Comments on: IE8 and Standards

By: eyelidlessness

eyelidlessness — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 19:02:36 +0000

But that kind of a prediction is totally naïve. People aren’t automaton slaves to statistical trends; there is a reason so many have kept using IE, and not all of them are satisfied with other offerings. I have a friend, in fact, who I yell at whenever I have to fix some bug or another in IE, because he likes it.

By: ThomasHansen

ThomasHansen — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 16:06:22 +0000

@eye…
Well, if you extrapolate their “loss rate” some 3-5 years into the future they’re left with **ZERO**… ;)
The really interesting thing is that it’s not a linear loss, it’s a curved loss…

By: eyelidlessness

eyelidlessness — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 17:03:18 +0000

Shrug, no one is commenting on-topic so I’m not concerned about it.
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Yeah, they’ve lost market share. But considering the market has three (four if you count Chrome) obviously technologically superior browsers, all of which have together taken three years to take ~20% of IE’s share, I don’t think that’s a sign of widespread lack of trust, and it’s certainly not an instance of obscurity!

By: ThomasHansen

ThomasHansen — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 16:49:56 +0000

@eye…
I am not sure if we should take this one that much further since it’s beginning to become pretty off topic, but the interesting thing is *not* their current market share, but how much they have *lost* the last three years…
(hint, they used to have 95% ;)

By: eyelidlessness

eyelidlessness — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 06:40:43 +0000

71% of the market is obscurity and lack of trust?

By: ThomasHansen

ThomasHansen — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 05:16:39 +0000

@eye…
By being sent into obscurity with their main lockin weapon – IE
And also not trusted or seen as a trustworthy player…
Basically loosing…

By: eyelidlessness

eyelidlessness — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 22:00:12 +0000

“I agree, and that job would probably be way easier if Microsoft cared about them and actually committed to them and worked with w3c instead of torpedoing them every occasion they get…”
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You’re not… wrong. But it’s sort of a weird case to bring that up. With the box model, the standards bodies “torpedoed” existing practice and chose something more complicated and less intuitive. They didn’t *have* to do that, and certainly Microsoft didn’t force that.
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“Now they pay the price for their ignorance and selfishness…”
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How so?

By: ThomasHansen

ThomasHansen — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 21:25:00 +0000

@eyelidlessness
I agree, and that job would probably be way easier if Microsoft cared about them and actually committed to them and worked with w3c instead of torpedoing them every occasion they get…
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Microsoft have deliberately put themselves on the outside of these [standard] bodies since they have historically found themselves in a position where it “makes sense” from a strategical and money-making perspective. Now they pay the price for their ignorance and selfishness…

By: eyelidlessness

eyelidlessness — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 16:03:28 +0000

This was a case, however, where the standard was wrong, or rather, more problematic to use and IE's model already existed. It is also the job of standards bodies (especially non-official standards bodies like the W3C) to identify existing practice and specify to specify it to facilitate interoperability on the most coherent existing practice.

By: ThomasHansen

ThomasHansen — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 09:20:40 +0000

@eyelidlessness
Wow, I didn’t know :)
I believe you too in fact…
Though standards are here to make sure that we can interop and have stuff that works on ALL browsers. To not at least implement the standards BEFORE you implement anything else is a crime against humanity…

By: eyelidlessness

eyelidlessness — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 07:19:37 +0000

@ThomasHansen: The old IE box model is better. When I set a div’s width, that ought to be it’s width god damn it. The idea that “width” means “the number of pixels from the leftmost pixel of text inside a shell of indeterminate dimensions to the theoretical rightmost pixel of text inside that shell” is ridiculous. There are obviously advantages and drawbacks to both, but the old IE box model wins hands down for allowing you to write code that does what it says, at least for code relevant to the box model.
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People, rightly, criticize Microsoft for creating conditions that require us to write massive divergencies for their browser. I think that criticism is also valid when directed at the W3C and the other browser vendors where the box model is concerned; I can’t count the thousands of lines of CSS I’ve written to work around the braindead standard.

By: ThomasHansen

ThomasHansen — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 17:24:24 +0000

@Douglas
I am not sure if this is you, though I guess so. This wasn’t really neither a mature thing to say…
Even I realize that probably both ActiveX, Silverlight, Adobe Flex, .wmf and so on are “better” than the Open Web thing. Just as we could probably find a better interface between lighbulbs and wall-connections or we could find a more optimal width for train tracks and such. No unless interoperability are a feature by itself we obviously have a holy duty in turning those things DOWN!
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This is especially true when some lock-in vendor creates “extensions” and “better versions” made to replace.
Some people could probably find features with IE’s Box Model and so on, that doesn’t make it BETTER…

By: eyelidlessness

eyelidlessness — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 16:50:51 +0000

Hey, ISPs still benefit when hosts use more bandwidth. :P

By: TNO

TNO — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 15:36:16 +0000

I guess ComCast was left out of the loop on that one

By: eyelidlessness

eyelidlessness — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 14:56:53 +0000

New theory: MS is in cahoots with ISPs. By increasing the bandwidth required to deliver rich internet applications, both profit!

By: TNO

TNO — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 11:56:06 +0000

Whether its XDR or XHR, the mainstream libraries are probably going to wrap them up into a single method name anyway. Its just irritating that code has to be branched yet again.

By: gossi

gossi — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 11:54:14 +0000

What about [DOMElement].addEventListener(); I header IE8 is still using attachEvent(), is that true?

By: crock

crock — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 10:35:19 +0000

I like Microsoft’s XDomainRequest. I think the extensions to XMLHttpRequest are well-intended but wrong-headed.