Working together for standards The Web Standards Project

David Storey, Chief Web Opener at Opera Software, announces on his blog today CSS3 support in the development of the Opera browser.

Most people don’t have the privilege of testing out our latest internal builds, which will go into a future release of our browser, so I thought I’d share with you some of the great work our developers have been up to in regards to CSS3.

Storey provides a look at the focus on selector support, what currently is supported, what is in the engine but not enabled and what is being prioritized down the road.

Your Replies

#1 On January 22nd, 2007 10:50 am Andy replied:

Sounds like great news, its a shame we will have to wait 10 years for the other browsers to catch up.

Where is Mozilla with these CSS3 selectors?

Who uses Opera these days anyway?

#2 On January 22nd, 2007 11:38 am Daniel Gr of jaspoid replied:

Firefox/Mozilla are XUL bloated so I use Opera on my old PCs instead.

It is my opinion that Opera should’ve tried to fully comply with CSS2 and XHTML before they jump on the CSS3 wagon, but then again, it’s not my company.

#3 On January 22nd, 2007 1:04 pm Rick replied:

I took IE7, Firefox 2 and Opera 9.1 to to CSS3info test suite (the link in the original post).

Firefox got the best score. Go figure.

#4 On January 22nd, 2007 2:37 pm Yahia Chlyeh replied:

Opera should’ve tried to fully comply with CSS2 and XHTML before they jump on the CSS3 wagon

Are you talking about Opera or MSIE?

Who uses Opera these days anyway?

I do. Seriously, Opera is known for not investing too much for ad campaign, spreading the word, etc.
Maybe they’ll decide to do that sometime? Right now Opera has the advantage MS nor Mozilla have: being embedded on mobile phones, PDAs and game console(s). I think they’re going in the right way.

#5 On January 22nd, 2007 3:30 pm Daniel Gr replied:

I’m talking about Opera, Yahia, because that’s what this article is about. And I don’t really give a crap what crap (or not) Microsoft pushes anymore, since I don’t care about the people who uses it anymore, nor use it myself.

#6 On January 22nd, 2007 4:56 pm Jens Meiert replied:

I like that. Everytime I read something from Mr Storey, there’s good news.

#7 On January 22nd, 2007 9:54 pm Yahia Chlyeh replied:

I’m not a professional webdesigner, but experience showed me that one _should_ actually care about those IE users. I do care for the v6, and that’s really hard when you use modern techniques. Indeed, MS’s browser, so MS, are the responsible for slowing the Web development process to semantics and standards.

So I asked you Daniel, because compared to Opera, it’s IE that has a lot of work to do on CSS2 support.

#8 On January 23rd, 2007 2:01 am Robert replied:

@Daniel Gr

It is my opinion that Opera should’ve tried to fully comply with CSS2 and XHTML before they jump on the CSS3 wagon, but then again, it’s not my company.

Opera passed Acid 2. I don’t know what you claim is missing, but it appears they did try to comply with CSS2. Plus, I imagine CSS3 compatibility ought to include CSS2 and CSS1. Implementing CSS2 does not stop when implementation of CSS3 starts, I would hope.

And I don’t really give a crap what crap (or not) Microsoft pushes anymore, since I don’t care about the people who uses it anymore, nor use it myself.

I wouldn’t hire you as a web designer. I hope for the sake of potential clients that you aren’t. Entirely ignoring the browser with the highest market share is not beneficial. If you aren’t a designer by profession, then more power (but I still wouldn’t ignore them 100%, as conditional comments really make supporting IE trivial).

#9 On January 23rd, 2007 7:39 am Daniel Gr replied:

Sigh.

This thread is not about Microsoft nor Internet Explorer. It is about Opera adding partial CSS3 support!

1. No Opera do not fully comply with the CSS2 recommendations.
2. I would’ve assumed it wiser to first comply to that before starting to work on CSS3 support.
3. Entirely my personal opinion.
4. And a strange one to some apparently.

