Making IE Standards Compliant 582
spin2cool writes "Dean Edwards has taken it upon himself to make Internet Explorer W3C compliant. How? Well, it isn't by patching the application, as you might suspect. He's created a stylesheet, dubbed 'IE7' that uses DHTML to load and parse style sheets into a form that IE can understand. Just include the style sheet in your HTML pages, and things should render correctly. The complexity of the CSS transformations is really amazing and shows off the power of this stuff."
Making IE Standards compliant? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Making IE Standards compliant? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Making IE Standards compliant? (Score:5, Funny)
My problem with this patch is its name - it was DoNotUseIE.phoenix, then DoNotUseIE.bird, now - apparently - its DoNotUseIE.patch. Enough already!
;)
MS releases patch to fix Security bug in IE (Score:4, Funny)
Let me get this straight... (Score:3, Funny)
That'd be the easiest money
Re:What's up with that comma, dude? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What's up with that comma, dude? (Score:5, Interesting)
I come across this all the time. People send emails with stuff like:
"Can someone, please look at, this."
What does it mean? By the way, this is a manager. She gets paid more than me and yet she can't string simple written English together.
Sometimes I wonder what goes on in peoples' minds, then I realise I'd rather not know.
Re:Making IE Standards compliant? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Making IE Standards compliant? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Making IE Standards compliant? (Score:5, Informative)
Just to clarify slightly - IE7 doesn't rely on serving up a different stylesheet, but an additional 'sheet. In other words, if you reference IE7 as your first 'sheet, existing stylesheets for compliant browsers will then render OK in IE.
If I've read it right you don't even need to sniff (well, at least not in the old-fasioned, java-script or server-side script sense): it's all done through CSS.
Re:Making IE Standards compliant? (Score:5, Insightful)
The trouble is...what if you don't have a windows computer to see how 'it looks' under IE? I can run just about any other browser under the sun on my development stations, all linux....except IE.
I'm still trying to figure how to run IE under wine...but, never have been able to do it with no windows partitions...
Re:Making IE Standards compliant? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is an age-old problem for web developers. Good developers test their work in multiple browsers, and should also do a test in browsers a few versions back. This might mean keeping an extra box lying around that runs Windows, or using VMWARE or WINE to run Internet Explorer. People might flame me and say that any good developer KNOWS what the content will look like in different browsers and tries to produce a browser-agnostic design, but experience tells me that there's nothing like a quick test to find your mistakes.
Re:Making IE Standards compliant? (Score:4, Interesting)
You're probably doing this, but many other sites (heh, usually IE-only sites) sure as heck aren't. What about 320x480, 400x600, 640x1024?
Not everybody browses with their web browser taking up the full window! Half a window, aligned portrait-style, is easier on the eyes because it requires less horizontal eye movement than "fullscreen". Horizontal scrolling is evil -- doubly so to users who go out of their way to minimize read-speed and comprehension-slowing horizontal eye movement by resizing their browsers to prevent it.
Re:Making IE Standards compliant? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's a pretty good question. But the beauty of this thing is that it allows web designers to use all W3C compliant techniques and then make them work correctly in IE6 without massive changes to their code. Just saying "modifying web site allows it to be rendered correctly in IE6" leaves people with the impression that they need to go through a re-coding project instead of just including a style sheet.
Maybe a better headline would be: "New standards compliancy stylesheet for IE6 clients eases cross-browser development for web developers." Or something like that.
Re:Making IE Standards compliant? (Score:4, Insightful)
So your analogy would be more accurate if you said "Here's a dictionary so you can read the signs around town. If you want to talk to a native, though, I recommend you continue shouting slowly in English."
It's not useless, but it's also not a complete solution to the fact that IE isn't standards compliant.
All that's missing (Score:4, Funny)
Re:All that's missing (Score:5, Informative)
Re:All that's missing (Score:4, Informative)
To a limited extent, yes [howtocreate.co.uk].
