They haven’t paid us much attention for years, but now they want us to help them win back their beloved market share. No kidding we’re not too happy about it. Unfortunatley, this is not the developers fault, but rather that of MS management. Until they decide to come out and face the music, their poor devs will continue to take a pounding.
Quite frankley, at this point they should be glad we’re talking to them at all. I do agree with you however that if we are to talk, we need to be constructive. Keep in mind though that the IEBlog has been up for months, IE7 was announced in early Feb. and this is the first IE team member to accually ask for concrete specific feedback.
March 11th, 2005
>>Perhaps I’m one of the few, but I still believe that in addition to making a profit, Microsoft still wants to make a quality product.
They, and Chris in particular, knew all this info before even IE6 came out. They knew then and know now what’s needed. But they won’t implement it, only a few odds and ends and pretend ie7 is something new and great until they can get a whole new browser done way, way down the road, which will be designed to forge a new and different wedge in the idea of “general standards”. It’s a callous marketing charade asking for “input.”
March 11th, 2005
I think it’s petty the fact that people still put “M + a $dollar” sign to signify Microsoft.
Steve, I think your list is solid. It’s not a very large list whatsoever and you’ve addressed by far the most important ones. If just those few things get implemented, I’d be estatic.
March 12th, 2005
I don’t think it’s petty to complain when Internet Explorer developers claim full CSS 1 compliance, when everybody has been well aware it isn’t for years, especially on such a touchy subject.
I agree about the “M$” thing though, that’s just childish.
March 13th, 2005