#10 On January 23rd, 2007 8:33 am Martin replied:

It will be nice to showcase some CSS designs using some of the new CSS3 support. Maybe it might blow my mind, but CSS Zen Garden already did that :)

I’ll be more inclined to use Opera if there are some new CSS3 styles to view.

#11 On January 23rd, 2007 9:04 am quiris replied:

@Daniel Gr: There is no single browser which supports all of features described by CSS 2.0 spec. If you know the one, let me know.

#12 On January 23rd, 2007 12:04 pm Daniel Gr replied:

That’s exactly my point, you know, quiris.

Why else would I care about Opera, if there was already a compliant browser out there? Then that battle would’ve already been won for me, you know!

So, the more the reason to get one there then (!) instead of cutting corners for CSS3. Or do you just want the flashy next-gen stuff like AJAX and gimmicky style tricks and other bullshit? Well. Then you’re against me.

#13 On January 23rd, 2007 12:30 pm David Storey replied:

Because we are adding CSS3 support, doesn’t mean we are skimping on CSS2. We have many engineers that work on different modules and different areas of the code. It is not an exclusive or. It maybe that adding something from CSS3 is easier to add while working on the same part of the code base for another feature or bug, or it maybe that one property, such as opacity, starts to get widely used and needs to be supported for compatibility reasons. We want to support all of CSS2.1 as much as the next person.

Most pages out there aren’t written to spec, so even if we were bug free in CSS2 and 3 there would still be a lot of work to do in making sure the error fallback is consistent with the browsers people test on. This is a bigger problem in quirksmode, than standards mode where there is a more specified way of handling errors. Then of course there is all the vendor specific features that the major sites insist on using, and we have to look into whether we have to support, and then reverse engineer them as there is no spec to base our support on. That takes a large amount of time. Thankfully some of the more useful vendor specific extensions are getting spec’d out by the likes of the WHAT-WG.

I’d love Opera to be the first browser to fully comply with CSS2.1 though. We also have a very good DOM level 2 support, where in Opera 9 we support all the interfaces, and we are well on the road with DOM Level 3.

I think all the major browsers are doing good work with picking up the standards baton at present. It should be an exciting few years as the IE team pick up the pace.

#14 On January 23rd, 2007 1:02 pm Daniel Gr replied:

Well here’s my tip of the day, David:

1. Put all style engineers on fixing CSS2 (and possibly even some CSS1) compliance in accordance with W3C recommendations.
2. Don’t bother about faulty code. The err is at the other end and you shouldn’t patch up other’s errors at your end. Unless you wanna be as stupid as every sucker here who works for free for IE6 because they like to cover Microsoft’s hairy ass.
3. After you’ve quality assured/secured CSS1+2+2.1 then you can read into CSS3 specs and try to comply to them.

Anyway, you said: “I think all the major browsers are doing good work with picking up the standards baton at present.”

That’s gotta be a joke. Both Mozilla.com and Mircosoft clearly misinterprets and disrespect W3C recommendations on purpose to make money.

That ranted. Thanks, Opera, for being the best out there yet (at least). You show promise, but you could still do much better. Good fortune, David.

#15 On January 23rd, 2007 6:19 pm Peter replied:

Daniel Gr:

Now you’re just being childish.

The “stupid suckers” don’t “work for free for IE6 because they like to cover Microsoft’s hairy ass”. They do it because they like to have clients. I really, really don’t want to believe that you don’t realize this.

But if you really do think it’s a wise business decision to create websites that don’t work in the most used browser, I suggest you start your own company and try it for yourself, instead of telling others they’re stupid for not doing it.

#16 On January 24th, 2007 7:43 am Daniel Gr replied:

Peter. In my opinion. You’re the one being an idiot. For heck, it wouldn’t be the most used browser if you didn’t work for free to cover for Microsoft!

