Internet Explorer 6 and Standards

April 5, 2001 12:48 PM

Internet Explorer 6 and Standards Microsoft says they'll have 100% CSS1 and DOM (I assume level 1) support. A step in the right direction? Too little too late? Discuss.
posted by fil! (19 comments total)

I'd say it's all definitely a good thing, although as was pointed out, the lack off CSS2 selector support complicates some of the ingenious hacks people have come up with.

I don't blame MS for not putting in CSS2 selector support, being that they don't have full CSS2 support. Partial support for standards is what gets us in to this compat. nightmare in the first place (Netscape 4.x anyone?)
posted by fil! at 12:52 PM on April 5, 2001

I'd say "finally." And look, they got their CSS1 support done in just under five years! I can't wait until full CSS3 support in 2018, because then I'll finally be able to create complex layouts!
posted by mathowie at 12:53 PM on April 5, 2001

Don't worry, Matt. By then, we'll just have to change coding styles to accommodate the 10% of users still using AOLscape 6.00005, so complex layouts will be trivial.
posted by hijinx at 12:58 PM on April 5, 2001

I worry much more about Netscape 4.x looming around for ages, without a doubt the most painful browser to code for.
posted by fil! at 1:04 PM on April 5, 2001

The .0000x releases are almost always bug fixes. I'd like to give a future shoutout to AOL for their sticktoitiveness. Keep the dream alive, guys! Don't quit until you make it work!!
posted by CrazyUncleJoe at 1:20 PM on April 5, 2001

In a slightly more serious tone, there are two things I'd like to point out from the article.

I realize that many of you will be saying, "When are you going to fully implement standard X?" ... The answer is that Microsoft will look at each standard individually and determine how important it is for the customer.

I think that this statement demonstrates the exact position MS is in. They've got the lion's share of the market, and thus, they can decide if people want a feature or not. This is so very different from the Olde Days, when MS and Netscape would actually compete and try to implement new technologies right away. Now, all people seem to want is an integral media player. Perhaps this is a side-effect of the browser being a more "mainstream" product?

The other point is:

...[IE6]... automatically provide ellipses for text when it will not fit into an available area (this feature does required that the text-overflow style be set appropriately).

This I'm not sure about. It's nice, because I think it's a nifty continuity touch. But if it's not a W3C recommendation, is that thin ice? Shouldn't that be suggested to the W3C to be incorporated into the standard? As I said, I like the idea, but MS seems to be doing things the usual way: "innovate" on an existing standard without keeping the standards body in mind.

CSS2 is only 17 years away!
posted by hijinx at 1:48 PM on April 5, 2001

...er, and of course, the next sentence talks about how MS wants to get that ellipsis feature into CSS3. Fine. But how much time will pass between the recommendation of CSS3 and actual implementation?
posted by hijinx at 1:50 PM on April 5, 2001

Goddamn it, I still want full HTML 4.01 support. They STILL can't get the ABBR and Q elements right and my tests were for the WinIE5.5 beta...

And why do we have CSS3 and XSL Style Properties? We're moving from HTML to XHTML, an XML vocabulary. Doesn't it make sense to use XSL which is CSS2, DSSSL, and some new stuff? Instead of doing XSL and then CSS3, both of which have CSS2 and new stuff? It's ridiculous!!

Grrrr.

posted by bkdelong at 2:07 PM on April 5, 2001

BTW, anyone got ie6 beta? any verdicts?
posted by Hackworth at 4:49 PM on April 5, 2001

Don't know how IE6 is for standards other than from what I've read. From a user perspective, though, it's pretty much like 5.5 with an additional menu bar that annoyingly pops up wherever your mouse pointer happens to be. In typical Microsoft fashion, installing IE6 wipes out IE5.5 or 5, and there's no option to keep it from doing so.

Oh, and uninstalling IE6 can be really annoying if you're on NT. (I had to drop a service pack to do it.)
posted by mrbula at 5:58 PM on April 5, 2001

IE 6.0 Beta for Windows is quirky at rendering the coloured scrollbars. On some sites like MeFi the scrollbars stay coloured, but on other sites the scrollbars revert to normal for some strange reason (but the same scrollbars work in IE 5.5)

mrbula: You can turn the image toolbar off from Advanced Options
posted by riffola at 7:32 PM on April 5, 2001

Re: Scrollbars

I just realised that the colours scrollbars won't work in XHTML documents, it works in HTML documents.

Which is kinda interesting, I wonder if they dropped all propriatery tags for XHTML.
posted by riffola at 7:59 PM on April 5, 2001

Unfortunately, I can't install IE6 because I'm still using Windows 95. I was kinda pissed off, but I'll probably have a new computer by the time Windows XP comes out, and Windows XP looks nice.
posted by gleemax at 1:19 AM on April 6, 2001

What BK says. We also NEED OPTGROUP! And INS/DEL, and BDO, and and and…

Do the extended form and table elements work in IE6?

I also wonder whether they'll support all the border types in CSS.

riffola: I wonder if they dropped all propriatery tags for XHTML.

Huh? Is there an either/or there? IE5 Mac handles XHTML (mostly) fine now, straight from the DTD.
posted by rodii at 1:55 PM on April 6, 2001

rodii: Huh? Is there an either/or there? IE5 Mac handles XHTML (mostly) fine now, straight from the DTD

By proprietary tags, I meant the CSS tags that modify the scrollbars in IE 5.5 and up and the alpha transparency, etc.

The scrollbar wont change its colours if the page has a XHTML DTD.
posted by riffola at 8:42 PM on April 7, 2001

Oh, sorry, terminology confusion. Those aren't "tags" to me, they're "properties". No big diff. Though the DTD shouldn't affect CSS rendering?

The big problem IE5/Mac has with XHTML is that it won't render pages with the declaration. Does IE6 have problems with that?
posted by rodii at 8:53 PM on April 7, 2001

Ack. "with the declaration" above should read "with the <?XML> declaration". I hate that.
posted by rodii at 8:54 PM on April 7, 2001

"Though the DTD shouldn't affect CSS rendering?"

I think it's a great idea...use the old, buggy rendering engine for pages that are probably old & buggy, and use the new, shiny rendering engine for new pages that are probably coded correctly.
posted by gleemax at 2:07 AM on April 8, 2001

Instead, they make the new, shiny rendering engine *emulate* the old buggy one. It's the miracle of bugwards compatibility.
posted by rodii at 7:39 AM on April 8, 2001