What we are saying is just because we don’t use it doesn’t mean others don’t as well. Because of this, as responsible developers and designers, we have to support them, even if they are wrong.

We’re griping because the largest browser in the world, which has the most responsibility to the web because of this, is the worse by a margin that is, quite frankly, pathetic. We’re just running the numbers and sharing them with the community.

TBH, I don’t rely on web design for an income, so I only accept clients that are willing to have a standards-based site, which usually means giving up a bell here and a whistle there.

If I were to be purely emotional about it, I’d specifically design standards-based sites that looked incredibly boring in IE and great in Fx, but that would unfortunately be childish. Instead, I find it best to continue to support Fx over IE verbally, but still develop for both. At least IE7 is more secure than IE6, and it isn’t as much of a hazard to run it.

there are as many folks out there who either want to throw standards out the window

I don’t think anyone wants to throw standards out the window, but don’t you find it a bit ironic to be using a term like “standards” in the phrase “..the standards keep changing..” It’s a bit of an oxymoron, isn’t it?

The problem is that they are working TOWARDS a standard, but they aren’t there yet. And if you code “standards” compliant, but then with every revision have to go back and edit 10 projects to make them compliant again, how is that less of a headache?

I agree with the others who said to use valid doctypes, write valid code, and stay away from the bells and whistles like PNG transparencies, z-indexes, and other elements that haven’t been standardized yet. You will have far less problems.

Seriously though, just because a portion of the people do it wrong does that mean we should accept that it’s the way it is? No web designer out there, new or old, can deny that it’s getting better. Oh, and CSS2.1 first saw the light of day back in 2004, that’s 3 years for them to sit there and go, “Gee, do you think this is going to be important?” It’s been around long enough for them to realise that it might be worth supporting. Also, they’re already trying to get CSS3 out the door. CSS2.1 isn’t going any further but is official in all but name I’d say. It was only meant as a quick solution to the issues that were raised when CSS2 didn’t have all the things developers had been screaming about to be included.

Anyway, to say it’s not supported just because of the W3C is almost worse in my mind because that means that Microsoft is only paying attention to one source when they should be looking at what designers and developers in entirety are asking for and not just the W3C. A company like Microsoft isn’t yet so mighty that they aren’t threatened by others. Google has stolen large portions of their thunder and Mac isn’t doing a bad job of it either. Not to mention Firefox and it’s growth.

Just because it’s Microsoft doesn’t mean concessions can be made. If anything they should be judged more harshly since they are the one leading the pack, for better or extremely worse. Microsoft has the ability to do what everyone else is doing, more so since it’s Microsoft. Having Microsoft come out with a browser like IE7 is like having Porsche come out with a 911 that looks like a pimped out golf cart. It’s got some new style, however questionable, and the extra bits under the bonnet don’t make up for the fact that it’s still only a golf cart.

(3) The problem isn’t that we don’t know standards based code or semantic coding techniques or any of the other things the W3C tells us to do. The problem is IE ignores them. The W3C says one thing, the web agrees, and then Microsoft says, “Oh, but that can’t possibly be meant to apply to us, can it? What a silly thought!”

Well I kind of think the W3C opened themselves up to that with CSS2 and then the revisions CSS2.1 brought. For example, IE7 still supports “font-face” as well as a few other things that were part of CSS2 but then removed with CSS2.1. Also keep in mind that CSS2.1 hasn’t even been fully approved by the W3C itself. It’s still in the candidate recommendation stage. And as the W3C says, “Publication as a Candidate Recommendation does not imply endorsement by the W3C Membership. This is a draft document and may be updated, replaced or obsoleted by other documents at any time.”

It’s not easy to develop software when the standards keep changing, or if they come too late: CSS2 was approved/recommended in 1998. You would have thought that a revision could come sooner, at least to coincide with the launch of the biggest browser in the world. Microsoft is always slow to do anything and when it finally does something, it certainly doesn’t want to have to go back and fiddle with it all over again. Contrast that with Firefox 2.009 (and I just received a notice that 2.010 was out). I’m not saying one is better, just that it’s not always black and white.