If you’d just respected web content recommendations the browsers would’ve already been there to pick up the content, and we wouldn’t have fought this largely pointless bad browser vs. designer war for 5+ years without nearly any results on Microsoft’s behalf.

For example, how hard do you think it really is to fix IE to catch “application/xhtml+xml” too and not only “text/html”? It takes less than a 1000 USD effort and less than an 1 hour. So just start collectively blocking out valuable content from disrespectful browsers and Microsoft’ll be there in no-time patching it up, I promise.

When people like you, and Yahia, say things like “Indeed, MS’s browser, so MS, are the responsible for slowing the Web development process to semantics and standards.”

Then you’re just bullshitting! You can choose semantics and standards today! And people, organizations and companies can get your content by using one of many free, pretty compliant, crossplatform browsers.

You’re the ones who are slowing down the progress! You’re the ones who disrepsect web content recommendation! Now stop covering Microsoft’s hairy ass and do something progressive for once!

Sincerely,

Daniel

#17 On January 24th, 2007 7:55 am Daniel Gr replied:

And Peter. I’m already doing it. Blocking out Internet Explorer. For profit.

But then again I’m no mainstream advertising whore working for AOL or Google or shit. I can run my own projects, and don’t need the least techsavvy 90% of the internet users to turn profits. So. I’m free! Free from IE, free from ads, free from idiot managers. And actually,

You should all try it too some time. You’ll feel like Buddha in no-time, I promise. Good fortune either way, friends. You’ve always got a choice for a better living with web recommendations.

So. Be lazy and stick to recommendations only. Then tell your boss he’ll have to pay an external consultant to cover for Microsoft’s hairy ass, and he’ll be sure to put Opera on every internal computer in no-time. And maybe even start a massive campaign for compliant browsers on every users desktop.

#18 On January 24th, 2007 8:49 am Roger replied:

So. Be lazy and stick to recommendations only. Then tell your boss he’ll have to pay an external consultant to cover for Microsoft’s hairy ass, and he’ll be sure to put Opera on every internal computer in no-time. And maybe even start a massive campaign for compliant browsers on every users desktop.

I’m not sure you actually live in the real world.

As for the news on Opera & CSS3 complaince – its good to see the company moving forward and spending time on the next stage of CSS.

I’ve used Opera now for around three years, and find it a refreshing change from IE. When developing websites, I tend to write it for Opera, check it in firefox, and fix in IE. I cannot imagine a time when I wouldn’t have to run it through IE – the majority of web surfers use IE, mainly because none of them understand that there is an alternative.

#19 On January 24th, 2007 9:08 am Daniel Gr replied:

Well. It’s your choice to waste time for no good reason at all, of course.

Don’t mind not supporting IE isn’t really an issue.
Don’t mind you’re just waisting creative time and resources at the wrong end.
Keep doing it perpetually because you really like being a corporate slave owned by Microsoft and mainstream media.

And please don’t mind you’re pre-90s business old school. You’re boring and inconstructive. And you disrespect web content recommendations.

As I said Roger, I feel free to turn profit on the 10% of the 1 billion people who are aware of the web. I know that’s only 100 million people, but strangely you can actually make a living on that kind of really limited target group. It’s amazing.

#20 On January 24th, 2007 9:19 am Daniel Gr replied:

I don’t really mind being the only progressive/constructive individual (regarding web content) on this thread, you know. I love putting myself on a pedestal like that – for all the world to worship. While you’re jaded, I’m painting myself as one glorious being.

Still. I’m just wondering. Where is Joe Clark to hold my hand?

#21 On January 24th, 2007 10:47 am Fyrd replied:

Most web developers working for a company (any company) value their employment higher than they do web standards. Their bosses won’t be convinced that there’s something more important than that the company’s website looks good on the most used browser.

So in the vast majority of situations, you think web developers should lose or risk losing their jobs due to Microsoft’s laziness? The web standards cause is important to me, but not that important.

