Web developers want to light a fire under Microsoft to get better standards support in the company’s Internet Explorer browser, but they can’t seem to spark a flame. Elsewhere, Eolas Technologies, which has the rights to a browser plug-in patent, has filed a motion to permanently stop Microsoft distributing Internet Explorer browsers that infringe the patent.
Developers Gripe About IE Standards Inaction
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Light a fire? How about a bonfire! Seriously. I write web based software for a living, and every day I deal with all the painful bugs that IE has with CSS. Like the fact that style sheet properties don’t ‘cascade’ which kinda makes them NOT cascading style sheets anymore? Or how about getElementById which returns the first document element with the *NAME* or *ID* that you requested. Or what about the button tag? Which returns it’s paremeter whether or not the person actually clicked the button. Or what about max-height, max-width, min-height, min-width? Doesn’t support those either. Pitiful, absolutely pitiful.
Sorry, but I’m ticked :]
If web developers didn’t ignore industry standards and coded web pages that weren’t “optimized for IE”, MS would have to have tried harder to dominate the market. This is just another example of typical short-term thinking screwing things up in the long-term.
Or how about getElementById which returns the first document element with the *NAME* or *ID* that you requested. Or what about the button tag? Which returns it’s paremeter whether or not the person actually clicked the button. Or what about max-height, max-width, min-height, min-width? Doesn’t support those either. Pitiful, absolutely pitiful.
Adding MathML, “position: fixed” and Alphatransparency for PNGs…
THey know that they have everyone in their back pocket. They don’t care how functional the web borwser is for us.
Why isn’t everyone switching to Mozilla?
Because around 70% of the IE-users don’t want to switch, mostly because they’re too used to it.
“Because around 70% of the IE-users don’t want to switch, mostly because they’re too used to it.”
I’d say this instead:
Because around 70% of the IE-users don’t switch, mostly because they don’t know about it.
First, some quick points: IE was, until about 2 years ago, the best browser around. But Mozilla now blows it away, because IE hasn’t moved an inch since then. So I agree with everyone above: if only everyone would switch. One trick is to install Mozilla on a friend’s computer, label the icon “IE” and use the IE theme; I bet they wouldn’t even notice the change!
Anyway, despite my contempt for Microsoft’s strategy with IE, I have to admit that I’m alarmed by the Eolas patent. Here we have a one-man company that creates NO products, contributes *nothing* to society, and simply uses a patent to extort money from other businesses (who could be next?), and to make life for millions of web users just one little bit more irritating.
Yeah, like this was really the idea of patents somehow “promoting innovation”. To be honest, even if the patent is technically valid, it should be thrown out on the basis of how it’s being (ab)used for the benefit of no-one except Michael Doyle.
Osnews doesn’t like long URLs.
http://164.195.100.11/netahtml/srchnum.htm
And search for patent number 5,838,906
Bulls Eye.
Developers helped make IE a monopoly browser, and now they are finally having to deal with it.
Frankly I believe the whole business of having commercial media types embedded in web pages to activate plugins hopefully present on the viewer’s computer is a kludgy, unsatisfactory solution
It requires constant software upgrades to deal with new standards ( which incidentally completely rules out digiboxes as a viable web tool even if the Tvscreen quality problem could be fixed ) and cripples new OS’s for the same reason – commercial plugins aren’t easy to get ported
The web should be built on open standards – Java, HTML, JScript, etc
MS should do the brave thing and rip plugin functionality out of their browser.
Although an even more superb response would be to reveal the protocols for accessing the built-into-windows rendering engine so people could make a replacement for it with OSS 🙂
(cue flame-war from the types who are addicted to flash games and animated websites)
Has anyone tried to use multible browsers on a Windows machine with multible users? If one user wants to use nothing but Mozilla and another user wants to use nothing but Opera, how can both users launch their favorite browser by clicking on url links or clicking on icons without the usual ‘This web browser is not the default web browser’ dialog popping up?
Why is it so hard to actually customize Windows so each user can have their favorite applications lauch without disturbing other user’s setting?
Thats because multiple users in Windows is so new that only a few programs make any good use of it.
“Why isn’t everyone switching to Mozilla?”
We actually tried where I work to push that. Unfortunately we use an old NetObjects server, which conveniently only makes CSS show properly in an IE browser. The pages are all messed up in any other browser, and since they are refusing to redo the pages, everyone must use IE.
What I find crazy is that people can patent features as image uploading (look for yourself at http://164.195.100.11/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=… )…
Get yourself 2000lite
http://www.litepc.com
Remove everything you can select.
Now clean the registry, defragment the disk, tweak some more.
