Working together for standards The Web Standards Project

Tired of standards woes related to IE 6.0? So are we. There’s been a lot of discussion about how to handle this both at WaSP and around the Web, with some individuals taking a ‘wait-and-see’ stance and others suggesting an anti-IE protest.

Well, if more articles hit the commercial press as hit Business Week Online today, we won’t have to argue standards at all. In an article by Stephen H. Wildstrom, Internet Explorer Is Just Too Risky, recent as well as ongoing security concerns and their impact on the consumer are explored in brutally clear terms:

“In late June, network security experts saw one of their worst fears realized. Attackers exploited a pair of known but unpatched flaws in Microsoft’s Web server software and Internet Explorer browser to compromise seemingly safe Web sites. People who browsed there on Windows computers got infected with malicious code without downloading anything.

I’ve been growing increasingly concerned about IE’s endless security problems, and this episode has convinced me that the program is simply too dangerous for routine use.”

Wildstrom also explores alternative browsers including Mozilla, Firefox, and Opera. His article provides thoughtful tips to a more mainstream audience than the one within the standards realm, encouraging folks and helping them to make the switch.

In a related but more technically-oriented article on eWeek, Internet Explorer Is Too Dangerous to Keep Using, Senior Editor Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols expresses the same concerns:

“In the few days that the sites provided the Trojan horses, hundreds of thousands or millions of users could have had their credit-card, stock-brokerage and bank-account numbers and passwords stolen.

Let me repeat myself: Millions of you may have every bit of your browser-driven online financial security information stolen.

Maybe this was just another massive Internet security prank. Maybe all that will happen is a DDoS attack. Well, you can hope that’s all there is to it and continue to use IE. But as for me, I’m done with it.”

There is no question in my mind that the consumer has far more power than we poor schmucks fighting for Web standards. With coverage like this, we can help facilitate a more important revolution: Get people to use well-built software and let the losers dig their own graves.

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