Personally I’m surprised the larger companies that must spend the most additional money to facilitate designing for IE don’t put more pressure on Microsoft…don’t they have enough collective influence to force them into writing some extra code easy enough that a two-man operation like the iCab developers can even do? (I know it’s not really “easy”, but you get my point)

#22 On January 24th, 2007 11:48 am Daniel Gr replied:

Well, if people are so desperate they wanna keep their shit jobs, it’s their choice of course. Just to bad they’ve put themselves in that situation.

There’s still room for plenty of money to be made from the 100 million people who don’t use Microsoft’s shitty browsers, you know.

#23 On January 24th, 2007 4:10 pm Yahia Chlyeh replied:

Daniel Gr, while I said that MS’ IE is slowing the process of moving towards more advanced standards-compliance, you shouldn’t deduce that all people who make websites compatible with IE don’t respect standards. Personnaly, it just avoids me the use of some fancy CSS selectors, and add up only 1 extra div somewhere, that’s all.
Roger said “I tend to write it for Opera, check it in firefox, and fix in IE.” What I do is write and go check on the three browsers, to catch a small error that I wouldn’t be able to fix quickly & painlessly if I had written a large amount of code.
This is to tell you, Daniel Gr, that I recently make my websites highly standards-compliant, and working as good as in the three browsers.
Also, if you think that having a website written in the useless XHTML and _served application/xhtml+xml_ for nothing, then you’re wrong. If you were good, you would be off using HTML 4.01. But maybe you still don’t know about this stuff. I checked the website you’re under in your comments BTW, and found very funny the way it’s coded, without me getting to details. But you seem to not know what semantics and standards really stand for.
And I don’t believe that a pressure from enterprises can push MS to do something or change something, when we know there are still people browsing the Web with IE5, IE5.5, NS6+, etc. And even with IE7′s release, which isn’t an improvement, we’ll still have IE6′s bugs to fix for years. And IE7 is just another bug bag.
Bottomline, Daniel, save us your rant, and do that on your blog instead. And make it compliant to your web content ;)
BTW, I don’t understand why Opera has to “fix” something like a specific CNN’s front-page or similar issues. Isn’t that helping to make big corporations NOT Caring at all about web standards?

#24 On January 25th, 2007 1:51 am Gérard Talbot replied:

Dear Mr David Storey, Chief Web Opener at Opera Software,

You said: “Because we are adding CSS3 support, doesn’t mean we are skimping on CSS2. We have many engineers that work on different modules and different areas of the code.”

Fine. Can you have a few of them visit 32 bugs in Opera 9 and/or Opera 9 CSS bugs by George Chavchanidze and/or R. Blaut’s list of Opera 9 bugs

Thank you,

Gérard Talbot

#25 On January 25th, 2007 2:41 am Peter replied:

Daniel Gr:

Fine, personal attacks:

People like you are hurting the web standards movement.

I’ll repeat it, because it’s that damn important:

People like you are hurting the web standards movement.

Why? Because you perpetuate the myth that “standardistas” are nothing but a bunch of naive idealists who live in some kind of happy magic fairyland, where “putting food on the table” isn’t an issue.

(You also seem to believe the opposite myth, that people who aren’t like you are just some lazy hacks who still beleive table layouts are the bee’s knees.)

I’m not a professional web developer, so I don’t work for free for anyone. I was speaking on the behalf of others.

And again, people don’t “work for free” to cover for Microsoft. They do it to cover for the people who are using Microsoft’s shitty browser. Because, you see, no matter how much you want them to, these people aren’t gonna switch browsers just because a few sites tell them their browser sucks – there are plenty of other sites to choose from.

#26 On January 25th, 2007 4:48 am Daniel Gr replied:

I think my opinions are valid, but of course they are my opinions. Be happy to disagree. I still think you’re wrong, Peter. Feel free to think the same about what I think. I just like the discussion and freedom of opinion. And I think I triggered some really crucial thoughts to be uttered here, above my own, so I can’t really see how I’m “hurting the web standards movement” when all I do is expand on points of views.