Start adding apps like: Firebird, Thunderbird, Irfanview, QDC, JDK-1.4.2, SVG-viewer, Acrobat Reader, PowerArchiver, OO.o-1.1, Gaim and the like. (this selection make up for quite a complete workable set)
So now I have a win2000 platform which just workSurf with pleasure. I know, browser of the ‘the other side’ had their incompatibilities, but this is now resolved. No more fuss !
I do this at a company I support IT for and hear no complaints as of yet (it’s been a week)
My guess is that if the word is out, the switching will appear everywhere soon.
Developers (who tend to work for management who unfortunately and uncritically make the IT platform decisions that they’re not really capable of making… been there done that) do what they are paid to do and tend to be given little freedom to choose a platform.
Dev: “I think we should ensure the site is standards compliant”
Manager: “Ok so it’ll work better in IE then?”
Dev: “Uh well it might break it in IE”
M: “No can do. We’re a Microsoft shop and our clients are”
D: “Uh well I could make it cross browser so it works in IE and browsers that work?”
M: “That wont take any more time will it?”
D: “Uh…”
Don’t be so ready to blame the messenger. They quite often just carry the message that is foisted on them.
Ditto that part about not knowing. I stunned my brother when I showed him how fast ESPN.com loads in MozPhoenix comapred to IE. He had kno widea that different browsers performed differently. He assumed it was all on the website’s side.
One problem with Mozilla/Firebird is that it doesn’t support some “IE-isms”. This is deliberate on the part of the developers, since they wish to encourage people to use W3C standards. But, this results in some sites – usually those relying on IE-specific Javascript not working.
Since IE is ~95% of the browser market, the devs aren’t usually interested in fixing this problem.
Because of this, I can’t dump IE completely, since there’s a couple of sites I use that are like this.
Granted, I can refuse to use them on princple, but it’d be pretty much cutting off my nose to spite my face.
I’ve known several people who “just want one browser”, and because Moz can’t handle these sites, the stick to IE.
A vicious circle, unfortunately…
I use Firebird on my XP box almost exclusively these days, and it’s a great browser and, IMHO, far superior to IE. But, until someone hacks in support for the funky IE “document” script breakage, it’ll never be able to completely replace IE for a lot of people.
A shame, because I think Microsoft’s stagnation would let contenders back into the market otherwise.
I believe Opera does in fact support the IE-specific script stuff, but that means either putting up with ads or paying for it. The majority of users won’t do that when IE is “free” …
Drill Sgt, does NetObjects support changing/modifying mime types? i bet the problem you are seeing is CSS being sent as a mime type other than text/css, or no mime type at all. if you can change the mime type to text/css moz will work.
I’ve got the lighter fluid and matches.
I am with you, and I do web development also. Besides, IE is just painful to use.
Mozilla or Firebird is the way to go.
Today there are many browsers significantly better than IE. It seems that Microsoft is abandoning that area in a way. I guess that the reason for it are some new, more specialized applications, based on .Net and integrated with OS. Ther was an article about integrated local and Internet search, for example.
Microsoft never liked browser, they were forced into it in the times of Internet boom. Browsers are potential universal clients, and Microsoft does not like universal clients.
They want to extend a lifetime of old fashioned PC desktop and client-server model. Universal thin client sounds lot like a network computer, which is a clear threat to Microsoft.
Network computers and similar devices would have been a great relief for both, IT workers and users, but Microsoft is blocking the development in that area. So we can only hope that some evil fate will soon cripple or destroy Microsoft.
DG
I wonder how many companies have intranets that have web pages that use vbscript. Since vbscript does not work with Mozilla it is a big problem.
Our company web site actually had some simple vbscript on a page. Thankfully some lady emailed and said the page did not work for her. Bless her soul. I converted the script to javascript for IT and now the page works on Mozilla.
Also I think the DOM implementation in IE is broken or just plain to lax. In IE6 you can use
formname.textbox.value without needing to specify the top level. In mozilla you need to put document.formname.textbox.vlaue. This means that all sorts of people who have learned javascript in IE only, make pages that just don’t work on Mozilla. Again as the only person at work who cares for anything but MS and IE I had to ask for a code change.
🙂
Anyway, I am sure this dead horse will continued to get flogged for another 10 years. The problem is that the vast majority of “web developers” use tools like Dreamweaver, which, by itself is nothing wrong as so long as you disable the IE extensions (through the options/preferences) and select strict HTML code.
The problem is that there are still a large number of people who produce sloppy code, heck, you can see it here. People who simply put an opening tag at the beginning of something assuming that the whole paragraph will magically become formatted. Sorry, but you have to open AND close tags. Just because IE works around your crappy code, doesn’t mean that it is correct.