Kudos, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Kudos, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Kudos, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Kudos, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
I suppose that the reason I'm not rich yet is because I wouldn't. Building software is usually time consuming and costly. Building good software is more so. I wonder that the OSS movement didn't gain popularity so much because of a desire to contribute, as out of a sense of frustration that there was very little good software available at any price.
The market dosen't reward good software because most users are so ignorant of what is good software that they just buy whatever is most shinny and pretty and expensive. The only alternative seems to be to write good software and give it away for free so that you don't have to sit in the Microsoft (and others) stench all day long. It's not just Microsoft, but they're the best example.
Re:Kudos, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
What's unusual in this case is that closed proprietry software has been "changed" without access to the source.
It's not sad that someone other than Microsoft had to do it. It's sad that people other than Microsoft can't do such things a whole lot more.
(in reality, they can of course by not using closed source software, but for some it seems percieved convenience is more important than freedom, but I digress)
Re:Kudos, but... (Score:5, Informative)
in reality, they can of course by not using closed source software, but for some it seems percieved convenience is more important than freedom, but I digress)
What this does is allow developers of standards-based sites, which they have under their own control, to provide a stopgap for users who don't understand the issue of standards and so haven't themselves chosen freedom. So your digression doesn't quite match the facts. As a developer, I can choose to make my site work in Mozilla and KHTML - and will - but I can't choose to force my audience to use them. With this, if it works as advertised, I can choose to follow standards and still provide some means for those who have, for whatever reasons, chosen to use a non-free browser to use my content.
Re:Kudos, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
> with no consideration for what browser they may be using,
> then you are taking the position of Microsoft: "Let's
> commandeer the html standard so that ppl write for our
> browsers instead of according to standards!"
Not right. You can build pages that conform to HTML standards which won't work right in IE due to defects in IE's handling of the HTML standards. This style sheet appears to work around those bugs in IE. Those same standards-
Re:Kudos, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
There are work arounds, using semi-legit CSS that fails in one browser or another and lets each browser see what it understands. But that is really just coding to the browser again, and occasionally breaks as groups upgrade their browsers. This promises a one-stop shop for all the main problems.
Re:Kudos, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Useful stylesheets (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Useful stylesheets (Score:5, Funny)
That doesn't require style sheets, just normal webpages.
Re:Useful stylesheets (Score:3, Interesting)
The sad thing is that the law does not get applied to the biggest criminal of them all, the Convicted Monopolist.
Re:Useful stylesheets (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Useful stylesheets (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Useful stylesheets (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Useful stylesheets (Score:3, Insightful)
That would be silly, because it would be stooping to the IE's level.
If I ever see a web page that specifically excludes me because I use a Non-Supported Browser, or deliberately crashes my browser, I'm not going to listen to that web designer's plea of Using Another Browser. Instead, I go elsewhere.
But if I see a site promoting the [microsoft.com] author's favorite browser [mozilla.org] in a sensible, non-intrusive way [opera.com], I'm not annoyed at all - still might not be interested to switch this very instant, but at least I'm not annoyed.
Re:Useful stylesheets (Score:5, Insightful)
Other than that, every other site I use works great in Mozilla, including banking sites and other sites that you'd think would be tempted to make the IE-only mistake.
What I don't miss is the pop-up I used to have to endure in IE when I disabled ActiveX, not to mention it's countless lack of features (tabbed browsing, popup blocking, etc,...).
Shows the power of IE (Score:4, Interesting)
And before people start attacking ie for saying that mozilla supports xyz css and ie6 doesn't - mozilla was last released yesterday - ie6 was released 2+ years ago. Most of these css3 features weren't even finalised as w3c guidelines when ie6 was released.
Great to see the css3 support though - removes the need for so hard-to-manage javascript hacks.
SharedID [sharedid.com] - Single Sign On for web applications
Re:Shows the power of IE (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Shows the power of IE (Score:5, Informative)
IIRC Moz and Opera do render all of CSS 1.0 correctly and nearly all of CSS 2.0 correctly. But doing some advanced things with CSS 2.0 (especially doing all formatting with it, instead of old table hacks) you really run into problems with both Moz and Opera.