That you can’t stand personal criticism (though, perhaps, put bluntly) is really your problem. I’m fine with any criticism. I consider all criticism, even yours. And though I think you’re basically wrong, you’re still valid to some point (from your perspective).

Yahia. You’re mostly right, and I’m sorry if you took personal offense. But “if you think that having a website written in the useless XHTML and served application/xhtml+xml for nothing, then you’re wrong. If you were good, you would be off using HTML 4.01.”

Using a 10 year old standard that is not XML? How progressive.. Well, we just prioritize different, I guess.

“I checked the website you’re under in your comments BTW, and found very funny the way it’s coded, without me getting to details. But you seem to not know what semantics and standards really stand for.”

I don’t know what web standards are, no, I use W3C Web Recommendations. I’m humble like that.

Haven’t really gotten into much semantics in (X)HTML yet. If you’re talking specifically about jaspoid.com, I can only say it shows what I want to show in a text browser and a graphical one. That is two links with title attribute descriptions. I’m still trying to discuss CSS3 in Opera before CSS2 here though, so, it’s kind of off track to review my websites perhaps..

But please send any criticism to [email protected] and I’ll be happy to try to improve.

#27 On January 25th, 2007 4:59 am Daniel Gr replied:

(And, Yahia, if you’re talking about my empty DIVs, they don’t add any semantics, no. They’re just there to present style to visual browsers. Perhaps a bit hacky, I agree, but I don’t like div as a semantic element anyway.

I’ll make sure to move to and likewise for logotypes as soon as I launch those sites for real.)

#28 On January 25th, 2007 5:18 pm Gérard Talbot replied:

“we know there are still people browsing the Web with IE5, IE5.5, NS6+, etc.”
Yahia Chlyeh

The browser usage stats represented by IE 5.x users makes it very acceptable to not test in IE 5.x (released some 8+ years ago) and to not bother about IE 5.x. Remember that if your website is well designed, then webpage content should still be accessible and navigation should be functional in any browser (text browsers, non-javascript browsers, non-css browsers, etc).
As for NS 6 and NS 7, the browser usage stats represented by NS 6/7 users is even lower and if your webpage layout displays accordingly, as expected in, say, Firefox 2, then there is a fair chance it will look good in NS 7.2.

“even with IE7′s release, which isn’t an improvement, we’ll still have IE6′s bugs to fix for years. And IE7 is just another bug bag.”
Yahia Chlyeh

IE7 is a clear and definite improvement (over IE6) in my opinion. I nevertheless agree with you that IE7 still has lots of bugs, incorrect implementations, incomplete CSS2.1/DOM2/HTML4 support, incomplete or buggy support for CSS 2.1, HTML 4 and for DOM 2.

Gérard Talbot

#29 On January 25th, 2007 5:27 pm La domo de karotoj » CSS3 en Operao replied:

[...] WaSP raportas, ke estos plibonigoj de la tria nivelo de CSS en estontecaj eldonoj de Operao. Mi havas eldonon 9.10 de Operao kaj ĝi ne havas tiujn trajtojn, do eble pli malfrua eldono havos ilin. [...]

#30 On January 26th, 2007 1:09 am Gérard Talbot replied:

Oh, and Mr Storey, there is also

19 CSS 2.1 test failures in Opera 9 by R. Blaut

and

W3C DOM levels 1, 2 and 3 test suites at W3C DOM

Thank you,

Gérard Talbot

#31 On January 26th, 2007 3:49 am WaSP Member lloydi replied:

Daniel Gr:

Discussion is good, ranting has its place, but please tone it down just a *little*. You are giving me a headache with all your swearing. If you can’t write something without all the four-letter words, I’ll simply go in and edit your comments and replace those words with some ‘alternatives’. Yes, I can do that so please exercise a little self-censorship.

