Comments on: Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the browser.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the browser.

weston — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 16:57:00 -0800

Dean Edwards does what a team of developers with billions behind them apparently can't -- update IE to work with modern standards. Almost, anyway... as he says, it's still in alpha, and has its quirks, but check out the Pure CSS Menus demo, for example.

By: techgnollogic

techgnollogic — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 17:36:32 -0800

Is the "Pure CSS Menus demo" not supposed to work in IE? Because it does... Am I missing something?

By: RavinDave

RavinDave — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 18:39:31 -0800

I guess I always took it as a given that the "team of developers with millions behind them" were breaking standards on purpose.

By: nakedcodemonkey

nakedcodemonkey — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 18:54:50 -0800

It would have helped if the site provided a "before" example, because that's the "after". IE7 is essentially a mega-hack embedded in the page. Currently versions of IE are transparently fixed. You have to see the examples without the IE7 stylesheet to see what IE5/6 normally does to it.

By: synecdoche

synecdoche — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 19:25:20 -0800

techgnollogic, it seems to work okay in IE for me as well, but it isn't as nice as it is in firefox, which I use as my primary browser. The difference seems to be that in IE, there is a tiny gap between the pop-down box and the "css/edge" and if I move my mouse even a bit too slowly, the pop-down disappears. Mind you, the page also looks a lot nicer in Firefox, but that could be because I have taken the time to mess around with font sizes and whatnot in it whereas I only use IE when I absolutely have to (or to see whether a site works in it).

By: weston

weston — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 19:25:24 -0800

Here's the before (Eric Meyer's original pure css menus demo).

By: techgnollogic

techgnollogic — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 19:28:47 -0800

Ah ha. Thanks guys.

By: mkultra

mkultra — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 19:45:04 -0800

I admire the noble diligence behind this, as well as the "why climb the mountain? because it's there!" that must drive it, but will this ever really go anywhere? There will never really be an IE7 until Microsoft says there is. Does anyone know this- if you had access to the source code, is "fixing" IE all that hard, or do the guts need to be junked and rewritten from scratch?

By: reklaw

reklaw — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 19:52:04 -0800

Vigilante bug-fixing... neat. Whatever you might say about MS, they certainly did a decent job of making IE extensible if it can support something like this. Now they just need to work on the whole security thing...

By: republican

republican — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 20:52:18 -0800

"dean - edwards 2004"...what could have been.

By: sixdifferentways

sixdifferentways — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 22:30:39 -0800

Has anyone ever investigated if Microsoft software (not just the browser - but IIS and Windows and the whole kit-and caboodle) is at least somewhat supported by the development and system administrator community precisely because it *is* so buggy? I mean in terms of job security and longevity. When you look at the amount of tech time spent fixing the stuff that should mostly work in the first place, it seems to be an impressive percentage. It's been my distinct impression that some IT people remain very loyal to MS as a "tried and true standard" either because that is what they are familiar with and/or it keeps them busy. I'm not suggesting this is a major reason for MS's dominance, but I've seen it often enough that it seems more than purely coincidence.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:43:33 -0800

man, if dean had won the nomination and picked edwards as a running mate, that guy would, like, be cool if he had deanedwards.com

By: i_am_joe's_spleen

i_am_joe's_spleen — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:52:47 -0800

oh yes, sixdifferentways. the same goes for oracle and a few other vendors i could name. not that oracle is buggy, but it totally requires manual tweaking care and feeding. oracle could be as user friendly as sql server, but that would deprive many many oracle dbas of a living. (i like and prefer oracle as a developer, but honestly... )

By: Satapher

Satapher — Fri, 30 Jul 2004 00:24:16 -0800

so what happens when IE 8 renders CSS on par with Firefox et al, and the million pages with IE box hacks and whatnot stop 'rendering' correctly?

By: Tlogmer

Tlogmer — Fri, 30 Jul 2004 00:36:45 -0800

IIRC, those box hacks usually take advantage of other IE bugs. If those bugs are corrected too, things should be fine.

By: weston

weston — Fri, 30 Jul 2004 00:41:37 -0800

Satapher, the "IE 7" hack presented here doesn't make that a danger, since a site developer has to make a conscious decision to use it, and would therefore know not to use the CSS "filters" anymore. Still, you ask a good question, and I think that's why the best CSS filters utilize a browser's inability to comprehend certain selectors, rather than things like stylesheet parsing bugs. It's easy to imagine the parsing bugs getting fixed w/o fixing box model or something like that, but it's harder to imagine someone getting closer to selector standards w/o getting closer to the standard in other ways.

By: DrJohnEvans

DrJohnEvans — Fri, 30 Jul 2004 05:39:06 -0800

Yes, IE7 is just a mega-hack embedded in the page—but it's a mega-hack of convenience. Now my stylesheet can include things like adjacent sibling selectors, without me having to worry about putting in an individual hack for IE to get similar behaviour. And when the real IE7 comes out (har), I can just take out the three-line hack, and everything will work. Okay, there may be some sunny optimism in the preceding paragraph, but this is still great. It's not some patch for IE that users won't bother to download, it's a style hack that web designers can make much use of. Although a "before" example would've helped win over the naysayers, I agree. Still, anyone who knows what they're doing should understand that this is a great idea.

By: mikeh

mikeh — Fri, 30 Jul 2004 08:30:34 -0800

His hack to get mozilla to use IE-style dhtml behaviors is just as, if not more, impressive.

By: Mitheral

Mitheral — Fri, 30 Jul 2004 09:54:56 -0800

I can't see the job security angle sixdifferentways. Supporting MS crap is so tiring. I guess if you were the kind of person who previously would have been screwing caps onto toothpaste tubes you might want MS to continue to make buggy, "feature" rich software. Most IT people I know would much rather be soving new problems though.

By: Blue Stone

Blue Stone — Sat, 31 Jul 2004 02:37:46 -0800

A better solution.