Re:Shows the power of IE (Score:5, Interesting)
now actually reverting to tables for a lot of the layout because of it.
Re:Shows the power of IE (Score:4, Interesting)
I've had weirdness with different IE versions too, like where I have some content with images floated right; words okay in IE5 and IE6, but in IE5.5, the images cover the content. And don't forget that Mac IE is different again!
But I have found myself that using standards compliant code, and then JavaScript to fix "anomalies" is pretty good. Using CSS hacks always seems to be asking for problems to me, whereas with JS you can target specific browser versions.
Re:Shows the power of IE (Score:5, Informative)
You are right, which is why some of the more esoteric features have been removed from CSS 2 and CSS 2.1 is about to be released.
However this is a lot different to Internet Explorer 6's situation. There are massive amounts of CSS 2 that simply aren't implemented, such as a whole bunch of selectors and tables.
The next time you see somebody complaining that CSS layout is hard, remember that there's probably a way to do what they want in a few lines of CSS, but that part of CSS simply doesn't work in Internet Explorer (but does in Mozilla, Konqueror, Opera, etc).
Re:Implementing CSS is HARD (Score:5, Interesting)
The W3C have now changed policy so that in order to get to full Recommendation status, a specification has to have at least two independent implementations. If nobody can implement it, it gets kicked back a stage or two for reevaluation. This should help combat the "nice specs, shame about the real world" problem a little.
Re:Shows the power of IE (Score:5, Interesting)
And to think it'll be a wait of several years before IE is updated with Longhorn... until then, writing pure CSS sites is going to remain a bug-whacking chore. Let's all be collectively glad that MS fought so hard for their "Freedom to Innovate" back in the anti-trust days
P.S. redesign slashdot [alistapart.com] using modern web standards, editors!
Re:Shows the power of IE (Score:5, Funny)
The power of IE is that it's broken but it may be possible to fix it?
I have a powerful car for sale if you're interested.
Re:Shows the power of IE (Score:3, Funny)
Shows the power of Open Source (Score:5, Insightful)
> released 2+ years ago
So, you're saying that the problem is not IE but the broken proprietry way of building softwarwe that can't can release new versions in time to answer real customer needs?
I think I agree
Gilad
Re:Shows the power of IE (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember when Microsoft was releasing and improving IE on a rapid basis? Let's see, when did Microsoft allegedly win the browser war? Oh, about two years ago. When did Microsoft stop innovating IE? Oh, about two years ago. Since then, Microsoft doesn't care cause they have the browser market locked up. Therefore we need to download stuff like this and google toolbars to add pop up blocking and all kind of other third party stuff to get IE up to some modern day level.
Re:Shows the power of IE (Score:3, Interesting)
It does however show a great degree of skill on the part of the programmer, in the use of the limited and corrupt subset of CSS which actually works on the obsolete browser, and a great deal of patience in finding and working around countless undocumented bugs and features, despite the
Re:Shows the power of IE (Score:4, Interesting)
I call BS on that. Even features which IE did implement, it couldn't get right. For example, IE's implementation of getElementById is extremely flawed [mikepalumbo.com]. It also doesn't support lots of things, like the CSS Width property [mezzoblue.com], properly. (IE treats width as min-width, and doesn't provide real width support.)
This isn't a testament to IE's scalability, hackability, or another ability you might come up with. It's just another reason why it's a piss-poor browser. We need additional code to make IE properly understand standards; that's atrocious.
Also, if you want to see how IE stacks up against a browser like Firefox, I have made a quick comparison [realfx.com] between the two. Its a little old now, and it was using Firebird 0.7 (not Firefox), but it's still a valid comparison. IE 6 chokes horribly on CSS, plain & simple.
Re:Shows the power of IE (Score:3, Insightful)
Because it's used by the majority of the people on the Internet, and the people this "fix" is aimed at are the ones who are responsible for getting websites to work for everyone, not just those that use the developers' favourite browser.