Thank you

#32 On January 26th, 2007 6:04 am Peter replied:

Daniel Gr:

I can’t stand personal criticism? That’s rich. You called me an idiot on the grounds that I “work for free to cover for Microsoft’s hairy ass”, which I don’t. You implied that I don’t respect web recommendations, which I do. So… where’s the personal criticism?

It’s very amusing that, according to you, when people disagree with you, they are “loyal little fascists”, but when you call them suckers and insult them for their choice of “shit jobs”, you’re just exercising your right to free speech. Seems to suggest that you’re the one who can’t deal with differing opinions, doesn’t it?

It’s even funnier that, once you’ve managed to really get on our nerves, you try to turn the other cheek by emphasizing that’s it’s just your own opinions, and that we’re free to disagree (while still talking down to us). No shit, Sherlock? We’ve all been expressing our personal opinions in here, and we know that we (as well as you) are free to disagree. I usually don’t emphasize this, though, because I assume that people are smart enough to figure it out for themselves.

So, in essence, first you try to make yourself look superior, then you try to make yourself look humble and open-minded. Sorry – neither is working.

It’s apparent now that I’ve been wasting my time on you, even if I did get a laugh out of it.

#33 On January 26th, 2007 6:08 am Daniel Gr replied:

I’m sorry, but I don’t like intolerants, Ian. So you’ll be thankful to hear I won’t comment here anymore. Since you daren’t learn anything from deviating opinions (and people with a different vocabulary than your own), what’s the point me commenting here, really, anyway?

Maybe if you’d told me what words weren’t appreciated from the beginning I’d have known not to use them. But I can’t read minds, sorry. So there you go. Over and out, for good.

#34 On January 26th, 2007 6:18 am Daniel Gr replied:

Did I ever sound offended, Peter? It’s a matter of personal opinion of course, but I thought you did, while I sure wasn’t.

My final words. Yes, I think you reduce yourself to less than worthy if you work for IE and stupid managers. Yes, I think this war would’ve already been won if you hadn’t gone and patched everything up for IE – even when there’s free, fully-functioning browsers out there for everyone to get and use.

And, yes, you do de facto work but for Microsoft to cover for them when you spend time fixing already good resources just to patch up for bugs at the other end. And that makes you an idiot to me.

Sincerely,

Daniel

#35 On January 26th, 2007 6:23 am Daniel Gr replied:

Feel free to delete all my comments now, Ian Lloyd. No one’s been listening anyway, so there’s no hope for change on your behalf.

#36 On January 26th, 2007 8:00 am WaSP Member kblessing replied:

The only comments that have been deleted from this thread are those that were purely inflammatory and didn’t contribute at all to the topic.

#37 On January 26th, 2007 4:03 pm Jordan Clark replied:

I thought you were going, Daniel? Don’t let us hold you up, now! Bye!!

#38 On January 26th, 2007 7:13 pm Yahia Chlyeh replied:

Gérard, you’re right. Even, the few websites I designed untill now are ergonomically navigable without any CSS, and pass minimum WCAG1 p1.
Talking about IE7, I would have preferred they redo the bells and whistles and keep the engine still, as IE6′s — like they did for XHTML’s MIME support. Because all the CSS hacks that used to work fine, now they don’t. I’m not one of those ugly CSS hacks that leave you with an unvalid stylesheet, so the solution that one has is including styles with conditional comments (I believe).

#39 On January 27th, 2007 6:55 am Daniel Gr replied:

Thank you, Jordan. Very constructive comment on CSS and web standards there. Just for you, I’ve decided not to leave this thread alone though I said I would. (Yes, that would mean I lied.) Welcome, Jordan!

1. There’s no such thing as “conditional comments” in any standard. Comments are for comments. Everything else is semantically incorrect.

2. There’s still no need hacking for Internet Explorer, since people are free to choose a browser with a standards-compliant rendering engine.

3. You’re just wasting your precious time doing disgraceful hacks (while you could be adding creative content, better service, or improving your accessibility). Shame on you, I say.