Get a book, “HTML programming for people as thick as two short planks and twice as ugly”, and learn how to use Javascript properly instead of relying on the good old “cut ‘n paste” from other peoples site. Learn how the code works and ensure that it is used correctly.
First, some quick points: IE was, until about 2 years ago, the best browser around. But Mozilla now blows it away, because IE hasn’t moved an inch since then. So I agree with everyone above: if only everyone would switch. One trick is to install Mozilla on a friend’s computer, label the icon “IE” and use the IE theme; I bet they wouldn’t even notice the change!
This is what I did. Delete IE and Outlook Express icons from every place. Make Mozilla available for use. I’ve done this and every person I have converted is very happy. Sites now work as they are meant to, pages load quicker, and the mail application is easy to use.
Anyway, despite my contempt for Microsoft’s strategy with IE, I have to admit that I’m alarmed by the Eolas patent. Here we have a one-man company that creates NO products, contributes *nothing* to society, and simply uses a patent to extort money from other businesses (who could be next?), and to make life for millions of web users just one little bit more irritating.
Well, the first thing I would need to know is whether Eolas is going to leave Mozilla alone. They might say, “well, they’re not making any money off our patent so why sue them”? Also, depending on the situation, Netscape *might* have an existing license with Eolas which allows anyone to use the Netscape plugin infrastructure. Since Opera supports Netscape plugins, they could be exempt from this patent.
Yeah, like this was really the idea of patents somehow “promoting innovation”. To be honest, even if the patent is technically valid, it should be thrown out on the basis of how it’s being (ab)used for the benefit of no-one except Michael Doyle.
Thats the “wonderful” thing of patents. There is a line between developing something, aka, IBM and Hard Drive Pixie Dust (yes, this does exist) and some piece of technology with a patent that is so open ended, it is the equivilant of asking how long a piece of string is.
There is also a difference between owning a patent and willing to license it and owning a patent just to piss off competition and make interoperabillity impossible. I am not directing this comment at any company in particular, but I think most people know who I am referring to.
> Developers helped make IE a monopoly browser, and now they are finally having to deal with it.
I really don’t agree with this statement. I am a web developer and have been through hell during the Netscape / Exlorer wars which basically crippled every web page I made. I tried hard to stick to standards given by W3c (then HTML 3) but did either browser support them – NO! Then there’s the mess that is Javascript. Then the likes of Dreamweaver came along and really screwed things up.
I’ve always tried to code to standards, I remebmber sitting there for hours with a text editor trying to get tables to behave the same in IE and Netscape, now I’m having the same headaches with CSS and IE (Mozilla and Opera behave perfectly everytime).
What I’m trying to say is the real web developers have always tried to do well, its the cowboy organisations who turned to the likes of Macromedia to design pages and never gave a blip about learning the skills required to be a ‘developer’ these are the people who have helped M$ ruin the web.
“I’d say this instead:
Because around 70% of the IE-users don’t switch, mostly because they don’t know about it.”
Because those 70% don’t care enough even if you tell them. I tell them Mozilla has popup blocking. I tell them Mozilla has tabbed browsing. I tell them Mozilla is more secure. Do they care? Hell no.
Well, on the good side, it provides great entertainment to me when I find a user complain about pop-ups, virus’s via Outlook Express and general instability. It is a great laugh to see such people being given an alternative and turn it down. IMHO, they’re the maker of their own missery and why should I or anyone else feel sorry for them.
get rid of java, flash, frames and use dillo
java and flash are typically used for adds which i hate and not using frames for a webpage design wont hurt anyone
a page can look very good when done that way and doesnt give you a friggen headache
“Why isn’t everyone switching to Mozilla? ”
ActiveX
Mozilla does not use Eolas’s code. I belive they use the old Netscape way of installing plugins. This court case has to do with Eola code that IE uses to installs and manage plugins. Mozilla and every other browser out there like Opera, Safari are in no way in danger of being sued.
“I’d say this instead:
Because around 70% of the IE-users don’t switch, mostly because they don’t know about it.”
I do know about Mozilla and the Firebird browser, but i have to say that the UI is just too unresponsive to be useful on an older computer. If Mozilla would be like Opera then i think that a lot more people would have switched. Opensource developers really have to try to make programs as fast and responsive as possible because that is one area where opensource software is often worse than its competitors.
Microsoft has paid millions to SCO for something they don’t care about, posturing as people who respect intellectual property. In reality, when found guilty of IP violations, they often refuse to pay, appeal the verdict and hope the claimant will disappear meanwhile (earthquake, hurricane, arson, bankruptcy, mass-murder, etc.).
“Freedom of innovation”, Gates shouts every now and then. Well, why shouldn’t that freedom be enjoyed by others ?
Eolas has played and won according to the rules. It’s time for Ballmer to send them a check and stop whining.