And regarding our collective ability to follow web standards, here are some of the results from a study conducted last year. Sites were selected randomly from the Open Directory Project:

* Only 39% of pages use a valid DOCTYPE;
* Only 2.58% of the pages were HTML or XHTML valid;
* Only about 67% of the pages used any form of CSS
* The fourth most common error amongst that sea of invalidity was forgetting to close a tag;
* The top five most common CSS declarations: color, font-size, font-family, text-decoration and font-weight, otherwise known as the stuff people use to style up their myspace pages.

And reading some of the comments in this thread, I’m less surprised that there are as many folks out there who either want to throw standards out the window or want to continue using good ‘ol tables.

Sometimes I think the fact that Microsoft did budge on agreeing to any standards was obviously Firefox’s success, but also due to the noise made by the Web Standards Project et al. Unfortunately I guess the rest of us are still the silent majority…

(1) Not true. Firefox may not be the major browser of choice in the US, but it’s quickly going that way in Europe, In Germany it has taken over as the leader. If it doesn’t get it’s act together and browsers like Firefox and Safari, heck even Opera, if they keep up making free better browsers that are so amazingly better than IE then it will get to the point that they’re the browser of choice over IE and one of the first things the normal user will do when they buy a computer, like us smart people, is bag IE and download a good browser or two.

(2) I can’t argue with this one. I agree. I just really really wish it wasn’t the truth. Can I just lie to myself on this one and say Microsoft will get it’s act together and stop hurting the web?

(3) The problem isn’t that we don’t know standards based code or semantic coding techniques or any of the other things the W3C tells us to do. The problem is IE ignores them. The W3C says one thing, the web agrees, and then Microsoft says, “Oh, but that can’t possibly be meant to apply to us, can it? What a silly thought!”

(4) As it stands now, you’re right. But that will change, and that is only a matter of time. As the world becomes more computer literate (remember they’re not really that old, the net even younger especially in the way it is now) people will start doing things better.

Maybe I need to dream bigger dreams, but I was just thrilled that IE7 fixed so many of its bugs in IE6. Even better, when using a valid doctype (I’d recommend strict), you can avoid even more bugs in IE6 as well as IE7.

So the reality is this:

1) IE7 isn’t going anywhere. It doesn’t contain enough bugs to warrant corporations from dropping it, even moreso when industry leaders like Yahoo announce they offer A-grade support for IE7 as well as IE6 (if they can, why can’t you?)
2) IE7 will not support CSS 2.1 — ever, probably. Microsoft has never fixed its CSS bugs in the past, and they kinda made that clear with IE7 by saying that “layout was finished” last year.
3) You should know exactly what valid, standardized HTML/CSS. Microsoft was smart to introduce conditional comments to prevent us from hacking ourselves to death.
4) It is up to Firefox and Safari to further differentiate themselves from IE. Microsoft knows that they only needed to be “mostly” standards compliant to satisfy the majority out there. They already have tremendous odds stacked in their favor. Will history repeat itself (IE v. Netscape)?

He has a bunch of reasons for this, and is a big part of what the book is about, but one of them is that people in a technological age understand that if you don’t have the latest piece of software you can’t expect to have all the benefits you would have if you did and that as long as you aren’t denied the information, they’ll tend to accept that it isn’t as pretty or as functionally sexy (within reason).

Great book.

Many argue that it should just start from scratch, which is not an easy thing to do: if it visibly breaks old sites, people will complain or, worse, stick with the old version.

The only old sites that will break are those that are not standards compliant. The longer we “bend over and spread ‘em” for Microsoft, the longer it will take for the web to blossom into providing the kind of user experience it can provide. We, as a group, waste so much time hacking for IE6 and IE7, that our creativity is stifled and our offerings lose the luster and appeal that they should provide the user. I found it incredibly frustrating until I decided to go with a[n almost] straight standards approach.

I write to the XHTML Strict 1.0 standard, add a few standard and well known hacks for IE6 (totally ignoring IE5 and earlier) and I’m done. IE7 will tag along, getting most right and some wrong, nothing that prevents the user from getting the message, but the formatting ain’t always perfect. Tough!

If we would all do the same, call a web developer strike, so to speak, I wonder what would be the outcome? Could we fell a giant?

Lee