#40 On January 28th, 2007 1:01 am zooplah replied:

Still feed the troll (Daniel Gr), huh guys?

#41 On January 28th, 2007 6:16 am Ted replied:

2. There’s still no need hacking for Internet Explorer, since people are free to choose a browser with a standards-compliant rendering engine.

Daniel
Most people have to use the browser supplied by the organisation they work for and that almost always means IE. Downloading anything else is often a disciplinary offence.

#42 On January 28th, 2007 8:23 am Daniel Gr replied:

Who’s the troll, anyway, zooplah? Not like you’re posting any constructive criticism on web standards nor CSS3 in Opera, right? More like you‘re picking on people totally off-topic and, thus, being the troll yourself.

If you really read what I said, instead of bothering with how I said it, you’ll see that I’m one of the more constructive people on this thread. My god!

I know that, Ted, but there’s usually no good reason why that organization would deny people to use a better, free browser – except not knowing there’s a demand for a better choice.

It’s all about people uniting for change and convincing the computer network administrators. It does take an effort, but it’s usually possible to bring change – and, infact, I’ve done it myself in several places (at a universities, a college and a media company).

Nearly nothing is impossible if you put your mind to it. Have a little faith.

#43 On January 28th, 2007 8:33 am Jordan Clark replied:

Daniel: For somebody who has consumed this entire page with his ego, I think it is a bit rich to start questioning other people’s input.

I actually quite agree with a lot of what you say, eg. CCs are technically invalid, and yes, they are a hack.

But the point that some others here are trying to get across is that, like it or not, IE is the predominant browser and to ignore that displays arrogance at the least.

Try telling the averge web user that your site is perfect, but IE has a “rendering” bug… see how far you get. Unfortunately, in the real world hacks are a necessary evil, and the last time I checked, they’ve never really hurt anybody.

#44 On January 28th, 2007 12:13 pm Daniel Gr replied:

Well, there we diagree. Hacks are – to me – an unnecessary evil. I’ve converted plenty of average users, and I think we could have converted pretty much the whole lot by now if we’d gone together, sticked to the recommendations and accepted poor support from the ost used browser.

I can just state – from my own experience – that most of my projects (that only have about 10 000 unique users in total / monthly, but still) already have about 60% compliant browsers (20% Opera, 40% Gecko), 30% Internet Explorer 6+ users, and 10% other (older or unknown) browsers. And I don’t think there’ll really be a problem converting most of those 40% to switch when I start working actively with gving them credit for doing just that – in exchange for giving me less work for bugchecking and instead providing a better user experience overall.

Currently even I spend a few 100 dollars a year on Internet Explorer. But I’ll rather spend this money on converting my 4000 “web standards ignorant” users. And I’m sure it’ll be worth at least a dollar a head, in the end.

#45 On January 28th, 2007 12:34 pm Daniel Gr replied:

And even if wide media services, like mail.ru*, only has about 9% Opera users and 7% Gecko users. IE6 has lost 6% to IE7 and another 6% to Opera+Gecko since last year. So yes, a lot of people are still Microsoft loyal, but it’s not static and impossible to make an impact on.

–
* I’m using mail.ru as an example since it’s one of few really big sites – Alexa Rank #31 – with public stats.

#46 On January 29th, 2007 2:32 pm Daniel replied:

I actually quite agree with a lot of what you say, eg. CCs are technically invalid, and yes, they are a hack.

Why are CCs technically invalid?
There’s only one CC-Syntax that is truly invalid (because it’s no comment at all) and I’ve never seen it in actual use.
Comments are comments, they may contain almost everything. The syntax of CCs is in no way a problem for parsers or validators.
Invalid is the interpretation of it’s contents in MS products. However, in later versions of Internet Explorer they should be obsoleted by the better standard compilance.

In my opinion CCs are a great invention. Without them modern CSS-based designing would be a lot harder (or probably more dirty).