Sure, it would be great if nobody used Internet Explorer, or if Microsoft fixed Internet Explorer, but that simply isn't the case, and pointing fingers at Micr
All he has to do now (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sure the CSS is a work of technical art; seeing it would be even better.
Re:All he has to do now (Score:5, Funny)
firefox (Score:5, Informative)
Re:firefox (Score:5, Interesting)
IE has the usual MS philosophy in that if something doesn't comply with the way they've done it, who cares because everyone will change to their way of thinking. I agree with those who don't like that someone else has to clean up after MS but what else are you going to do? For better or worse it is, and will be for a while yet, what most non-techy people use.
Re:firefox (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps it's slashdot that needs to be made standards compliant! It would seem that someone doesn't want us to know [w3.org] how compliant it is.
It seems WDG had better luck getting through [htmlhelp.com], but look at all those errors!
Re:firefox (Score:5, Informative)
Re:firefox (Score:5, Interesting)
MOD PARENT UP, SCORE +20 FULL ON TRUE (Score:3, Informative)
Re:firefox (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:firefox (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, it varies; not all attributes are defined in that way. If you limit your remark to the href attributes of <a> elements, the HTML 4.01 specification defines them to contain CDATA as well. However you are misinterpreting the meaning of CDATA - CDATA includes character entities [w3.org].
Re:firefox (Score:4, Informative)
You are wrong. The HTML specification [w3.org] is very clear on the matter.
Re:firefox (Score:5, Interesting)
The magazine A List Apart [alistapart.com] has already redone Slashdot's design with web standards. Look here:
Re:firefox (Score:4, Informative)
Re:firefox (Score:5, Funny)
Fixed in nightlies (Score:5, Informative)
More major changes since 0.8 here [squarefree.com].
Re:Fixed in nightlies (Score:3, Informative)
Re:firefox (Score:5, Insightful)
They're going to completely rewrite IE? (Score:3, Funny)
Google cache (Score:5, Informative)
So - how are the plans going with implementing a slashdot cache?
Re:Google cache (Score:5, Interesting)
http://freecache.org/http://www.slowsite.com/bi
It benefits the site owner by having reduced bandwidth costs and it also benefits Slashdot as we can read the articles.
Re:Google cache (Score:4, Informative)
Although this would be very useful for tiny sites like those hosted on cable connections, but it's hard to tell in advance which sites will be slashdotted.
And either way, the choice should really be up to the web site owner. I'm sure most would prefer that people see their content versus having their server crushed, but you never know until you ask.
Id say (Score:5, Funny)
Get firefox. (Score:4, Informative)
So if you havent downloaded it yet, get it now! [mozilla.org]. Avalible for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and more!
Nice (Score:5, Insightful)
In any event, this may allow me to actually use some CSS 2, a standard that was published in May 1998 (almost 6 years ago!) and still isn't (fully) supported by the leading browser in the world...
No-one has a copy of the stylesheet?? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's just simple text!
Do people just blindly click on links just because they are posted?
Misleading title : corrects CSS2 selectors only. (Score:5, Informative)
The title of the news is misleading : this JS component only corrects some CSS 2 selectors that IE doesn't natively support.
So it doesn't really make IS standards compliant, it just extends some functionnality. It doesn't, for example, correct the box model of IE5.
So I'm afraid it doesn't spare us of using CSS hacks [centricle.com] to filter out IE.
Dean Edwards (Score:5, Interesting)
Flippancy apart, I think using CSS to make IE7 W3C compliant is a really brilliant idea. However, the browser itself is a small part of the equations. Very few websites are W3C compliant. Vast majority of them are geared to a certain browser, depending on the whim and fancy of the designer.
For my part, I run my sites thru Anybrowser [anybrowser.com] to make sure they will render on, well, as the name suggests, any browser.
Microsoft should hire him (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft should hire him...
Re:Microsoft should hire him (Score:5, Insightful)
Wouldn't life be grand if Microsoft shipped the open source Mozilla as their default browser?
