Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 28th Sep 2009 20:37 UTC
As you all undoubtedly know, the European Union and Microsoft are trying to work out some sort of a settlement regarding the Internet Explorer case. Microsoft made a very detailed proposal for a browser ballot screen earlier this year, and the EU was relatively satisfied. Now, various browser makers have told Reuters that they are not satisfied with Microsoft's proposal.
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Member since:
2005-07-07
While I also find the browser ballot kind of stupid, it is hard to come up with better solutions that are actually doable.
Microsoft could be required to offer free support for IE-only or IE-centric web services for updating their offerings and, at some predetermined point, deactivate/force-upgrade non-standard IE version.
But that would also incur a huge impact on parties not involved in the struggle.
Or maybe Micrsoft could be required to make IE randomly identify as a different browser, so broken/non-standard websites would be broken even if browsed by IE users.
But, again, inflicting harm on third parties.
Or the EU could run a test lab that makes sure web sites are equally functional with competing browsers and make Microsoft pay for those which don't, but then somebody could create such a site for intentionally for harming Microsoft.
It's one of the unfortunate situations where harm cannot be undone and avoiding further damage is hard because of the nature of the damage already done.
IMHO it would be better to forget about the browser ballot and just make sure that any new OS-bundled web related technologies (e.g. Silverlight, codecs, etc) are equally well supported/supportable by all browsers on all plattforms.