#47 On January 30th, 2007 6:42 am Daniel Gr replied:

HTML comments were supposed to be readable comments – relevant to the code, Daniel. SGML has a goal to be both readable and typable, you know.

W3C didn’t add comments for Microsoft to use as browser negotiation hacks. They are for explanatory expansions of what the HTML code is for.

Without them modern CSS-based designing would be a lot harder (or probably more dirty).

Or one could just use CSS2.1 according to W3C recommendations, that’s supported in several free, good browsers?

Sigh. Stop frickin’ working around everything for the sake of Microsoft! They’re bad – so let ‘em be, and give them what they deserve! Broken rendering in their shitty browsers.

#48 On January 30th, 2007 6:47 am Daniel Gr replied:

Let me spell it out loud, once and for all: Microsoft deserves broken rendering in their browsers.

And Let me spell out what is important, once and for all: It’s only important that one use Web Content Recommendations that is available to all through some browser.

Now. Get this into your brains!! Please?

#49 On January 30th, 2007 9:36 am WaSP Member lloydi replied:

Daniel Gr – or is that Grrrrrrrrr!? – at the risk of spawning another 5 replies, you wrote:

I’m sorry, but I don’t like intolerants, Ian. So you’ll be thankful to hear I won’t comment here anymore. Since you daren’t learn anything from deviating opinions (and people with a different vocabulary than your own), what’s the point me commenting here, really, anyway?

Note that I didn’t ask you not to express an opinion, nor did I say anything that suggested I do not value your opinion. All I asked is that you have a little self-restraint as far as the profanities are concerned. That has *nothing* to do with having a rich vocabulary – it’s simply a measure of politeness. One can have a discussion without resorting to swearing, or at least in this arena, and in my experience, this has always been the case.

Am I being unreasonable asking for you to cut out the profanities?

#50 On January 31st, 2007 7:45 am Daniel replied:

HTML comments were supposed to be readable comments – relevant to the code, Daniel. SGML has a goal to be both readable and typable, you know.

I do understand your point. However, if I’d write my comments in some secret language no one else understood. Would they be technically invalid as well?

Let me spell it out loud, once and for all: Microsoft deserves broken rendering in their browsers.
And Let me spell out what is important, once and for all: It’s only important that one use Web Content Recommendations that is available to all through some browser.

Honestly, I completely understand your point of view. I think it’s the wrong one though.
Let me spell it out loud, once and for all: Customers and visitors of your website should be your top priority. Not some hateress agains Microsoft (even if they deserved it).

#51 On February 2nd, 2007 8:15 pm Gérard Talbot replied:

“Why can’t you offer backward compatibility?

Old software does not support standards. Didn’t we mention that already? It would be swell if we could have backward compatibility and pure standards compliance. But we can’t. We have to choose. For years, most of us have chosen backward compatibility. But is this really the best choice?

For years, we’ve been taught to be good little web designers, building sites that work in browsers that don’t. Each site we build the old-fashioned way becomes one more dung heap of bad code, one more web destination that will eventually stop working as browsers and standards evolve.

The longer we do it, the more doomed sites proliferate. Thousands of new sites premiere every day. Most of them are built to support bad browsers intead of standards. It’s an epidemic. Enough already. We finally have good browsers. Let’s use them.”

coming from To Hell With Bad Browsers, February 2001

#52 On February 3rd, 2007 7:05 am Nemo replied:

God bless this thread for your input, Gerard. You’re one reasonable/constructive guy. Keep it up!

#53 On April 6th, 2007 7:11 pm Uwe replied:

IE7 is a clear and definite improvement (over IE6) in my opinion. I nevertheless agree with you that IE7 still has lots of bugs, incorrect implementations, incomplete CSS2.1/DOM2/HTML4 support, incomplete or buggy support for CSS 2.1, HTML 4 and for DOM 2.

Nice Prog but Firefox is much better.

Uwe

Post a Reply

Comments are closed.