Re:Microsoft should hire him (Score:5, Funny)
There's a greater possibility that Microsoft will pay him to STFU.
Mirror made (Score:5, Informative)
This is temporary, of course.
No wonder it's /.'ed... (Score:3, Funny)
I imagine his ISP's going to want to have a few words with him about bandwidth usage...
Microsoft can fix IE (Score:5, Interesting)
When Microsoft says "we cant fix xyz", it usually means "we cant fix xyz because it would cost us more (in money, programmer time etc) than we are going to gain (in sales, PR etc)"
Re:Microsoft can fix IE (Score:3, Interesting)
Source Code for IE7 htc (Score:5, Informative)
Why did notobdy grab and torrent the file (Score:4, Insightful)
If somebody had grabbed the files we could had a torrent mirror delivering the files in seconds.
This is a great idea (Score:5, Informative)
This would certainly make development a lot easier... I look forward to trying it out
Mirror (Score:4, Informative)
PNG Support? (Score:3)
I was expecting another kind of patch (Score:5, Insightful)
Rather than fixing IE, how about using the same method to make Mozilla render pages designed for IE correctly?
Mozilla is my favorite browser in both Windows and Linux platforms, and it works so well that whenever I stumble with a broken page, I blame it to site designers, not Mozilla, and move along.
However, sometimes I need to browse the broken page. Wouldn't it be cool if you could fire up some DHTML code to parse the broken page and make it standards compliant, so Mozilla (and others) can read it flawlessly?
This wouldn't encourage correct site design, but while in that fight, it would be a nice temporary solution.... do you think this could be done?
Useful for enhanced IE browsers (Score:3, Interesting)
It would be pretty simple for them to have a local copy of the stylesheet and modify the HTML from the server to include this before rendering.
Cute, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is, CSS2 doesn't fill its intended purpose for those who must support legacy apps. Its faster to bite the bullet and format layouts with tables, and it works for ancient browsers (Netscape 4.x anyone?). To me, that's one of the main advantages of JSP, PHP, ASP, and the like: I can include complex logic in my site and output lame ole' HTML 4.01. Code and UI are separated, and everyone is happy.
Besides, take a lesson from Google, simple layouts are best.
Corporate Business Strategy (Score:5, Funny)
Still no cure for bug #97283 (Score:4, Interesting)
Space: Does not page down
Page-Down: Does not page down
Cursorkey-Down: Does not scroll down
"Microsofts Invention", the iframe works like a charm in Mozilla, simple W3C CSS fails. Since 2001.
The correct way (Score:5, Insightful)
It is meaningless to comment by saying "hey I use firefox", because the rest of the world is not using it. Now still 25% of my visitors are using IE 5.5, given that IE 6.0 is there 4 years ago.
Yes, it is much easier to make Mozilla/Opera more IE-complaint. [See IE Emu [eae.net]]
It is also quite easy to design a new set of API such that they are deligated to the correct version supported by the browser in runtime. [See DHTMLLib [siteexperts.com]] [See CBE [cross-browser.com]]
But these are just the wrong way.
A patch to IE means:
It is exactly something like Cygwin, which implies UNIX-style programs are correct programs. When you move to Linux is just your choice.
Re:Gone with only 3 comments (Score:3, Funny)
* This is my site
* for my personal use
* running on my machine
* in my kitchen!
jesus christ, someone create a mirror before his computer blows up from being slashdotted.
more than enough bandwidth to cover it... (Score:3, Funny)
yehaw boys!!
Re:MSIE is the standard (Score:3, Insightful)
at least in ie6 they've fixed that div padding and margin issue (where ms blatantly ignored w3c standards and made their own), but it's still annoying because now it means you have to do a version for ie5 and a version for ie6!
and ie6 ignores div heights, aaargh.. nev
Re:MSIE is the standard (Score:3, Informative)
Re:MSIE is the standard (Score:5, Insightful)
What I'd love to see someone do at some point is re-skin FireFox to look like IE and then abuse one of IE's many security holes to replace IE with the reskinned FireFox on any machine that visits the website.